The article rethinks and analyzes the terms and categories mobilized in the theoretical and political debate, on the subject of freedom, accomplished by liberal-socialists and Italian communists during the 1920s and 1930s. In a certain way, the controversy can be noticed during the foundation of the Italian Communist Party, through the theoretical wonderings and the narrow collaboration between the liberal, Piero Gobetti and the Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. Such a dialogue accompanied the P.C.I. trajectory in several moments: when sharing civic moments, as the antifascist fight and the organization of the resistance, or at the moment of the reconstruction of Italy in the 1950s. The controversy, on the liberal-socialist side, is headed by Norberto Bobbio and on the communist side, headed by the then general secretary of the P.C.I., Palmiro Togliatti.
Liberalism; Democracy; Socialism; rights of freedom; modern State