Il "Vangelo" socialista. A quarant'anni dal saggio di Craxi su Proudhon

On August 27 1978 the weekly “L’Espresso” published a long article by Bettino Craxi entitled Il Vangelo socialista (The Socialist Gospel) – in response to an interview about Leninism that Enrico Berlinguer had given a few weeks earlier to Eugenio Scalfari in the daily “la Republica”. Craxi’s article caused a lot of comment, both for the period when it was published (after the Torino PSI Congress, where the “Socialist Project” was launched, and the tragic conclusion of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro), and for its consequences in the relationship between PCI and PSI and, more generally, in Italian politics. The essay reconstructs its political and ideological backgrounds.