Forging socialism through democracy? 'Eurocommunism' and the transnational debate on power in the global socialist left (1973-1989). Talk given at the Beyond 1917 conference (Oxford, May 2017). (original) (raw)
Related papers
Twentieth Century Communism, 2019
The article provides a critical overview of the latest phase of scholarly engagement with Eurocommunism, firstly, by pointing out the resilience of a 'Cold War framing' in many of the new studies of the phenomenon , secondly, by stressing the resulting blind spots in the assessment of its geographical scope (e.g., the lack of attention paid to Spain, scarce contributions on Eurocommunism's ramifications beyond West Europe). It then proposes a de-centred perspective on the phenomenon that is able to encompass its global roots and outreach, especially regarding the Third World; contrary to the prevalent focus on individual national cases of Eurocommunism, the article calls for a framing of Eurocommunist coordination as a transnational formation, so that both the leading role of Italian communists and the cross-border exchanges that shaped it can factor into a revised scholarly engagement with the topic. From this vantage point, Eurocommunism emerges as a strategy of transition for the global conjuncture of multiple crises that the 1970s represented, one that nevertheless failed to present a viable alternative to neoliberalism, another product of the decade in question. The article concludes by approaching the little explored gender dimension of Eurocommunism, visible in its entanglement with the second-wave feminism.
Reassessing the Communist utopia? Eurocommunists at the mirror of "developed socialism"
History of Communism in Europe, 2011
Th is article tries to provide some food for thought on the identities of the PCI and the PCF about the developed socialism, taking into consideration some relevant turning points in the '70s and three diff erent case studies (the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Poland). Although it does not off er a complete analysis of Western Communist thinking on the image of developed socialism, it rather tries to reassess the common interpretation of some central features of the legacy of the developed socialism with respect to the two main Communist Parties of the Western bloc. Firstly, it argues that though many factors lay behind the strong tie between Western Communism and the Eastern communist states, the belief that developed socialism was reformable, mattered a great deal and, indeed, many leaders endorsed such a conviction. Th e Western leaders, and especially those of the Italian Communist Party, were arguably aware of the failures of developed socialism: particularly during the mid-'70s, pessimism grew and was decisive in the creation of Eurocommunism. Nevertheless, the important role played by the Soviet Union in détente, and the conviction that the contradictions of the developed socialism could be resolved if the new course of the 20th Congress were restored, proved central in defi ning the image of developed socialism for Western Communists. Secondarily, the paper argues that historiography makes much of the diff erences between the PCI and the PCF: the fi rst is usually considered more open, more democratic and capable of serious and genuine ideological evolution; while the latter is seen as a pro-Soviet Party, which used Eurocommunism as a tactic, and that lacked the capacity for autonomous thought. Th ough substantially agreeing on this distinction, more information is needed. We should stress that the thoughts of both Parties were based on the idea that a new political ruling class would have been able to change developed socialism.
The aim of this article is to show some results from an investigation about an issue that has not been much analyzed: the role played by the European socialdemocracy and its main transnational organization, the Socialist International (SI), during the transitional periods towards democracy in Latin America’s “third wave”. At the same time, this issue is inscribed within a broader one, which has not been broadly discussed either: the transnational strategies of Latin American political parties during the years of dictatorships, revolutions and several authoritarian regimes.
Studying ‘Eurocommunism’, on unfolding ideology
The Sociological Review, 1979
T he term 'Eurocommunism' is an ideological construct. Our object in this paper is to chart its origins, development and elaborations in current ideological struggles. Of particular interest is the way in which the term 'Eurocommunism' has been incorporated into communist discourse. In this paper, for the sake of clarity, we have decided not to explore the theoretical developments within the communist parties but to concentrate on how they have handled a term which originally came from bourgeois discourse. It is no small irony that a concept coined by anti-communists should have largely set the terms of reference for Marxist and bourgeois theorists alike. Its irony is twofold: first, the adoption of the term by communists; and second, the tendency for the term to 'take off', to run away from the purely anti-communist meaning intended by its creators. This latter development has produced its own fair share of ideological repair work. The sociological significance of such developments lies in the way in which it illustrates how the ideological initiative may be taken by crucial elites, how they may, to a certain extent, lose it and then once more regain it. 'Eurocommunism' provides a useful case to investigate the division of labour which exists between different ideological elites. There is a distinction to be drawn between those who report events and provide information and analysis for political and economic elites and those who interpret events directly or indirectly for popular consumption. We shall have occasion below to elaborate this distinction and suggest in a preliminary way how it relates to different institutional positions, different types of journal and different communication media. In our view there is no simple process of dissemination or popularisation working downwards through these strata. The construct of 'Eurocommunism' itself has ooly achieved limited distribution in English-55 iKp Elliott and Philip Schlesinger language media. Accounts of related phenomena in truly popular media in Britain have largely been managed in pre-Eurocommunist, that is Cold War, terms. Our analysis of the system through which knowledge and meaning is produced and distributed leads us to expect that this will continue to be the case. Ideological elites in the West-here consisting of politicians, journalists and academics-generally build up a considerable investment in established patterns of thought. Occasionally, particularly in moments of crisis, they have to engage in ideological retooling. So far as communism is concerned such a process of retooling has been necessitated by the change in international relations from Cold War to detente and by the emergence, particularly since 1956, and latterly 1968, of a number of significant developments in major Western European communist parties. These developments have had to be located and interpreted, and have posed problems for the dominant, static, ideological framework, which is based on assumptions of communist totalitarianism and the unquestioned writ of Soviet orthodoxy in the international communist movement. Western political elites have therefore faced the problem of explaining the gap between the traditional Cold War view of communism and the current professions of, in particular, the PCI, PCF, and PCE (the Italian, French and Spanish Communist Parties). Our contention is that the coining of the term 'Eurocommunism' and the development of the subsequent debate have reflected the need to make major ideological adjustments at a time of detente. This has given rise to a number of differing non-Marxist views, which are explored below. We should say, at the outset, that we do not take the view that a 'Eurocommunist' phenomenon as such exists. That there are convergent analyses and programmes amongst some Western communist parties cannot be doubted. That these have been produced by similar structural developments in capitalism's present crisis, that they have been actuated by a rejection of Stalinism and the Soviet model as the sole road to socialism, and that they reflect a new appraisal of the prospects of revolution in Western Europe, can also not be doubted. But such considerations do not, in our view, add up to a homogeneous phenomenon-as is implied by the term 'Eurocommunism'. Nor does Che somewhat ad hoc set of links between major Western communist parties and some socialists as yet constitute a coherent movement about to change the face of Europe. Potentially, of course, it might 56 On the Stratification of PoUticd Knowledge herald a rapprochement between elements of the Third and Second Internationals. But in our view, an assessment of the political prospects in Western Europe needs to pay more attention to national realities, rather than to over-emphasise convergence. The Origins of the Term It is hardly surprising with a term which has had such considerable ideological reverberations that there are three separate claims to have coined it. lfons Dalma, an Austrian journalist of Croatian origins, based in Rome, and contributor to a right-wing book entitled EurO' Kommunismus, asserts that the Catholic philosopher Augosto Del Noce flrst thought up the label.^ Given the greater strength and the more detailed support for the other two claims, our conclusion is that Del Noce is not the most significant of the originators. The second claimant is Arrigo Levi, editor of the liberal-Socialist Milanese newspaper La Stampa, and coliminist on Italy for Newsweek. In December 1976 in Newsweek, Levi speculated on whether he himself was the originator of the term in an earlier Newsweek column in December 1975. In that first column he had set out in a remarkably prescient passage why 'Eurocommunism' was on the world agenda: The evolution of "Eurocommunism"-^which has also been called "white communism" or "neo-communism"-may become a decisive factor for European history and East-West relations. It challenges the traditional political balances in the West but it also threatens the rigidity of Soviet power in the East. In the end, who will be more affected? To some extent this is a consequence of detente, a diplomatic strategy of movement that demands much greater inventiveness than the old "trench warfare'' of the Cold War.'«
Histoire Politique, 2022
The Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) evolved from divergence to convergence in the face of European integration between 1985 and 1994. Both parties started from opposite positions since the times of the struggle against the dictatorships of Salazar and Franco, when the PCP aligned itself with the Moscow orthodox line while the PCE opted for Eurocommunist heterodoxy. Gorbachev’s theses on the “common European house”, perestroika, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War forced the two Iberian communist parties to position themselves before vertiginous changes that also had their translation in European construction. The changes in the international relations, the form that European construction took with the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, and the anti-capitalist and third-world turn to the left that the PCE gave as of 1988 facilitated a convergence with the PCP that resulted in cooperation between both in the European Parliament. This article analyses the evolution of the ideological positions and the tactical decisions of two main Iberian communist parties through documents, press, speeches, statements, parliamentary debates of both organizations and, when possible, their historical archives.
Contemporary European History
The main aim of this article is to show how the political evolution of Western and Eastern Europe during the Cold War cannot be fully understood without analysing the political experiences of countries like Spain, which were not at the centre of the period's political decisions but whose evolution was inspired and suggested by strategies outside the political mainstream. In this respect, the internal evolution of Francoist Spain from the mid-1950s through the 1960s portrays a peculiar political situation demonstrating the capillarity of political and social experiences across the Iron Curtain in Europe and Latin America. A minority of influential sectors linked to the Single Spanish Party, the Falange, pursued its own third way, ignoring the Cold War models. They instead looked to what was happening in Eastern Bloc countries, especially after the events in Hungary in 1956, as well as to the political experiments in Latin America, especially the Cuban revolution.
European Socialists and the State in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
2020
Around the world, social movements have become legitimate, yet contested, actors in local, national and global politics and civil society, yet we still know relatively little about their longer histories and the trajectories of their development. This series seeks to promote innovative historical research on the history of social movements in the modern period since around 1750. We bring together conceptually-informed studies that analyse labour movements, new social movements and other forms of protest from early modernity to the present. We conceive of 'social movements' in the broadest possible sense, encompassing social formations that lie between formal organisations and mere protest events. We also offer a home for studies that systematically explore the political, social, economic and cultural conditions in which social movements can emerge. We are especially interested in transnational and global perspectives on the history of social movements, and in studies that engage critically and creatively with political, social and sociological theories in order to make historically grounded arguments about social movements. This new series seeks to offer innovative historical work on social movements, while also helping to historicise the concept of 'social movement'. It hopes to revitalise the conversation between historians and historical sociologists in analysing what Charles Tilly has called the 'dynamics of contention'.