Italian Socialist Party in the context of "Italian Republican Party"

The history of the Italian Republic concerns the events relating to the history of Italy that have occurred since 1946, when Italy became a republic after the 1946 Italian institutional referendum. The Italian republican history is generally divided into two phases, the First and Second Republic.

After the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy and the end of World War II, Italian politics and society were dominated by Christian Democracy (DC), a broad-based Christian political party, from 1946 to 1994. From the late 1940s until 1991, the opposition was led by the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Christian Democracy governed uninterrupted during this period, dominating every cabinet and providing nearly every prime minister. It governed primarily with the support of an array of minor parties from the centre-left to the centre-right, including the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), Italian Democratic Socialist Party (PSDI), Italian Republican Party (PRI), and Italian Liberal Party (PLI), and even far-right parties like the Italian Social Movement (MSI). The Communist Party was excluded entirely from government, with the partial exception of the short-lived Historic Compromise, in which the PCI provided external support to a DC minority government from 1976 to 1979.

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 1883 – 28 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who was the dictator of Italy during the Fascist era from the March on Rome in 1922 until his overthrow in 1943. He founded the National Fascist Party (PNF) and served as Prime Minister of Italy from 1922, later adopting the title Duce ("leader") of Italian fascism. Mussolini first organized the Italian Fasces of Combat in 1919, which evolved into the PNF that established a totalitarian regime. As the founder of fascism, Mussolini was a key inspiration and contributor to the rise of similar movements across Europe during the interwar period.

Mussolini was originally a socialist politician and journalist at the Avanti! newspaper. In 1912, he became a member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), but was expelled for advocating military intervention in World War I. In 1914, Mussolini founded a newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia, and served in the Royal Italian Army until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. He eventually denounced the PSI, his views pivoting to focus on Italian nationalism, and founded the fascist movement which opposed egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. In October 1922, following the March on Rome, he was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III. After removing opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes, Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, he established dictatorial authority by legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, he signed the Lateran Treaty to establish Vatican City.

The Italian Communist Party (Italian: Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist and democratic socialist political party in Italy. It was established in Livorno as the Communist Party of Italy (Italian: Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) on 21 January 1921, when it seceded from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), under the leadership of Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci, and Nicola Bombacci. Outlawed during the Italian fascist regime, the party continued to operate underground and played a major role in the Italian resistance movement. The party's peaceful and national road to socialism, or the Italian road to socialism, the realisation of the communist project through democracy, repudiating the use of violence and applying the Constitution of Italy in all its parts, a strategy inaugurated under Palmiro Togliatti but that some date back to Gramsci, would become the leitmotif of the party's history.

Having changed its name in 1943, the PCI became the second largest political party of Italy after World War II, attracting the support of about a third of the vote share during the 1970s. At the time, it was the largest Communist party in the Western world, with peak support reaching 2.3 million members in 1947, and peak share being 34.4% of the vote (12.6 million votes) in the 1976 Italian general election. The PCI was part of the Constituent Assembly of Italy and the Italian government from 1944 to 1947, when the United States ordered a removal from government of the PCI and PSI. The PCI–PSI alliance lasted until 1956; the two parties continued to govern at the local and regional level until the 1990s. Apart from the 1944–1947 years and occasional external support to the organic centre-left (1960s–1970s), which included the PSI, the PCI always remained at the opposition in the Italian Parliament, with more accommodation as part of the Historic Compromise of the 1970s, which ended in 1980, until its dissolution in 1991, not without controversy and much debate among its members.

Left communism, or the communist left, describes a range of positions held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices held by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress. There have been two primary currents of left communism since World War I, namely the Italian left and the Dutch–German left.

The Italian communist left tends to follow Bordigism (though a smaller Damenite current exists) and considers itself to be Leninist, but denounces Marxism–Leninism as a form of bourgeois opportunism materialized in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The Italian current of left communism was historically represented by the Italian Socialist Party and the Communist Party of Italy but today is embodied in the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy, International Communist Party, and the International Communist Current.

Christian Democracy (Italian: Democrazia Cristiana [demokratˈtsiːa kriˈstjaːna], DC) was a Christian democratic political party in Italy. The DC was founded on 15 December 1943 in the Italian Social Republic (Nazi-occupied Italy) as the nominal successor of the Italian People's Party, which had the same symbol, a crusader shield (scudo crociato). As a Catholic-inspired, centrist, catch-all party comprising both centre-right and centre-left political factions, the DC played a dominant role in the politics of Italy for fifty years, and had been part of the government from soon after its inception until its final demise on 16 January 1994 amid the Tangentopoli scandals. Christian Democrats led the Italian government continuously from 1946 until 1981. The party was nicknamed the "White Whale" (Italian: Balena bianca) due to its huge organisation and official colour. During its time in government, the Italian Communist Party was the largest opposition party.

From 1946 until 1994, the DC was the largest party in the Italian Parliament, governing in successive coalitions, including the Pentapartito system. It originally supported liberal-conservative governments, along with the moderate Italian Democratic Socialist Party, the Italian Liberal Party, and the Italian Republican Party, before moving towards the Organic Centre-left involving the Italian Socialist Party. The party was succeeded by a string of smaller parties, including the Italian People's Party, the Christian Democratic Centre, the United Christian Democrats, and the still active Union of the Centre. Former DC members are also spread among other parties, including the centre-right Forza Italia and the centre-left Democratic Party. It was a founding member of the European People's Party in 1976.

The Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Italian: Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano, PSDI), also known as Italian Social Democratic Party, was a social-democratic political party in Italy. The longest serving partner in government for Christian Democracy, the PSDI was an important force in Italian politics, before the 1990s decline in votes and members. The party's founder and longstanding leader was Giuseppe Saragat, who served as President of the Italian Republic from 1964 to 1971. Compared to the like-minded Italian Socialist Party, it was more centrist, at least until Bettino Craxi's leadership, in fact, it identified with the centre-left.

After a rightward shift in the 1990s, which led some observers to question the PSDI as a social democratic party, it was expelled from the European Socialist Party. When Enrico Ferri founded with Luigi Preti the current European Liberal Social Democracy (SOLE), which was in favour of an alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right coalition, the choice was stigmatized by the PES and the Socialist International, and an official statement was issued. In January 1995, the party congress put the current of Ferri and Preti in the minority and elected Gian Franco Schietroma as secretary. After the party was disbanded in 1998, the majority went to the Socialist Party of the centre-left coalition, while the party's right-wing current joined centre-right coalition parties. In 2004, the party was established with the same name, Italian Democratic Socialist Party, which remains a minor party associated with both centre-left and centre-right coalitions.

Avanti! (Italian: [aˈvan.ti]; lit. 'Forward!') is an Italian daily newspaper, born as the official voice of the Italian Socialist Party, published since 25 December 1896. It took its name from its German counterpart Vorwärts, the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.