Antonio Gramsci: the roots of Italian communism

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”.