Abstract

The problem of the democratic credibility of Eurocommunism has been equated to the squaring, of the circle, and it revolves around whether there is a viable Marxist alternative to both Marxism-Leninism and democratic socialism consistent with the ideals of classical pluralistic liberalism and appropriate to Western Europe. The answer to this problem requires a study of the experiences of Marxist parties in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. Although there are already many useful studies for the more important cases of Italy and France, they remain inconclusive, and the problem of meaningfully articulating the Eurocommunist alternative is far from solved. There is, to be sure, near-unanimous agreement that this alternative is rooted in Gramsci's works, but this only displaces the problem since interpretations of Gramsci are notoriously difficult.