Part 16 (2/2)
The same orthodox and revolutionary elements in the Party overthrew the Monis Ministry by refusing to vote for it with Jaures and his followers.
But this ministry, perhaps the most radical France has had, was in part a creation of Jaures, who had hailed it with delight in his organ, _L'Humanite_. The fact that it only lived for three months and was overthrown by Socialists was another crus.h.i.+ng blow to Jaures. As it came simultaneously with his defeat in the National Council, it is highly improbable that the reformists will succeed soon, if ever, in regaining that majority in the movement which they held for a brief moment at the time of the St. Quentin Congress and during the first days of the Monis Ministry.
It is now in Belgium and Italy only that ”reformism” is dominant and still threatens to fuse the Socialists with other parties. In the last election in Italy the Socialists generally fused with the Republicans and Radicals, while the Belgian Party has decided to allow the local political organizations to do this wherever they please in the elections of 1912.
In Belgium, Vandervelde, who has usually represented himself as an advocate of compromise between the two wings in international congresses, has now come out for a position more reformistic than that of Jaures and only exceeded by the British ”Labourites.” He was one of the movers of the Amsterdam resolution (see Chapter VII), which he now declares merely repeated the previous one of Paris (1900) which, he says, merely ”forbids an individual Socialist to take a part in a capitalist government without the consent of the Party.” On the contrary, this Amsterdam resolution, as Vaillant says, forbids Socialist Parties to allow their members to become members of capitalist ministries except under the most extraordinary and critical circ.u.mstances.[102]
We are not surprised after this to hear Vandervelde say that the Belgian Party has not decided whether it will take part in a future Liberal government or not, because, though the occasion for this might occur this year (1912), he considers it too far off in the future for present consideration--surely a strange position for a Party that pretends to be interested in a future society. We are also prepared to hear from him that Socialists might be ready to accept representation in such a ministry, not in proportion to their numerical strength, or even their votes, but in proportion to the number of seats an unequal election law gives them in Parliament. Whether, when the question actually presents itself, the Party will follow Vandervelde is more than questionable.
In Italy ”reformism” has reached its furthermost limit. When last year (1911) Bissolati was offered a place in the Giolitti Ministry he hesitated for weeks and was openly urged by a number of other Socialist deputies to accept. After consultations with Giolitti and the king he finally refused, giving as a pretext that, as minister, he would be forced to give some outward obeisance to monarchy, but really because such an action would split the Socialist Party and perhaps, also, because he might not be able altogether to support Giolitti on the one ground of the military elements of his budget. Far from condemning Bissolati, the group of Socialist deputies pa.s.sed a resolution that expressed satisfaction with his conduct and even appointed him to speak in their name at the opening of the new Parliament. All the deputies save two then voted confidence in the new ministry and approbation of its program.
The opinion of the revolutionary majority of the international movement on this situation was reflected in the position of the revolutionaries of the two chief cities of the country, Milan and Rome. At the former city where they had a third of the delegates to the local Socialist committee they moved that the Socialist Party could neither authorize its deputies to represent it in a capitalist ministry or give that ministry its support, ”except under conditions determined, not by Parliamentary artifices, but by the needs and mature political consciousness of the great ma.s.s of workers.” At Rome two thirds of the Socialist delegates voted a resolution condemning the action of Bissolati as ”the direct and logical consequence of the thought, program, and practical action of the reformist group,” and reproved both the proposal of immediate partic.i.p.ation in a capitalist government and ”the theoretical encouragement of such a possibility” as being opposed to all sound and consistent Socialist activity.
The ”reformists,” led by Turati, were of the opinion merely that the time was not yet ripe for the action Bissolati had contemplated. But the grounds given in the resolution proposed by Turati on this occasion show that it was not on principle that he went even this far. He declared that ”in the present condition of the organization and the present state of mind of the Party” a partic.i.p.ation in the government which was ”not imposed by a real popular movement, would profoundly weaken Socialist action, aggravating the already existing lack of harmony between purely parliamentary action and the development of the political consciousness and the capacity for victory on the part of the great ma.s.s of the workers.”[103] In other words, as in France, the working people, especially those in the unions, will not tolerate a further advance in the reformist direction, but Turati and Bissolati, like Jaures and Vandervelde are striving to compromise, just as far as they will be allowed to do so. There is thus always a possibility of splits and desertions in these countries, but none that the party will abandon the revolutionary path.
The tactics of the Italian ”reformists” were immensely clarified at the Congress of Modena (October, 1911). For the question of supporting a non-Socialist ministry and of partic.i.p.ating in it was made still more acute by the government's war against Tripoli, while the Bissolati case above mentioned was also for the first time before a national Party Congress. Nearly all Socialists had opposed the war, as had also many non-Socialists--but after war was declared, the majority of the Socialist members of Parliament voted against the general twenty-four hours' strike that was finally declared as a demonstration against it.
This majority had finally decided to support the strike only after it was declared by a _unanimous_ vote of the executive of the Federation of Labor, and then its chief anxiety had been lest the strike go too far.
The revolutionary minority in the parliamentary group, however, which had consisted of only two at the time of the Bissolati affair, was now increased to half a dozen of the thirty-odd members, while the revolutionary opposition to ”reformism” in the Modena Congress, as a result of these two issues, rose to more than 40 per cent of the delegates.
At this Congress the reformists were divided into three groups, represented by Bissolati, Turati, and Modigliani. All agreed that it was necessary not only to vote for certain reforms--to this the revolutionists are agreed--but also at certain times to vote for the whole budget and to support the administration. Modigliani, however, declared (against Bissolati) that no Socialist could _ever_ become a member of a capitalist ministry; Turati, that while this principle held true at the present stage of the movement, he would not bind himself as to the future; while Bissolati was unwilling to make any pledge on this question. As Bissolati did not propose, however, that the Socialists should take part in the present ministry _at the present moment_, this question was not an immediate issue. What had to be decided was whether, in order to hasten and facilitate the introduction of universal suffrage and other social reforms, the government is to be supported at the present moment--when it is waging a war of colonial conquest to which all Socialists are opposed.
The resolution finally adopted by the Congress was drawn up by Turati and others who represented the views of the majority of reformists.
While purely negative, it was quite clear, and the fact that it was finally accepted both by Bissolati and by Modigliani is highly significant. It concluded that ”the Socialist group in Parliament ought not any longer to support the government _systematically_ with their votes.” It did not declare for any systematic _opposition_ to the administration, even at the time when it is waging this war. It did not even forbid occasional support, and it left full discretion in the hands of the same parliamentary group whose policy I have been recording.
As a consequence the Italian Party at this juncture intentionally tolerated two contradictory policies. Turati declared: ”We are in opposition unless in some exceptional case, in which some situation of extreme gravity might present itself.” Rigola, who was one of the three spokesmen appointed for the less conservative reformists (with Turati and Modigliani) said: ”We have been ministerialists for ten years, but little or nothing has been done for the proletariat. Some laws have been approved, but it is doubtful if they are due to us rather than to the exigencies of progress itself.” In other words, Turati and Rigola thought there could be occasions for supporting capitalist ministries, though the present was not such an occasion; while the latter practically confessed that the policy had always been a failure in Italy. But in the face of all criticism Bissolati announced that he refused absolutely _to pa.s.s over to the opposition to the ministry of Giolitti_. Turati and his followers, now in control of the Party, might tolerate this position; the large and growing revolutionary minority would not. This could only mean that Socialist group in the Italian Parliament, like that of France, and even of Germany, would divide its votes on many vital matters, or at least that the minority would abstain from voting. Which could only mean that on many questions of the highest importance there was no longer one Socialist Party, but two.[104]
Turati himself wrote of the Modena Congress:--
”Only two tendencies were to be seen in the discussion and the voting; _two parties in their bases and principles_: the Socialist Party as a party of the working people, a cla.s.s party, a party of political, economic, and social reorganization, and on the other side a bourgeois radical party as a completion of, and perhaps also as a center of new life force for, the sleeping and half moribund bourgeois democratic radicalism.”[105] That is, the ”reformist” Turati denied that there is anything Socialistic about Bissolati's ”ultra-reformist” faction. To this Bissolati answered that compromise and the political collaboration of the working people with other cla.s.ses, was not to be reserved, as Turati had said, for accidental and extraordinary cases, but was ”the very essence of the reformist method.”[106] The revolutionaries, of course, agree with Bissolati that, if the Socialists hold that their prime function is to work for reforms favored by a large part of the capitalists, compromises and the habit of fighting with the capitalists instead of against them are inevitable.
Turati now began to approach the revolutionaries, said that they had given up their dogmatism, immoderation, and justification of violence, and that he only differed from them now on questions of ”more or less.”
The revolutionaries, however, have made no overtures to Turati, and Turati's overtures to the revolutionaries have so far been rejected.
Turati's ”reformism” seems to be less opportunistic than it was, but as long as he insists, as he does to-day, that it is only conditions that have changed and not his reformist tactics, that the revolutionaries are moving towards the reformists, the relation of the two factions is likely to remain as embittered as ever. Only if the revolutionaries continue to grow more powerful, until Turati is obliged still further to moderate his ”reformist” principles and to abandon some of his tactics permanently, instead of saying, as he does now, that he lays them aside only temporarily, will there be any real unity in the Italian Socialist Party.
Within a few weeks after the Modena Congress, Turati had already initiated a movement in this direction when he persuaded the executive committee of the Party, after a bitter conflict, and by a majority of one (12 to 13), to enter definitely into opposition to the government, which in the meanwhile had given a new cause for offense by delaying on a military pretext the convocation of the Chamber of Deputies.[107]
Among the opportunist and ultra ”reformists” who were still anxious to take no definite action, were such well-known men as Bissolati, Podrecca, Calda, and Ciotti. Bissolati deplored all agitation in criticism of the war except a demand for the convocation of the Chamber.
Turati and others who had at last decided to go over definitely to the opposition, did so on entirely non-Socialist and capitalist grounds such as the expense of the war, the unprofitable nature of Tripoli as a colony, the aid the war gave to clericals and other reactionaries (elements opposed also by progressive capitalists), and the interference it caused with other reforms (favored also by progressive capitalists).
Turati, indeed, was frank enough to say that he had Lloyd George's successful opposition to the Boer War as a model, and called the attention of his a.s.sociates to the fact that Lloyd George became Minister (it will be remembered that Turati is not on the whole opposed to Socialists also becoming ministers--even in a capitalist cabinet).
Even now it was only the revolutionary Musatti who pointed out the true Socialist moral of the situation, that failure of the non-Socialist democrats to stand by their principles and to oppose the war, ought to lead the party to separate from them, not only temporarily, but permanently, and to make impossible forever either the partic.i.p.ation of the Socialists in any capitalist administration or even the support of such an administration in the Chamber of Deputies.
It was only when Bissolati secured a majority of the Socialist deputies, and this majority decided to _compel_ the minority to accept Bissolati's neutral tactics as to the war and his readiness actively to support the war government at every point where that government was in need of support, that Turati rebelled and demanded that his minority, which announced itself as willing as a unit to obey the decisions of the Party Congress, should be recognized as its official representative in the Chamber. Turati's position was the same as before, but Bissolati's greater popularity among the voters, _including non-Socialists_, gave the latter control of the Parliamentary group, and forced the former to a declaration of war. The effect was to throw Turati and his followers into the arms of the revolutionaries, where they form a minority.
And thus the situation becomes similar to that in France. The reformist ”leaders,” Jaures and Turati, do all that is possible to lead the Socialist Parties of the two countries in the opposite direction from that in which these organizations are going. But though these ”leaders”
are turned in the direction of cla.s.s conciliation, they are constantly being dragged backwards in the direction of cla.s.s war. Unconsciously they are doing all they can to r.e.t.a.r.d Socialism--short of leaving the movement. But as long as they consent to go with Socialism when they are unable to make Socialism go with them, their ability to r.e.t.a.r.d the movement is strictly limited.
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