tional symbolism of what is in another a mere pressure group transforms its
legitimacy in the foreign culture. To study the French Army in the late Third
Republic on the assumption that armies were the same sort of institutions in
France, the USA and the UK would, were the judgement made by an
Englishman, involve a serious ethnocentric mistake.
In a less technical context, ethnocentrism is akin toracism, being the
assumption of the innate superiority of one’s own culture and society.
Eurocommunism
Eurocommunism was the moderate version ofcommunismespoused by
some communist parties in Western European democracies, particularly from
the late 1960s. The two most important parties to pursue this line were the
Italian and Spanish communist parties. The root of the development lay in the
need of communist parties in Western democracies to compete electorally with
socialist and conservative parties if they were ever to gain political power as a
result of an election. During the inter-war years communist parties either
hardly existed or managed only barely to survive because they were closely
associated with revolutionary politics, and with theStalinismof the Soviet
Union. During the Second World War communist parties in France and Italy
came to be more respectable because they were deeply involved in opposition
tofascismand in the resistance movements against German occupation.
Nevertheless, after the war they were still seen, on the whole, as anti-
democratic, even if they fought elections. The doctrines of thedictatorship
of the proletariatand the need to transform capitalist society totally and
immediately, as well as their close connection to the Soviet Union, which had
by this time become the maincold warthreat to Western Europe, meant that
the French and Italian communist parties were effectively excluded from the
main arena of democratic politics.
Slowly the Italian Communist Party (PCI) broke away from this position,
principally under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, and followed the
theoretical doctrines developed byGramsciwhile in a fascist prison. The
essence of the new Italian communism was to accept democracy as the only
way in which the long-term aim, the transformation of Italian society to
communism, could be achieved. In its turn this required at least a temporary
acceptance of a mixed economy, where capitalism would still have an impor-
tant role, and overall a belief in the sort ofgradualismthat used to be
preached by the EnglishFabianmovement. In more practical terms it meant
an acceptance of the need for Italy to remain inNATO, and a general move
away from automatic support for the Soviet Union in preference for backing
European institutions like theEuropean Union. The move certainly helped
the PCI, which became the principal opposition party to the Christian
Eurocommunism