The article we now re-publish was written as soon as Mussolini’s famous 18^th October article in Avanti! was published. The issue from which we quote it bears as a first page headline Not “pacifism”: class antimilitarism, while the article is titled For Active and Operating Anti-Militarism.

It was an extremely difficult moment for the Party, for only after a few days would this audacious character disclose the last portion of his mask, no longer speaking of neutrality of either sort, but of open intervention, and making his expulsion from the now thoroughly betrayed Party inevitable.

At that time, more than worrying about the future record of Mr. Benito Mussolini, there were worries over the harmful effect that the ideas cleverly presented with a deceptive gradualism of going from absolute neutrality to active and operating neutrality would have for the Party. What follows was therefore a polemic on the fundamental misunderstanding in the approach to the question of neutralism, and shows from the very first lines how the true Marxist Left in the irreducible struggle against the war, and also against the self-described left-wing justifications for the war, had warned and averted the danger of confusing revolutionary anti-militarism with any relapse into a humanitarian and petit-bourgeois pacifism, completely antithetical to Marxist doctrine. All this after clearly premising that socialism can do without anyone, including Mussolini, such as he was at that time on the merits of all his previous action. This brief polemic is not about whether or not to save Benito’s soul, but about fighting against the danger of a breach opening in the solid class ranks of the party.

The comment may be worth confirming the infallible rule that anyone who wants to draw himself out of the realm of doctrine in order to remain in reality is nothing but a traitor.

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On Tuesday evening the general membership meeting discussing the latest statements of the editor of Avanti! which interprets neutrality in a non-absolute way, as stated in the Manifesto of the Party Direction and the Socialist Parliamentary Group, and makes reservations about our party’s practical opposition to the war, approved the following agenda:

«The Socialist Section of Cesena confirmed the agenda issued on the evening of September 25 on which absolute neutrality was claimed and the war was execrated;

«Whereas the unexpected statements of the Director of the Avanti! profoundly disturb the animating spirit of the referendum held within the Socialist Party, which was inspired by the Manifesto of the Direction and the Parliamentary Group in which every war was condemned as detrimental to the moral and material interests of the proletariat;

«Considering also that the Socialist Party cannot remain under the weight of a misunderstanding that harms the precise directive that our Party must have in this special contingency, invites the Direction to state with the utmost clarity that by absolute neutrality it must be understood to mean the Italian proletariat’s ideal and practical opposition to every warlike attitude of the bourgeoisie, and to shape the immediate action of our Party on this precise concept».