Readings 1.0 The Revolution Against Capital Page 32, The Gramsci - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

A study of Antonio Gramsci through a lens of an unfolding of his life story and selected writings

Readings 1.0

 ‘The Revolution Against Capital’

Page 32, The Gramsci Reader. This is about the October Revolution in Russia. Keep in mind that Gramsci’s target here in not Das Kapital itself, but the system of ossified ideas and economic determinism may top leaders of the 2nd International had made of it.

 ‘Our Marx’

Page 36, The Gramsci Reader. Here Gramsci declares there are many ‘Marxisms’ that miss the mark. (Remember how Marx once declared, ‘I am not a ‘Marxist.’) What are the core elements of Gramsci’s Marx?

 ‘Men Or Machines’

Page 62, The Gramsci Reader. Here Gramsci discusses his view of culture and schools. Note what he advocates for workers.

Gramsci:

Why his thinking matters for us today  The Many Gramsci's’:

 Radical student of literature  Innovative theater critic  Working-class organizer  Newspaper editor  Founder of Italy’s Communist Party  Member of Parliament  Long-time political prisoner under Mussolini’s fascist rule.  Most of all, he was a Marxist thinker who independently deepened and pushed the boundaries of revolutionary theory, strategy and tactics— and with relevance for our time.

Gramsci was a Sardinian

 He was born and raised on the 2nd largest island in the Mediterranean, formerly the ‘Kingdom of Sardinia’, but then an ‘autonomous region’ of the Kingdom of Italy.  Gramsci grew up speaking Campidanese, the Southern dialect of Sard, an old language closer to the original Latin than Italian, which emerged later.  In 1718, Sardinia came under the rule of the feudal House of Savoy, in the far northwest of Italy. They promptly ‘enclosed’ the lands of Sardinia peasants and drove them into poverty. For the next 100 years, the Sardinians resisted, mainly as bandits.  Gramsci’s father, partly Albanian, held the post of a minor clerk in a small town, and was arrested for ‘irregularities.’ His mother and her 7 sons (Antonio was the 4th) were destitute. Moreover, Gramsci had a spinal deformity, and a hunchback.  Although very bright, he had to leave

• school. Due to poverty, his early politics

emerged as Sardinian nationalism.

Street in the capital city of Cagliari (above) where Gramsci eventually finished high school, and won a scholarship to the University of Turin.

1911-1915: Gramsci’s Student Years in Turin

 Gramsci won a scholarship to the university, along with another Sardinian youth, Palmiro Togliatti. They were close politically for a long time.  First attracted to linguistics, in part to improve his Italian, but his teacher encouraged him to study Sard as well. Gramsci, however, soon moved on to philosophy and history.  In his studies, he was influenced by a Hegelian Marxist, Antonio Labriola, who had two other young Hegelian protégés, Benedetto Croce, a famous liberal, and Giovanni Gentile, an equally famous philosopher of fascism. Gramsci would study and criticize these two for the rest of his life, giving him a deep grasp of Italy’s history & culture  His student days were conflicted. He was a brilliant

• student. At the same time he was very poor and
• sick. He lived with little food in flats without heat,

and could only warm himself walking in the cold. Yet he did the best work, while comfortable rich students were far below him academically. His suffering led him to quit in 1915. He turned to journalism and the workers movement in Turin.

Labriola (above), the ‘philosopher

• f praxis’. Croce

and Gentile (left), and the campus of the University of Turin (below)

1915-1917: Gramsci’s Newspaper Writing and Schools for Workers

 In 1915, Gramsci joined the PSI, the Socialist Party of Italy, and started writing for it newspapers, Il Grido del Popolo and Avanti!  His theater reviews were very popular, since he included the responses of working class audiences in them, and unmasked the contrast between the morality of the upper classes to that of the

• workers. He made the theater into his prop for

teaching the workers about themselves, developing their class consciousness.  The PSI had workers education as part of its program, but Gramsci battled with its

• shortcomings. The capitalists only wanted skill

and job training, while Gramsci argued for more universal education, including culture, science and socialist politics and, most of all, critical thinking.  He critiqued educational plans from the viewpoint

• f the students, rather than the teachers or
• bosses. ‘Everyone is cultured,’ he argued, even if

for many it was rudimentary and fragmented. He never wanted to ‘water down’ thought, arguing that workers were fully capable of it, give time and resources

Worker-students in Turin (right). Avanti!, Gramsci paper (top) where he starts of with his early writings

• n school for workers,

an theater reviews (above), scene from Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House’. In 1917, Gramsci also started a small study

• group. ‘Club for the

Moral Life’

Readings 2.0

 ‘Workers Democracy’

Page 79, The Gramsci Reader. An analysis of the Turin Workers’ Councils, their democratic character, and their similarity to the Russian ‘soviets.’

 ‘Conquest of the State’

Page 83, The Gramsci Reader. This contain a critique of syndicalism’s avoidance of electoral politics, and begin to introduce the need for workers control of institutions prior to taking power in the state.

 ‘Those Mainly Responsible’

Page 103, The Gramsci Reader. Now writing in his own paper, The New Order, this article begins to spell out the reasons for splitting with the PCI.

1918-1920: The Impact of October, 1917

• n the Turin Workers, & the ‘Two Red Years’

 By 1917, Gramsci was stifled by the PSI’s reformism, part of the ‘evolutionism’ of the 2nd International that urged waiting on history to make change. This then dominant trend said workers had to allow capitalism to ripen slowly, biding their time until workers could take power with a majority vote.  When Gramsci got the news of Lenin in power, he wrote ‘The Revolution Against ‘Capital’, meaning the ‘evolutionary’ view. He saw workers as active players.  Learning about Russia, workers in Turin and elsewhere formed ‘factory councils’ with the idea of

• Soviets. Gramsci helped to organize them, despite

the PSI’s opposition. He saw them, some 200,000, as a ‘socialist core’ in the movement of the present. Bordiga, a PSI left ‘purist’, accused Gramsci of ‘syndicalism’ for this view of wider allances.  Gramsci and the PSI ‘left’ thus set up their own newspaper in 1919, L'Ordine Nuovo, which became the voice for insurgent factory councils.  The ‘Biennio Rosso’ (Two Red Years) saw more than

• ne million industrial workers involved by 1919,

three times more than 1913.

Trucks for war (above) were the main products of the Fiat workers. The war led to suffering, and thus a wave of strikes and factory

• ccupations in

Turin and Milan (right). The PSI did little, setting up the split to form a new party, the PCI. Amadeo Bordiga L'Ordine Nuovo (top) translates as ‘The New Order: A Review of Socialist Culture.’

1921: Founding a New Party, & the Comintern’s Watchful Eye

 Three groups broke away from the PSI in 1921: Borgida’s ‘purist’ faction opposing alliances and elections, a group around Angelo Tasca, a trade unionist wanting to ally with the PSI, and Gramsci’s group, which leaned left, but didn’t trust Tasca as a real communist.  The PCI formed under the eye of the Comintern, which at that time was organizing national ‘sections’ under the ECCI in Moscow. Both Bordiga and Gramsci’s group were in the leadership, and Bordiga at first held the upper

• hand. They were both invited to Moscow in
• 1922. Mussolini took power at the end of the
• year. The PCI now had 43,000 members.

 What were the differences? Bordiga was an electoral abstentionist against alliances, just a harder party core. Gramsci saw a use for elections, and also sought alliances with the peasants in the South and the colonies. Tasca want to reunite with those they had just split from, against fascism. Bordiga had 75%, Gramsci 15% and Tasca 10%

PCI election poster (right), a point of contention between Gramsci and Borgia. Gramsci walking with Bukharin in Moscow. Lenin had criticized Bordiga and tagged L'Ordine Nuovo as the Italian paper closest to Lenin’s own views.

‘Two Black Years’ & the Rise of Fascism

 In 1914, Benito Mussolini was well known to PCI leaders. They worked together in the PSI with him, at least until he took a sharp turn and supported Italy entering WW1. Expelled from the PSI, He became a soldier himself, until wounded and discharged in 1917.  Mussolini now denounced socialism and class struggle as undermining a more important ‘revolutionary national unity’, appealing especially to veterans and the rural unemployed to form “Black Shirt’ fighting

• groups. The PSI first led the insurgencies, but

had no real strategy. They only frightened the capitalists, who turned to the fascists for help.  Mussolini ran for office in 1919 as the ‘Lenin of Italy’ but lost miserably. By 1921, however, he dropped all left symbols, and became traditionalist as well as radical. In 1921, the Fascists won 33 seats, and their wider 4-party bloc got 105, not enough to make a majority.  By 1921, the postwar upsurge was ending. In Oct, 1922, Mussolini ‘Marched on Rome,’ and the King named him Prime Minister. Gramsci was the only PCI leader to predict it. WW1 (above) saw great suffering in Italy, even more when returning soldiers (left) found a lack of work rather than glory. March on Rome, (below).

1923-24, Clandestine Years: Gramsci in Moscow & Vienna

 A few months before the ‘March on Rome,’ Gramsci, in poor health, went to Moscow for treatment at a sanatorium. While recovering, he met Julia Schucht, who soon became his wife.  After Mussolini took power, Gramsci stayed of in Moscow for the 4th Comintern Congress in Nov,

• 1922. Pressed by Zinoviev, the ‘Italian Question’

was debated, urging a merger of the CPI and the SPI, as a way to fight fascism, and because the SPI had re-applied for Comintern membership. Zinoviev thus helped Tasca’s group.  Since Bordiga refused to take part in the debate, it fell to Gramsci to argue with Tasca. At the close, the ‘merger’ and ‘united front’ line won out overall, and the PCI was a minority opposition. It took another 10 months before Gramsci finally gave up his bloc with Bordiga, isolated Tosca, and he and Togliatti came to lead the PCI.  During this time, Bordiga was in jail, along with many PCI leaders, and a warrant was out for Gramsci’s arrest. After Moscow, Gramsci thus stayed in Vienna, to avoid arrest and continue party work.

Above, Gramsci’s Comintern ID

• Card. Right, Julia

and Gramsci’s two sons, Delio (born 1924) and Giuliano (born 1926). Gramsci and comrades in Vienna

Readings 3.0

 ‘Antonio Gramsci, the United Front, and Geopolitics of Strategy’

This 2017 article by John Riddell places Gramsci’s work in this period in

• context. Get it online by searching on the title.

 ‘Letter to Togliatti’

Page 127, The Gramsci Reader. Here Gramsci discusses the weaknesses in the PCI, and how they relate to Comintern Policy. He does not want to turn the party over to the rightists or the ultraleftists. Nor does he want blindly to follow the Comintern or Russia, but find a way forward rooted in Italy’s conditions and situation.

 ‘Speech to the Italian Parliament’

May 16, 1925. Gramsci defines fascism and takes on Mussolini in a personal debate over fascist measures. Available online in the Marxist Internet Archive.

 ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question’

Page 171, TGR. Here Gramsci corrects and refines earlier positions towards the colonized, arguing for political alliances.

1924-26: Gramsci Returns to Italy as an Elected Deputy, but on a Path to Prison

 Early n 1924 Gramsci, now head of the PCI, was elected to parliament, which gave him legal immunity from arrest. Returning to Rome, he launched of the CPI official newspaper, L'Unità (Unity). His family stayed in Moscow. Togliatti also went back to Moscow.  In June, 1924. struggle breaks out in parliament after the Fascists assassinate a Reform Socialist leader for a speech critical of ‘Il Duce.’ The

• pposition parties stage a walkout in protest,

with Gramsci also calling for a general strike.  For the next year, Gramsci travels from city to city, reorganizing the party into ‘cells’ for survival, and building an educational apparatus

• f ‘correspondence schools.’

 In early 1926, the PCI holds it 3rd Congress in secret, in Lyons, France. Gramsci’s ‘Lyons Theses’ are adopted, as the main overview and strategy.  In Oct 1926, an attempt to kill Mussolini launches fascist attacks, immunity is suspended, and Gramsci is arrested.

Top, Gramsci’s fingerprints. Above, ‘Unity’ with Togliatti, (right) as co-founder. Below, Violet Gibson, attempted assassin

• f Mussolini.

1926-27: The Prison Years Begin

 First arrested in Milan, Gramsci was taken to Regina Coeli, a prison in Rome. After several transfers, his final destination was Ustica, a small island near Sicily, long used for political prisoners.  Gramsci was with five other prisoners, including Bordiga, and two PSI deputies. Only there for 44 days, Gramsci still helped

• rganize a school among the prisoners-

Bordiga was in charge of science while Gramsci taught history.  The show trial against Gramsci and 21

• ther PCI leaders took place in Rome

between 28 May and 4 June, 1928. Referring to Gramsci, the prosecutor Michele Isgrò declared: ‘We must prevent this brain from functioning for 20 years.’  Starting 1929,Gramsci won permission to read and write in his cell. By February. He made a list of ‘Main Topics’, dated 8 February 1929, on the first page of a notebook entitled ‘First Notebook.’

Tatiana Schucht, sister- in-law, and Piero Sraffa, economics professor. Piero gave Gramsci an

• pen account at a major
• bookstore. Titiana

smuggled out pages on the ‘Notebooks’, and many other tasks Most of the prison years were at Turi, near Bari, a port city

• n Italy’s southeast coast.

The prison wall (above) and his cell (left). The conditions were considered poor. Gramsci with his ‘entering class’ at Ustica prison

Context of Arrest: The 6th Comintern

Gramsci rejects much of the ‘3rd Period’ Ultraleftism and becomes isolated

 The 6th Comitern Congress viewed capitalism in three post-war ‘periods’: The 1st period was revolutionary, immediately after WWI; the 2nd was the period of capitalist stabilization, where struggle subsided; and the 3rd was the supposed new wave of revolutions arising from the great depression.  Another 3rd period feature was that Communists fought against their rivals on the left as vehemently as their

• pponents on the right, with special viciousness

directed at Social Democrats and Trotsky, in which they were dubbed as ‘social fascists.’ The German KPD put up the slogan, ‘After Hitler, Our Turn.’  In the PCI, a few were expelled due to their disagreement with ‘3rd period’ tactics. Togliatti sent Gramsci’s brother to get his support for the expulsions, but Gramsci refused. Instead, he called for a democratic constituent assembly against fascism. His brother refused to deliver the message, since Togliatti was submitting to Moscow’s new line. Some PCI members in prison tried to isolate Gramsci because of it. In the end, Tasca was expelled in 1929, and ended up in the Vichy government in France. Bordiga was expelled in 1930 for ‘Trotskyism,’ a charge that never quite stuck. Betrayed by the SPD, Vote Communist!

Against Popen, Hitler and Thalmann! Vote Social Democrat!

The Notebooks

 It’s worth noting that they really were notebooks. Gramsci’s earlier writing was for newspapers, clear and lucid. The prison writings were notes to himself and perhaps a few friends on a massive intellectual project, and thus more difficult to read, even if richer in meaning.

Readings 4.0

 ‘Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historic Bloc’

Pages 191-209, several passages in The Gramsci Reader.

 ‘War of Position, War of Maneuver’ Pages 225-230,

TGR.

 ‘The Political Party as the Modern Prince’ Page

238, TGR.

 ‘Passive Revolution and Fascism’ Pages 263-267, TGR

The ‘Notebooks’ Begin:

Ideas: Hegemony, Relations

• f Force, the Historical Bloc

 Throughout the notebooks, Gramsci takes the core ideas of Marx, Lenin and others, and deepens and expands of them in original ways.  First, he places then in the context of Italian and West European history. Second, he uses them to test the work of all the currents in Italy’s intellectual traditions.  Unless one knows a bit of Italian history and culture, this sometimes makes the meaning

• difficult. Add to that the fact that his writings

sometimes had to pass prison censors, so he has to write in code. ‘Philosophy of praxis,’ for example, means Marxism, and it was the way Croce and others referred to it. But at times it meant a little more. It’s worth working though any hard parts. The view on the other side is terrific!  So here we begin with the most well-known concept attributed to Gramsci, ‘hegemony’. Lenin used it to mean the ‘domination’ and ‘leadership’

• f the politics and movements of the peasantry by

the working class in a revolutionary alliance. But Gramsci added a lot more to the idea.

Top, page 1 of the ‘Notebooks.’ Above, Nazi poster showing ‘all persuasion’. Right, cartoon by Grosse showing ‘all coercion’ as class rule. For Gramsci, these were too ideal. In life and history, the ruling class needed both, plus the ability to shift.

Hegemony

Recasting ‘Ruling Classes’ into ‘Historic Blocs’

 We can use ‘class’ as a as structural descriptor of a relation between people in any given mode of production—master and slave, lord and serf, capitalist and worker.  But Gramsci wants to do more with ‘class’, also to see it dynamically active in a given time and place, and with a set of ideas in a given

• culture. He sees ‘blocs’ of politically active people and subgroups that can

arise within a given class (and more than one at a time), and also spanning between classes, as in alliances of landlord, clergy and peasants against a rival bloc.  At any give time, one bloc is ‘hegemonic,’ i.e., all the other ‘subalterns’ are under its influence and obeys its rules. Moreover, the hegemonic bloc rules largely through persuasion and, at times, concessions—although the means of coercion are always on the ready. Finally, a hegemonic bloc tries to be the voice of the nation as a whole.  What Gramsci wants is for the working class to form a ‘counter- hegemonic bloc’ on its own, a process it begins by drawing out of the workers a new culture rooted in their moral values of solidarity and mutual aid. Not only will it undermine and challenge the dominant bloc for moral and then political leadership of all classes in the nation. For this, they need to be organized into an instrument for study and learning, to become ‘permanent persuaders,’ a ‘Modern Prince’. This connected the PCI with the older Italian tradition of Machiavelli.

The hangman and priest, as coercion and persuasion, the two aspects of rule.

More on Historic Blocs…

Class is not enough, the emergent blocs within must be understood

 Although Gramsci claims to borrow concept of ‘historical bloc’ from Georges Sorel, the French syndicalist, but the way its developed is unique to Gramsci. For him they are ensembles of social force and ideas within a temporal reality. They span both base and superstructure--the material forces are the content and ideologies are the form, but this distinction is only indicative—both always go together.  Here is a US-BASED example: Note that it would be quite different if drawn in 1928. The Wall St Crash of 1929 was a CRISIS that disconnected and rearranged everything.

Relation of Forces

Infrastructure, Superstructure, Organic, Conjunctural

 For Gramsci, power relations and forces in any give society can never be measured once and for all. They are always in motion, and need regular reassessment, i.e., taking stock of relative strength and weakness.  Power is anchored in society’s infrastructure (or base)—its economy, productive forces, relations of classes, factories and transport and energy sources. The base matters a great deal because no society can make demands on itself that it does not yet have the means to

• accomplish. (Think of Mao’s peasant ‘backyard steel mills’)

 Power, however, takes shape and engages in battle inside the superstructure, which Gramsci divides into two big tents, ‘political society’ and ‘civil society.’ This division was unique to Gramsci.  In political society, power appears mainly as COERCION—the state, police, army, courts, prisons, FBI, CIA. In civil society, power appears as PERSUASION—family, religion, schools, unions, political parties, mass campaigns, NGOs, mass media, music and art.  Change is constant among all these elements, and the imbalances, when severe, bring CRISES. Some are long-lasting—slavery, automation—and hence ‘systemic’ or organic. Others are short term

• r ‘conjunctural.’ Trump’s unstable White House is a case in point.

Women garment workers show force in NYC. Below, Army uses force against Homestead steel workers.

Passive Revolution

Radical change at the top when the subaltern groups are too weak to rule

 In 1922, the relation of forces in Italy was unfavorable. Gramsci developed the concept of ‘passive revolution‘, when the bourgeoisie was too weak to rule directly, or

• alone. It needed new allies and partial changes to

restore an old order or make a new one.  'Caesarism' occurs where the two opposing core classes are deadlocked, both sides evenly matched, potentially threatening mutual ruin. A 'Caesar’ represents some form of compromise between the classes. Because of the enhanced role of the state in 'Caesarism', it can also be an ideal regime for 'revolution-restoration'. Mussolini’s ‘compromise’ coalition with Italy’s Nationalists, liberal businesses, the Church and King is an example.  In the US, an example of ‘passive revolution’ without a Caesarism was the Hayes-Tilden deal of 1877. Two forces were stalemated, the GOP and the Southern Democratic ‘redeemers.’ The latter allowed Hayes to take the White House in exchange for terrorist rule in the South, restoring much of slavery and the South’s power in the Senate. Northern manufacturing moved South, in a new alliance with former Confederates. Labor and the Freedmen, the main subalterns, were too surpressed, divided and weak.

Right, Dem machines, Southern Redeemers and Wall St hold down Freed Blacks. Below, Futurism and Mussolini.

Politics, Strategy, Tactics

War of position, war of movement

 Gramsci was an enthusiastic supporter of the October

• Revolution. But early on, he also understood its unique

features, and that it was not likely to a ‘model’ for Western Europe and the US.  Russia had an overreaching but brittle state, the Tsarist autocracy. Its civil society, however, was primitive and not well formed. But in the West, the state was ‘proper’ and more flexible. Plus it had a robust civil society, which encircled the state with protective ‘moats’ and barriers. A strategy and tactics for the West would be quite different from Russia’s.  Gramsci also drew his metaphors from both Machiavelli and the recent ‘Great War’—war of movement, war of position, and clandestine war. The first was frontal attack, the second was building and securing strong points, the third was partisan warfare. He mainly discussed the first two. Most important, they are combined, not stages.  It’s not ‘either-or.’ One can be waging a ‘war of position’ strategically, while using the ‘war of movement’ tactically. And vice versa. But there is no war without troops. Enter ‘The Modern Prince’…

Top, trench warfare. Left, sabotage. Below, storming the Winter Palace.

While using military metaphors, Gramsci mainly saw their political use—winning leadership in schools or city councils (position) while going on strike or demonstrations to free a prisoner (movement).

Revisiting ‘Hegemony’

Politics and the Modern Prince

 MANY GRAMSCI ADMIRERS TODAY ignore the core of his

• ideas. Gramsci was always a Marxist and a communist. He

was not interested in complex, subtle and dialectical analysis for its own sake. He had a purpose that tied it all together, changing the world, and shaping the political instrument to do it, the revolutionary party. Ignore this, and you misunderstand everything else.  Like all Marxists, Gramsci held that the party must be rooted in the working class, especially its insurgent

• sectors. Like some Marxists, he also expanded this to all

the subaltern classes and groups, especially peasants, intellectuals, and the anti-colonial movements.  As noted, Gramsci had studied Machiavelli, and saw him as an early progressive figure, not an apostle of evil-doing. Gramsci was especially interested in his ‘humanism’ and his notions of ‘legitimacy’ and ‘morality’  The Prince, in its day, was one of the first to see the need for the promotion of a ‘popular will.’ This is how Gramsci came to see the PCI, as a voice and educator of a modern- day collective popular will, not just for singular princes. CPUSA Mass Rally

The Modern Prince

Gramsci’s enhancement of the party and it tasks

 Gramsci was not different from many of his time in wanting a large, centralized and disciplined party. But drawing from his own interests and what he learned in his early days in the Turin workers councils, he wanted more from it.  Workers parties in this period usually had three layers— members who paid dues, voted, and carried out instructions, national leaders who spoke, wrote, theorized and held posts in government and unions, and an intermediate group of cadres who organized and facilitated communication between top and bottom. It was a combat party  Gramsci didn’t disagree with this. But he also saw the party as a school of a new counter-hegemony, one that would facilitate the rise of the working class to the position of a new ruling class. But for Gramsci, this required more than a majority of voters and/or military takeover. Whatever was won in this way could soon be lost, if it was won at all.  Gramsci wanted to extend the party’s intellectual work far beyond the top core. Every worker-member could learn ‘…active participation in practical life, as constructor,

• rganizer, “permanent persuader” and not just a simple
• rator…’ It would win sway throughout civil society.

Our ‘persuaders’: Fred Hampton,

• above. Myles

Horton and Paulo Freire, left. Highlander class, below, Ella Baker.

Readings 5.0

 ‘Intellectuals’

Pages 301-311, The Gramsci Reader.

 ‘Intellectuals and Non-Intellectuals

Page 320, TGR.

 ‘Notes on an Introduction to the Study of Philosophy and the History of Culture’ Page 324, TGR.  ‘Americanism and Fordism’

Pages 275-300, TGR

Intellectuals

Gramsci had a unique approach, defining both ‘traditional’ and ‘organic’ intellectuals

 Gramsci argued that all men and women were intellectuals, in that they pondered their fate and learned from their work.  He also argued that just because one could fry an egg or mend your coat, you were not necessarily a cook or a tailor. Every worker, however, should be challenged and helped to become intellectuals ‘organic’ to the working class, with study and teaching through the party, its schools and its newspapers.  Bordiga ridiculed this. ‘If we want a party that spends time studying and learning, we should simply be a party of school teachers.’ Bordiga believed it was enough for him and a few friends to do the party’s thinking about theory and strategic

• politics. For the rest of the party, they should simply learn to

be more firm and diligent in carrying out their tasks.  Those we usually think of as intellectuals (and they usually see themselves as ‘independent), Gramsci calls ‘traditional intellectuals,’ and notes that they are tied to the dominant class, or a sector of it. He advocates helping to shape a ‘left wing’ of this intelligentsia to side with the working class, but these are not the same as the organic intellectuals developed from within the working class, which he want to win to Marxism and the Modern Prince.

Above, Jamala Rogers, organic

• intellectual. Below, Noam Chomsky,

left wing of US intelligentsia.

Counter-Hegemony

Putting the ‘organic intellectuals’ to work,

• rganizing for the future within the present

 Domination is rule by naked force. Hegemony, which draws out consent from its subalterns, necessarily requires a degree of compromise. For example, workers are allowed a union and a contract.  Implicit in every contract, however, is that bosses remain bosses, and workers remain subalterns.  Since economic conditions always change, so do the terms of contracts (or protective legislation) require re-negotiation. Thus we have the terrains of class struggle—elections, strikes, mass campaigns—taking place in the fields of politics and culture.  In these ‘terrain’ battles, Gramsci wants the working class to understand itself fully, beyond just selling its labor, making products, and getting cash. He wants it to see the irrationality and injustice of the existing order, and its ability, as a working class, to create and manage a new order.  Capitalism itself supplies conflict and crisis as ‘teachable moments,’ while the workers, as organic intellectuals in the ‘school’ of the Modern Prince, do the teaching. The counter-hegemonic bloc begins. ‘If I don’t get pants, no one gets pants.’

Counter-hegemonic agit-prop likely to meet with Gramsci’s approval

Consciousness

‘Educate yourselves because we'll need all your intelligence! Stir yourselves because we'll need all your enthusiasm! Organize yourselves because we’ll need all your strength!’

 Educate is from the Latin, educare, ‘to lead or draw out.’  ‘is it better to “think”, without having a critical awareness,’ Gramsci asked, ‘or, on the other hand, is it better to work

• ut consciously and critically one’s own conception of the

world?’  He wanted revolutionaries to be critical and made it clear that ‘the starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is.’  Education for Gramsci, then, started off more like a feminist consciousness-raising group, where each begins by talking about their lives, sharing and then learning that they are not alone in their sufferings.  But Gramsci pushed harder, encouraging study and reading, pulling in wider ideas and the ability to challenge and question them, seeking one’s place and mission in the entire

• world. And the ability to pass on what one has learned.

 All consciousness was conflicted, a combination of ‘common sense,’ or folklore, religious dogma, any beliefs widely held,

• ften fatalistic. But there’s also what one learned solving

problems, and gaining skills in life, i.e., the root of science.

Women’s ‘speak bitterness’ meeting Top: Conflicted

• self. Right:

Workers study group

Conflicted Consciousness

The key to awakening and change

 Like Marx, Gramsci never uses the term ’false consciousness.’ (It implies a ‘true’ consciousness, a problem that is at once metaphysical and disdainful.)  Instead he argues for ‘two theoretical consciousness's (or one contradictory consciousness): one which is implicit in his activity and which in reality unites him with all his fellow workers in the practical transformation of the real world; and one, superficially explicit or verbal, which he has inherited from the past and uncritically absorbed.’  ‘The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.’ --Marx  In other words, any given ‘Self’ is a dynamic hologram of identities, interests, values, memories and stores of knowledge and relationships—some conflicting, others reinforcing, and interconnected with other ‘Selves.’ It is social and also becomes a field or terrain of struggle.  It is the task of the ‘organic intellectuals’ to organize is this terrain, to shape and grow the Modern Prince.

Old beliefs can be a torment (above), but conflicted selves also have energy to change (left) and interconnect for working together (below).

Organized Will

The party gives birth to new organic intellectuals

• f the working class; but these ‘protagonists’ are also

the critical link in expanding the party and its reach

 ‘If yesterday the subaltern element was a thing, today it is no longer a thing but an historical person, a protagonist; if yesterday it was not responsible, because “resisting” a will external to itself, now it feels itself to be responsible because it is no longer resisting but an agent, necessarily active and taking the initiative.’  Wherever there is oppression, there is

• resistance. This is an objective factor,

independent of our will. What matters to Gramsci is how our will is organized, and given forceful expression within these conditions. The party is a collective protagonist.  Gramsci’s intellectuals were not simply to be learned or eloquent. That would make them a

• priesthood. They had to share life and battles

with the workers and all subalterns. Only that way could they share their passions, and without passions, there would be no revolutionary insurgencies.

Women as protagonists: Foster vs Lecter in film, and Italian women against fascism in life

Common Sense into Good Sense

Our task as radical educators is ‘to draw out’ more so than ‘to inject’ a revolutionary outlook.

 Gramsci doesn’t use ‘common sense’ as its normally used in English as practical wisdom. He means the huge networks of ideas, dictums, fables and stories that are commonly held, even if overlapping and contradictory.  It’s what we absorb under the hegemony of everyday life, the ruling ideas of our time and our history. ‘Work hard, and you’ll get ahead.’ ‘America is the greatest in the world.’ ‘The rich get rich and we get screwed; nothing ever changes’ and so on. Some of it is even partly true.  Our job is to tease ‘good sense’ out of ‘common sense,’ by questioning our experience, seeking truths from facts and practice. We can do this because everyone’s life also includes some ‘good sense’ learned from work skills and solidarity with others, that can be expanded upon.  Reading and study also help, adding to immediate good sense which, taken as a whole, can become revolutionary

• consciousness. You thus become part of the Modern

Prince, and join its praxis.

Common Sense: ‘It’s a free country’ (above), Ms. Grundy (below) offering ‘good sense’ to Betty.

Praxis

The dynamic and practical side of a theoretical field of study, as opposed to the theory alone

 ‘The philosophy of praxis does not tend to leave the simple in their primitive philosophy of common sense but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life.’ -– Gramsci  ‘Philosophy of praxis’ is not just another name for Marxism to get past the prison

• censor. It’s also, many times, another

interpretation of Marxism, one done by Gramsci, and others in the 1950s-60s.  More than just a radical critique of political economy and history, Marxism was also a philosophy of action and engagement. Praxis meant the organic philosophers of the working class had to put their shoulders to the wheel of organizing for revolution and the approach to it.  The condensed version is found in Marx’s ‘Eleven Theses on Feuerbach.’

The radical praxis

• f Lincoln’s ‘wide

awakes’ (above) and antiwar GIs (below).

Fordism

Understanding the present to project a future

 Gramsci in prison still thought it important to study what was new in capital’s growth, both in its factories and its social order.  In the US, Henry Ford had revolutionized auto production with a moving assembly line, and idea borrowed from Chicago’s meatpacking ‘disassembly’ line of moving animal carcasses. His workers reduced production time for a Model T to just 93 minutes, by dividing the process into 45 steps.  But Ford’s aim was different. He wanted to pay his workers enough, $5 per hour, so they could buy his cars for a month’s wage. He also wanted them to have the time to enjoy it, thus the 5- day, 40 hour week. This turned cars from playthings for the rich to necessities for workers and farmers, a mass market.  Ford also experiments with organizing workers entire lives, suppressing drinking, gambling and mistreatment of families. Gramsci was critical.

Top, Chapin in ‘Modern Times.’ Above, moving line. Below, the dissolute life.

The Future

Fordism, Americanism and its meaning for socialism

 Gramsci saw Italy resisting ‘Fordism,’ but often for the wrong reasons. One was that part of the surplus value needed for transition was drained by the ‘parasite’ strata on ‘rents’ from the old order of landlords, clergy and the monarchy. This held Italy

• back. Since American wasn’t ‘cluttered’ with these

feudal remnants, it was quicker to modernize. Whether for ill or good, Gramsci wasn’t sure.  But was it better? Was Fordism connected to fascism and its ‘corporate’ organization of life. Or was it making the productive forces ready for

• socialism. It was another ‘terrain’ for Gramsci.

 Gramsci understood Marx on automation, i.e., the more money into new machines, the less living labor needed, and thus labor time and price could decline toward zero, and markets wither away.  But to get the full benefit, or avoid the worse results, a transformative change was needed. Gramsci framed the right questions, with human agency and open future, but he didn’t answer.

• Top. Ford’s anti-Semitic newspaper. Above,

futurist art. Below, Tesla assembly line without workers.

Gramsci’s Death

The survival of the ‘Notebooks’ and their spread worldwide

 Never fully healthy even when he was free, Gramsci’s prison years were full of suffering. Toward the end ‘…his teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood, and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell.’  Yet he did his greatest work in these years, as if his misery fueled his determination and discipline. It was his way of not surrendering, of being unbowed.  People fought to get him better conditions, to good effect at times, but he refused to appeal to Mussolini for mercy, only for early release. He was moved to a clinic, and the date for his release was April 21, 1937. He was too ill to move, and died on April 27, 27.  Tatiana had smuggled out the Notebooks, bit by bit, then they were sent to Moscow. After the war, they were given to Togliatti, who began to publish them. By 1957, a Selection is first published in English.

Gramsci’s grave in

• Rome. Below,

monument to the prison years. Dutschke and the 1960s New Left: ‘Long march through the institutions.’