Account for the decline of communism in Italy and France since the 1970s

that the younger generation and especially the students did not want to see again and it was felt that the

PCF portrayed themselves as a party that would support such violence. In Italy the PCI also saw a drastic

drop in support from the young; this though could be put down to a more liberal feeling that was engulfing

the youth of Italy. The membership of the communist youth federation almost halved in the years 1971 and

1986 from around 85,000 members to 45,000 members a figure that would drastically affect electoral

support as in the past support tended to be ‘drummed up’ when the voters were young so that people would

become lifetime communists.

The decline in communist support coincided with the industrial decline that bought with it a decline in the

proportion of people in both countries that were working class. The working class had traditionally been the

greatest supporters of communism going back to when Karl Marx was writing to Stalinism and Trotskyism.

It obviously did not sit well with the communist parties when with the industrial decline of the 1980s a

white-collar middle-class began to emerge. Traditionally support was difficult to get from the middle

classes and as the Italian and French communist parties represented working class interests this bought with

it a clash, as the number of working class declined they lost their traditional support from the industrial

workers which they were familiar with during in France for example the French industrial revolution. The

working classes that were left were also not as supportive as they were no longer as dependant to the party.

This was because there was weakening of their links to the workers movements as compared to the

previous decades. This was because trade unions were becoming increasingly autonomous from not just the

communists but all types of political party. This all meant that the party’s social influence was diminished

in comparison to previous years and meant that the new social movements in France and Italy proved to be

problematic where they had once been supportive to the cause.

The PCF and the PCI were affected negatively be changed in their own party systems, losing votes that had

traditionally be that of the communist party’s. This came with the strengthening of the socialists and even

more so by the emergence of the ‘new right’. The 1980s was characterised throughout Western Europe by

the cultural dominance of the ‘new right’. The ideas of the communist parties in Italy and France that were

bound to state intervention began to sound extremely different from the dominant neo-liberal political

values of the day. With for example the idea of private ownership and periods of denationalisation taking

place and periods of prosperity sitting alongside, it became difficult for the voting public to continue to

relate to the traditional views of the communist parties. Marxist views were also losing prestige which only

further intensified the party’s isolation. It must be said though that strengthening of the right wing differed

in both Italy and France. In France the rise in unemployment and the increase in racial tension in the

country led to more support being given to the extreme right wing party; the National Front. Under the

leadership Jean-Marie Le Pen the National Front gained seats in the National Assembly elections of 1986.

This hurt the communists more than any other party in that the two parties were on the opposite ends of the

political spectrum.

The role of the socialist party was also different in the two countries. The PCF lost many members

to the French Socialist Party (PS) whose enigmatic leader Francois Mitterand was able to inspire loyalty

and rally support for his party from the communist party. He was firmly established as the leader of the

non-communist left in France. This was partly due to his personal individual prominence in French politics

from when he ran for and lost the presidency against Charles de Gaulle in 1965. The PS modelled

themselves as a more moderate left party so that they could take more advantage of the middle ground and

the embourgeoisement of the electorate. This made the communist look even further like a radical left and

further disenfranchised them from the electorate. The PCF found themselves with further problems in the

late 80s when in 1988 the communist vote was further divided when two of the party stood for election of

the president; the official candidate Andre Lajoinie had too stand against a fellow communist Pierre Juquin.

Similarly the PCI lost votes to their socialist counterparts this was in similar to the situation in France but

not too the same extent. The Italian Socialist party the PSI gained almost 3% of the vote in 1983 which was

almost wholly from voters that were former communist voters. This was their largest portion of the vote

since 1958.

The Cold War had differing affects on the communist parties in France and Italy alike. The PCI in Italy had

been purposely weakened by the US throughout the cold. This was due to there close association to the

Soviet Union. With the PCI being the strongest communist party in western Europe, America could see that

it was important to suppress the growth of communism in Italy, this was more so than in France. Italy was

seen by the US as the frontier between the East and West and meant that it was vital for communism not to

get a stranglehold on the country. The US in order to beat this growing party financially supported the

communist’s main political opposition – the Christian democrats. With this financial support and backing

from the most powerful nation in the world the Christian Democrats went on to hold government for over 4

decades, there power within the country helped in the quashing of what was seen as the communist threat

and not allowing the communist party to take a position of government over this period.

The PCF found themselves in a position of power in 1981 following the election victory of the socialist

leader Mitterand. The PS attempted to “hug the PCF to death” and invited them into a coalition government

even though they had a clear majority in parliament. The PCF gave into the lure of parliamentary power

much to their eventual detriment. Early on, Mitterand’s government introduced radical reforms,

nationalising industries and increasing the minimum wage and social security benefits. These were all

reforms that were backed by the communists and their traditional ideological stand point. These reforms

though worsened the economic crisis and the government was made to make a u-turn and bring in

monetarist policies. They rejected protectionism and uncontrolled public spending to increase productivity. 

This of course undermined the PCF’s traditional reformist rhetoric and its claim to be a revolutionary party

as they appeared to be pro-capitalist within this coalition. This left the party further marooned in political

obscurity with much of its traditional base turning away either using their vote to abstain, vote for the

socialists or even worse in the eyes of the communist party and use their vote to vote for the right. In the

eyes of the voter in this situation in was neither revolutionary nor mainstream they merely came across

unimportant. This resulted in the 4 communist ministers that sat on the coalition cabinet resigning to try

and regain its legitimacy.  Similarly in Italy, the PCI was having difficulty in finding their political identity;

by 1987 “the PCI had become, in all intents and purposes, a mainstream political party which called itself

communist” This was proven when looking at the party’s demographic with over 1/3 having university

degrees and a similar proportion now believing that the working class was no longer central to the party’s

direction.  Further figures moving the party away from the communist parties of the past were that only one

in four people believed in the aim of a classless society set out by the original writings of Engels and Marx

and only one in ten people believed in the abolition of privatisation. These figures are a surprising read and

show that the party itself had become centralised in its attempts to gain more electoral support, no longer

the revolutionary party the PCI were attempting to gain votes in other areas proven by the fact that their

demographic would not support a pure communist party of the past.

As already mentioned the PCF further divided their vote through dividing themselves as a party with two

members running for the presidency in 1988. Both the PCF and PCI became weak and divided by the end

of the 1980s which of course was concerning for the parties. With this added to their already struggling

identities it further undermined the communist parties credibility. The PCI split into factions of interests on

the political spectrum. There was a small group on the right of the centre of the party which was close to

the socialist party then on the left there was a pro-soviet group who felt closeness to the ecologists. Even

the centre of the party was divided with a left, centre and a right division. It was becoming increasingly

unfeasible for the party be one that could be supported easily as there was no longer a central direction that

all of the party was heading in. In France, the divisions at the top as mentioned were just one of the

divisions within the party. It fits with the petition which had hundreds of names on protesting against the

not allowing of proper debate after the 78 elections, their was a further revolt of the editorial team of two

communist newspapers which led to their closure and replacement. In a similar situation to that in Italy it is

not hard to realise that with these internal divisions within the party it was becoming increasingly difficult

for the party to appeal to voters if they could be united as one.

The fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1989 sped up and intensified the process of the disintegration of the

communist parties in France and Italy. Even though both the PCI and PCF had tried to distance themselves

from the repressive image of Stalin’s Soviet Union by establishing their own forms of communism it could

shed the coat that was their political ally and forefather that was Russia. Further losses of support were to

be expected and they came to fruition for both the PCI and the PCF when the regime broke down.

Weaknesses in ideology had become apparent, if communism could not work in Russia where it had been

dominant for so long, what were the chances of it working in Western European Nations. This viewpoint

was mirrored in 1990s with neither of the communist parties having the ability counteract the decline in

support and both parties continued to fail.

The period in question is characterized by an almost general reduction of electoral power across Europe of

the communist parties, there have been different intensities and different decline speeds but the common

denominator is that there is a general decline. When looking at western Europe as whole we can separate

the countries into two groups differing on speed of the decline. France and Italy are in the group that have

declinedn rapidly yet this can be reasoned that it is due they have been traditionally big communist

organisations in comparison  to somewhere like the UK. The decline continues in both countries and

parties. With all the information compiled and accounted for it can be said that decline of the communist

parties in the countries of France and Italy has been alike. The parties were faced with similar issues both

politically, socially, financially and internally. The decline of both parties happened due to the political

world moving on and the communist parties not being able too move as one with it. When looking over the

decades that have passed it is possible to asses that both the parties were faced with uphill struggles to

become significant political parties in their own countries, in a way they were caught ‘between a rock and a

hard place’ due to that fact that to gain power the communists parties had to become more mainstream

politically and distance themselves from the soviet bloc due to the image that it portrayed yet at the same

time by doing this the parties were turning away from their traditional support base. The class structure of

western societies has changed over this period and what was a large industrial working class society in both

countries has become an white-collar middle-class society which is a society that does not support

communist ideology so the political parties are going to struggle. Both the PCI and PCF were faced with

this issue and though at times tried to deal with it in differing ways the outcome has proven to be the same,

one of continued decline for the communist parties in Italy and France and the rest of Western Europe.

Bibliography

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6. D. Sassoon, Contemporary Italy – Economy, Society and Politics since 1945, London: Longman, 1997
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