At the congress of the Italian Socialist Youth Federation held in Bologna in 1912, a lively struggle took place between two currents: one under the influence of the right wing of the [socialist]party, which feared the lively action of the young socialists and wanted to turn them into a circle of ‘scholarly’ activity, to serve as the condition for acquiring the right to discuss the great questions of the movement and their different solutions; the other placing the members of the Youth Federation on the same level in the more open and heated militant political struggles, and seeing in these the only preparatory training of a revolutionary nature.

The less stringent current supported those working to liquidate a youth movement with an autonomous line of its own, and aimed to put a stop to the lively polemics in the Federation’s newspaper, ‘L’Avanguardia’, which had been resolutely defending the revolutionary current. Here we were on Emilian terrain, the lair of the reformist organisation which, albeit with a serious and respectable line and primary organisational outcomes, opposed any revolutionary vision of the tasks of the proletariat (...)

The texts reproduced here are the following: 1) Conclusion of the so‑called ‘culturists’ and conclusion of the left‑wing current; 2) Letter to the Florentine periodical ‘L’Avanguardia’, edited by Gaetano Salvemini (...)

Salvemini, a notoriously right‑wing socialist, attached a commentary to the letters which appraised the importance of the issue and indicated notable future developments, without showing any solidarity with a truly Marxist position, but nevertheless courageously diagnosing the corruption in the party in terms that are still valid today.

What we ask our readers to take especial note of is the thesis of the right‑wing (‘culturist’) current, that the socialist movement should strive to have young proletarians instructed not only in the ‘generic’ sense, but also have ‘professional training’, to turn them into good producers. In this demand for technical culture, we detected a propensity for class collaboration and energetically rejected it: we saw it as revolutionaries training proletarians to be well-behaved and pliable so their bourgeois masters could exploit them. It was a reaction worthy of youthful hearts.

Today, as well as confirming for us that the arguments originated in a genuine Marxist position, we can verify that we had back then an ante litteram manifesto of Turin‑brand ordinovism (the regions where it took off: Piedmont, Reggio Emilia, Parma... were the haunts of the various immediatisms) and of the system that sees socialism being built within the factory and the capitalist state, a new version of the same old opportunism and collaborationism.

The ‘invariant’ doctrine of Marxism has allowed the point to be seen in the same way across half a century. All the texts quoted by us will come together to prove this.

Gramsci would later on recognise Tasca (representative of the ‘culturist’ current) as the forerunner of his system, despite their subsequent disagreement.

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1. Conclusions of the Speakers at the Youth Congress in Bologna
L'Avanguardia, no.257, 15 september 1912

- Motion of the right‑wing current on ‘education and culture’

The Congress: believing, especially in the current period which the socialist movement is ttraversing, that it is incumbent on the Youth Federation to mainly perform above all a preparatory function by carrying out educational and cultural work which has the three‑fold aim;
    1) of refining and elevating the mind and spirit of proletarian youth, with a general, literary and scientific education;
    2) of providing the Party with conscious and confident militants;
    3) of creating competent organisers and good producers, through a work of elevation and professional technical improvement, without which the socialist revolution will not be achievable;

it provides that the action of the youth organs shall conform to these guiding criteria and to this end it resolves to transform L’Avanguardia into a predominantly cultural organ, entrusting its editing to young and adult comrades of greater competence;

It invites the youth circles:
    1) to take care of the registration of young socialists in the cultural associations;
    2) to periodically establish, in the most important centres, in agreement with the Party, courses of lectures, whose object will have as its subject, in addition to strictly socialist culture, will be the difusion of historical, economic and sociological ideas, and the treatment of problems related to labour organization;
    3) to establish, and develop social libraries;
    4) to adopt, as an effective means of mutual instruction, a method that includes talks and readings.

- Motion of the Left Current on the same subject

The Congress, considering that in a capitalist regime the school is a powerful weapon of conservation in the hands of the ruling class, whose aim is to give young people an education that makes them loyal and resigned to the present regime, and prevent them from seeing its essential contradictions, highlighting therefore the artificial character of the present culture and official teachings, in all of their successive phases, and believing that no confidence can be placed in a reform of the school in a secular or democratic sense;

recognising that the aim of our movement is to oppose the education systems of the bourgeoisie, by creating young people who are intellectually free of all forms of prejudice, who are determined to work for the transformation of the economic foundations of society, and ready to sacrifice to revolutionary activity all individual interests;

considering that this socialist education, in contraposition to the various forms of individualism which distract modern youth, commencing with from a set of strictly scientific and positive theoretical cognitions, manages to create a spirit and feeling of sacrifice;

it recognises the great practical difficulty of giving to the mass of our movement’s adherents such a vast grounding of theoretical notions, which would require the formation of actual cultural institutes of culture, and financial means disproportionate to our forces; and, while pledging itself to give the most enthusiastic support to the work that the Leadership of the S.P. intends to carry out in this field, it considers that the attention of young socialists should rather be directed towards the formation of a socialist character and feeling;

considering that such an education can only be provided by the proletarian milieu when this lives the class struggle understood as preparation for the greatest conquests of the proletariat, and rejecting the scholastic definition of our movement and any discussion about its so‑called technical function, it believes that, just as young people will find in all the class agitations of the proletariat the best terrain for the development of their revolutionary consciousness, so the workers’ organisations will be able to draw from the active collaboration of their youngest and most ardent elements that socialist faith which alone can and must save them from utilitarian and corporatist degeneration;

it affirms in conclusion that the education of young people is accomplished more by action than in study regulated by quasi-bureaucratic systems and rules, and consequently it urges all adherents of the socialist youth movement:
     (a) to meet much more often than the statutes prescribe, so they can discuss among themselves the problems of socialist action, communicating to each other the results of personal observations and readings and becoming more and more accustomed to the moral solidarity of the socialist milieu;
     b) to take an active part in the life of the trade union organisations, by engaging in the most active socialist propaganda with organised comrades, especially by spreading the consciousness that the Trade Union does not have as its sole purpose immediate economic improvements, but instead is one of the means for achieving the complete emancipation of the proletariat, alongside the other revolutionary organisations.

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2. Letter from the representative of the left‑wing current

Naples, 14 October 1912.

Dear Sir,

I trust you will allow me a some space to reply to an article commenting on the recent National Congress of Young Socialists, which appeared in your interesting periodical.

The remarks of Mr. Pietro Silva, not very well-disposed towards that tendency which, not just as a result of more or less high‑sounding speeches, but due to the firm conviction of the comrades present, prevailed at the Congress. They give one to believe that he followed our discussions only very superficially and knows nothing at all about the considerations on the basis of which we declared ourselves in disagreement with comrade A. Tasca’s line of thinking, without ululating at him, but countering his opinions with other arguments, derived from a study and experience of the movement no less serious than his own. We have by no means declared war on culture, we do not deny that among us today socialism is going through a period of crisis, we know we need study its causes and find suitable means to eliminate them, it is just the way we evaluate it all that is different.

We are more than ever in agreement with Silva in recognising the causes of the crisis lie in localism and particularism, in the emergent categorical [trade] tendencies within the workers’ movement, and in the lack of unity of intent among the socialists.

But we cannot agree with Tasca and his columnist that such a vast problem will be resolved by applying the simplistic formula ‘crisis of culture’. What is more, in this we consider them to be in open contradiction with themselves.

How can one not see possible that that particularism has instead given rise to a real crisis of faith and socialist feeling? If the masses give in to category-based impulses, if local groups follow different policies, it is because – in over‑vauling local, corporatist, egoistic problems – they risk forgetting the integral vision of the aims of socialism. And the autonomies, which Silva rightly criticises, are desired, advocated, provoked not by the proletariat, but by intellectuals, who have too narrow a conception of socialist action derived from the specialisation to which they devote themselves in studying immediate and practical problems, driven by local and egoistic interests that prevent them from sensing the actual, universal needs of the working class.

Put in this way, we can see the necessity of setting the youth movement on a course that remedies this crisis of feeling. And it follows that we must make it a movement whose boudaries are set in an animated anti‑bourgeois way, a breeding ground for enthusiasm and faith, and nor do we want to waste precious energy trying to remedy, according to scholastic methods, what is one of the essential, indelible characteristics of the regime of the wage‑earner: the low level of workers’ culture. The Catholic party, which spends millions in this field, has not been able to form a popular Catholic culture.

We evidently disagree on this point with the trend represented by your paper. We believe that workers’ culture may appear in the programmes of democracy but is of little value in the field of the subversive action of socialism.

This does not mean that we deny socialist culture. On the contrary, we believe that the only way to encourage it is to leave it to individual initiative, without enclosing it in the hateful field of the scholastic regime. And that initiative can only be aroused by bringing young proletarians into the heat of struggle and social conflict, which develops in them the desire to render themselves more fit for battle.

If our Avanguardia were to take on a cultural orientation, after four issues the workers would no longer read it. But our young comrades seek it out and love it today because they see it as a symbol of the struggle, and they rediscover in our campaigns they rediscover the proletarian soul as a whole, with its impulses and revolts.

One might say that enthusiasm without conviction is short-lived. Well, this is always true, apart from in the class movements. In the socialist worker, conviction is the child of enthusiasm and feeling, and there is something that does not allow this feeling to die: the instinctive solidarity of the exploited. Those who no longer have faith in the latter and want to replace it with a little theoretical schooling, study, and awareness of practical problems, will find themselves, in our opinion, in very low spirits outside socialism.