National Communism Vs. the National Way To Communism — an Italian Interpretation

• Date: 01 September 1958
• Published date: 01 September 1958
• Author: Norman Kogan
• DOI: 10.1177/106591295801100314
• Subject Matter: Articles

NATIONAL COMMUNISM VS. THE NATIONAL WAY
TO COMMUNISM — AN ITALIAN INTERPRETATION*
NORMAN KOGAN
University of Connecticut
HE BREAK-AWAY of Tito’s Yugoslavia in 1948, the Twentieth
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the
Polish revolt which led to the successful (until the present, at least)
seizure of power by Gomulka in October, 1956, all have served to shake the
traditional Leninist-Stalinist conceptions of the relations between the Soviet
state and other Communist states, between the Soviet Communist party
and other Communist parties. These traditional relationships could be
summed up, perhaps, in the phrases &dquo;guiding state&dquo; and &dquo;guiding party.&dquo;
The Soviet Union was the &dquo;guiding state&dquo; for all other socialist (corm-
munist) states; the Soviet Communist party was the &dquo;guiding party&dquo; for all
Communist parties.
Marshall Tito was the first to raise the standard of &dquo;national commun-
ism.&dquo; Subsequently, in various states of eastern Europe a series of purges
removed from power Communists who, whatever their real sins, were ac-
cused of advocating national communism, condemned by Stalinists as be-
ing basically anti-Soviet and therefore, by definition, harmful to the interests
of the working class. The emergence of a powerful Communist China,
the death of Stalin, the rise of Khruschev, the subsequent attacks on Stalin’s
memory and misdeeds, and the efforts to woo Tito back into the Soviet
fold, culminated in 1956 with the elaboration by Khruschev, and its accept-
ance by the Twentieth Congress of the C.P.S.U., of the concept that the
road to socialism might take different forms in different countries, and that
violent revolution was not a necessary prerequisite to success. In other
words there were legitimate national ways to communism, to be distin-
guished from illegitimate national communism.
Throughout all this the Italian Communist Party (P.C.L), the largest
in the Western world, has had a hard time. The initial reaction of its
leadership was to criticize the Khruschev line openly and then to fall back
into a more or less formal acceptance of it, but not with much grace. Within
the party Palmiro Togliatti, the Secretary General, has had to fight off both
the hard-core Stalinists who accused him of being too &dquo;revisionist,&dquo; and a
group of younger, more flexible leaders who accused him of being intellectu-
ally fossilized, of being holier than the Pope, of being incapable of under-
standing and realizing the significance of developments in the Soviet Union,
of combining extreme tactical flexibility and &dquo;possibilism&dquo; at the level of
* My presence in Italy at the time of the meetings of the Central Committee of the
Italian Communist party was made possible by grants of sabbatical leave from the
University of Connecticut and of funds from the Social Science Research Council.
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Italian politics with immovable rigidity at the level of Marxist ideology.
These issues, among others, have led to an admitted 20 per cent loss in dues-
paying party members (outsiders believe it is even greater) as well as the
defection of some prominent Italian intellectuals. Among the most dra-
matic of these defections was the resignation from the party in the summer
of 1957 of young Antonio Giolitti, a Communist member of the Chamber
of Deputies, and nephew of a former Prime Minister of Italy, Giovanni
Giolitti.
Among the various issues, the question of an &dquo;Italian way to socialism&dquo;
has played a prominent role. Could such a way be independent of Soviet
experience and Soviet guidance; would it mean the wrecking of the concept
of &dquo;proletarian internationalism&dquo;? Could it or would it lead automatically
to anti-Sovietism and thus become finally &dquo;national communism&dquo;?
During the days from September 25 to September 29, 1957, a meeting
of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist party was held in
Rome. The major addresses were reproduced textually in the official party
newspaper, l’Unità, which also printed lengthy summaries of the comments
and discussion of Committee members. There were two items on the
agenda; a report by Giorgio Amendola, considered by many to be Togliatti’s
probable successor, on &dquo;The Activity of the Party and the Preparation of
the [Coming] Election Campaign,&dquo; and a report by Vice-Secretary General
Luigi Longo, one of the old guard, on &dquo;The Trip of the Italian Delegation to
the Soviet Union and other Socialist States.&dquo; Amendola’s report does not
concern us here, but a good part of Longo’s report and of the subsequent
discussions was devoted to the question of national communism versus a
national way to communism, a subject on which he had evidently had
many conversations with Soviet leaders.
I have decided, contrary to considerations of style, to quote at length
and in chronological order from the major speeches and the ensuing dis-
cussions. The justification is two-fold. The particular way in which Com-
munists use words and phrases makes it hard to catch the same flavor by
paraphrase, especially when translated from a foreign language. Secondly,
at a number of points Longo and others claim to be repeating exactly what
was told to them by Soviet leaders. This is a rare occasion to find out how
leading Soviet Communists explain things, presumably in private, to close
friends, not to a public audience. For if Longo’s description of Soviet think-
ing is accurate and reliable, something of course that cannot be proved, we
have not only the most recent Italian interpretation but also the most recent
Soviet interpretation of the meaning of &dquo;various roads to socialism.&dquo;
In his report Longo states that the Italian delegation which he led was
able to have repeated meetings with leaders of the Soviet Communist party
and of the Soviet government, including Khruschev, Mikoyan, Suslov, Furt-

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662
seva, Koslov, and others. He claims that full and frank exchanges of
opinion were had both inside Russia and with the leaders of eastern Euro-
pean states, and he claims that both inside and outside Russia much ap-
preciation was expressed for the efforts of the Italian Communist party to
build, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism, an Italian way to socialism.
Above all in the peoples’ democracies a systematic struggle is being carried out
against so-called &dquo;national communism&dquo; which is a weapon in the service of the Ameri-
can Department of State in its attempts to split the socialist camp, to play off one socialist
country against another, one communist party against another. Naturally there is no con-
nection nor possible closeness between the necessity, rather the duty, of every communist
party to elaborate its own path to socialism and that which is called &dquo;national com-
munism.&dquo; One of the fundamental theses of the 20th Congress [of the C.P.S.U.] is
precisely that of the diversity of ways to the development of socialism. If there are some
nationalistic or revisionistic deviations in this search the struggle against the deviations
helps the search to be correctly established and conducted. In no case can such a struggle
be understood as a condemnation of this search nor can it be distorted to check its
development.
In a discussion we had with the comrades directing the agitation and propaganda
work of the C.P.S.U. it appears to us that the issue was set up correctly. &dquo;The passage to
socialism,&dquo; they told us, &dquo;is obligatory for everyone. But the forms depend on the circum-
stances for each country, and here there is the most ample room for original research in
the field of methods, of strategy, and of tactics. We criticize national communism not
because it seeks out national particularities, but because it affirms on the theoretical level
that national particularities are more important than general laws.&dquo;
That search which, starting from national particularities, deduces conclusions which
reinforce the international movement to which must be brought the maximum contribu-
tion of national forces, is legitimate and in perfect conformity with marxism-leninism;
while every theory that would like to use national peculiarities as a pretext for dividing
the international movement, to oppose a self-styled national communism to communism
tout court, which is intemationalistic by its essence, is illegitimate and contrary to marx-
ism-leninism....
Lenin already underlined repeatedly that the most difficult thing is the co-ordination
between national particularities and the problems of proletarian internationalism, between
particular ways of revolutionary action and what...