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.

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3. The problem of culture
(Avanti!, 5 april 1913)

The recent controversy that took place in the columns of Avanti! between Professor Fabietti and Adelino Marchetti, secretary of the Milan Chamber of Labor regarding “culture,” has barely touched on the very important problem, reproducing that profound disagreement of methods and conceptions that constituted the core of all discussions at the last National Congress of Young Socialists, expanding to include the whole general question of the method of preparation and the mission incumbent on the Socialist Party.

It will perhaps not be useless to put the problem in its true terms, summarizing it briefly in the columns of  Avanti! in order to draw the attention of all comrades to it. First of all, it is necessary to rectify an erroneous interpretation given to the thesis made by those who, like us, have certain distrusts of the work of cultural preparation as it is commonly understood, distrusts which we shall go on to justify and explain.

No one – and certainly not Comrade Marchetti – would accept the epithet “enemy of culture” in the absolute sense, and no one considers the state of ignorance of the proletariat desirable for the future of socialism. We only want to investigate to what extent and with what values the cultural preparation of the masses can be part of the subversive action of socialism, because we believe that, while recognizing the undeniable advantages, some forms of such preparation, especially in so far as an attempt is made to give them fundamental importance, end up by going too far outside the characteristic lines of the revolutionary program of socialism. The socialist party has the mission of attending to the intellectual development of the proletariat as well as its economic interests: We do not dispute this premise of the advocates of culture either. On the contrary, we go so far as to argue that the party must vigorously counter the corporatist and localist degeneration by setting itself against the immediate interests of certain workers' groups, if these compromise the ultimate goal of the whole working class – socialism.

But we urge comrades not to forget that this collective aim (which we may call “ideal”, if one wishes to employ that term) according to the Marxist conception has its basis in the “material” fact of the contrast existing between the interest of the proletarian class and the present forms of production.

That ideal is thus felt by the workers insofar as they live in the straits of that real and economic contrast. The development of the worker is the direct consequence of his economic status. And in this sense socialism seeks to concern itself with the intellectual emancipation of the worker at the same time as the economic emancipation, always holding that the former is a consequence of the latter, and that if one cherishes the progress and culture of the masses, one must not despise but accept in its highest value the program of his “material” redemption.

It is therefore abundantly clear that as, by the very evolution of capitalist society, the strength and economic cohesion of the proletariat is accentuated, its ideal consciousness and intellectual preparation must also be accentuated. The Socialist Party indicates to the proletariat in which direction to direct the forces resulting from its need in order to reach as soon as possible the class goal, namely, the abolition of the wage-earner.

Thus, then the party can and must guide workers' education and “culture”. And no revolutionary socialist can be against this second part of the program without falling into contradiction with their anti-egoistic and anti-reformist conceptions of the workers' movement.

But “reformism” and “democracy” see the problem of culture from a quite different, indeed exactly upside-down point of view. In working-class culture they see the parallel consequence of economic emancipation, the main means and “necessary condition” of that emancipation.

How reactionary and anti-Marxist such a concept is, does not require many words to prove. If we believe that the ideology of a class is a consequence of the position assigned to it in a given epoch of history by the system of production, we cannot “wait” for the working class to be “educated” in order to believe that revolution is possible, because we would be admitting at the same time that revolution will never happen.

This purported cultural educational preparation of the proletariat is not feasible within the framework of present-day society. On the contrary, the action of the bourgeois class – including reformist democracy – “educates” the masses in a precisely anti-revolutionary sense, by a complex of means with which no socialist institution can ever remotely compete. But it is not on this that we insist. Let socialist schools arise, especially where it is necessary to train propagandists, perhaps... among the intellectual class, which is, in matters of socialism, very ignorant. But let us not run the risk of spreading, perhaps unwittingly, that reformist criterion of the “necessity” of culture.

It would be a mighty means of numbing the masses, and is in fact the means by which the ruling minority persuades the exploited class to leave the reins of power in their hands.

We are well aware that socialist schools are often directed in the revolutionary direction, and that many comrades who advocate them do not accept at all those criteria that we point out as dangerous. That is all very well.

But the danger remains. The worker is logically reluctant to assiduously attend these schools which impose a very serious intellectual effort on him, given his conditions of overwork and poor nutrition. A lively inducement is therefore needed to commit him to such a sacrifice, and the means by which this inducement is made ends up being equivocal.

Proletarians are told that they have almost no “right” to be militant in the trade union field and especially in the political field because of their lack of education; this is intended to make them blush at their own ignorance. However, they should instead be convinced that this ignorance is one of the many infamous consequences of bourgeois exploitation, and that the intellectual inferiority of the worker, rather than being a cause for hesitancy and cowardice, ought to serve as a springboard to make him rise up, just as his economic inferiority does.

This is the danger. It is the danger of excess, not of the thing itself, when the theoretical direction of these schools of culture is clearly revolutionary. But it then becomes inevitable if reformist theories are followed. Zibordi explicitly says that the worker, before “swearing at bourgeois society,” must educate himself, and “not only” in the field of socialist culture, but rather in that of an education in every sense... As a result of this softening of our propaganda Giolitti was able to congratulate our representatives in parliament for the work of pacifist “education” done in the masses. Socialism, instead of making the proletarians the untamable rebels to the present condition, would end up making them docile sheep, domesticated, “educated” and... ready for shearing.

But reformism goes further and goes so far as to demand from the proletariat “technical preparation” and “culture of concrete problems.” It is remarkable that reformism which is all positive, all “economist”, all mechanical, arrives at these far more unattainable desires than those of which we are accused. It is the utopianism of practice, of technique, catalogued in the minimum programs, inflated with electoral advertising, that would require many more centuries to be realized than those that its advocates – practical people, who do not think of their grandchildren! – cathedrally assigned to the advent of the social revolution.

It is against these exaggerations that we must react. Comrade Marchetti is quite right to fear for the solidity and subversive physiognomy of the resistance organizations, just as the majority of the Youth Congress felt that an exclusively cultural direction of preparation would discolor the Socialist youth movement altogether.

The mission of the Socialist Party is to subvert, to stir up the masses, by agitating an “idea,” certainly; but an idea deeply rooted in reality.

The Party's intransigence must become a profound differentiation from democratic methodology. For democracy, the economic problem is the underground that needs to be explored with the light of “culture” that descends from the empyrean of philosophers, teachers, thinkers.

But Marxist socialism reverses in theory and in politics the democratic equivocation. It shows that the social underground is in ferment and will find within itself the way to unleash the latent forces that agitate it.

Workers’ thought and ideology are determined outside the philosophy led by the class that has the monopoly of the means of production, and the monopoly of “culture”. The action of the Socialist Party succeeds in accomplishing a work of synthesis of those latent forces, in giving the proletariat the consciousness of its “entire” self, and the courage not to seek outside itself the means of its ascension. All our propaganda and agitation daily clash against the mistrust the workers have in their own strengths and against the prejudice of inferiority and inability to conquer power; errors warmed by bourgeois democracy that would like the political abdication of the masses in the hands of a few demagogues. And it is precisely the danger of favoring this game – attempted in the conservative interest of present institutions – that makes us wary of the exaggerations of the work of culture.