The Communist Party and the Politics of Cultural Change in Postwar Italy, 1945–50

Abstract

In the period during and shortly after the war of national liberation, which followed the fall of Fascism, many of Italy’s artists, writers and intellectuals turned to the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The reasons for this intense and largely unexpected identification are relatively straightforward. Politically, the Party emerged from the Resistance as an authoritative force that quickly proved itself capable of attracting a genuine mass base in the north and centre of the country. It embodied and represented a widespread and deeply felt need for radical change that intellectuals, who in the course of the war and the Resistance had abandoned their traditional isolation and embraced the theme of social involvement, shared in large numbers. Culturally, the PCI also represented a new factor. It was the bearer of Marxism, a philosophy which had scarcely penetrated Italy and which had been excluded for some twenty years. Moreover, the Party strongly affirmed the need for a profound renovation of the national culture to match the change that was taking place in social and political relationships. It claimed to want to deprovincialise Italian culture, overcome the great influence of Crocean Idealism and facilitate the reintroduction of democratic currents of modern thought.