The Agony of Italian Socialism

The Italian Socialist Party (PSI), after seventy almost unbroken years of political opposition, is now an organic part of the new government in Rome. Representatives of the country’s two major ideological camps—the Catholic and the Marxist —sit face-to-face in working collaboration. The Socialists’ venerable leader, Pietro Nenni, is Vice-President of the Council of Ministers, and four other Socialists sit at his side.

This is a government whose program makes concessions...