“Tutto il popolo sotto la bandiera della democrazia” : Il Partito Comunista Italiano e la costruzione discorsiva del popolo (1943-1945)

Between 1944 and 1945, the Italian Communist Party seems to abandon its internationalist, classist and revolutionary policy. In fact, the turning point of Salerno and the launch of the formulas of the “New Party” (partito nuovo) and the “Progressive Democracy” (democrazia progressiva) offer a new political line in order to achieve the political success and the massification of the party: a democratic, autonomous, and national political strategy. Since this moment, in the public discourse of the party seems prevailing a discursive use of the concept of “people” (popolo), which tends to flank or overcome, in many occasions, words, such as “class” or “proletariat”, belonging to the Marxist tradition. This research aims at explaining the reasons and showing the modalities by which the Italian Communist Party, between 1943 and 1945, modulated, in the public discourse and with specific discursive strategies, an image of the “people” as a unified, national, and interclassist entity, within which, however, it is possible to notice, since 1945, the first linguistic and discursive signs of the future political change: the rupture of the unity of the anti–fascist front.