Palmiro Togliatti - Writings of Palmiro Togliatti

WRITINGS

of

PALMIRO TOGLIATTI

Writings of Palmiro Togliatti

Compiled: Serafino B.

Converted to eBook format: Serafino B.

Published: Marxists Internet Archive

Works

Parliament and the Struggle for Socialism

Written: 1956

First published: Pravda on March 7, 1956, and reprinted by Rinascita on August 27, 1976.

Source: Marxism Today, 1977, pp284-7

HTML: https://www.marxists.org/archive/togliatti/1956/togliatti-parliament.htm

Translated: Derek Boothman

Transcription: Steve Palmer

Diversity and Unity in the International Proletarian-Communist Movement

Written: 1961

First published: 1961

Source: Rinascita, December 1961

HTML: https://www.marxists.org/archive/togliatti/1961/unityanddiversity.htm

Translated: Unknown

Transcription: Steve Palmer

The Togliatti Memorandum

Written: September 4, 1964

First published: L'Unita, September 4, 1964

Source: Unknown

HTML: https://www.marxists.org/archive/togliatti/1964/memorandum.htm

Translated: Unknown

Transcription: Steve Palmer

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BIOGRAPHY

for Marxism, the development of the forms of production and of society does not proceed along peaceful lines but is a dialectic and revolutionary development. Contradictions develop and break out within capitalist society. Our task is to work on the basis of these contradictions, to gather together and guide the forces of the working class which are all developing within capitalist society as its unavoidable opponent and enemy, and not to support or consolidate the capitalist regime, but to prepare for and accelerate its overthrow through revolutionary class activity.

Palmiro Togliatti, 1928

"Parliament, in the past the instrument for the organisation and consolidation of the capitalist regime, can today become an effective instrument in the hands of the parties which aim at a socialist transformation of society"

Palmiro Togliatti, 1956

Palmiro Togliatti was born in Genoa. He joined the Italian Socialist Party before the First World War. He served as a volunteer officer during the war, and on his return, joined the group around Antonio Gramsci and L'Ordine Nuovo paper in Turin. He helped found the PCI following the split in the Italian Socialist Party at their 17th Congress at Livorno in 1921. Beginning in 1922 Togliatti edited Il Comunista and in April 1924 became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. While attending a Comintern meeting in Moscow in 1926, the CPI was banned. He became PCI Secretary in 1927 and organized the PCI clandestinely for the next 18 years under his nom de guerre, Ercoli. In 1928 he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. On his return to Italy in 1944 he led the PCI in the svolta di Salerno, the "Salerno Turn", joining the government of national unity and disarming PCI members who had been active in the resistance. When a right-wing student attempted to assassinate him in July 1948, armed workers seized power in Genoa, and occupied factories throughout Italy in a near-insurrection. The PCI leadership called on workers to abandon the armed strike and Togliatti called for the need to observe bourgeois legality. Togliatti developed a political position, arguing the necessity to seek political change through parliament, the "Italian Road to Socialism", a position which received biting criticism of the Chinese Communist Party in its polemic with the CPSU in the 1960s. This position was highly influential in several European Communist Parties which were attracted to what became known as Eurocommunism. Togliatti died August 21, 1964 in Yalta. His posthumously published 'Memorandum' (included below) was highly influential in the Communist movement, giving encouragement to what bourgeois observers welcomed as 'liberalisation' of both socialist countries and the Communist movement.

PARLIAMENT AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM

Reprinting the article Rinascita noted: "This text of Togliatti (was) extremely significant for the date and the place in which it was published, and for its clarity and the force with which he formulates the developments of a policy which 'came from afar and was going far' (words used to describe the policy of the Communist Party when Togliatti returned from Moscow in 1943 (Translator's note) ). In re-reading it today, we find an immediacy that goes beyond the merely formal; and because of this we are again submitting it to our readers."

The proposition, formulated by comrade Khrushchev in his report to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, according to which it is possible to make use of the parliamentary road for a transition to socialism, is provoking enormous public interest, amongst the masses of the people and particularly among workers, who are, more than ever, setting their sights on a socialist society.

This proposition is an example and proof of how Marxist-Leninist doctrines, if understood in a creative sense, closely tied to the development of actual reality and the practice of class struggle, are capable of opening up new fields and perspectives of work for the socialist transformation of society.

Marxism-Leninism is for a variety of forms of passage to socialism, and, in given conditions, allows the possibility of the peaceful development of revolution.

New Relation of Forces

The essential thing is to succeed in grasping and understanding what is basically new in objective relations and in the position of class and political forces, and to draw from these factors the necessary consequences for the general orientation and practical activity of those who are fighting for socialism. In the course of historical development, important transformations have already taken place as regards Parliament, its tasks and its function. We must take account of these, with the aim of understanding what could happen in the future.

Also as regards Parliament, what was once true, at a time when the socialist movement was hardly yet developed, and the bourgeoisie ruled unchallenged both throughout the world and in every single country, can no longer be true now, when a socialist camp, embracing a third of humanity, exists, when capitalism, shaken by a general crisis, has lost the authority which it once enjoyed, and, instead, the idea of socialism and the necessity for it, is penetrating ever more deeply into the working masses.