The Battle Within: Benito Mussolini, the Reformists and the Great War

Abstract

Benito Mussolini’s dedication to violence since his early youth has always struck historians, and violence characterized him as a theoretician and practitioner of revolutionary socialism. Nevertheless, while his violent streak as the founder of fascism has been well documented, his early career as a fierce opponent of a gradual, non-violent approach to socialism—its phases up to the outbreak of World War I and its impact—is less familiar but just as significant. In his struggle against the older and well-established reformist founders of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) led by Filippo Turati may be found the key to Mussolini’s attitudes as a radical Socialist and of revolutionary socialism.¹ If Mussolini’s radical socialism is to be understood, the documentation of the different phases of Mussolini’s strategy and action to gain control of the PSI up to the outbreak of World War I, and his expulsion from the Party must be examined.