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Our Debt to Sraffa
“Italian Communists are joined to Sraffa by an ineradicable political and human debt of gratitude. It is hard for us even to grasp his full significance for Gramsci: the role he played during Gramsci’s long years in fascist jails is a priceless and crucial element in our own . . .” read more
Introduction to Sraffa
“Piero Sraffa was born in Turin in 1898, the son of a law professor at the university. As he himself described in a 1924 letter to Gramsci (quoted in the article by Ferrata below), he was a ‘pacifist socialist’ as an adolescent, in the years 1915–17: the Italian . . .” read more
Eurocommunism, Socialism and Democracy
“As is well known, a reassessment of the relationship between Democracy and Socialism lies at the heart of Eurocommunism’s theoretical aggiornamento, underpinning the strategy of ‘democratic roads’ to socialism and the conception of a ‘State of advanced democracy’. This reassessment, which is explicitly presented as a revision of . . .” read more
What Must Change in the Party
“The defeat of the Union of the Left has seriously confused the popular masses and filled many Communists with profound disquiet. A ‘workerist’—or more precisely sectarian—faction is openly rejoicing at the break with the Socialist Party, presenting it as a victory over the social-democratic danger. But the majority . . .” read more
Eurocommunism: Left and Right Variants
“Fernando Claudin was a leader of the Spanish Communist Party until his expulsion in 1964, and is the author of the already classic The Communist Movement: from Comintern to Cominform. The analysis of Eurocommunism and its relation to socialism put forward in his new book is very timely—both . . .” read more
The Italian Road to Socialism
“We may distinguish, schematically, three ‘models’ of the road to socialism, three types of strategy for transition. The first is the Leninist, or ‘classical’ model, on Which the revolutionary left bases itself. The growth and intensification of capitalist contradictions heighten working-class combativity and increase class consciousness until these . . .” read more
Presentation of Deutscher/Brandler
“Isaac Deutscher and Heinrich Brandler had in common the fact that they were among the small number of communist oppositionists from the twenties and thirties who survived into the post-war era without modifying their fundamental political stance: without succumbing to cold-war, social-democratic or Stalinist pressures. In short, both . . .” read more
On the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party
“I should like to thank the Sorbonne Philosophy Circle of the Union of Communist Students for inviting me to participate in this discussion. I was left free to choose my own subject. I felt that in France today, not only for Communists but also for all who want . . .” read more
Memoir of an Indian Communist
“Why do you think the CPI took such a long time to establish itself? What was its early activity and its relations with the nationalist movement: could it be that the infamous ‘Third Period’ of the Comintern also seriously disoriented Indian communists by isolating them at a critical . . .” read more
Introduction to Damodaran
“On 26 June, Indira Gandhi introduced a State of Emergency which led immediately to the arrest of several hundred opposition leaders and to the imposition of a draconian press censorship on the country’s normally vigorous bourgeois press. Emboldened by the feeble response to these measures, Indira Gandhi induced . . .” read more
Brezhnevism in Finland
“Finland today presents the unique spectacle within the advanced capitalist world of a mass Communist Party that is now vertically divided into two hostile blocs on a semi-permanent basis. For over six years, Finnish Communism has lived amidst institutionalized schism, but has not yet formally split—unlike Greek or . . .” read more
The Kapetanios
“Two events—the April 1967 military coup d’état and the outbreak in April 1968 of the rift in the Communist Party—have opened a new period in Greek politics. They have also focused international attention on the situation in Greece. The circles of opinion that registered the impact of these . . .” read more
The Split in the Spanish Communist Party
“The Communist Party of Spain (pce) was among the communist parties which went furthest in its condemnation of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia and the Husakian ‘normalization’. This led to a serious deterioration in its relations with the cpsu and provoked a deep internal crisis . . .” read more
Italian Communism in the Sixties
“The last few weeks have seen a new wave of resignations and expulsions from the Italian Communist Party. Attempts by the pci leadership to brand the ‘scissionist manoeuvres of Il Manifesto’ as the cause of these phenomena need hardly be taken seriously. We have made no efforts . . .” read more
Introduction to Magri
“Lucio Magri’s article on Italian Communism in the sixties, published in Il Manifesto in late 1970, is for a number of reasons of considerable international significance. The Manifesto group was excluded from the pci in June 1969 for their systematic criticisms of its policies from the left: . . .” read more
'The British Road to Socialism'
“For some time now, the present writer has increasingly felt that the Communist Party’s strategy for achieving socialism in Britain, as embodied in its programme, The British Road To Socialism, is characterized by grave theoretical ambiguities and unresearched but crucial formulations. What follows is an attempt to articulate . . .” read more
Marxism and Asia
“The upsurge of colonial revolution in recent years has led to a fresh examination of earlier Marxist work on this topic, both by Marx and Engels themselves, and by theorists of the Third International. This book gives a serious and mainly non-polemical approach to some aspects of this . . .” read more
Confronting Defeat: The German Communist Party
“Hermann Weber has added about nine hundred pages to the already long bibliography of German Communist history, with his massive work Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. The first question prospective readers will ask is: did he have to? The answer, on the whole, is yes. These two volumes . . .” read more
Swedish Communism--End of an Interlude
“The Twenty-Second Congress of the Swedish Communist Party—since 1967 called Left Party (Communist) or VPK—on September 19th–21st put an end to a period in the history of the party, hitherto unique in the annals of the international movement. A balance-sheet of this period and of the congress . . .” read more
The Popular Front in Finland
“Since March 1966, Finland has been governed by a Popular Front coalition which includes the agrarian Centre Party, the Social-Democratic Party, and the Communist Party. The Finnish Popular Front is so far a unique phenomenon in Europe: it is the first time for 20 years that a Communist . . .” read more
Problems of Communist History
“We are today at the end of that historical epoch in the development of socialism which began with the collapse of the Second International in 1914 and the victory of the Bolsheviks in October 1917. This is therefore a suitable time to survey the history of the Communist . . .” read more
The Greek Communist Party
“At the 12th plenary session of its Central Committee, which met between the 3rd and 12th February 1968, the Greek Communist Party split. A captive of its myths, transplanted into a foreign environment, institutionalized in the framework of a dubious legality, cut off from the political and social . . .” read more
Introduction to article on Greek Communist Party
“The article on the Greek Communist Party which follows first appeared in Literani Listy, the Czechoslovak weekly. It is of interest on three counts. First, it was published in Czechoslovakia during the summer of 1968. Second, it attempts to tackle historically the problem of the relationship between the . . .” read more
The PCF and its History
“The socialist revolution in France cannot be a repetition of the May events, any more than the 1917 Revolution (February and October) was a repetition of 1905. The May events were a tremendous explosion, in which (through tracts, meetings, newspapers and even sometimes through the distorted accounts in . . .” read more
Communists and the Australian Left
“The political fortunes of the Australian Left have reached a low pass. In the national elections late in 1966, the Australian Labour Patty sustained its greatest electoral defeat of all time, recording the lowest percentage of the total vote since 1906. More galling for the left wing inside . . .” read more
The Communist Party in the 1920s
“For the last 46 years the Communist Party has played a part in left-wing politics in Britain out of all proportion to its membership and electoral support. Other left-wing Socialist groups, organizations, campaigns and journals have come and gone. But the continued existence of the Communist Party, despite . . .” read more
The Morning Star
“‘Surely there never was a daily paper set going in such conditions, under such almost frightening handicaps.’ This is the late William Gallacher recalling, 35 years later, the birth of the Daily Worker. For years before that, and in the years since, every socialist who understands that first . . .” read more
Communist Party Congress
“A delegate writes: British Communists, no less than other sections of the left, are faced with the problem of taking an attitude to the Labour Government. ‘Why has the Labour Government been unable to provide even the basis for solving problems in which not only its own future . . .” read more
The Swedish Left
“The general societal setting of contemporary Swedish politics has been analysed elsewhere by the present writer in terms of the combination of—to use Gramscian categories—working-class political dominance with a continuing latent hegemony of the bourgeoisie. This situation has positive implications for left-wing action and thinking. Working-class political dominance . . .” read more
French Communism
“The history of Communism in the developed economies of the west has been the history of revolutionary parties in countries without insurrectionary prospects. Such countries may be, and at various times in our century have been, involved in revolutionary activities arising out of the international contradictions of capitalism . . .” read more
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
“This is an intellectual’s book about intellectuals. Caute is a historian of concepts and he finds it difficult to accept that political leaders may at times act in response to motivations that are not entirely the result of intellectual choice. In reading his account of the Parti Communiste . . .” read more
Three Currents in Communism
“Hegel says somewhere that any party is real only when it becomes divided. The idea, far from being a paradox, is simple and profound in its dialectical realism. Any political movement (or any philosophical school of thought) as it grows and develops cannot help unfolding the contradictions inherent . . .” read more
The Debate of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party on the 22nd Congress of the CPSU
“The Italian Communist Party, in exile and jail for 20 years under Mussolini, was re-formed in 1944 in the throes of the Resistance. Relatively uncompromised by the equivocations and complicities of the 30’s, the Party’s formative experience was national resistance and insurrection. The majority of its cadres were . . .” read more