The paper presents some aspects of the debate held between Norberto Bobbio and intellectuals linked to the Italian Communist Party (PCI) on the Marxist theory of the state, between 1975 and 1976. In this discussion, the theoretical elements that underlie the construction of the "Italian road to socialism" with the participation of the PCI in the Italian parliamentary life and the affirmation of "democracy as a universal value" are detailed. At the center of this debate lie, on the one hand, a critique of the Soviet model and the affirmation of the need for socialization of political power beyond the socialization of the economy; and, on the other hand, the critical incorporation of individual rights and the procedures of bourgeois representative democracy into the socialist political projects.
Socialism; Democracy; Italian Marxism; Norberto Bobbio