ABSTRACT
The Socialist reformers believed in gradual change and felt that it was not realistic in the Italy of 1919-20 to talk about a Socialist state. The ‘maximalists’ preached revolution, but they did not get ready for it, because they held that a revolution takes place by itself and should not be created (many of them, in their heart of hearts, did not believe in revolution, or even feared it). The Communists, like Amadeo Bordiga, Antonio Gramsci, or Umberto Terracini, did not hold either the reformists or the maximalists in high esteem and denied that a party prepared for revolution was already in existence. They founded such a party in 1921, when the Fascist squadrismo had already become a strong power.
