ITALIAN ANARCHISTS.

Waipa Post, Volume XVIII, Issue 1009, 21 October 1920, Page 5

ITALIAN ANARCHISTS.

A VIGOROUS CLASS MOVEMENT.

SEEKING POWER TO CONTROL. A vigorous controversy has been carried on here for some weeks past * in the two Socialist and anarchists ; dailies, "Avanti!" and "Umaniia Nova," writes the Rome correspondent of the Daily Herald, which sheds a clear light on the differences ot tendency and method, which have .become accentuated of late, between the Socialist Party and the anarchists. The anarchists daily openly accuses, the Socialist Party of lacking in its revolutionary duty by not declaring the general strike as an act of solidarity with the recent rising at An-, cona. How Controversy Came. ; It must be remembered that during .. that rising the direction of tne Socialist Party rejected, by a majority of one vote, an order of the day of the secretary, Gennari, in which the latter invited the party to declare a. general strike throughout as a mark of solidarity with the revolutionary movement at Ancona. On the very day on which the direction of the party rejected Gennari's order of the day, it voted for -another order of the. . day (presented by Baratono) in which the direction pledged itself to remain ready to intervene with its full force on the day on which the Government should take any reactionary measures against the comrades who had takeh part in the rising of Ancona. This second order of the day was' considered by the anarchists as a doubling movement on the part of the ■ Socialist Party, in the face of what they considered to tbe a good opportunity for making a revolution; whence the above-mentioned controversy, which is giving place to long and passionate discussions in all sections of the Socialist Party and in the various Chamber of Labour in Italy. • Pros and Cons. To sum up, the anarchists reproach' the Socialist Party with being too much attached to the General Confederation of Labour, which, according to them, is carrying on an antirevolutionary and collaborationist ' policy among the masses organised in its branches. It cannot be denied that there is* a certain amount of truth in this criticism of the policy of the General Confederation of Labour which the anarchists are making, but the anarchists are in the wrong in not understanding the position of exceptional responsibility in which the Italian Socialist Party finds itself to-day in regard to all the working classes and in in regard to the country; a position of responsibility which imposes upon it the necessity of being cautious and wary in every one of its acts, and of not allowing itself to be unduly im- * pressed by certain movements, which *' may be provoked by the Government itself with the object of dragging the Socialist "Party and the Labour organisations which belong to it into some premature action whose consequences might bring about the destruction ol its forces. \ An Advance Guard. .. This action, which the Socialist Party is developing for the defence and protection of the masses against the snares of, the Government, is unjustly interpreted by the anarchists as an anti-revolutionary action. And the anarchists are trying to exploit to the utmost extent possible that feeling of indecision and of ferment which the war has created among the masses of the Italian working class, and it is doing this with the intention of detaching the great masses from their adhesion' to the Socialist Party and of persuading them to join their own propaganda. With this object they never miss a chance of a conflict between capital and Labour, using it to force the hand of the directors of the party and to provoke strikes and disturbances. Nearly every movement of a revolutionary chaaracter which has taken place in Italy during the past year has been provoked by the anarchists who hope in this way to get the reins of the entire working class movement in Italy,*into their own hands. But by this conduct they are assuming a very, serious responsibility, for it is quite possible' that by it they may bring about just that schism in the body of the proletariat which first Nitti's Government and now Giolitti's has tried and is trying to provoke. '