# Virgile Cirefice, « L'espoir quotidien » : Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944-1949)

Rome, Publications de l'École française de Rome, 2022, 590 p.

Tommaso Milani

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OpenEdition
Journals

**Electronic version**

URL: https://journals.openedition.org/histoirepolitique/14193

DOI: 10.4000/histoirepolitique.14193

ISSN: 1954-3670

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Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po

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Tommaso Milani, "Virgile Cirefice, « L'espoir quotidien » : Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944-1949)", Histoire Politique [Online], Books reviews, Online since 02 November 2023, connection on 07 March 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/histoirepolitique/14193; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/histoirepolitique.14193

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# Virgile Cirefice, « L'espoir quotidien » : Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944-1949)

Rome, Publications de l'École française de Rome, 2022, 590 p.

Tommaso Milani

## REFERENCES

Virgile Cirefice, « L'espoir quotidien » : Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944-1949), Rome, Publications de l'École française de Rome, 2022, 590 p.
1 Patterns of democratic participation in

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twentieth-century Europe were transformed by the rise of a new model of political party. Since German political scientist Sigmund Neumann observed that, under the Weimar Republic, parties based on social integration (Integrationspartei) were gradually replacing parties based on individual representation (Repräsentationspartei) by achieving the “inclusion of the whole person in the political organisation” and fulfilling their members’ needs “from the cradle to the grave”¹, the strength of mass parties has often been linked to their ability to operate as agencies of socialisation. If communist militancy –polymath Maurice Duverger claimed in the early 1950s– went so far to suppress “any distinction between public and private life: there is only party life”,² socialists too tended to forge –US sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset argued some years later– “an organized subculture which cuts workers off from the rest of society” by “having them belong to party-controlled unions, live in workers’ co-operative housing, belong to party-aligned sports and social clubs, attend cultural and musical activities sponsored by the party or the unions, and read party newspapers and magazines.”³ Rather than mere electoral machines, many –if not all– left-wing parties grew into closely-knit communities sharing a more or less coherent worldview.

2 Virgile Cirefice's « L'espoir quotidien »: Cultures et imaginaires socialistes en France et en Italie (1944-1949) provides a thorough and thought-provoking investigation of a few of these communities: the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière (SFIO) and the Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria (PSIUP), whose name was changed into Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) following a 1947 split from which the more centrist Partito Socialista dei Lavoratori Italiani (PSLI) emerged. A 590-page monograph originating from a PhD dissertation, it unpacks the key components of these parties' rich and multilayered political culture but also charts their strategic reorientation, making a valuable contribution to the relatively small yet growing body of comparative scholarship on European socialism after 1945.
3 Methodologically, the book investigates six federations (Ardennes, the Northern Federation, Tarn, Milan, Arezzo and Bari), combining the examination of their archives with the analysis of primary sources from the police, the local press, and the correspondence of party cadres. Its structure is mostly thematic, although several chapters shrewdly underscore shifts over time, especially in the way each party recast its identity vis-à-vis the communists. Among the key aspects explored in the book, one must mention at least how the SFIO and the PSIUP/PSI rebuilt themselves in the shadow of the Resistance, gaining "une position centrale dans la vie politique des deux pays" (p. 88) (chap. 1); their dual allegiance to republican institutions and to revolution, the latter being the idea around which "s'organise l'unité du parti" (p. 134) (chap. 2); the main dichotomies underlying French and Italian socialist discourses, revealing "la grande plasticité des imaginaires socialistes qui perdurent malgré les mutations des conditions sociales" (p. 202) (chap. 3); the enduring self-perception of the party as an "ouvrier" and "masculine" organisation (pp. 268-269) (chap. 4). In chapter 5 -a most absorbing read-, Cirefice highlights the greater reliance on Christian language and imagery by Italian socialists while also noticing a "multiplication d'un vocabulaire mystique" in both countries, pointing to the persistence of socialism being experienced "comme une foi" (p. 323). Chapter 6 is devoted to socialist practices, informed by a "double revendication de maîtrise du temps et de l'espace" (p. 385) underpinning demonstrations, rallies and celebrations. Chapter 7 and 8 discuss the impact of the Cold War on the increasingly strained relations between the SFIO and the PSIUP/PSI as well as on socialist attitudes more broadly by tackling evolving forms of contestation and legitimisation, including those related to the use of force. In the conclusion, the author insists on the "rôle central" of the Cold War "dans la rupture entre SFIO et PSI" (p. 499): a largely overlapping culture notwithstanding, international tensions exacerbated "l'opposition entre socialisme antagoniste et socialisme humaniste" (p. 504), with the Italian leader Pietro Nenni and the French leader Léon Blum being pulled towards opposite poles. Eventually, the SFIO -as well as the PSLI- agreed to cooperate and remain in government with the pro-Atlanticist Christian Democrats whilst the PSI pursued an organic alliance with the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI).

4 Overall, Cirefice's book is at its best in carefully dissecting the array of primary sources assembled, including the visual ones (the book features numerous and often enthralling cartoons). The meticulous scrutiny of private letters, discussions at the local level, and niche publications allowed him to grasp subtleties -such as the extent to which emotions affected party life- that more succinct or elite-focused accounts tend to neglect. Cirefice's captivating and erudite 'history from below', however, has greater ambitions for it also sets out (or at least hints at) a more wide-ranging interpretation of the diverging paths taken by the SFIO and the PSIUP/PSI from 1947 onwards. The book starts out by outlining the hypothesis that "l'évolution heurtée des partis socialistes français et italien s'explique tout autant -sinon davantage- par les imaginaires qu'ils charrient, les espoirs qu'ils sont capables de susciter chez leurs militants et leurs électeurs que par leur seul patrimoine idéologique, central certes, mais insuffisant pour élucider les « motivations du politique », lesquelles ne sauraient se résumer à l'intérêt ou à la sociologie" (p. 12) and ends with the assertion that "l'une des hypothèses centrales à l'origine de cette étude - l'importance des imaginaires et des représentations dans le positionnement politique des acteurs - s'est trouvée vérifiée par certains épisodes emblématiques de la période." (p. 501) Although Cirefice has a point in stressing the relevance of culture, whether that truly explains the
trajectory of the parties discussed is more debatable, and depends on the weight accorded to two other major factors.

The first is ideology. Cirefice holds that “la seule analyse idéologique ne permet de rendre compte ni de toute la complexité de la rupture progressive entre les deux formations ni des tourments de nombreux militants et électeurs qui se détournent des deux partis, ce qui est bien visible à la fois dans l’hémorragie militante de la SFIO et dans les scissions nombreuses en Italie” (pp. 12-13). Even so, ideology did matter for it was through the elucidation, combination and systematisation of separate and potentially contradictory ideas permeating each party’s milieu that leaders articulated their message, rationalised their behaviour and steered their course. A case in point is the formula ‘single party of the working class’ (partito unico della classe operaia), which Italian left-wing socialists deployed both as a mobilising myth and a theoretical justification for joining forces with the communists. While the concept played on a widespread desire to transcend painful divisions dating back to the 1921 Leghorn Congress that –according to many in the rank and file– had crippled democratic forces confronting Mussolini⁴, its true meaning can be fully understood only within the stiff Marxist-Leninist framework that intellectuals such as Rodolfo Morandi developed and later applied to the overhauling of the PSI’s internal structures.⁵ Effective action required effective thinking. By the same token, ideologically ill-equipped factions were more vulnerable to charges of opportunism: for instance, the fact that Blum’s sophisticated interwar theorisation of l’exercice du pouvoir had no equivalent in Italy may have deprived neo-reformists of much-needed intellectual ballast to defend governmental participation.⁶

The second factor to be taken into account is money. Although Cirefice passingly acknowledges that Soviet funds fuelled factionalism within the PSIUP/PSI (see e.g. p. 424), that the latter was on the brink of bankruptcy when its leadership chose to abandon, in 1949, a short-lived attempt to seek greater autonomy from the communists is no minor detail.⁷ Besides, we now know that financial considerations played a huge part in driving the PSLI into De Gasperi’s cabinets and in shattering the project of a Third Force run by another PSI’s breakaway group, the Partito Socialista Unitario (PSU).⁸ A sound comparison between the SFIO and the PSIUP/PSI cannot overlook the degree of financial solidity of the two parties, upon which their ability to stand up to communist competition –let alone infiltration– also rested.⁹

These reservations aside, Cirefice’s book deserves praise for deepening our understanding of the multifaceted character of the socialist Weltanschauung, pushing the increasingly mainstream study of symbols, mindsets, and temporalities beyond the chronological boundaries of the Second World War.¹⁰

## NOTES

<footnote n="1">1. Sigmund Neumann, *Die Parteien der Weimarer Republik*, Stuttgart: Wohlkammer GmbH, 1965 [1932], pp. 105-106.</footnote>
2. Maurice Duverger, *Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State* London: Methuen & Co., 1959 [1951], p. 117.

3. Seymour Martin Lipset, *Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics*, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1960, p. 197.

4. See e.g. Stefano Merli and Salvatore Sechi, *Dimenticare Livorno: sul partito unico dei lavoratori, 1944-1947*, Milan: SugarCo 1985. See also the classic account by Nenni, *Storia di quattro anni, 1919-1922*, Rome: Einaudi 1946 (1926), whose post-war foreword encapsulates his rejection of both reformism and maximalism.

5. See e.g. Rodolfo Morandi, *Opere di Rodolfo Morandi, VI. Il partito e la classe (1948-1955)*, Turin: Einaudi 1961. The theoretical writings of Basso, Lombardi, Lussu, Morandi and Nenni are notably absent from Cirefice's otherwise excellent bibliography.

6. On the ideological feebleness of Italian neo-reformism in this period, see e.g. Daniele Pipitone, *Il socialismo democratico italiano fra la Liberazione e la legge truffa: fratture, ricomposizioni e culture politiche di un'area di frontiera*, Milan: Ledizioni 2014, p. 269-275.

7. See e.g. Nenni's views on the PSI's economically "desperate situation" [Pietro Nenni, Entry of 21 May 1949, in *Tempo di Guerra Fredda. Diari 1943-1956*, Milan: SugarCo 1981, p. 487]. Nenni benefited from extensive support from the PCI during that year's leadership contest.

8. See e.g. Ettore Costa, 'The Socialist International and Italian Social Democracy (1948-1950): Cultural Differences and the 'Internationalisation of Domestic Quarrels', *Historical Research*, 91:251 (2018): p. 160-184. As Costa nicely put it with reference to the positioning of various socialist groupings, "strategic choices depended on the resources available." (Ibidem, p. 167).

9. On the PSI's structural deficiencies, see e.g. Paolo Mattera, "Dopo il 18 aprile: La crisi e la 'seconda rifondazione' del Psi," *Studi Storici*, 43:4 (2002): p. 1147-1179. For some insightful remarks on the SFIO's sources of funding, see Gilles Morin, "Le Parti socialiste SFIO et les associations 1944-1969," in Claire Andrieu, Gilles Le Béguec, Danielle Tartakowsky (dir.), *Associations et champ politique. La loi de 1901*, Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2001, p. 359-377.

10. For some recent works focused on the early Twentieth Century, see Maarten Van Ginderachter, *The Everyday Nationalism of Workers: A Social History of Modern Belgium*, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019; Alexandra Paulin-Booth, *Time and Radical Politics in France: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War*, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2023.