Antonio Gramsci: the roots of Italian communism
Antonio Gramsci: the roots of Italian communism

Summary/Abstract: Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, based on the importance of consensus, is the antecedent of the recognition of the democracy by the Italian Communist Party (terrain that would be fully acquired by its successors, Togliatti and Berlinguer). Gramsci takes the word and the concept from the debates at the top of international communism and –adapting it to his theory of the “revolution in the West” – changes and innovates it profoundly in the Prison Notebooks, making it an idea that is today widespread and used throughout the world. Palmiro Togliatti, who returned to Italy in 1944, became a protagonist in the writing of the post-war democratic Constitution and theorized on the “national ways” to socialism and polycentrism; Enrico Berlinguer theorized on the universal value of democracy and the acceptance of many liberal principles for the construction of an idea of “communism in freedom”.

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