IL RUOLO DI SERRATI NEL MOVIMENTO SOCIALISTA ITALIANO (Contributo per un bilancio storiografico)

Giacinto Menotti Serrati, for many years leader of the maximalist trend of the Italian Socialist Party, has not yet had his rightful place in contemporary history. His popularity among the masses as a powerful representative of the workmen' movement led both the Italian Socialist Party and the Italian Communist Party (which he joined in 1924) to claim the priority of his membership. In this bio-bibliographic survey, the A. compares the interpretations given according to the historical political moments and the ideologies of the scholars.Through the evolution of communist historiography regarding this leader, the A. concludes that the positive recovery of Serrati and of the Socialist tradition, the attempt to establish a link between the maximalist leader and Gramsci recently made by some authors « in line » with the present political choices of the Italian Communist Party meet the exigency to present this party as a force for ever struggling for democracy and progress, far from any revolutionary hysteria and sectarian intolerance. On the contrary, the charges of reformism and second-internationalism made against him by other historians and the comparison with Mussolini, in which he is the loser, and with Bordiga, show a political choice against revisionism and centralism. The A. points out that the « availability » of the man to opposed interpretations is demonstrated by the fact that the freedom of judgment, the refusal of dogmatisms and ideological sectarisms shown by Serrati in his conflicts with Lenin and the Third International, lead other authors of socialist extraction to classify Serrati among the « positive heroes » of Italian Socialism. In conclusion, the A. affirms that if in this revival of essays on Serrati there are the symptoms of a greater critical awareness, the research on Maximalism as an historical and ideological phenomenon of the Italian Socialist Party is still full of gaps. Once these are filled, it will be possible to evaluate exactly the rôle of Serrati in the Italian socialist movement.