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 2 nd 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 2 nd 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 4 th ) were destitute. Moreover, Gramsci had a spinal deformity, and a hunchback. Street in the capital city of Cagliari (above) where Although very bright, he had to leave  Gramsci eventually finished high school, and won a school. Due to poverty, his early politics scholarship to the University of Turin. emerged as Sardinian nationalism .

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  Labriola (above), Italian, but his teacher encouraged him to study the ‘philosopher Sard as well. Gramsci, however, soon moved on to of praxis’. Croce philosophy and history. and Gentile (left), and the campus of In his studies, he was influenced by a Hegelian  the University of Marxist, Antonio Labriola , who had two other Turin (below) 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.

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 Worker-students in Turin (right). Avanti!, and job training, while Gramsci argued for more Gramsci paper (top) universal education, including culture, science and where he starts of socialist politics and, most of all, critical thinking. with his early writings on school for workers, an theater reviews He critiqued educational plans from the viewpoint  (above), scene from of the students, rather than the teachers or Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House’. bosses. ‘Everyone is cultured,’ he argued, even if In 1917, Gramsci also for many it was rudimentary and fragmented. He started a small study never wanted to ‘water down’ thought, arguing group. ‘Club for the Moral Life’ that workers were fully capable of it, give time and resources

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 on the Turin Workers, & the ‘Two Red Years’ By 1917, Gramsci was stifled by the PSI’s reformism,  part of the ‘evolutionism’ of the 2 nd 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. Amadeo Bordiga Learning about Russia, workers in Turin and  Trucks for war elsewhere formed ‘factory councils’ with the idea of (above) were Soviets. Gramsci helped to organize them, despite the main the PSI’s opposition. He saw them, some 200,000, as products of the a ‘socialist core’ in the movement of the present . Fiat workers. Bordiga, a PSI left ‘purist’, accused Gramsci of The war led to suffering, and ‘syndicalism’ for this view of wider allances. thus a wave of strikes and Gramsci and the PSI ‘left’ thus set up their own  factory newspaper in 1919, L'Ordine Nuovo, which became occupations in the voice for insurgent factory councils. Turin and Milan (right). The PSI did little, setting The ‘Biennio Rosso’ (Two Red Years) saw more than  up the split to L'Ordine Nuovo (top) translates as ‘The one million industrial workers involved by 1919, form a new New Order: A Review of Socialist Culture.’ three times more than 1913. party, the PCI.

1921: Founding a New Party, & the Comintern’s Watchful Eye Three groups broke away from the PSI in PCI election poster  (right), a point of 1921: Borgida’s ‘purist’ faction opposing contention between alliances and elections, a group around Angelo Gramsci and Borgia. Tasca, a trade unionist wanting to ally with the Gramsci walking with PSI, and Gramsci’s group, which leaned left, Bukharin in Moscow. but didn’t trust Tasca as a real communist. Lenin had criticized Bordiga and tagged L'Ordine Nuovo as the The PCI formed under the eye of the  Italian paper closest to Comintern, which at that time was organizing Lenin’s own views. 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%