Pci e intellettuali. Un tentativo di tematizzazione storiografica

PCI and intellectuals. Notes for a historiographical thematization, by Marco Di Maggio This essay addresses the relationship between the PCI and intellectuals. A relationship that profoundly characterises Italian communism both in its national history and in its particular position within communism as a global phenomenon in the history of the 20th century. The analysis will be developed by trying to hold together two levels, which specifically concern the political dimension of the relationship between the PCI and intellectuals: the first concerns the position of the intellectual classes in the social composition of the party and therefore the communist policies towards this social class. The second concerns the relationship between politics and culture both in the dimension that, to quote Pierre Bourdieu, we could define as ‘theological’, that is, the role of doctrine and those who produce it as an instrument for legitimising the mechanisms of power within the organisation. And also in what, adopting a Marxist and Gramscian perspective, is instead the ‘teleological’ dimension, of the functioning of the party as a collective intellectual and its relationship with society