Totalitarianism and communism in France and in Italy

Abstract

This article seeks to determine if Communism in France and in Italy represented a form of totalitarianism. To respond to this question, the author sets out to examine some of the founding texts analysing the totalitarian phenomenon. In particular, he discusses those of Hannah Arendt, Claude Lefort and François Furet, and he evaluates their pertinence with regard to the historical and sociological configurations represented by the French and Italian Communist Parties. The author demonstrates that, in light of these conceptual analyses, there was, in effect, a totalitarian dimension to French and Italian Communism that could be found in their mode of organization, their political practices, and their conception of democracy. At the same time he shows that this was a failed totalitarianism because of the resistance of French and Italian societies, the particularly strong anti‐communism that held sway in the two countries, and also because of the evolution of the parties themselves. They progressively and in different ways (more clearly with the Italian Communist Party than with the French Party, whose evolution is still in progress) adapted to democratic practices and then assimilated democratic theories. The author concludes by observing a certain vitality in western democracy, even if in the future it does not prevent the rise of other totalitarian impulses.

Notes

Translated by Michael Robert Shurkin.