The pci: The Communist Giraffe

Abstract

This commentary offers an insight into ‘the Gramsci genome’, the concept typically used to underline Gramsci’s influence on the historical experience of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; pci). Drawing on a personal and specific experience of political militancy within the party, this contribution explores how the pci, by assuming the role of a collective subject in Gramscian terms, pursued the Gramscian line of revolution as a protracted process of democratic expansion and conquest of essential forms of power in civil society. The article underlines the pivotal role played in this endeavour by party leadership until the death of Palmiro Togliatti; it assesses the events that led to the end of pci – including Berlinguer’s failed attempt to revive a left alternative after the historic compromise position; and underlines the persistent need for communism (a ‘more robust communism’) in view of the disaster caused by capitalism over the last 40 years.