PSI war-time abstentionism left a political vacuum into which fascism expanded

Evidence

In the course of the war years, a reformist Right, based primarily on the parliamentary deputies and the trade unions and led by Turati, Treves and d’Aragona, emerged as a coherent entity. Its main characterising feature, especially after the catastrophic defeat of the Italian army at Caporetto in 1917, was its readiness to accept patriotic slogans. The official party position was defined by the party secretary Lazzari as “Neither support nor sabotage”, and the principal source of dissent within the movement was the argument over whether or not support could be given to the various committees (for aid to war victims, industrial mobilisation, etc.) formed to assist the war effort. The Right was favourable to participation in these, but the party leadership remained true to its “abstentionist” principles. Though positive as far as it went, this had some extremely negative consequences for the future. For the leadership had a “left” enough position to prevent the emergence of any effective organised Left until well after the war, while it was in no genuine sense revolutionary in its practice; at the same time, it profoundly alienated the petit-bourgeois strata-susceptible to patriotic slogans -who were to provide the social basis for fascism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the toolkit concept of ‘common sense’ and passive consent — the leadership’s abstentionism surrendered patriotic discourse terrain rather than contesting it.