In 1977, Eric Hobsbawm published a book of interviews with Giorgio Napolitano, a leading figure in the Italian Communist Party (PCI)’s gradualist wing, the miglioristi. Hobsbawm proclaimed himself a “spiritual member” of the PCI and intended this book to depict the path it was beating between Leninism and social democracy. Yet his efforts appeared rather frustrated by Napolitano’s vocabulary. Though calling for the “reconstruction and renewal” of Italian society and insisting on the PCI’s “democratic commitment,” Napolitano did little to convey any clear socialist worldview. As he extolled the “perspective of the continuous, organic, balanced development of the Italian economy” and the “retailoring of [Italian] production for the foreign market,” Hobsbawm interrupted him, as if to draw him back on topic:

Hobsbawm: All this is very useful and positive . . . 

Napolitano: But what does it have to do with the advancement of socialism?

Hobsbawm: That’s exactly what I wanted to ask you.

Napolitano: That’s a question whose answer is less simple than it may seem.

Napolitano’s elusive response expressed a contradiction not limited to the miglioristi. In Cold War Italy, the PCI never took up the reins of national government, yet strongly identified with republican institutions and a cross-class interest. The meaning of this ambiguity in terms of economic policy was highlighted at a 1962 Gramsci Foundation seminar on “Tendencies of Italian Capitalism,” as well as the 1966 PCI congress, where leading migliorista Giorgio Amendola clashed with the left of the party.