Volume 9, Number 5 · September 28, 1967
A Founding Father
By Luigi Barzini
Vita di Antonio Gramsci
by Giuseppe Fiori
Editori Laterza, 363 pp., 900 Lire
Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism
by John M. Cammett
Stanford, 306 pp., $8.50
A short time ago, in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, after announcing my party's vote in favor of a Communist proposal for the abolition of movie censorship, I concluded, 'It is superfluous to point out that Liberals have been against all kinds of censorship in all countries for centuries, while Communists are against it only when and where they are not in power.' I sat down as the extreme Left booed me. All this had happened before. Whenever the occasion warrants it, either the Communists or the Liberals make similar proposals, the Liberals more often than the Communists; a noble debate follows. The Liberals draw the neat distinction between permanent and occasional love of liberty; the Communists boo; then an overwhelming majority (Catholics, neo-Fascists, Monarchists, Republicans, and Socialists) buries us under an avalanche of nays. As I was leaving on that particular day, the young, erudite, and inexperienced Marxist-Leninist who had just spoken on behalf of his Party ran after me and said, 'This you must admit, that the Italian Communists have always been in favor of liberty!' He was visibly hurt that doubts should be cast on the sincerity and intellectual consistency of his motives. I did not argue. I knew he had no doubts that liberty (real liberty, and not the trompe l'oeil variety which bewitched our grandfathers and is still held sacred by the bourgeois) could be secured in no other way than by serving one of the most tyrannical, bureaucratic, and dogma-ridden organizations ever invented by man. I reassured him. Yes, I said, the Italian Communists have always declared liberty was their ultimate goal. He looked relieved and thanked me.
Review, 8238 words
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