Marzia Maccaferri teaches political theory and history at Queen Mary University of London. She is one of the organizers of the Pastasciutta Antifascista in London.
When Benito Mussolini was ousted in 1943, a farming family called the Cervis celebrated by serving free helpings of pasta in the village square. It’s a ritual still repeated each July, upholding the community spirit at the heart of Italian antifascism.
In the 1970s, a reform trend in Europe’s Communist parties promised a radically democratic socialism. “Eurocommunism” sought an alternative to the exhausted Soviet model — but it was unable to answer the profound social upheavals taking place in the West.
Antonio Gramsci was twentieth-century Italy’s greatest intellectual. Fifty years ago, the English translation of Selections from the Prison Notebooks allowed his unorthodox Marxism to spread worldwide.