Left-interventionism

This article is about the early-20th century Italian political movement. For interventionism in other political contexts, see Interventionism (politics).

Left-interventionism was the part of the progressive interventionist movement of various left-wing matrices, such as those of Mazzinian, social reformist, democratic socialist, dissident socialist, reformist socialist, and revolutionary socialist persuasions, that saw in the Great War the historical opportunity for the completion of unification of Italy, and for those who later became part of the Italian fascist movement, such as Benito Mussolini, as the palingenesis of the Italian political system and the organization of the economic, legal, and social system, and therefore a profound change.[1][2][3]

A part of left-interventionism joined the nascent fascist movement, while many others went on to become anti-fascists. Left-interventionism was a minority position among socialists, such as the young Palmiro Togliatti, that, in the words of Battista Santhià, distinguished "between the imperialist war and the just national claims against the old imperialisms; they did not consider it right that some Italian provinces should remain under the dominion of a foreign state, moreover a reactionary one."[4]

  1. ^ Rimbotti, Luca Leonello (1989). Il fascismo di sinistra (in Italian). Rome: Settimo Sigillo. pp. 16–30.
  2. ^ Payne, Stanley G. (1996). A History of Fascism, 1914–1945. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. pp. 81–82. ISBN 9780299148737.
  3. ^ Ciotti, Amedeo (2015). 1914-1918. Perché quella guerra. L'Italia nel conflitto (in Italian). Rome: Armando Editore. ISBN 978-88-6677-910-0. OCLC 902638876.
  4. ^ Bocca, Giorgio (2005). Palmiro Togliatti (in Italian). Milan: Mondadori. p. 34.