Maoism in the Developed World

Maoism was represented in Ireland by the Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist). It was founded in 1970 by the Irish Communist Movement (Marxist-Leninist), which had been set up by students two years earlier. The party had as its periodical Red Patriot/ Newsweekly.[279]

The Communist Party of Ireland (Marxist-Leninist) joined with the Albanians in their split with China after the death of Mao Tse-tung. In June 1979, a delegation of the party visited Albania, where it was received by and talked with Ramiz Alia, then a member of the Albanian Politburo, and ultimately successor to Enver Hoxha, as head of the Albanian Party of Labor.[280]

Italian Maoism

For forty-five years after World War II, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) remained (along with the Christian Democrats) one of the two largest and strongest parties in Italy. It was the major opposition party after being thrown out of the government of Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi in 1947, and was one of the world’s two or three largest non-governing Communist organizations.

Until his death in 1964, the PCI was led by Palmiro Togliatti. He had emerged as the principal leader of the exile and underground party during the Fascist period, with the support of Joseph Stalin, and until its dissolution in 1943 he served as a leading figure in the apparatus of the Communist International.

It was Togliatti who set the Italian Communists on the path which was to lead them to become in the 1970s the most outstanding “Eurocommunist” organization. In the “political will” which he wrote just before he died, Togliatti, although clearly aligning himself with the Soviets in their quarrel with the Chinese, strongly urged the necessity of maintaining the unity of the International Communist movement, and urged strongly against the calling of an international conference to excommunicate the Chinese from the ranks of orthodox Marxism-Leninism, as Khrushchev was then advocating.

In this same document, Togliatti insisted that “Each party therefore knows how to march in an autonomous fashion. Autonomy of the parties is not only an internal necessity of our movement but an essential condition of our development in present conditions.”

The Origins Op Italian Maoism

There were, both during and after Togliatti’s hegemony in the Italian Communist Party, elements that were strongly opposed to the direction in which it was being led, including some who sympathized with the Chinese. Togliatti himself recognized this. In his final document, he wrote that “We have in the parry and its periphery some small groups of comrades and sympathizers favorable to the Chinese positions and who defend those positions. Some members of our party have had to be expelled because they were responsible for factional activities and lack of discipline. But, in general, we discuss all aspects of the polemic with the Chinese in cell and section meetings on a municipal level.”[281]

There was apparently a pro-Chinese group, separate from the Italian Communist Party, as early as 1964—perhaps made up of the people whom Togliatti noted had been expelled from the PCI. Although I was told by local Socialist leaders in Florence in 1964 that there were Maoists in the PCI who had not as yet dared to challenge the party leadership,[282] I was informed by a Florentine Communist trade union leader that there did exist a Maoist party, which he estimated had perhaps a thousand members and had its own publication.[283]

The Washington Post reported in October 1966 that “The dissident pro-Chinese group first emerged in northern Italy three years ago. They were quickly isolated by the late Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti’s efforts to couple substantial loyalty to the Soviet line with steady opposition to any open break with the Communist Chinese.”

The Washington Post article continued, “Now, however, the current ‘cultural revolution’ in China has left the Party leadership no choice but to go along with Moscow’s counter-attacks against Peking. This has provided more room and support for the pro-Chinese, who have now surfaced in most areas of Italy. Most of the pro-Chinese groups are planning a meeting in Leghorn, where the Italian Communist Party was founded 45 years ago, to organize a nationwide ‘Communist Party of Italy (Marxist-Leninist)’ It will be dedicated to fighting ‘revisionist and bourgeois’ tendencies in the Italian Communist leadership.”[284]

A couple of years later, a United States State Department source claimed that “Despite the large domestic and international press attention” given to the founding congress of the Partito Co-munista dltaHa-Marxisti-Leninisti, “the new ‘pro-Chinese’ party appears increasingly to have all the characteristics of still-born. Its present membership is not believed to be higher than a couple of thousands … the new party does not seem to cause the PCI undue alarm.”[285]