Page:William Z. Foster - The Revolutionary Crisis of 1918-1921 (1921).djvu/37

 tatives of the Socialist Party were also invited to attend.

This conference was one of the most important labor meetings ever assembled, and marked a mile-stone in labor history. The fateful question it had to decide was: should there be a revolution or not? No sooner was the conference come together than two sharply opposing factions developed: one for the revolution and the other against it. Gennari, then a leader in the Socialist Party but now head of the new Communist Party, led the revolutionaries, while D'Aragona, General Secretary of the General Confederation of Labor, was the principal spokesman for the reformists.

Gennari, sensing the true situation and speaking for the Socialist Party, declared that the contest had passed beyond the realms of a mere wage dispute and had become a revolutionary political struggle. He demanded that the General Confederation of Labor turn over the direction of the movement to the Socialist Party, so that the latter could immediately try to put the revolution into effect and to establish the workers' society. D'Aragona strenuously combatted this proposal and threw all the weight of his prestige and official power against it. He insisted that the workers of Italy were not yet ripe for revolution, and that to attempt any such would be disastrous, in fact the suicide of the whole labor movement. He demanded that the struggle be restricted to purely an industrial affair, and he proposed that the movement, instead of aiming at the revolution, should be turned towards achieving the institution of workers' control in all the industries of Italy. In his stand D'Aragona had the support of the Turatti (right-wing) and the Serrati (centrist) groups, which normally control the Socialist Party, but which tempor-