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Italian Socialist Party

For the modern-day party, see Italian Socialist Party (2007).

Italian Socialist Party
Partito Socialista Italiano
AbbreviationPSI
Secretary
Founders
Founded14 August 1892
Legalised24 April 1944 (after ban on 6 November 1926)
Dissolved13 November 1994
Merger of
Split fromHistorical Far Left
Succeeded byItalian Socialists
NewspaperAvanti!
Youth wingItalian Socialist Youth Federation
Paramilitary wingRed Guards (1919–1922)
Membership (1991)674,057[1]
Ideology
Political positionCentre-left to left-wing
National affiliation
European affiliationParty of European Socialists
International affiliation
European Parliament groupParty of European Socialists
Colours  Red

The Italian Socialist Party (Italian: Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) was a social-democratic and democratic-socialist political party in Italy,[2][3] whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country. Founded in Genoa in 1892, the PSI was from the beginning a big tent of Italy's political left and socialism, ranging from the revolutionary socialism of Andrea Costa to the Marxist-inspired reformist socialism of Filippo Turati and the anarchism of Anna Kuliscioff. Under Turati's leadership, the party was a frequent ally of the Italian Republican Party and the Italian Radical Party at the parliamentary level, while lately entering in dialogue with the remnants of the Historical Left and the Liberal Union during Giovanni Giolitti's governments to ensure representation for the labour movement and the working class. In the 1900s and 1910s, the PSI achieved significant electoral success, becoming Italy's first party in 1919 and during the country's Biennio Rosso in 1921, when it was victim of violent paramilitary activities from the far right, and was not able to move the country in the revolutionary direction it wanted.[4]

A split with what became known as the Communist Party of Italy and the rise to power of former party member and Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who was expelled from the party and repudiated socialism, class struggle and internationalism in favour of corporatism and ultranationalism, and his National Fascist Party led to the PSI's collapse in the controversial 1924 Italian general election and eventual ban in 1925. This led the party and its remaining leaders to the underground or in exile.[4] The PSI dominated the Italian left until after World War II, when it was eclipsed in status by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The two parties formed an alliance lasting until 1956 and governed together at the local level, particularly in some big cities and the so-called red regions until the 1990s. The PSI suffered the right-wing split of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party, whose members opposed the alliance with the PCI and favoured joining the Centrism coalition, in 1947 and the left-wing split of the Italian Socialist Party of Proletarian Unity, whose members wanted to continue the cooperation with the PCI, in 1964. Starting from the 1960s, the PSI frequently participated in coalition governments led by Christian Democracy, from the Organic centre-left to the Pentapartito in the 1980s.[4]

The PSI, which always remained the country's third-largest party, came to special prominence in the 1980s when its leader Bettino Craxi served as Prime Minister of Italy from 1983 to 1987.[4] Under Craxi, the PSI severed the residual ties with Marxism and dropped the hammer and sickle in favour of a carnation, a symbol popularly associated with democratic socialism and social democracy, which the party was by then fully embracing, and re-branded it as liberal-socialist[5][6]—some observers compared this to the Third Way developments of social democracy and described these events as being twenty years ahead of New Labour in the United Kingdom.[7] By that time, the party was aligned with European social democracy and like-minded reformist socialist parties and leaders, including François Mitterrand, Felipe González, Andreas Papandreou and Mário Soares, and was one of the main representatives of Mediterranean or South European socialism.[8][9] During this period, Italy underwent il sorpasso and became the world's sixth largest economy but also saw a rise of its public debt. While associated with neoliberal policies, as the post-war consensus around social democracy was on the defensive amid the crisis of the 1970s, others argue that the PSI and Craxi, along with the DC's left-wing when they governed, maintained dirigisme in contrast to the neoliberal and privatisation trends.[10]

The PSI was disbanded in 1994 as a result of the Tangentopoli scandals.[11] A series of legal successors followed, including the Italian Socialists (1994–1998),[12] the Italian Democratic Socialists (1998–2007) and the Socialist Party (formed in 2007, it took the PSI name in October 2009) within the centre-left coalition,[4] and a string of minor parties and the New Italian Socialist Party (formed in 2001) within the centre-right coalition.[4] These parties have never reached the popularity of the old PSI. Former PSI leading members and voters have joined quite different parties, from the centre-right, such as Forza Italia, The People of Freedom and the new Forza Italia, to the centre-left, such as the Democratic Party.[13]

  1. ^ "Gli iscritti ai principali partiti politici italiani della Prima Repubblica dal 1945 al 1991" (in Italian). Cattaneo Institute. Archived from the original on 10 November 2013. Retrieved 13 August 2011.
  2. ^ Frederic Spotts; Theodor Wieser (30 April 1986). Italy: A Difficult Democracy: A Survey of Italian Politics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 68, 80. ISBN 978-0-521-31511-1. Retrieved 24 August 2012.
  3. ^ James C. Docherty; Peter Lamb (2006). Jon Woronoff (ed.). Historical Dictionary of Socialism. Scarecrow Press. p. 182. ISBN 978-0-8108-6477-1. Retrieved 28 January 2013.
  4. ^ a b c d e f "Partito socialista italiano in 'Dizionario di Storia'". Treccani (in Italian). Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  5. ^ "17 novembre 2003 – 'Il PSI di Craxi visto dal PCI di Berliguer' intevento di Umberto Ranieri al Convegno di Italianieuropei 'Riformismo socialista e Italia repubblicana. Storia e politica'". Il Socialista (in Italian). Archived from the original on 29 August 2016. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
  6. ^ "Il primo riformista italiano". Il Foglio (in Italian). 29 September 2013. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  7. ^ Forte, Francesco (2015). "Il socialismo liberale di Craxi vent'anni di anticipo sul New Labour". Critica Sociale (in Italian). Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  8. ^ Apse, Tobias (1994). "Italy: A New Agenda". In Anderson, Perry; Camiller, Patrick (eds.). Mapping the West European Left. Verso Books. pp. 189–233.
  9. ^ Garzillo, Salvatore (30 March 2021). "Socialismi a confronto: Bettino Craxi e Felipe Gonzaléz". Avanti (in Italian). Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  10. ^ Naso, Pierpaolo (20 November 2021). "Oltre destra e sinistra: la terza via in Italia". Il Pensiero Storico (in Italian). Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  11. ^ DeLisa, Antonio (11 October 2012). "Mani Pulite e Tangentopoli". Storiografia.me (in Italian). Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  12. ^ Bardi, Luciano; Ignazi, Piero (1998). "The Italian Party System: The Effective Magnitude of an Earthquake". In Ignazi, Piero; Ysmal, Colette (eds.). The Organization of Political Parties in Southern Europe. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 102. ISBN 978-0-275-95612-7.
  13. ^ Ancona, Pietro. "Il Partito Socialista Italiano verso il declino e la diaspora". Luccifanti.it (in Italian). Retrieved 10 October 2019.

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