Evrokomunisti pred izazovima parlamentarne demokratije
Eurocommunism and the Challenge of Parliamentary Democracy

Summary/Abstract: Unlike social democracy, the communist movement had maintained for a long time a negative attitude towards bourgeois democracy. With the emergence of Eurocommunism in the industrialized countries of the West, the relationship between socialism and democracy began to assume a different aspect. The approach is no longer motivated by pragmatic but rather by theoretical considerations. The new, increasingly positive, attitude towards parliamentary democracy is accompanied by a critical reappraisal of the theoretical heritage of the communist movement. The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat has been abandoned, to be replaced by political pluralism, with all the consequences this entails (changed concept of the avantgarde; acceptance of ideological pluralism; renunciation of the aim "to demolish" the bourgeois state: new political and social alliances). The author suggests that the Eurocommunist parties have not been able to evolve an adequate strategy. In questions of democracy, this strategy reduces the whole Issue to forms of representation, while avoiding, for tactical reasons, any stronger emphasis on the new social contents of democracy. The question is raised in conclusion; how are Eurocommunists to preserve their revolutionary identity in their "long progress through the Institutions" of parliamentary democracy?

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