ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the party's strategic aims. It examines first how the PCI has adapted these aims to its circumstances and to the need for alliance with other groups, and second, how the concept of 'hegemony' has in recent years sparked off some intense ideological and political disputes. The PCI's strategy of 'presence' leading to 'hegemony' was glorified in 1947 with the name of 'the Italian road to socialism', and after 1956 party debate concentrated on the details of this road. The social democrats had accepted the capitalist system, which the PCI was pledged to overthrow. The party aimed at achieving 'socialism', but would do so by a 'third way', within the framework of the democratic Italian constitution. The socialist's offensive of 1975-8 naturally concentrated on all these concrete issues, as well as on the nature of 'hegemony' and 'democratic centralism'.
