l 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 classes, 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
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