Hammer and sickle

The Hammer and sickle is the emblem through which the book gives visible form to the Italian socialist movement’s revolutionary hopes in the postwar crisis. Adopted by the Socialist Party’s maximalist majority as a symbol of Russian proletarian committees, it stands for collective labor and a world imagined as beginning anew; its display at a workers’ rally and on the flags of factory workers carries that political promise into public life. Yet the emblem’s confident unity contrasts with hesitation over revolutionary violence and with the armed opposition confronting socialist crowds.

Adoption and Revolutionary Meaning

At the Socialist Party’s sixteenth congress, held in Bologna in early October, the maximalist majority adopted a platform inspired by the Bolshevik revolution, which it hailed as a momentous event in proletarian history. The congress rewrote the party’s older foundational program for a new political moment and appointed Nicola Bombacci as secretary. In this setting, the Hammer and sickle, encircled by two ears of corn, was adopted as the symbol of Russian proletarian committees. The image joined the tools of labor to an encompassing ring, suggesting a redeemed world and a history beginning again.

The emblem’s meaning was political rather than merely decorative. It accompanied a program calling for a Soviet republic in Italy and for power to pass to the proletariat. In the book’s account, the sign concentrates the congress’s expansive expectations into a portable image: a collective future made legible through the symbols of work. But its apparent completeness also sharpens the question of whether the movement could turn revolutionary language into coordinated action.

A Sign at the Edge of Action

That question becomes most pointed in the account of Bombacci addressing a vast crowd in Piazza del Nettuno. The congress had made him secretary and the Comintern’s representative in Italy placed hopes in him as a possible leader of revolution. Yet, before the assembled workers, Bombacci hesitated to pronounce the word that the crowd had come to hear. The Hammer and sickle could signify a world already imagined as whole; the speaker’s hesitation revealed that the political decision required to bring that world about remained unresolved.

The disagreement over violence was not a minor dispute around an otherwise settled program. Socialist leaders differed over whether to act, when to act, and what degree of certainty was required. Filippo Turati warned that the fascist squads were better armed and that a call for revolutionary violence could bring a devastating response. The narrative sets the emblem’s promise against this practical imbalance: a symbol of proletarian power could rally hope, but it could not by itself close the chasm separating socialist leaders from opponents shaped by the Great War and prepared for armed confrontation.

From Congress to the Factory Floor

The emblem also moved beyond congress rhetoric. At the Alfa Romeo Portello plant in Milan, workers raised red flags bearing the Hammer and sickle on September 1, 1920, amid a bitter dispute over wage increases. Negotiations had broken down; workers first slowed production through obstructionism, and the company then declared a lockout. The union announced an occupation, which was followed within hours by occupations across Milan. The workers’ flags made the socialist emblem part of a concrete industrial confrontation, linking its revolutionary associations to a dispute over labor and wages.

The plant episode belonged to a broader season of organized labor conflict. In Emilia, socialist organizations controlled many municipalities and the peasant leagues administered hiring, work shifts, threshing, seed supplies, and planting. The book describes that system as a comprehensive exercise of control over rural economic life, while also showing the class antagonisms and coercive pressures it produced. The Hammer and sickle is not identified as an emblem in each of these rural disputes; rather, their context helps explain why the symbol could carry such weight. It stood amid struggles over who would organize work and who would command the resources on which workers depended.

Visibility, Opposition, and Limits

The symbol’s public appearance acquired meaning within streets and workplaces where competing political forces confronted one another. During the Milan demonstration of April 15, 1919, socialist marchers at the head of the column carried a portrait of Vladimir Lenin and a red flag as armed opponents gathered on the other side of a cordon. The account does not identify a Hammer and sickle on that flag, but the scene clarifies the contentious public setting in which socialist symbols circulated: a demonstration framed as a peaceful march could meet armed resistance, and revolutionary expectation could sit beside immediate vulnerability.

Across these episodes, the Hammer and sickle holds together aspiration and uncertainty. Its adoption gave a newly revised socialist program a recognizable emblem; its presence on workers’ flags placed that emblem amid industrial conflict. But the symbol’s promise of collective power did not settle strategic disagreements, guarantee unity, or overcome the material disparity between political forces. The book’s recurring contrast is therefore not between a meaningful sign and an empty one, but between an image capable of gathering hope and the difficult, contested action required to make its promised future real.