When the first world war spread out, the italian socialist party (PSI) adopted neutralism as its official political position (“neither support nor sabotage”). Despite its pacifist tradition, if from one hand it psi theorized the violent revolution, on the other it didn’t organize a strong pacifist mass movement. The PSI as a whole remained firmly anchored to the Marxist tradition and to revolutionary ideals. Nevertheless, when the Italian front was swept away at Caporetto, the socialist secretary Filippo Turati called every Italian to the resistence in order to defend fatherland invaded by enemy.