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The Communist Parties of Italy and France: A Study in Comparative Communism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

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Throughout the 1950's, students of communism almost invariably emphasized the “totalitarian” characteristics of Communist states, a conceptual orientation that coincided with and reinforced the foreign policy of the cold war. T h e doctrines of containment and massive retaliation could be justified most easily if the targeted enemy was considered the embodiment of the unremitting evil suggested by the totalitarian label.

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Research Article
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Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1968

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References

1 Gordon, H.Skilling has reviewed some of the concepts and criticisms of the totalitarian model as used in the study of Communism. See his “Interest Groups and Communist Politics,” World Politics, XVIII (April 1966), 435Google Scholar–51.

2 Among the earlier attempts at systematic cross-cultural analysis of modernizing societies were George Kahin, McT., Pauker, Guy J., and Pye, Lucian W., “Comparative Politics of Non-Western Countries,” American Political Science Review, XLIX (December 1955), 1022CrossRefGoogle Scholar–41; Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, XVIII (August 1956), 391409CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rustow, Dankwart A., Politics and Westernization in the Near East, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, Research Monograph Series (Princeton 1956Google Scholar); Pye, Lucian W., “The Non-Western Political Process,” Journal of Politics, XX (August 1958), 468CrossRefGoogle Scholar–86; and the now classic introduction to Gabriel Almond, A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960Google Scholar).

3 See Tucker, Robert C., “On the Comparative Study of Communism,” World Politics, XIX (January 1967), 242CrossRefGoogle Scholar–57. Tucker suggests several categories within the comparative framework. Other comparative approaches to the study of communism are suggested in the symposium of views reprinted in the Slavic Review, XXVI (March 1967), 128Google Scholar. See especially Alfred G. Meyer, “The Comparative Study of Communist Political Systems,” 3–12. Among the most notable attempts to study communism on a comparative basis are Borkenau, Franz, European Communism (New York 1953Google Scholar); Burks, Richard V., The Dynamics of Communism in Eastern Europe (Princeton 1961CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Fejto, Francois, “Les Progres du schisme chinois,” Esprit, XXXI (November 1963), 694717Google Scholar, a Paris journal of the democratic Left; Scalapino, Robert A., ed., The Communist Revolution in Asia (Englewood Cliffs 1965Google Scholar); Brown, J. F., The New Eastern Europe (New York 1966Google Scholar); Rubinstein, Alvin Z., ed., Communist Political Systems (Englewood Cliffs 1966Google Scholar); and Skilling, H. Gordon, The Governments of Communist East Europe (New York 1966Google Scholar).

4 The integrative approach to the study of communism is especially well exemplified by Barghoorn's, Frederick C. contribution to the Little, Brown Series in Comparative Politics. See Barghoorn's Politics in the USSR (Boston 1966Google Scholar). Like the other contributors to this series, Barghoorn integrates his topic area within a framework for functional analysis which derives particular sophistication from studies of developing societies. For some of the pitfalls in employing functionalist categories in the study of communism, see Sharlet, Robert S., “Systematic Political Science and Communist Systems,” Slavic Review, XXVI (March 1967), 2226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Meyer's, Alfred G. perceptive analogies between the Soviet Union and modern corporate bureaucracy might also be included in the integrative category of Communist studies. See Meyer's The Soviet Political System (New York 1965Google Scholar).

5 Among the studies of decision-making conflict in the Soviet Union are Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk Under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 1958Google Scholar), and Ploss, Sidney, Conflict and. Decision-making in Soviet Russia: A Case Study of Agricultural Policy, 1953–1963 (Princeton 1965CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

6 Studies that view the French and Italian Communist parties as basically identical can be found in Einaudi, Mario, Domenach, Jean-Marie, and Garosci, Aldo, Communism in Western Europe (Ithaca 1951Google Scholar); Ignazio Silone, in the French weekly L'Express (December 7, 1956); McLellan, David S., “The French and Italian Communist Parties and the Decisions of the 20th Congress, CPSU,” Western Political Quarterly, X (June 1957), 446ftGoogle Scholar.; and, more implicitly than explicitly, Giorgio Galli's contributions to Problems of Communism, VIII (May-June 1959), 2734Google Scholar, and to Volume I of Communism in Europe, edited by Griffith, William E. (Cambridge, Mass., 1964Google Scholar).

7 This period is covered in detail by Borkenau, chap. 20. Borkenau's insights into Cominform politics still are too frequently overlooked by students of comparative communism.

8 Maurice Thorez, as quoted in the non-Communist journal La Nouvelle Socialiste (May 1956Google Scholar).

9 Fejto, Francois, “Le Parti communiste et le ‘polycentrisme,’” Arguments (No. 1–2, 1962Google Scholar). Arguments, now defunct, was a quasi-sociological journal edited in Paris by Edgar Morin for the intellectual Left.

10 Palmiro Togliatti, interview in Nuovi Argomenti (June 18, 1956Google Scholar), a non-Communist journal of the Italian intellectual Left.

11 See the collection of Thorez’ articles in La Pauperisation des travailleurs frangais: Une tragique realite (Paris 1961Google Scholar).

12 In 1961, the well-known non-Communist French writer on trade unions and industrial technology, Serge Mallet, admitted his debt to the Italian Communist sociologist Leonardi, who in the mid-1950’s had developed the concept of integration, applying it to the new relationships between workers and their enterprise. Leonardi’s concept of integration was “considered by the PCF as the expression of the most atrocious collaboration of classes” (Mallet, “La Querelle Thorez-Togliatti,” France Observateur, November 30, 1961Google Scholar).

13 An English translation of the widely publicized Togliatti memorandum, with an introductory note by Longo, Luigi, Togliatti’s successor, was published in the New York Times, September 5, 1964Google Scholar. The PCI’s subsequent willingness to go further in favoring an international CP resolution of the Chinese conflict was primarily in exchange for the CPSU’s publication of Togliatti’s memorandum, a successful maneuver by the post-Togliatti leadership. Pravda published Togliatti’s memorandum in full on September 10, 1964, thus immeasurably strengthening the PCI’s position on all counts. The PCF’s L'Humanite had reported the event of Togliatti’s memorandum on September 4, 1964, without quoting from it and, predictably, with only critical comment. The occasion also prompted another PCF demand for imposing discipline on the Chinese, whose “factionalist activities have made the calling [of a conference] all the more urgent.”

14 For example, Francois Fejtö, “Le Parti communiste et le ‘polycentrisme,’” and Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Changing Class Structure and Contemporary European Politics,” in the special issue of Daedalus, “A New Europe?” (Winter 1964).

15 The 1948 parliamentary election in Italy is not included in Figure I or Table I because of the Communist-Socialist electoral alliance. The alliance precluded any precise differentiation of the two parties’ combined vote (31 percent).

16 See especially Lipset, 279–80, 290–93. An ecological study of the ninety-two Italian provinces in the 1953 national elections also finds a positive correlation between PCI voting support and increases in per capita income. This is especially true of the provinces in central and southern Italy, where the respective correlation coefficients are .58 and .59 (Steighton Arthur Watts, Jr., The Influence of Socio-Economic Factors on Party Vote in the Italian General Election of June 7, 1953, unpubl. diss., Department of Political Science, Michigan State University, 1960, Table 40, 254, 314).

17 It should be noted that the near equivalence of male and female percentages in the PCF’s electorate appears to have been a characteristic only during the mid-1950’s, the period of PCF immobility and Stalinism with which this article is mainly concerned. Opinion samples by the Institut Franijais d’Opinion Publique (IFOP) in both 1951 and 1965 showed the PCF’s electorate including 61 percent male and 39 percent female supporters, the same ratio of male and female that appears consistently to have characterized the PCI’s electorate. See the IFOP’s quarterly review, Sondages, No. 3 (1952), and he Monde, November 20, 1965.

18 A PCF militante, Denise Millerioux, writes that “if in a large factory . . . a woman is elected cell secretary after debate and a fair election, her authority as secretary is still frequently placed in question. It is necessary to struggle constantly in order to maintain her in her position, even if she is doing a good job” (“Sur le travail parmi les femmes: Quelques experiences probantes,” Cahiers du communisme [January 1962], 67). An Italian party leader also has written that “conceptions that assign to women a subaltern and a marginal role in society are not yet overcome by the PCI” (Pietro Valenza, “Alcuni problemi del Rinovamento del PCI nel Mezzogiorno,” Cronache Meridionali VII [January-February 1960], 7, quoted in Tarrow, Sidney G., “Political Dualism and Italian Communism,” American Political Science Review LXI [March 1967], 46Google Scholar.)

19 See Macridis, Roy C., “The Immobility of the French Communist Party,” journal of Politics, XX (November 1958), 613CrossRefGoogle Scholar–34.

20 Edelman, Murray, “Causes of Fluctuations in Popular Support for the Italian Communist Party Since 1946,’ Journal of Politics, XX (August 1958), 535CrossRefGoogle Scholar–52.

21 Watts, 122.

22 Immobility as a function of a diversity of support is also Samuel Lubell’s thesis explaining the stagnation of the American Democratic party during Harry Truman’s Administration. See The Future oj American Politics (Garden City 1956), 232Google Scholar–33. Roy Macridis makes the same argument in regard to the PCF in “The Immobility of the French Communist Party.”

23 Tarrow, 45.

24 Ibid., Table I. (My calculations correct for the summing of the “Italy” column in this table, where N is equal to 4,246 and not 4,264, as stated.)

25 For observations of PCF “rural” support that is actually based on small industry, see Goguel, Francois, ed., Le Référendum du 8 Janvier 1961, Cahiers No. 119 of the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques (FNSP) (Paris 1962Google Scholar), 143, 222; Olivesi, Antoine and Roncayolo, Marcel, Géographie Electorate des Bouches-du-Rhone sous la IV26e République, FNSP Cahiers No. 113 (Paris 1961), 221Google Scholar–23; Fauvet, Jacques and Mendras, Henri, eds., Les Paysans et la Politique dans la France contemporaine, FNSP Cahiers No. 94 (Paris 1958), 448Google Scholar–49.

27 These differences in PCF and PCI total membership, actual and declared, conform to the credible estimates made by the U.S. State Department for 1959 (source cited for Table IV). Reprinted in Cahiers du communisme (July-August 1959), 233.

28 Reprinted in Cahiers du communisme (July–August 1959), 233.

29 P. 44. The 1956–1959 membership turnover for the PCF also derives from a more unstable period in Communist history, although most authorities agree that the events of the Twentieth CPSU Congress and in Poland and Hungary (in 1956) affected only the Communist intelligentsia of the nonruling parties. This point is especially well documented by Cantril, Hadley, The Politics of Despair (New York 1958), 195Google Scholar–96.

30 As noted above, 81 percent of the PCI’s electorate in the mid-1950’s was below fifty years of age, while only 55 percent of the PCF’s electorate was below fifty. In terms of party membership, Sylvia Sprigge reports that “some older [Italian] Communists are said to be passing over to Nenni’s Socialist Party, but n ew young members are however still joining [PCI]” (“Destalinization in the Italian Communist Party,” World Today, XVIII [January 1962Google Scholar], 29).

31 Jucker, Ninetta, “Italy in Transition,” Political Quarterly, XXXIV (April-June 1963), 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar–93.

32 McLellan, David S. and McLellan, Robert, “The 1963 Italian Elections,” Western Political Quarterly, XVII (December 1964), 671Google Scholar–90 (esp. 683–84). An ecological study of the Italian industrial triangle appears in Tempi Moderni, V (April-June 1963), 87–94; an increase of southern immigrants in northern districts is shown to correlate with increases in the PCI’s 1963 electoral support.

33 The French General Confederation of Labor (CGT) is dominated by the PCF, although the CGT occasionally has shown some independence, as in its reaction to the Soviet repression in Hungary and the extent of its support for the Algerian rebels. The PCI is by far the dominant partner in the Communist-Socialist CGIL, the General Confederation of Italian Labor, with the Communists receiving the support of at least 70 percent of the CGIL’s membership (Bayne, E. A., Four Ways of Politics [New York 1965], 64Google Scholar). Giorgio Galli estimates the Communist majority in the CGIL at 75 percent (“Italian Communism,” in Communism in Europe, Vol. I, 325).

34 Bayne, 65.

36 Est et Ouest, Supplement (February 16–28, 1959); Bulletin S.E.D.E.I.S. (March 15, 1957); B.E.I.P.I., Supplement (July 1–15, 1955).

37 On the basis of his field research and interviews, E. A. Bayne reports that the Soviet repression of the Hungarian rebellion in 1956 prompted more defections from the PCI to the Social Democrats and Republicans than to the Nenni Socialists (p. 56). The Republicans have been particularly strong in the Central regions (where the PCI a ‘so enjoys its strongest support) and have substantial appeal for anticlericals in general and sharecroppers and agricultural laborers in particular (also a significant part of the PCI's clientele). See LaPalombara, Joseph, “Political Party Systems and Crisis Governments: French and Italian Contrasts,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, II (May 1958), 117142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 In the first half of the 1950's, 42 percent of the PCI's electorate were nonagricultural workers (26 percent were agricultural workers), and 39 percent of the Christian Democratic electorate were nonagricultural workers (21 percent were agricultural workers). The PSI’s working-class support was only 33 percent nonagricultural and 15 percent agricultural (data reproduced in LaPalombara, 141).

39 Kogan, Norrnan, “Italian Communism, the Working Class and Organized Catholicism,” Journal of Politics, XXVIII (August 1966), 531555CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Giorgio La Pira, “a shrewd politician, a scholar and a fluent public orator,” see Orsini, G. M. G., “The Red Lily of Florence,” Italian Quarterly, VII (Fall-Winter 1963), 93105Google Scholar.

40 Kogan, Norman, The Government of Italy (New York 1962), 49Google Scholar. At the October 1963 PSI Congress, convened to sanction the PSI’s direct participation in Italy’s Center- Left government, a substantial minority of 40 percent of the PSI delegates voted for continued opposition to the government, and thus for continued cooperation with the PCI.

41 The PCF’s destalinization efforts in the early 1960’s were also stimulated by a power struggle within the party (the “Servin-Casanova affair”), based on the PCF’s long accumulated weaknesses and the Sino-Soviet conflict. Increasing PCF autonomy from Moscow was demonstrated in February 1964 when Roger Garaudy disputed Leonid Ilyitchev’s thesis that religion would have to be eradicated before communism could be constructed; in March 1964 when L’Humanite reprinted an editorial from a French Yiddish journal that criticized Russian anti-Semitism; in October 1964 when the PCF (like the PCI) sent a special delegation to Moscow to inquire into the circumstances of Khrushchev’s fall from power; and especially in February 1966 when Louis Aragon condemned a Soviet court’s conviction of writers Andrei Sinyavski and Yuli Daniel. Aragon wrote on the front page of L’Humanité (February 16) that “even a mediocre writer has the right to live freely,” and he noted that the conviction “creates a precedent more detrimental to the interests of socialism than could ever have been the case with the writings of Sinyavski and Daniel.”

42 Comparisons of the leadership qualities of Togliatti and Thorez, with marked advantage to the former, have been made by several writers; see, for example, Borkenau, 79 459. 529. 546.

43 This point is made by Lipset in his contribution to Daedalus, 277.

44 This still is evident in the latest edition of Thorez’ autobiography, Fils du peuple (Paris 1960), in which there is an astonishing display of Thorez’ maudlin attachment to the memory of Stalin. See pp. 281ff.

45 Studies of Gramsci in English are of fairly recent origin. In the PCI’s Gramsci Institute in Rome approved an anthology of Gramsci’s writings, selected and translated by Louis Marks, who also provides a biographical introduction (The Modern Prince and Other Writings, by Antonio Gramsci [London 1957Google Scholar]). A substantial contribution to the study of Gramsci as a major Marxist theoretician was recently published by Cammett, John M., Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (Stanford 1967).Google Scholar

46 See Galli, Giorgio, “Italy: The Choice for the Left,” in Labedz, Leopold, ed., Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas (London 1962), 326Google Scholar–27.

47 Reported by Mallet in France Observateur, November 30, 1961.

48 Togliatti, Palmiro, Il Partito comunista italiano (Milan 1961Google Scholar). The excerpts are taken from pp. 169 and 136 of the , French edition, Le Parti communiste italien (Paris 1961Google Scholar), translated from the Italian by Robert Paris (italics added). In his book, Togliatti demonstrated in several other ways the extent to which Italian communism had shaken off some of the behavioral patterns of Stalinism. There was not a single quotation from Marx, Engels, or Lenin (or, of course, Stalin) in the book’s 170 pages, but instead there were innumerable references to Gramsci. It is significant that the PCF has no counterpart to Togliatti’s study, and instead offers Fils du peuple, Thorez’ presumptuously entitled autobiography, cited above. And what should be a major theoretical statement by the PCF (Qu’est-ce que la philosophie marxiste? [Paris 1962Google Scholar]) is instead a routine restatement of old dogma written by the PCF’s two top bureaucrats (rather than intellectuals), Waldeck Rochet and Jacques Duclos.

49 There is a note of ecstatic self-satisfaction whenever the PCF leadership quotes Picasso’s declaration, “I came to communism as one goes to the fountain.”

50 Christian Guerche, a PSU militant, in Le Monde, May 3, 1962.

51 Quoted in Le Monde, April 19, 1963.

52 Reprinted in Cahiers du communisme (July-August 1956), 63.

53 “Le Parti communiste et le ‘polycentrisme.’”

54 This point in regard to the PCF is illustrated by Auguste Lecoeur, a former coal miner who climbed through the PCF's ranks to become secretary for organization before being purged in 1954. Lecoeur showed his disdain for the party intellectuals at several points in his book, Le Partisan (Paris 1963Google Scholar). The party, Lecoeur declared, is “a hobby for the intellectuals, for whom something thought is something done. As their ‘present’ is sufficiently comfortable and satisfying, they have nothing to lose by making themselves the propagandists of the ‘happiness for future generations,’ that old Stalinist dodge” (p. 295).