In the mid-1970s European politics witnessed what, in retrospect, appears to have been the Indian summer of Western communism. Italy, first and foremost, as well as the Latin countries of the continent where the communist tradition was most pronounced, saw the rise of an at least partially renewed communist doctrine – and praxis – which increasingly distanced itself from Moscow's ossified canons. The international press gave widespread coverage to the new tendency, dubbed ‘Eurocommunism’, which attracted attention throughout Western Europe and elicited differentiated responses. In Italy in particular, a dynamic Communist Party (the PCI), able to capture around one third of the votes in regional and general elections, seemed to be a serious candidate for participation in government – a possibility unheard of since the beginning of the Cold War. Yet, despite the stir they caused, Eurocommunist parties had a rather limited concrete influence on European politics when compared with what still constituted the major forces of the left: socialist and social democratic parties.Footnote 1 For the latter, too, the 1970s were years of ideological renewal and of new domestic and international challenges. At the same time, though, socialist parties were also facing unprecedented governmental responsibilities.
In drawing attention to this parallel, this article examines the impact Eurocommunism – in its Italian version – had on the European socialist parties. It does so by focusing on the interaction between the ideological concerns that traditionally animated socialists’ relations with communism and the international dimension of a political development that seemed to challenge the Cold War order in Europe. It is indeed the connection it raised between ideological and international elements that makes the Italian ‘communist question’ an interesting case study, suggesting wider reflections on the relationship between the Cold War framework and the political identity of European socialists.
In defining the locus of ‘European socialism’, this article devotes to the Socialist International (SI) a level of attention that the association has not often achieved, or indeed deserved, in current literature. This does not mean insisting on the (almost non-existent) importance of the SI as a ‘deliberative’ agency. Rather, it means identifying it as a forum in which debates were conducted that showed, in spite of the national segmentation and transnational cracks of ‘international socialism’, the existence of common problems and interests among its members and an emerging awareness of the need to share a coherent political profile: a requirement that became especially evident in an increasingly integrating Europe and interdependent world.Footnote 2
In addressing these issues, the article first provides a political-ideological panorama of 1970s international socialism, examining socialist attitudes towards communism in the years of international détente and the rifts that arose among SI parties on these questions. It then focuses on the responses to the rise of Italian communism, both in terms of ideology and policymaking. Finally, it suggests some generalisations this case study may allow about the debate on social democratic political identity during the Cold War.
A socialist ‘ideological offensive’
During the first half of the 1970s, European socialist parties experienced a substantial improvement in their electoral records. After the formation of the Social Democratic party (SPD)-led government in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1969, socialist parties gained the premiership in Austria (1970), Norway and Denmark (1971), the Netherlands (1973) and the UK (1974), and they participated as junior partners in other governments, while retaining (until 1976) their Swedish bastion.Footnote 3 A ‘turn to the left’ seemed to mark European politics, a trend that the end of dictatorships in Greece and in the Iberian Peninsula, occurring in the mid-decade, seemed only to confirm. Even if relations between the ‘old’ left and the ‘new’ had not been smooth, the progress of the socialist parties seemed capable of providing politically viable answers to some of the demands that had emerged from the social movements of the 1960s. Socialist leaders proposed the enlargement and completion of welfare systems on the one hand and new prospects for going ‘beyond’ past accomplishments towards a progressive ‘democratization’ of society on the other.Footnote 4 As for the international situation, the shift in European politics evolved in tandem with developments whose key relevance recent historiography is increasingly highlighting: bipolar and European détente, the emergence of strains in the Atlantic alliance, a new phase in European integration; the rise of the North-South issue and the restructuring and crisis of the international monetary and economic system.Footnote 5
Altogether these elements contributed to the definition of a renewed socialist approach to the international system. At its foundations lay the accomplishments of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, widely heralded as the decisive push towards détente in Europe. Hans Janitschek, the SI's general secretary, commented in 1972 that Ostpolitik was ‘a lasting proof of the validity and reality of a socialist alternative in international relations’, adding that it was ‘in the field of East-West relations, and more especially in European security and co-operation, that socialist. . . parties [had] their greatest role to play in the modern world’.Footnote 6 The SPD's détente policies, interpreted as a means to secure peace in Europe and to favour a gradual transformation of the Eastern bloc, reconciled the Western socialist parties with what they saw as their longest-term international goal. After delegating the task of guaranteeing peace to the international alliance led by the US, socialists now provided a contribution of their own, which could influence superpowers’ initiatives.Footnote 7 Détente was also considered to supply a favourable environment for the further development of democratic socialism – such a development was indeed believed to be impossible in a context of international confrontation.Footnote 8
The new climate widened socialist support for European integration, a process that had traditionally been associated primarily with centrist and right-wing parties. The strengthening of the socialist caucus within European institutions, together with the programme of ‘enlargement, completion and deepening’ of the European Community (EC) agreed upon at the 1969 Hague summit, seemed to provide a positive conjuncture for the advance of democratic socialist values within the European framework. Again, this was often interpreted as a dialectic process of reconciliation of the socialist movement with one of his long-term features – namely, internationalism – after its incorporation in the Western system. As the Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky argued:
Internationalism was one of the basic principles of Democratic Socialism from the beginning. But in Europe at least the conservatives had a hand in bringing it into being. Monnet, Schuman. . . and Adenauer introduced the first phase. . . . There are many good Europeans who to this day do not know that once the German Social Democrats were abused as a bunch of unpatriotic rascals for holding those very same ideas.Footnote 9
If self-affirmation of democratic socialism and Europe could go hand in hand, this was in the context of a new attitude towards the United States. As transatlantic discussions over détente and Ostpolitik had already shown, an increasing assertiveness was perceptible on the European and socialist sides – but an assertiveness that never questioned the Western alliance.Footnote 10 The SI's increasingly critical outlook on the Vietnam War provides another example of this trend. Dutch leader Joop den Uyl put it bluntly at a January 1973 SI ‘Party leaders’ conference’: democratic socialists needed to speak up against the bombing of North Vietnam, otherwise ‘the world would not realize that there was a third alternative to Communism on the one hand and acceptance of the Pentagon line on world affairs on the other.’Footnote 11 The existence of that alternative was instead boldly stated by socialist leaders and commentators, who spoke of social democracy as nothing less than ‘the force that is more apt to answer the problems of modern society’,Footnote 12 and as a movement that was ‘on the ideological offensive.’Footnote 13 A distinct ‘Euro-socialist’ attitude was also displayed in North-South issues, which again tried to connect domestic demands and international interest in ‘democratizing’ relations with the emergent Third World.Footnote 14
Two episodes of convergence between ‘European’ and socialist attitudes can be considered the culmination of this phase: the completion of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) process with the August 1975 Helsinki summit and the democratic transition in post-authoritarian Portugal. In both cases, European governments – among which the presence of left-wing forces was remarkable – proved able to implement a view of their own of ‘Western’ interests, which challenged the American strictly bipolar vision: in the name of ‘human security’ in the Helsinki negotiations, or in providing a framework for the solution of the Portuguese crisis that prioritised support of domestic democratisation as a means to contain the communist challenge.Footnote 15 Socialist influence was particularly evident in Portugal, where SI parties strongly supported Mario Soares’ Partido Socialista as a guarantor of democratic development but also played a significant role in Helsinki. The connection between the CSCE and Ostpolitik was early recognised and turned the conference into one of the international objectives of the socialist movement.Footnote 16 Moreover, some SI parties, such as the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA), became determined agents for the insertion of ‘humanitarian’ issues among European priorities.Footnote 17
Détente and ideological controversy
The onset of détente policies, while prompting a relaxation of the European political climate, seemed to many to pose anew the classic question of the relations between social democrats and communists. Were the distinctions between the divided heirs of the tradition of the European left to blur now that Cold War tensions were abating? From its frontline position, the SPD made clear its outlook: détente did not change at all the ideological controversy between the two movements, and reaching agreements with Eastern European governments did not mean softening the approach to communism. In 1970, as the USSR-FRG treaty was being concluded, the SPD Präsidium commissioned from the political scientist and party member Richard Löwenthal a paper on the issue, which was then widely discussed within the party and officially adopted (with minor amendments) as a declaration of principles. The study recalled the traditional SI position: there was an unbridgeable divide with communism, which centred on the question of democracy.Footnote 18 To the timid complaints about the paper voiced by Soviet ambassador Semyon Zarapkin, SPD officers plainly answered that it should be clear that ‘even in the phase of détente, communists [remained] communists, and social democrats social democrats.’Footnote 19
If the position was coherent with the Western anchorage of Ostpolitik and aimed at reassuring domestic public opinion, it also had an essential intra-party motivation: it was designed to rebut the left-wing tendencies that were prevalent among the young party members (Jusos).Footnote 20 The latter, while largely re-embracing a Marxist political discourse the party leadership had abandoned decades before, displayed a critical attitude towards the ‘westernising’ trajectory of the SPD that had as its symbol the 1959 Bad Godesberg Conference.Footnote 21 For their part, Soviet leaders indeed outspokenly expressed their hope that détente could favour a strengthening of the left wing of the SPD. This aspiration actually mirrored a more urgent anxiety about the possible spread of ‘bourgeois’ and social democratic influences within the Eastern bloc – due to growing contacts with the West – and exposed again the trans-European ideological struggle going on beneath détente.Footnote 22 Pursuing what Janitschek defined as a ‘socialist alternative in international relations’ also implied certain risks for the social democrats, since old and new challenges to their mainstream identity, which used to be tamed by the ‘disciplinary’ effects of the Cold War on national politics, both gained room for manoeuvre and became issues of international relevance in the new international climate.Footnote 23
The SPD's concerns were widely shared by the rest of the SI leadership.Footnote 24 The German party also began to worry about an international coordination between left-wing socialists. A March 1975 meeting between the Juso leader and leftist officials of the British Labour Party, as well as the French and Italian Socialist Parties, was pointed out by the SPD's International secretary Hans-Eberhard Dingels as ‘proof of an international network’ that was assuming a ‘quasi-factionist character’. Dingels added that the Labour Party International Department in particular was now in the hands of a left-wing leadership that was altering the party's traditional stance towards communism.Footnote 25
But it was the French situation that brought about the greatest unease. The long running crisis of the French socialist forces had led in 1971 to the foundation of a new Parti Socialiste (PS). The party regrouped several dispersed factions and aimed to provide a fresh start for democratic socialism in the Fifth Republic. The new party's tenets were a marked leftist orientation (noticeable, above all, in its economic programme), as well as a strategy of alliance with the French Communist Party. Within the left-wing coalition that soon emerged (a common platform was agreed upon in June 1972 by the Socialist, Communist, and Left-Wing-Radical Parties) the PS hoped to be able to act as the linchpin of the alternative to Gaullist power.Footnote 26 While struggling to have this strategy accepted by SI, the new leader François Mitterrand repeatedly used opposition to mainstream social democracy as a means to bolster his own party's identity, and as an instrument to consolidate its left-wing credentials, thus challenging the communist leadership within the French left.Footnote 27 This approach soon put Mitterrand at odds with most other SI leaderships. Together with a controversial trip to Moscow he made in May 1975, the French leader's promotion of a ‘unity of the Left’ strategy embracing the whole of Southern Europe prompted international concern regarding the PS.Footnote 28
The showdown came in Helsingør, Denmark, at a January 1976 SI Party leaders’ conference held just a few days before a scheduled ‘Conference of the Southern European Socialist Parties’ convened by the PS. Helmut Schmidt (Brandt's successor as German chancellor) unceremoniously lectured Mitterrand about the need to revise his strategy, taking into account its international implications. Schmidt did not conceal his critical assessment of the interventionist economic plans supported by the PS and its allies and expressed his view that alliances with communist parties undermined the voters’ confidence in socialist parties all around Europe. Above all, he stressed the detrimental effect that communist participation in any European government would have on the Atlantic Alliance and on the global equilibrium vis-à-vis the Eastern bloc.Footnote 29
A remarkable reminder of the latter issue had been delivered to the Germans by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who, just before the meeting, wrote a letter to Brandt, by then chairman of the SPD, and in line to be elected as SI chairman. Kissinger reasserted his staunch opposition to any communist participation in Western European governments, regardless of the various degrees of ‘reliability’ of the CPs. He justified his stance by pointing to the need to preserve the cohesiveness of the Atlantic Alliance, its political and military implications included. The letter ended with a tribute to European social democrats, which could also be read as a warning about the need to preserve their distinctive features. While the German press had reported his alleged fears of a looming ‘Marxist’ Europe under the political hegemony of social democrats and communists, Kissinger said he knew ‘very well the difference between Democratic parties growing out of a Marxist tradition (such as yours) and those that grew out of the Leninist-Stalinist mutation of the Marxist tradition’, and that he counted ‘many of the leaders of those [Democratic] parties. . . among our staunchest friends and among the most effective political leaders of the Western world today’.Footnote 30
From this point of view, it is revealing that Brandt, often considered to have been far more open than Schmidt on the communist question, did not say a word in Helsingør to soften the positions held by his colleague, which, on the contrary, he backed during a later confidential meeting of the SPD leadership.Footnote 31 His silence appeared ‘striking’ to other delegates at the SI conference but was consistent with the development of the international identity of mainstream social democracy.Footnote 32 The alternative that Mitterrand was emphatically voicing – ‘should I be forced to choose between solidarity with the French workers, and other solidarities, either Atlantic or European, I let you know my choice is made’, he announced in Helsingør – could not attract much interest in the interdependent world of the 1970s.Footnote 33 After the substantive failure of his subsequent ‘Mediterranean’ socialist conference, Mitterrand himself implicitly recognised this and initiated a rapprochement with the SPD.Footnote 34
The rise of Italian communism
It is within this context that socialist reactions to the rise of the PCI should be examined. The Italian Communist Party had been attracting increasing international attention since at least 1973, when its leader, Enrico Berlinguer, launched the strategy of ‘historic compromise’, proposing to build a broad alliance with the Italian Christian Democratic (DC) and Socialist (PSI) parties. In this manner the PCI sought to rally the widest political support for a vast programme of social reform, while avoiding the risk of a right-wing backlash. Among Berlinguer's distinctive proposals was the development of ‘democratic economic planning’, ‘structural reforms’ and new patterns of resource allocation – investment in ‘social’ goods and services was to be increased at the expense of ‘private’ consumption – which together were supposed to gradually introduce into Italian society some ‘elements of socialism’ without altering the country's constitutional framework. These broad schemes, however, were accompanied by a moderate attitude in day-to-day political life: although in opposition, the PCI was in fact increasingly involved in parliamentary lawmaking.Footnote 35
This domestic strategy, which entailed a staunch reaffirmation of PCI's commitment to democratic and pluralistic models of society, also had an essential international dimension. The PCI emphasised its independence from Moscow, adopted a favourable attitude towards European integration and, strongly supporting East-West détente, asserted in this context its acceptance of NATO. By the mid-1970s, this strategy had gained wide international attention. The press coined the term ‘Eurocommunism’. This was a label that stressed the Italian attempt to include the French and Spanish CPs in a new Western European ‘reform-communist’ caucus and to seek to shape a ‘third way’ between orthodox communism and social democracy.Footnote 36
The developments in Italian politics represented a difficult case for the SI assumption that social democracy constituted the natural agency for social progress in a democratic environment. The upward trend of communist electoral performance (at the June 1975 regional elections PCI reached its best ever score of 33.4 per cent), while socialist votes languished, epitomised the anomalous features of the Italian involvement in the European left-wing tendency of the 1970s. The Italian Socialists were partners of the leading Christian Democrats in most of the cabinets that followed one another in the volatile Italian political context, but the appeal of these ‘Centre-Left’ coalitions was waning.Footnote 37 During the 1970s, international socialist commentary on Italy typically depicted a gloomy situation of state inefficiency and a looming crisis of the political system, in which the ever-stronger communists challenged the monopoly on power of a divided and inadequate DC. The PSI appeared to be hopelessly weak and increasingly resigned to a minor role.Footnote 38 This situation seemed to reach a breaking point by mid-decade. Italy was one of the countries hardest hit by the post-oil shock economic crisis, and the case appeared to be strong for an agreement, aimed at economic stabilisation, with the communist opposition, which increasingly depicted itself – and acted – as a force of order and stability.Footnote 39
The Italian communists’ international views remained, however, a source of concern. The party's acceptance of Italy's Western alliances did not imply a corresponding ‘choice of civilisation’, as its aim remained the transformation of the Cold War order. The long-term vision of the PCI involved overcoming the division of Europe and creating a sort of neutralist (‘neither anti-Soviet nor anti-American’) and socialist-oriented entity.Footnote 40 Thus, when the PCI supported détente and Ostpolitik, interpreting them as a stimulus to political change in both Eastern and Western Europe, it not only alarmed both the superpowers (which, on the contrary, were interested in the stability of the European order), it also embarrassed the SPD, which viewed its distinction from communism as crucial. ‘Change through rapprochement’ – historian Gottfried Niedhart has noted, referring to the famous Ostpolitik slogan – ‘did not mean change in the West.’Footnote 41
Because of its wide-ranging international role, the SPD was the SI party that had the most relevant contacts with the PCI. These began during the years of the German ‘Grand Coalition’ government and were originally centred on East-West issues. As SPD officials often made clear, however, the existence of these (confidential) contacts did not entail support of PCI views. The Italian network also encompassed relations of a similar nature (somewhat more cordial but far lower in intensity) with the Scandinavian social democratic parties, and in the second part of the 1970s significant exchanges took place with British Labour, as well as with the Dutch and Austrian parties.Footnote 42 While demonstrating mutual attentiveness between the Italian communists and the European social democrats, these contacts also often exposed mutual incomprehension and divergence among these forces. In a May 1976 meeting, for instance, PvdA officials challenged their Italian interlocutors with a set of pressing questions:
Why, in spite of its harsh criticism of the USSR. . . does the PCI not break with the CPSU. . . ? The PCI's views on national autonomy, democracy, freedom, etc., and also the pursuit of an ‘historic compromise’ with bourgeois forces, contradict the tradition and the practices of the communist movement. Why then does the PCI keep calling itself a communist party?. . . why does not it try to strengthen its relations with German social democracy?Footnote 43
The PCI's relations with other SI parties, such as the French or the Belgian socialists, had different features, as these parties recognised the existence of common objectives between socialists and Eurocommunists, which could be advanced within the European framework.Footnote 44 Much to the consternation of the SPD leadership, such a stance also reflected the opinion of wide sections of the Jusos, which held quasi-autonomous relations with the PCI. Reporting on a 1971 visit to Italy, a Juso delegation made clear its interest in developing a dialogue with those forces that, ‘as the Jungsozialisten do, aim at achieving structural reforms that respond to an anti-capitalistic thrust, as a basis for a transition to socialism’.Footnote 45 The interest in shaping a radical left-wing strategy that could advance gradually and through the democratic institutions would later be boosted by the climate of the economic crisis. Both the PCI and the leftist socialists tended to interpret the crisis as a sign of the limits of what they saw as the essentially ‘redistributive’ orientation of post-war social democracy and thus sought to devise more interventionist strategies, which were expected to consolidate economic planning and the democratic participation of citizens.Footnote 46
Taken altogether, PCI's relations with social democratic parties appeared in any case quite erratic, as compared to its solid ties with Eastern and Western CPs. It was indeed to the latter that the party dedicated its primary attention.Footnote 47
Socialist leaders and Western policymaking
Eurocommunism, however, was clearly not unrelated to the socialist ‘ideological offensive’ of the 1970s. Inspired by the same Zeitgeist, both socialist and Eurocommunist parties were concerned with domestic demands for democratisation and social reform, and, in the international arena, leaned towards East-West détente and the transformation of North-South relations. Of course, their perspectives remained different, reflecting their distinct political cultures: the Italian views, if innovative for a communist party, were hardly viable in a ‘Western’ context. The socialists’ approach was conditioned by these ambivalences. They would not wish to be associated with any communist ‘variant’, but, given their proclaimed democratic commitment, they could neither easily content themselves with the Kissingerian approach that regarded the renovation of the PCI as politically irrelevant nor look at it solely as a menace to the Atlantic Alliance. This, if vague, was the standard position held by Willy Brandt, who was often asked for his opinions on Eurocommunism. The process of ‘de-dogmatisation’ of the Western CPs was, according to him, ‘interesting’, and should be carefully monitored: but neither should social democrats drop their reservations, nor could the Atlantic Alliance blindly trust communist pledges of loyalty to NATO. Brandt also tended to question the definition of Eurocommunism as a unitary movement, stressing instead the different political conditions of the Western countries in which the communist parties were operating, as well as the distinct programmes of the various CPs. Footnote 48 In his speech at the SI Geneva Conference in November 1976, Brandt referred to the movement as ‘the phenomenon which – vaguely and ambiguously – is termed Eurocommunism’ and stated that to him it was ‘not yet clear where it is a matter of tactics in the interest of power, and where it is a development based on insight’.Footnote 49
Reporting to his party on his talks on the issue with senior representatives of the American administration, former SPD minister Horst Ehmke, who was politically close to Brandt, described once more the dilemmas of an approach that wished to square stability (as defined within a Cold War framework) with democratic renovation:
The real problem is whether we can influence the development of Western European Communism in the direction of further separation from Moscow, and of recognition of pluralism and basic rights, and, if so, how we can do it without at the same time further building it up.Footnote 50
Animated by similar concerns, Swedish socialist Premier Olof Palme proposed instead to put full trust in the ideological strength of social democracy. The evolution of Western communism, he argued, proved ‘the attraction and strength of democratic socialism’. If not interrupted, the process could lead to a dismissal of what had been the distinctive tenets of communist parties (dependence on Moscow, the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the centralistic organisation of the party) and to an embrace of the basic values of democratic socialism. Only in the event that communist moves turned out to be just tactical should ‘a tough and implacable line’ be taken.Footnote 51
Former European Commission President Sicco Mansholt (of the PvdA) likewise suggested understanding the new ‘communist question’ in the context ‘of the fundamental changes in our society, where we enter the post-industrial period’. Mansholt saw this phase as characterised by the need for ‘other forms of participation of the mass of the people’. SI parties, he argued, were ‘strong enough’ to lead an open debate on these issues. Accordingly, in the countries where the communist presence was of great import, ‘when there is a strong development inside the communist parties towards our forms of democracy. . ., then. . . a collaboration cannot only be a wishful undertaking, but even an obligation’ for the socialists.Footnote 52
This kind of confidence in the strength of European socialism failed to notice that many of the factors that had accompanied the ‘self-affirmation’ phase of the 1970s were fading. When the Italian ‘communist question’ fully emerged as an issue of primary international concern, détente was already showing the strains that in a few years would cause its collapse. The ‘democratic’ appeal of socialist realisations in that field was starting to be eroded by the resurgence of the anti-totalitarian theme among American and European intellectuals. At the same time, the continuing troubles of Western economies forced socialists to revise socio-economic strategies once thought to be panaceas for meeting the demands of ‘modern’ societies.Footnote 53
Among those socialist leaders who were particularly aware of these problems were Schmidt and the new Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain, James Callaghan, who had replaced Harold Wilson in April 1976, both of whom came from the right wing of their parties and were known for their Atlanticist commitment.Footnote 54 Their role in transatlantic policymaking on the Italian crisis has been highlighted by recent research.Footnote 55 These studies have shown the American administration's propensity to manage the Italian situation by cooperating with European powers such as the FRG, the UK and France as well as the widespread concerns about the broader implications of the new communist challenge. During the Italian political crisis of spring 1976, when the collapse of DC-PSI collaboration had engendered a situation in which no majority could be formed in Parliament, and general elections had been called for June, the four powers agreed on the undesirability of communist participation in the government but found it hard to reach an agreement on how to achieve this goal. The British government in particular stressed the need to avoid direct interference.
Studies by historians Duccio Basosi and Giovanni Bernardini suggest that a key contribution to Western policymaking came from the German chancellor, who proposed using economic constraints as a means to contain communist influence. During the G7 economic summit that took place in Puerto Rico at the end of June, a few days after the Italian elections, the idea was put forward to make the concession of the international loan that Italy needed to put in order its balance of payments conditional on a strict programme of economic adjustment guided by a ‘technical’ institution, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The authors contend that the implications of this attitude went beyond the Italian context and were connected to the broader issue of the structuring of a ‘neo-liberal’ world economic order. Schmidt's ideas would then typify a specific answer to the social democratic impasse.Footnote 56
The results of the Puerto Rico summit have been the object of a sharp controversy. Two weeks after the conference, Schmidt declared to the press that a loan agreement had been reached on condition that the PCI be excluded from the government. In the wake of hostile reactions amongst the Italian public, the British and French leaders publicly denied any such direct interference in Italian affairs, while Schmidt himself tried to downplay his statement.Footnote 57 In any event, the elections had ruled out the establishment of a left-wing majority, in spite of a new peak of PCI votes at 34.4 per cent. The DC once again emerged as the strongest party, without which no governing coalition could be formed. The main goal of the Western powers – keeping Communists out of the government – was achieved, as a cabinet composed exclusively of Christian Democrats was formed. The latter could count on support from most other political forces (communists included) in the form of benign abstention votes: this uneven yet broad backing allowed the new government to embark on a harsh austerity programme.
A wider socialist debate
Schmidt's declarations indeed went beyond his party's standard line. But the distinctions were of tone rather than of substance when it came to the issue of a communist participation in government in Italy. Party officials reacted with understanding to the chancellor's remarks, the novelty and importance of which they tended to minimise. They connected his viewpoint to the general atmosphere surrounding the impending German elections: safeguarding ideological boundaries was deemed opportune, as a hostile Christian Democratic campaign – conducted under the electoral slogan ‘Freedom or Socialism’ – targeted the outcomes of SPD's détente policies.Footnote 58
In any event, Brandt-style alertness regarding the democratic evolution of Western communists could hardly provide an alternative policy strategy for addressing the Italian situation. Something new emerged as the PSI, after its meagre result at the polls, elected a new leader, the relatively young Bettino Craxi, who showed his interest in strengthening ties with SI parties and in countering the rise of the PCI. The SPD did not spare energy supporting the new leadership, in which it saw a chance to gain leverage on the Italian situation and to rebalance forces on the Italian left. If Craxi's strategy was partly successful in challenging the communists’ position, in the medium term it proved less favourable to Brandt's international goals than was initially thought. The PSI's own ‘ideological offensive’ against the PCI, in fact, entailed an uncompromising stance on issues related to communist rule in Eastern Europe, which often put it at odds with SPD's handling of détente policies.Footnote 59
The German outlook on Italy was little influenced by other international developments. After the American elections of 1976, SPD officials saw in the new Carter Administration a tendency towards a more ‘liberal’ handling of the Eurocommunist question.Footnote 60 But they did not do much to cultivate this attitude and showed few regrets, as Carter's approach, when put to test, proved to be less innovative.Footnote 61 Afterwards, it was the prospect of the first direct elections to the European Parliament that stimulated a revival of the SPD's concerns about the impact of Eurocommunism, both on the party itself and on international socialism. As the party drafted its European platform, officials focused on the need to distance the social democrats from Western CPs, to contain domestic promoters of collaboration with Eurocommunist parties and to rebuff allegations of a looming European ‘popular front’.Footnote 62 Tellingly enough, a new edition of Löwenthal's 1970 paper was published in July 1977, with an epilogue by Willy Brandt in which the party chairman discussed again the Eurocommunist question.Footnote 63
The SPD was not the only SI party to be concerned with Eurocommunism. An interesting debate was taking place, for instance, within the British Labour Party. As was noted, Callaghan cooperated in the Western powers’ effort to hinder the PCI's participation in the Italian government, but he also stressed the need to avoid any direct intervention. During the tenure of Anthony Crosland as Foreign Secretary (April 1976–February 1977), alternative schemes were also sketched out that tried to evaluate possible positive outcomes of communist involvement in government (could it favour a final split between Moscow and Western CPs? And what would its consequences be?). As it turns out, however, these were not put into practice, and, after the sudden death of Crosland, his successor, David Owen, reverted to a traditional uncompromising frame of reference.Footnote 64
If the cabinet echoed a variety of ‘mainstream’ attitudes towards Eurocommunism (looking at it as a development that was foreign and most likely a threat to socialist parties), the situation was very different within the wider Labour Party. The 1970s witnessed a rise of Labour's left wing, which came to dominate party politics from the middle of the decade until the early 1980s.Footnote 65 Among the rallying themes employed by the group was the criticism of the social democratic tradition of the party and the proposal of an ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’ centred on public ownership and economic planning. These opinions were strongly influenced by the study of state intervention in various European economies, especially Italy. The left's chief economist, Stuart Holland, set out the group's views in an influential 1975 book, The Socialist Challenge. The study acknowledged the existence of broad uniformity between the Labour programme and those of the Italian and French Socialist and Communist parties. Holland called for an international strategy to be worked out in cooperation with these parties, thus dropping the allegedly ineffective collaboration with ‘moderate’ forces of international socialism.Footnote 66
These views, although largely marginalised insofar as government policy was concerned, nevertheless boosted attentiveness to Eurocommunism and the PCI within the party. The Labour International Department produced a number of studies on the Italian situation, maintaining a firm position against external meddling regarding the formation of governments.Footnote 67 In a long and well-researched paper that the department issued at the beginning of 1977, positive comments about the evolution of PCI were expressed along with an assessment criticising as anachronistic the division of the European Left into the ‘rival and bitterly antagonistic camps’ of communism and social democracy. It argued that, after overcoming the ‘grim days of entrenched Cold War orthodoxies’, a more precise picture should acknowledge at least five currents within European socialism: the revolutionary left, orthodox communism, Eurocommunism, ‘left-wing’ democratic socialism and ‘moderate’ social democracy. In this context, ‘whilst not yet an ally, the PCI [could] no longer be considered an antagonist to democratic socialists’.Footnote 68 Confidential contacts with the Italian party were thus initiated, and in 1977 delegates from the Eurocommunist parties were invited to the annual Labour Conference for the first time.Footnote 69 A West-European Sub-Committee of the International Department was established in early 1978, whose initial research focused on Eurocommunism. Committee members produced papers and studies that were then offered as a contribution to the on-going international socialist debate.Footnote 70
Rather than questioning the definition of Eurocommunism, or its conceptual consistency, these studies tended to focus on the movement's political implications, which they regarded positively. Eric Heffer, a prominent Labour backbencher and one of the most active members of the West-European Sub-committee, commented for instance that the label ‘Eurocommunist parties’ was ‘likely to stick’, regardless of whether the interested CPs themselves ‘liked it or not’. Contradicting those who viewed the position of the Eurocommunists as ‘purely tactical’, he quoted instead a statement by the Spanish communist leader Santiago Carrillo: Eurocommunism, he wrote, ‘is not a tactical manoeuvre. . . . It is an autonomous strategic conception in the process of formation’.Footnote 71
‘Mainstream’ leadership reactions did not fail to emerge. In November 1977, David Owen delivered a speech in which he warned the party about the risk of being led by an erroneous understanding of Eurocommunism to a dismissal of the traditional hostility to communism.Footnote 72 During the same period, harsher tones were used by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson underlined the threat Eurocommunism posed to socialist action within Atlantic framework and singled out for condemnation Mitterrand's ‘unity of the Left’ strategy. Socialists throughout Europe, he wrote, should shun ‘Mitterrandisme’ ‘like the plague – for its infection would recognise no international boundaries, the Channel not excepted’.Footnote 73 Criticised by Brandt for his public attack on the leader of a member party of the SI, Wilson answered with affected surprise, recalling the SI chairman's solidarity with the anti-Mitterrand front in Helsingør. His reply emphasised again the internal implications of Eurocommunism:
I think we must all govern our approaches to these matters by our judgment on how such developments offset the international cause of Socialism in general and in our several countries. . . . Perhaps the best commentary on your letter is the fact that in The Guardian, this very day, there appears a main-page article by Eric Heffer, attacking Labour's Foreign Secretary for his speeches. . . and emphasising the important role of Eurocommunism in the fight for the future, as he sees it.Footnote 74
Conclusion
After its peak in the mid-1970s, international interest in Italian communism gradually declined, as the PCI failed to make further breakthroughs in domestic politics. The local elections of spring 1978 showed a downward trend of the party's results, which the following year's general elections confirmed: the communists lost nearly one million votes compared to 1976. By this time, the PCI, after failing to obtain any direct participation in government, had definitively withdrawn its support for the Christian Democratic cabinet. The Eurocommunist project soon reached a dead end too, derailed by its internal contradictions, by the inconsistent support of the PCI's communist allies in the West and by the harsh campaign that the Soviets eventually initiated against it. Part of this picture was also the absence of a comprehensive strategy towards socialist parties, going beyond the mere development of a network of contacts.Footnote 75
The far-reaching debate among SI parties about Italian communism revealed divergent viewpoints. The Italian developments indeed transcended the schemes by which socialists had become used to interpreting international realities. If a generalisation can be made, what emerges, beyond the intricate distinctions on the attitude to PCI and Eurocommunism, is a major chasm between a ‘mainstream’ socialist identity and its various internal opponents. Though far from univocal in its positions, the first group shared a view of socialist identity as a multi-layered construction which held together national and international concerns. The action of socialist parties could not therefore be understood outside of the Western framework in which they operated: the more so since in the 1970s they perceived an increase of their influence – and of their responsibilities – within that context. Here lay the key difference with the ‘unorthodox’ forces, which instead stressed the need to pursue what they saw as distinct ‘socialist’ goals, overlooking any international implications or describing them as conflicting with working class interests.
Occurring in the context of détente policies, the rise of Italian communism contributed to the unleashing of centrifugal forces within European socialism which had previously been contained by the Cold War order. This association was especially threatening to ‘mainstream’ socialists, as it blurred the links between the democratic European Left and the Western system. It is the interconnection between this ideological concern and the international one regarding the consequences for the Atlantic Alliance of a communist participation in government that defined the varieties of socialist approaches, thus highlighting a complex and dynamic correlation between Cold War context and socialist identity.
