Massimalisti

representatives of a trend in the Italian Socialist Party (ISP) that took shape at the Sixteenth Congress of the ISP in 1919.

The massimalisti constituted a majority in the ISP and were represented in its leadership (including J. Serrati, E. Gennari, and C. Lazzari). With the postwar revolutionary upsurge, the massimalisti trend united diverse groups that opposed the reformists. Calling for a struggle for socialism, the massimalisti nevertheless did not advance a concrete revolutionary program. They called for support of Soviet Russia. Acting on the proposal of the massimalisti, the Sixteenth Congress of the ISP adopted the decision to join the Comintern. During the course of continued aggravation of the class struggle in the country and idelogical differences in the party, leftist revolutionary groups, including the New Order, the left massimalisti, and the abstentionists, withdrew from the massimalisti. Fighting the sectarian orientation of the abstentionists, the massimalisti nevertheless refused to break with the reformist wing in the ISP (a step demanded by the leftist groups) and occupied a centrist position. In 1921, at the Seventeenth Congress of the ISP, the leftist groups left the party and founded the Communist Party. In 1922 the onslaught of the fascist offensive laid bare the pernicious nature of the policies of the reformists; at the Nineteenth Congress of the ISP, they were expelled from the party. Subsequently, some of the massimalisti formed a group of “third internationalists,” which joined the Communist Party in 1924.