Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was an attempt in the
1970s by various Western European
communist parties to develop a theory and practice of social transformation that was more relevant in a Western European democracy.
The main theoretical foundation of Eurocommunism was
Antonio Gramsci's writings about Marxist theory which questioned the sectarianism of the Left and encouraged communist parties to develop social alliances to win
hegemonic support for popular reforms. Eurocommunist parties expressed more clearly their fidelity to
democratic institutions and attempted to widen their appeal by embracing
public sector middle-class workers,
new social movements such as
feminism and
gay liberation, more publicly questioning the
Soviet Union.
It was those
Communist parties with strongest popular support, notably the
Italian Communist Party (PCI),
Spanish Communist Party (PCE) and the
French Communist Party (PCF) that adopted Eurocommunism most enthusiastically, while many smaller parties remained closer to the position of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
The
PCE and its
Catalan referent, the
United Socialist Party of Catalonia, had already been committed to the liberal possibilist politics of the
Popular Front during the
Spanish Civil War. The leader of the PCE,
Santiago Carrillo, wrote Eurocommunism's defining book
Eurocommunism and the State and participated in the development of the liberal democratic constitution as Spain emerged from the dictatorship of
Franco. The Communist parties of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Austria were also Eurocommunist.
Western European communists came to Eurocommunism via a variety of routes. For some it was their direct experience of feminist and similar action. For others its was a reaction to the political events of the Soviet Union, at the apogee of what
Gorbachev later called the
Era of Stagnation. This process was accelerated after the events of
1968, particularly the crushing of the
Prague Spring.
The politics of
détente also played a part. With war less likely, Western communists were under less pressure to follow Soviet orthodoxy yet also wanted to engage with a rise in western proletarian militancy such as Italy's
Hot Autumn and Britain's
shop stewards' movement.
Eurocommunist ideas won at least partial acceptance outside of Western Europe. Prominent parties influenced by it outside of Europe were the
Movement for Socialism (
Venezuela), the
Japanese Communist Party, the
Mexican Communist Party and the
Communist Party of Australia. Mikhail Gorbachov also refers to Eurocommunism as a key influence on the ideas of
glasnost and
perestroika in his memoirs.
But Eurocommunism was in many ways only a staging post. Some — principally the Italians — became
social democrats, others, like the Dutch, toyed with
green politics, while the French party during the 1980's reverted to a more pro-Soviet stance.
Eurocommunism became a force across Europe in 1977, when
Enrico Berlinguer of the
Italian Communist Party (PCI),
Santiago Carrillo of the
Communist Party of Spain (PCE) and
Georges Marchais of the
French Communist Party (PCF) met in Madrid and laid out the fundamental lines of the "new way". The PCI in particular had been developing an independent line from Moscow for many years prior, which had already been exhibited in
1968, when the party refused to support the Soviet invasion of
Prague. In 1975 the PCI and the PCE had made a declaration regarding the "march toward socialism" to be done in "peace and freedom". In 1976 in
Moscow, Berlinguer, in front of 5,000 Communist delegates, had spoken of a "pluralistic system" (translated by the interpreter as "multiform"), and described PCI's intentions to build "a socialism that we believe necessary and possible only in Italy". The
compromesso storico ("historic compromise") with
Democrazia Cristiana, stopped by
Aldo Moro's murder in
1978, was a consequence of this new policy.
Before the end of the
Cold War put practically all Leftist parties in Europe on the defensive and made
neoliberal reforms the order of the day, many Eurocommunist parties split, with the Right (such as
Democratici di Sinistra or
Iniciativa per Catalunya) adopting
social democracy more whole-heartedly, while the Left strove to preserve some identifiably Communist positions (
Partito della Rifondazione Comunista or
PSUC viu/
Communist Party of Spain).
Two main criticisms have been advanced against Eurocommunism. First, it is alleged by
right-wing critics that Eurocommunists showed a lack of courage in definitively breaking off from the Soviet Union (the Italian Communist party, for example, took this step only in 1981, after the repression of
Solidarność in
Poland). This "timidity" has been explained as the fear of losing old members and supporters, many of whom admired the USSR, or with a
realpolitik desire to keep the support of a strong and powerful country.
Other critics point out the difficulties the Eurocommunist parties had in developing a clear and recognisable strategy. They observe that Eurocommunists have always claimed to be different - not only from Soviet Communism but also from Social Democracy - while, in practice, they were always very similar to at least one of these two tendencies. Thus, critics argue that Eurocommunism does not have a well defined identity and cannot be regarded as a separate movement in its own right.
From a
Trotskyist point of view,
Ernest Mandel in
From Stalinism to Eurocommunism: The Bitter Fruits of 'Socialism in One Country' views Eurocommunism as a subsequent development of the decision taken by the
Soviet Union in
1924 to abandon the goal of
world revolution and concentrate on social and economic development of the Soviet Union, the so-called "
Socialism in One Country". Thus the Eurocommunists of the Italian and French Communist parties are considered to be
nationalist movements, who together with the Soviet Union abandoned
internationalism. This is analogous to the Social democratic parties of the
Second International during the
First World War, when they supported their national governments in prosecution of the war.
More generally, from the point of view of most revolutionary
left-wing movements, Eurocommunism simply meant an abandonment of basic communist principles, such as the call for a
proletarian revolution, which eventually led many Eurocommunists to abandon communism or even socialism altogether (by giving up their commitment to overthrow capitalism). Such critics felt strongly vindicated when several Eurocommunist parties scrapped their communist credentials following the fall of the
Soviet Union.
The origin of the term
Eurocommunism was subject to great debate in the mid-1970s, being attributed to
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Arrigo Levi, among others.
Jean-Francois Revel once wrote that "one of the favourite amusements of 'political scientists' is to search for the author of the term
Eurocommunism. In April 1977,
Deutschland-Archiv decided that the word was first used in the summer of 1975 by
Yugoslav journalist Frane Barbieri, former editor of
Belgrade's
NIN Newsmagazine.
*
Antonio Gramsci,
Prison Notebooks: Selections, Lawrence and Wishart, 1973, ISBN 0853152802
*
Santiago Carrillo,
Eurocommunism and the State, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977, ISBN 0853154082
*
Enrico Berlinguer, Antonio Bronda, Stephen Bodington,
After Poland, Spokesman, 1982, ISBN 0851243444
*
Roger Simon, Stuart Hall,
Gramsci's Political Thought: An Introduction, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977, ISBN 0853157383
*
Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe,
Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, Verso, 2001, ISBN 1859843301
*
Ernest Mandel,
From Stalinism to Eurocommunism: The Bitter Fruits of 'Socialism in One Country', NLB, 1978, hardcover, ISBN 0860910059; trade paperback, ISBN 0860910105
* "A Trotskyist criticism" is adapted from the
Wikinfo article,
"Eurocommunism, the Trotskyist criticism"
