14
PARTISAN REVIEW
and in the Socialist party. Its formal break with Moscow, and its
alignment with the Itali an Party, which is regarded as somethin g of
a rival in Western Europe, is relatively recent.
It
is interes ting that
thi s formal break in la te '75 came some years after the electoral pact
with the Socialists and the program of the uni on of the Left. And this
break may very well have been facilita ted by the Soviet Union 's
backing of Gi scard in the presidential electi on aga inst Mitterand.
If
we move to Italy, we find an even more open situa ti on and a
more perplexing one. Just the o ther day, the leader o f the Italian
Republican party, a much respected seni or fi gure o f the secul ar
Republi cans and a libera l in our terms, Ugo LaMa lfa, sa id th a t it
was now time for the Communi sts to enter the government. And
there is a movement in the Communist pa rty directed aga inst its
present leadership, whi ch argues tha t it must either carry th e present
compromi se with the Christian Democra ts to its logical conclu sion
and enter the government, o r cease to support it, form a Left alli ance,
and offer itself as the center component of an altern a te government.
The Ita li an Commun ist party is the heir,
to
some extent , of a
dessicated sociali st traditi on.
It
is also the heir o f a Republican
tradition , and a t the same time it has made strenuous efforts to reach
a compromi se with Itali an Ca tho li cism.
The efforts are rooted in , amongs t other things, an accura te view
of the Catholi cs as not necessa ril y procapitali st or ma rket-ori ented.
From 1956 onwards, the in creasin g autonomy of the Ita li an Com–
muni sts from Soviet domin a ti on has been ev ident, from the declara–
tion on pol ycentri sm by Togli a tti to recent decl a ra ti ons. What is
more interes ting about th e Pa rty, I think , is the fact tha t tacti ca l
ques ti ons are mo re openl y ca rri ed out and di scussed in the Pa rty and
before Itali an publi c op ini on than in any o ther Wes tern European
Communist party. There is a Lcftline, and a more or less Ri ght line.
The Left line argues fo r a uni on of all wor king -cl ass forces, and
confronta ti on . The Ri ght line, led by Amendo la but adop ted by
Berlinguer, a rgues in effect fo r a government of na tion a l emergency,
a cross-class all iance.
It
is thi s line whi ch , in the form of th e so-ca ll ed
hi stori ca l compromi se, has, for a time a t leas t, triumphed. The
diffi cult y is tha t it takes two to p lay, and the Demo-Chri sti ans h ave
r'a ther successfull y utili zed Communist support to maintain them–
selves in the precari ous position of minorit y government. We can
therefore say tha t the crisis of Euro-communi sm in Italy is not a
cho ice between subservi ence to the Soviet Union and something else.
It
is a cri sis between two versions of the transiti on to sociali sm in
