The party was led by a former interior minister Giuseppe Romita.
The goal of the party, which considered itself as transitional, was to reunite all Italian socialists in order to overrun both the PCI and the DC.
The project had strong international support through the Socialist International; the French SFIO and the British Labour Party, at that time both in government, liked the idea of their Italian counterpart defeating parties funded by the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively.
As Ignazio Silone, then a leading member of the party, confessed in 1950: "The search for funds to pay for our extremely limited expenses become every month more difficult, more precarious, more humiliating....
"[1] On 1 May 1951, the party fused with the PSLI, led by Giuseppe Saragat, giving birth to the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano, PSDI).