'Rejecting all adventurism': the Italian Communist Party and the movements of 1972-9

Edwards, Phil ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5814-4184 (2011) 'Rejecting all adventurism': the Italian Communist Party and the movements of 1972-9. Twentieth Century Communism, 2011 (3). pp. 14-37. ISSN 1758-6437

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Abstract

The history of the Italian Communist Party in the 1960s and 1970s was marked by the party’s engagement with a succession of radical competitors. The party benefited from its engagement with the ‘cycle of contention’ (a term taken from Sidney Tarrow) that centred on the Hot Autumn of 1969. However, a second cycle can also be identified, running from 1972 to 1979 and fuelled by ‘autonomist’ readings of Marxism. The party’s hostile engagement with this second group of movements was a major contributory factor to the subsequent decline of the party, as well as the suppression of the movements.