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Political Dualism and Italian Communism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Sidney G. Tarrow
Sidney G. Tarrow*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

The poverty of philosophy, for Marx, was its formalism. The social sciences, in contrast, are blessed with the ability to adjust theory to experience. In our study of Marxist movements, however, we lack precisely the marxian flexibility we need to overcome a patrimony of ideology, misinformation and rigidity. Writers like Duverger and Selznick, for example, talk about “devotee parties” and “organizational weapons” without considering that their terminology may in some cases be misleading.

The devotee party, writes Duverger, “represents a change from the conception of the party as a class; it is the party conceived as the elite.” Its members pledge their “whole human being” to the party while its structure focuses upon “unceasing propaganda and agitation,” to the detriment of parliamentary activity. Duverger leaves no doubt that his archetype of the devotee party is the Communist Party. What he never asks, however, is whether a Communist Party may be anything but a devotee party.

With a similar focus, Philip Selznick describes “the combat party,” whose peculiar property is its “competence to turn members of a voluntary association into disciplined and deployable political agents,” and its “adoption of subversion” and “penetration and manipulation of institutional targets.” While the model is most relevant in societies in which Communist doctrine is remote and unappealing to the population, Selznick, like Duverger, holds that it “provides a fair interpretation of the Communist vanguard or combat party, wherever it is found.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 39 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1967

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Footnotes

*

The research upon which this article is based was supported by grants from the Ford Foundation and from the Committee on Faculty Research of the Concilium on International Studies of Yale University. I wish to thank my colleagues Donald Blackmer, Joseph LaPalombara, Roger Masters, James Mau, Gianfranco Poggi, and Giovanni Santori, who read the manuscript and contributed many helpful criticisms.

References

1 Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties, 2nd. rev. ed., North translation (New York: Science Editions, 1965)Google Scholar; Selznick, Philip, The Organizational Weapon, 2nd. ed. (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960).Google Scholar

2 Op. cit., especially p. 70, p. 2, and p. 58.

3 Op. cit., pp. xii, xv.

4 Ibid., p. vi.

5 These data are presented systematically in the author's Peasant Communism in Southern Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.)

6 Intra-nation comparative analysis is creatively used by Linz, Juan and Miguel, Amando de, “Eight Spains,” in Merritt, Richard and Rokkan, Stein (eds.), Comparing Nations: The Use of Quantitative Data in Cross-National Research (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; also see Rokkan, Stein and Valen, Henry, “Regional Contrasts in Norwegian Politics,” in Allardt, Eric and Littunen, Yijo (eds.), Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems (Helsinki: The Academic Book-Store, 1964).Google Scholar

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8 Ibid., p. 147, emphasis added.

9 Ibid., p. 170.

10 See Sartori's, excellent Democratic Theory (New York: Praeger, 1965).Google Scholar The problem of the efficacy of a legal prohibition of anti-system parties may perhaps be settled by a consideration of the impact of prohibition upon the German Social-Democratic Party in the nineteenth century. The ban failed to interrupt its growth but did succeed in turning it into an anti-system party. See Chalmers, Douglas A., The Social Democratic Party of Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 4.Google Scholar

11 The party is analyzed in detail in Chapters Five and Six of Peasant Communism, op. cit. For a sensitive analysis of its external relations and policy line, see Blackmer, Donald, Italian Communism and the International Communist Movement (Cambridge: M.I.T., mimeo.), 1966.Google Scholar

12 Togliatti's important speeches and writings have been collected in three volumes: Il Partito; La Via Italiana al Socialismo; and Sul Movimento Operaio Internazionale, all published by Editori Riuniti of Rome in 1964. See in particular his “Promemoria sulle Questioni del Movimento Operano Internazionale e della sua Unita,” published post-humously in 1964 in Sul Movimento Operaio Internazionale, pp. 361–376.

13 The concept of institutionalization as used here is similar to its usage in Selznick's, PhilipLeadership in Administration (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1957).Google Scholar

14 See Dati suli'Organizzazione del PCI (Rome: PCI, 1964), p. 4.

15 See Organizzazione del Partito (Rome: PCI, 1962), p. 59.

16 See “Modificazioni Strutturali e Politiche del PCI al suo IX Congresso,” Tempi Moderni, 2 (April, 1960), p. 50; also see the official party statistics in Forza ed Attivitá del Partito (Rome; PCI, 1954); Organizzazione del PCI (Rome: PCI, 1961); Dati sull'Organizzazione del PCI (Rome: PCI, 1964).

17 “Modificazioni Strutturali e Politiche del PCI,” p. 30.

18 Sartori, Giovanni, Il Parlamento Italiano (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1963), p. 105.Google Scholar Most of the interviewed Communist deputies felt that parliamentary discipline was not excessive, while the members of other parties interviewed were not at all satisfied with the constraints placed on their voting by the parties.

19 The author is indebted to the Carlo Cattaneo Research Institute of Bologna for allowing him to refer to its as-yet unpublished study, La Participazione Politica in Italia. This multi-volume study will be published in the United States in shorter form under the auspices of the Twentieth Century Fund.

20 Rienzo, Di, A Study in Political Dogmatism (unpublished doctoral thesis, Notre Dame University, 1963).Google Scholar

21 These data are reported in Istituto Carlo Cattaneo, Il Comportamento Elettorale in Italia alla Luce di Alcune Ricerche Condotte Direttamente sugli Elettori (Bologna, mimeo, n.d.), pp. 150–153.Google Scholar

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23 See Merli-Brandini, Pietro, “La Crisi del Pensiero Comunista,” Conquiste del Lavoro, 18 (11 14–20, 1965) pp. 9–20.Google Scholar

24 See Blackmer, op. cit., on the important distinction between the old sectarian left and the new left and on the contrast between left and right within the PCI today.

25 LaPalombara, Joseph, Interest Groups In Italian Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The classical sources on the cultural cleavage between North and South are found in Salvemini, Gaetano, Scritti Sulla Questione Meridionale (Milan: Einaudi, 1955)Google Scholar; Nitti, Francesco Saverio, Scritti Sulla Questione Meridionale (Bari: Laterza, 1958)Google Scholar; Fortunato, Giuseppe, Il Mezzogiorno e lo Stato Italiano (Bari: Laterza, 1911).Google Scholar The most important works on the historical development of the South are collected in Caizzi, Bruno (ed.), Antologia della Questione Meridionale (Milano: Comunitá, 1955)Google Scholar; and Villari, Rosario (ed.), Il Sud nella storia d'Italia (Bari: Laterza, 1961).Google Scholar

27 A statistical analysis of economic and social indices has been collected in Un Secolo di Statistiche Nord e Sud, 1861–1961 (Rome: SVIMEZ, 1961).

28 Lutz, Vera, Italy: A Study in Economic Development (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), Ch. V.Google Scholar

29 Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Compendio Statistico Italiano, 1958 (Rome: Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 1959), p. 17.Google Scholar

30 Lutz, op. cit., p. 94.

31 Apter, David writes, “Industrialization is that aspect of modernization so powerful in its consequences that it alters dysfunctional social institutions and customs by creating new roles and social instruments, based on the use of the machine”: The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965), p. 68.Google Scholar

32 See the analysis of southern Italian brigandage by Hobsbawm, Eric in Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar

33 Salvemini, Gaetano, “La Piccola Borghesia Intelletuale,” in Caizzi, (ed.), Antologia della Questione Meridionale, pp. 383–405.Google Scholar

34 Banfield, Edward and Banfield, Laura Fasano, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1958).Google Scholar

35 SVIMEZ, Un Secolo di Statistiche, op. cit., pp. 336–338.Google Scholar

36 Vera Lutz writes: “The peasant is almost always what is called a mixed figure—small proprietor, tenant, share-cropper, wage earner. In the past, at least, the link between him and that part of the land which he farmed but did not own was in many cases a precarious one”: op. cit., p. 105.

37 Cited in LaPalombara, Joseph, Interest Groups in Italian Politics, op. cit., p. 65.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Pitt-Rivers, Julian, People of the Sierra (Chicago: Phoenix, 1961), p. 154.Google Scholar

39 Dati sull'Organizzazione del Partito, op. cit., p. 21.

40 While 42 per cent of the membership in the North are members of the working class, 32 per cent of the southern PCI members are workers. In the North, even in the agricultural regions, Emilia, Tuscany and the Marches, 36 per cent of the members are workers, more than the working class portion of the party in any southern region. See PCI, Dati Sull'Organizzazione del PCI (Rome: PCI, 1964).Google Scholar

41 Calculated from ibid., pp. 22–27.

42 Ibid., p. 74, pp. 15–17.

43 Ibid., pp. 22–27.

44 Ibid., pp. 29–63, passim.

45 Ibid.; also see Ghino, Celso, “Aspetti della Struttura della Organizzazione,” Rinascita, 7 (03, 1950), p. 163.Google Scholar

46 Dati sull'Organizzazione del Partito, op. cit., p. 45.

47 Valenza, Pietro, “Alcuni problemi del Rinnovamento del PCI nel Mezzogiorno,” Cronache Meridionali, 7 (01–February, 1960), p. 7.Google Scholar

48 Pasquale, P. di, “Dalla Politica di Salerno alla Crisi del Frontismo Meridionale,” Rinascita, 13 (10, 1956), p. 543.Google Scholar

49 Secchia, Pietro, “Relazione,” in VII Congresso Nazionale, Atti e Risoluzioni (Rome: PCI, 1951), p. 146.Google Scholar

50 Comitato Centrale, PCI, Documenti, 1951, p. 197.Google Scholar

51 Spano, Velio, “La Sardegna alla Vigilia delle Elezioni Regionali,” Rinascita, 6 (03, 1949), p. 103.Google Scholar

52 Comitato Centrale, PCI, “Risoluzione della Direzione,” Documenti, 1951, p. 230.Google Scholar

53 The data which follow on the PCI national elite were graciously provided me by Professor Gianfranco Poggi of the University of Edinburgh and of the Instituto Carlo Cattaneo.

54 For a more extensive treatment of the data on the PCI provincial elite, see Peasant Communism, op. cit., Ch. IX.

55 Pietro Valenza, “Alcuni Problemi del Rinnovamento del PCI nel Mezzogiorno,” op. cit., p. 10.

56 PCI, IX Congresso Nazionale (Rome: PCI, 1960), Vol. I, p. 231.Google Scholar

57 Valenza, Pietro, “Aspetti del Fanfanismo in Lucania,” Cronache Meridionali, 5 (12, 1958), p. 865.Google Scholar

58 Interview F-1, Naples.

59 Interview S-1, Rome.

60 Interview S-4, Rome.

61 Cronache Meridionali, 5 (May, 1958), p. 305.

62 Gramsci's, works are collected in the six-volume series, Opere di Antonio Gramsci (Torino: Einaudi, 1955)Google Scholar, and selected in Salinari, Carlo and Spinella, Mario (eds.), Antonio Gramsci: Antologia degli Scritti (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1963).Google Scholar A recent study of Gramsci's influence on the early period of the party is Cammet, John M., Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of the Italian Communist Party, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

63 Gramsci, , Note sull Machiavelli (Torino: Einaudi, 1955), p. 3.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 5.

65 Antologia degli Scritti, vol. II, p. 50.

66 Ibid., p. 79.

67 Ibid., vol. I, p. 52, emphasis in the original.

68 Ibid., vol. II, p. 51.

69 L'Ordine Nuovo, Torino: Einaudi, 1955, p. 10.

70 Rinascita, August 29, 1944.

71 “Report on the Debate of the Central Committee of the PCI on the Twenty-Second Congress of the CPSU,” New Left Review, nos. 13–14 (June, 1962), p. 153. For the re-interpretation of capitalism, see Gramsci, Istituto (ed.), Tendenze nel Capitalismo Moderno (Rome: Ed. Riuniti), 1962.Google Scholar

72 Scoccimaro, Mauro, “Dottrina Marxista e Politica Comunista,” Rinascita, 05–June, 1945, p. 138.Google Scholar

73 Ferri, Franco, “Questione Meridionale e Unitá Nazionale,” Rinascita, 9 (01, 1952), p. 10Google Scholar, emphasis added.

74 Togliatti, Palmiro, “L'Azione Democratica e Socialista nel Mezzogiorno,” Cronache Meridionali, 1 (06, 1954), p. 412.Google Scholar

75 Lichtheim, George, Marxism(New York: Praeger, 1965), p. 125Google Scholar, emphasis added.

76 Ibid., pp. 124–127.

77 Ibid., p. 125.

78 Lenin, V. I., “Report Before the Second All-Russian Representatives Congress of the Communist Organizations of the Eastern Peoples,” Sochinenya (Works) (Moscow: 1932), vol. XXIV, pp. 542–551Google Scholar, quoted in Pye, Lucian, Guerilla Communism in Malaya (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 26.Google Scholar

79 Rinascita, August 29, 1944.

80 The Politics of Modernization, op. cit., p. 205.