485

GRAMSCI ' S MARXI SM: BEYOND LENI N AND T OGL I AT T I

PAUL PICCONE
Toward a Mediterranean Communism?
If, in the history of Marxism, the period from the Erfurt program to 1914 can
be characterized as the age of the Second International, from 1917 t o the
middle 1920s that of Leninism, from 1924 to early 1950s that of Stalinism,
and from the late 1950s to early 1970s that of Maoism, the 1980s are likely
t o usher in what may be called a new phase of "Gramscism." This is a result
of an international situation wherein bot h Russian and Chinese communism
have exhausted themselves and have found accomodation within a world
order still under a U.S. hegemony, based on new and not yet fully developed
imperialist relations stronger than earlier versions and immune to tradi-
tional challenges. The Second International found its historical limit in the
political integration of the labor movement within late capitalism; Stalinism
ran out of gas with the industrialization of Russia; and Maoism lost its
revolutionary cutting edge with the completion of de-colonization. Yet
Gramscism, understood as t he strategy of socialist transformation in fully
industrialized societies, becomes relevant precisely in the age of cybernated
imperialism. Notwithstanding its historical roots in the realities of post-World
War I central Europe, Gramsci's articulation of Marxism is likely to provide a
framework within which t o recast the problem of emancipation in a cont ext
where Southern Europe becomes the main ideological and pofitical battle-
field.
From the East German uprising of 1953 through the Hungarian Revolu-
tion in 1956, down to Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Russian tragedy has
become all t oo clear: de-Stalinization is impossible wi t hout dismantling the
entire socio-economic apparatus, thus precipitating major political upheaval.
Consequently, no significant internal reforms can be carried out to de-
centralize production and decision-making, up-grade agriculture, and
eliminate waste in order to improve the perennially deficient consumer-goods
Department of Sociology, Washington University
486
sector and institutionalize long-overdue political freedoms. But the system
must deliver at least a mi ni mum of goods and services t o prevent the
germination of serious internal dissatisfaction liable to develop into political
turmoil. The growing integration of Russia into the orbit of Western im-
perialism t hrough the purchase of agricultural, high-technology, and
specialized consumer goods is a successful short-run solution t o these
problems. This failure to transcend Stalinism, resulting in a perpetual socio-
economic backwardness eliminable only through a process of genuine liberali-
zation, entails a high political price: the loss of any lingering revolutionary
pretense for the rest of the world and the degradation of Russia to the level
of a sub-imperialist power - not wi t hst andi ng a growing military might and
partial international successes in some areas of the Third World (e.g., Angola
and India).
A roughly similar fate befell the Chinese model, although for somewhat
different reasons. The Sino-Soviet split derived from the Chinese refusal to
fall in line wi t h the rest of Eastern Europe in a relation of crude imperialism
wi t h Russia. What made the Maoist model popular even before the Cultural
Revolution was its insistence on a Marxism which, unlike the Russian variety,
did not reduce communi sm to industrialization and some compl ement ary
dubious technological progress automatically guaranteeing human emancipa-
tion. It did not forget t hat the goal of communi sm is not a whopping GNP,
but a new t ype of human being and a new civilization. Yet, it remained
Stalinist in its core - especially with regard to an opportunistic and un-
principled foreign policy reminiscent of Stalin's worst blunders in the 1930s.
Geared to industrially backward societies such as China, the Maoist model
turned out t o be largely irrelevant in industrialized capitalist societies where
the platitudes of the "Red Book" cannot compet e with highly sophisticated
cultural industries.
Although this process of theoretical and political involution had already
become obvious by the late 1960s - which explains the ext raordi nary success
of aberrations such as Althusserianism at t hat time as efforts to politically
rehabilitate or t hodox Marxism within a Western cont ext 1 - a systematic
reconsideration of Marxism in the West from the viewpoint of traditional
communi st parties could begin only after the theoretical and political thrusts
of the 1968 movement s had either exhaust ed themselves or had been
successfully repressed. Thus, Perlini is correct in seeing the rising popul ari t y
of Gramscism in It al y and France as precisely the spearhead of this systematic
reconsideration of Marxism, and the ' re4aunching' of Gramsci as "an
operation which not by accident comes about in a moment of alleged (but
not true) eclipse of the themes of 1968 and aiming at substituting t hem wi t h
487
a pseudo-left ideology - the masked apology for reformism. ''2 One need
only survey the window-displays of Roman and Parisian bookstores crammed
with officially and unofficially sanctioned works on or by Gramsci t o realize
that such is at least partially the case. But Perlini and those increasingly rarer
remnants of the Italian extra-parliamentary left not yet fully reintegrated
within the rapidly expanding umbrella of the Italian Communist Party are
blinded by their hatred for the long reformist history of Italian Communism.
They reduce Gramsci's Marxism (which has always been claimed by the part y
as its historical matrix) t o "a para-Marxism derived from the reversal of
Marxism itself into idealism, ''3 and Gramscism to the ideological otherness of
Russian policy in Western Europe seeking the integration of the Common
Market into the Russian economic and socio-political orbit. 4
Gramsci's work is almost ideally suited for such an ideological revitafization
of Western Communist Parties seeking a difficult blend of cont i nui t y with
their reformist past and new perspectives for the present on the eve of their
participation in bourgeois governments, while clothing the whole project
within a revolutionary theoretical garb. But although such an operation may
seem viable in the abstract, it is almost impossible to carry out in the present
pofitical context. The likely counter-productive result is that, in spite of
itself, the Gramscian ideological re-armament undertaken by the Italian and
French Communist Parties will generate the political space for a practical
reconsideration of the meaning of socialism in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Even if inspired by the darkest opportunistic calculations, the expansion of
the long-standing internal frontist policy not only tendentially checkmates
traditional centralist postures, but qualitatively changes the very character of
the parties involved. Thus, the de-Stalinization that has remained unfulfilled
in Eastern Europe, Russia and China, finds its realization in the theory and
practice of the Italian, French and Spanish Communist Parties. Unlike its
historical precedent in the Second International, this new blend of revolution-
ary (Gramscian) rhetoric and reformist practice so hat ed by the extra-
parliamentary left is likely to provide the only hope for a revolutionary
socialist alternative in a world hegemonized by the new forms of imperialism
based on scientific and technological domination and protracted involution
by traditional "socialist" countries. It is for this reason that the vindication
of the genuinely revolutionary dimension of Gramsci is of the utmost
urgency - especially in light of the work of the Frankfurt School and of
the new conditions brought about by the ongoing post-Vietnam restructuring
o f imperialism.
488
The Genesis of Gramscism
Gramsci's works have had a strange history. His imprisonment from 1926 up
t o his death, and the combination of bot h Fascism and Stalinism, succeeded
in suppressing his mature prison writings until well after the end of World
War II s - and t hen the Gramscian heritage became so successfully instru-
mentalized as the theoretical support for the policies of the Italian Com-
munist Party that Perlini is right in claiming that "t o deal with Gramsci
means, first and foremost, coming to grips with [that] Party. ''6 What
happened t o Gramsci closely parallels what happened to Marx after his death
when Engels, in further elaborating and popularizing his thought, defused it
of most of its relevant features, positivized the dialectic, and generally paved
the way for the Marxisms of the Second International. 7 In Togliatti,
Gramsci found his Engels. Whereas Marx and Engels were two German
emigr~s in England, Gramsci and Togliatti worked closely together from 1911
at least up to 1922, first as students in Turin, and then as militants in the
Italian Communist Party. In bot h cases, there was a lifelong friendship
resulting in the two survivors, Engels and Togliatti, becoming the heirs and
leading interpreters of Marx and Gramsci respectively. 8 But bot h Togliatti
and Engels turned out to be much more modest thinkers than their respective
friends, with the unfort unat e consequence that it t ook over half a cent ury t o
rediscover Marx, and almost as long to properly evaluate Gramsci's thought.
Thus, the resulting multiplicity of interpretations of Marx has its counterpart
in Gramsci. As Salvadori has put it.
What has happened t o Gramsci is that he has become a fountain from
which everyone takes whatever water he needs: for some he is the father
of a conception of authentic proletarian democracy; for others, he is a
strict Stalinist; for still others, he is a social-democrat, maybe even of a
right-wing variety; there are those who consider him an or t hodox Marxist-
Leninist; while in the eyes of others, to conclude, he is an incorrigible
idealist who has never understood anything of Marxism - or just about. 9
Yet, the official Italian Communist Party interpretation did become the
dominant one, setting the pace for all other interpretations. 1~ Although this
Party has always been, and remains, the most open and intellectually dynamic
of all Communist parties, its interpretations of Gramsci were hopelessly
one-sided. Thus, notwithstanding an immense literature on the matter, the
Gramsci debate is far from over.
This situation came about when, after the fall of fascism, Togliatti, who had
succeeded Gramsci as the head of the Italian Communist Party, systematically
489
proceeded t o embalm Gramsci's thought as the main ideological pillar of the
Party' s de facto social-democratic policies and theoretical orientation. But
since in the immediate post-World War II period official communist ideology
was under Stalin's uncontested control and all of Marxist t heory was presen-
ted as an uninterrupted development of a single theoretical trend from
Marx to the present, this meant that, in order to fit into the official Party
chronology. Gramsci had t o be subsumed as a follower of Lenin - a Lenin
tailored according to the Stalinist model and, purified of most of his
revolutionary features, reduced to the level of a harmless social-democrat.
This integration of Lenin' s, Gramsci's and Stalin's thoughts was necessitated
by the particular historical situation of post-fascist Italy. According to
Lentini, the task was "t o reconcile the rich Gramscian theoretical heritage,
and what is relevant and plausible in his political orientation, with the very
different reality of the international communist movement . " This was
particularly true in 1945, when
Ercoli (Togliatti' s pseudonym) could not present himself to his comrades
as the author of a policy lacking roots in the tradition of the Italian
Communist Party, nor could he approach ot her forces, whose alliance he
sought, as the pure and simple executor of the new phase of Soviet policy.
In Gramsci's teachings he readily sought the support of a stronger
aut hori t y for his policies - an aut hori t y root ed in Italian politics and
culture, in the hi st ory of the party, and in anti-fascist struggle, a2
Notwithstanding initial and rather unsuccessful opposition from Crocean
intellectuals who saw Gramsci as one of their own, 13 the instrumentalization
of Gramsci as the "Italianizer" of what in the post-war period was general
Soviet policy turned out t o be relatively easy: a selective reading of his works,
the hypostatization of some of his historically contingent policies to the level
of the party' s basic program, and a prudent silence concerning Gramsci's
growing opposition t o Stalinist policies 14 readily generated a politically
marketable Gramsci. Thus, Togliatti became the main architect of the myt h
of Gramsci as a brilliant theoretical foot not e to Lenin - a Lenin which, as
already indicated, was an opportunistic Stalinist reconstruction manufactured
in Russia t o provide its de-facto totalitarian and social-democratic policies
with a legitimating antecedent.
What is amazing is that the Italian extra-parliamentary Left has generally
accepted the party' s dubious appropriation of Gramsci and, therefore, has
constantly attacked him as a non-Leninist, non-Marxist and generally a
social-democrat.Is According t o Merli, one of the leading extra-parliamentary
Leftist anti-Gramscians, 16 Gramsci ends up forfeiting the very idea of a
490
"revolutionary break" in favor of a "revolution in two stages," or a
"revolution wi t hout a revolution, " by posing the "war of position" as the
first stage of a strategy allegedly leading to the eventual "war of manouvre,"
which, unfort unat el y, never comes. Consequently, the party' s evolutionistic
approach whereby power is to be gained gradually and through electoral
means is seen as a direct continuation of Gramsci's "revolution without a
revolution" which is rejected as social-democratic through and through. Aside
from abstractly condemning Gramsci for posing the only viable alternative in
a very limited socio-historical cont ext , this "critique from the Left " uncritic-
ally assumes as its theoretical measure a Leninist model which, even in its
unadulterated original version, not only was immensely inferior t o Gramsci's
but, as we shall indicate later, on closer examination turned out to be a mere
extension of predominant bourgeois ideology.
This ideological comedy of errors surrounding Gramsci-interpretations is
further obfuscated by the Trotskyists' own positive evaluation and appropria-
tion of Gramsci. 17 What makes this appear abnormal is that, at first sight, one
would predict that, given their close political affinities and their equally tragic
fate within the official communist movement, Italian Trotskyists would side
with Bordiga against Gramsci since, as Perlini rightly put it, '*Bordiga saw
certain essential things before Trotsky and was more coherent than the
latter in drawing the due consequences. ''18 But Bordiga's perceptive reser-
vations had been very early branded as "sectarian" and "ext remi st " by
Trotsky himself at a time when he still harbored hopes of gaining hegemony
within the Russian party and was openly against Bordigan-type fac-
tionalism in the name of a fictitious party unity. Consequently, Italian
Trotskyists have taken great pains to separate Gramsci from Togliatti,
starting from an open disagreement between the two before Gramsci's
arrest in 1926 concerning Stalin"s administrative handling of Trot sky and the
Left opposition. 19 Without venturing here into the particular merits of this
anti-Stalinist interpretation of Gramsci, 2~ for the present purpose it need only
be pointed out that Italian Trotskyists have rendered an invaluable service
in helping to clarify a whole series of crucial historical points. Yet, on the
whole, their account remains unconvincing in light of Gramsci's commit-
ment to the party.
Given the breadth and variety of interpretations of Gramsci, it becomes
necessary to investigate what constitutes a Marxist reappropriation of this
theoretical heritage, and how to concretely articulate it within a new
cont ext which has rendered it largely obsolete. This is a problem which, not
accidentally, had already taxed to the limit the theoretical arsenal not only of
Gramsci but of all his cont emporary Hegelian Marxists with respect to Marx,
491
Lenin and the Second International. As already indicated, the history of the
process whereby the wealth of Gramsci's social thought was reduced to only a
few of its minor moments is almost identical to the fate of Marx's works in
the late 19th century. What facilitated these instrumentalizations and fal-
sifications was t hat bot h thinkers followed roughly the same pattern of
intellectual development from initially explicit idealist perspectives to specific
and historically-determinate positions. Since the original framework was
never altogether abandoned but only increasingly relegated to an invisible
background, what came down as their heritage were precisely those specific
and historically-determinate positions rendered obsolete by historical
developments, themselves partly precipitated by the at t empt t o realize the
political implications of these positions. This is why the reduction of Marx's
thought to its bare economic components resulted in a systematic impoverish-
ment of Marxism within the Second International and led even Lenin to dig
out Hegels Logi c in order to make sense out of Capital through the reintegra-
tion of its faded philosophical background. 21
Unfortunately, this st ory has no happy ending, for it is not the case that once
the forgotten theoretical framework is reintegrated with its severed moments,
all is well and t heory and practice live happily thereafter. History takes its
toll. As Korsch put it, "all attempts t o re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a
whole in its original function as a t heory of the working class' social
revolution are reactionary utopias. ''22 Pending the dubious achievement of
the Hegelian Absolute, all theoretical constructions must be relegated t o
onesidedness and can only receive their validation as historically grounded
mediations not extrapolable beyond the cont ext within which t hey are
created. 23 Furthermore, within this logic, all t heoret i cal claims t o absolute
knowledge not only turn out to be epistemological frauds but, as Castoriadis
has pointed out in terms of 20t h century realities, t hey provide the ideol-
ogical justification for bureaucratic domination. 24 This is why the more
philosophical moments of Marx's work become the most salvageable heritage:
whereas the economics of Capital and of Theori es o f Surpl us Value remain
inextricably bound to the competitive market conditions of 19th century
capitalism and, as such, confront us as theoretical elaborations of a reality
long-since past, the Manuscri pt s and the Grunclrisse - and the not strictly
economic parts of Capital - still provide us with a philosophy which,
concretely historicized, can help us meaningfully deal with our present.
Marxism survives as faith precisely because, as Adorno put it, it was not (and
we should add: it could not have been) realized. 2s
The fate of Gramsci's thought is very similar. As with Marx, the early works
are openly Hegelian (Crocean) - a feature that, although subsequently
492
de-emphasized in what he wrote as a part y official from the format i on of the
Italian Communi st Party to his arrest in 1926, reappears full-blown in the
Prison Notebooks. ~6 Also, as in Marx, what has been embal med as official
Gramscian t hought consists of generally ideological falsifications and
hypost at i zed historically-determinate notions least likely t o survive the cor-
rosive effects of changing conditions. This construction of the official
"Gr amsci " was carried out, as already mentioned, by Togliatti in a series of
ext remel y influential essays written most l y from the end of World War I I t o
1964 shortly before his death. 27 It is useful to closely examine Togliatti' s
claim not in order to provide a merel y scholastic refutation, but as a guide t o
some of Gramsci' s key notions, where distance from bot h Lenin and the
various Marxist-Leninist formulations will indicate their relevance for a
radical social t heory of late capitalism, a t heory irreducible to the neo-
Gramscism underst ood in Perlini' s sense of "an insidious ideology of the
adversary camouflaged as revolutionary theory. ' ' 2s
Marxist Methodology
To the ext ent t hat within any t heory basic notions receive their meanings in
relation to bot h the logical structure as well as their internal relations wi t h
other notions of the t heory in question, it may very well be t hat similar
claims may have substantially different functions and meanings within dif-
ferent theories. Since Togliatti, Lenin and Gramsci have three different
theories of Marxism, it follows t hat although all three may be using similar
phrases, t hey may not mean the same thing. Thus, although Togliatti is
correct in claiming that, for Gramsci, "t o do politics means to act in such a
way as t o t ransform the world. Hence politics contains everyone' s real
philosophy along wi t h the substance of hi st ory . . . . ,,29 it does not follow t hat
for Gramsci the t r ut h of his political t hought is reducible t o "t he met hod
which is Marxist and Leninist ' ' a~ as bot h Togliatti and Marxist-Leninists
understand it. Although Togliatti did not bot her t o document these claims, it
is not difficult t o provide an army of quotes t o support them. 31 Togliati and
Gramsci, however, do not mean the same thing by "met hod. "
The question of Marxist met hodol ogy, in fact, is one of the most confused
within the present state of theoretical discussion. Whereas Togliatti and the
official communi st version codify the met hodol ogy within a formal domain
accessible only to the "leaders of the working class" and applicable to the
political struggle leading to the overthrow of prevailing capitalist relations, 32
for Gramsci such an objectification of met hod leads Marxism t o "become an
ideology in the worst sense of the word, t hat is t o say, a dogmatic system of
eternal and absolute truths. ''33 Although within Marxism-Leninism the
493
specific cont ent of t heory is considered variable as a function of changing
historical circumstances, the met hod whereby this variable content is proper-
ly dealt with is t hereby reified precisely to the metaphysical level of
absolute truths. That this met hod subsequently becomes the sole possession
of the revolutionary technicians of the Party 34 and thus considerably con-
tributes t o widening the social gap between those who know and those who
do not know - precisely what, among other things, the revolution is meant to
bridge - makes it into the opposite of what Gramsci sought.
For Gramsci the Marxian met hod is fundament al l y informal (i.e., irreducible
to a series of steps or procedures) and subjective. To the ext ent t hat he sees
Marxism as the most recent synthesis of the Western tradition, presupposing
the "Renaissance and the Reformat i on, German idealism and the French
Revolution, Calvinism and English classical economics, secular liberalism and
this historicism which is at the root of the whole modern conception of
life, ''3s the goal is none other t han the realization of what this tradition has
been aiming for: t hat free social individual described by Marx in the Grund-
risse 36 and prefigured even earlier in the citizen of the Greek polis or in the
Christian soul. Only with the advent of communi sm, however, is it possible to
finally realize this goal by abolishing the last expression of class divisions
which have hi t hert o prevented the maj ori t y of manki nd from becoming
human beings in the fullest sense, thus not onl y reducing the freedom of the
few to an abstract freedom, but also degrading the various expressions of this
Western tradition to "mani fest at i ons of the intimate contradictions by which
society is lacerated. ''37 Thus, Gramsci saw Marxism as "absol ut e his-
toricism ''3s in so far as its synthesizes the tradition and concretely works out
the means whereby the emancipation of manki nd is carried out by destroying
the last and most advanced forms of internal social divisions. Since bot h the
historical cont ent as well as the tradition to be fulfilled are constantly under
development, no formal met hod to mediate between the two can be given
once and for all: which explains why prams is the central Marxist category. It
is t hat creative activity which reconstitutes the past in order to forge the
political tools in the present, to bring about a qualitatively different future.
This is why Gramsci hailed the Bolshevik revolution as "The Revolution
against Capital." To the ext ent that Capital "in Ru s s i a . . . was the critical
demonst rat i on of the fatal necessity whereby a bourgeoisie had to come into
being, a capitalist era had to begin along with a civilization of the Western
type, before the proletariat could even consider its class vindications, its
revolution, ''39 it had to be put aside. In the official social-democratic inter-
pretation, Capital had been seen as a blueprint for the necessary stages of
historical development. This objectivistic i nt erpret at i on was politically de-
494
activating: "event s have exploded t h e critical schemes within which the
history of Russia would have had t o develop according t o the canons of
historical materialism. " "The Bolsheviks are not ' Marxists, ' " Gramsci con-
tinues, but "t hey live the Marxist thought t hat never d i e s . . , which always
posits man, and not brute economic facts, as the supreme factor in hi st ory. "
Thus, already in 1918 Gramsci had seen the obsolescence of the historically
specific features of classical Marxism (at least, as seen by the Second Inter-
national) and what rendered it still valid: the pri macy of human activity over
and above its theoretical objectifications, along with the ability of "Marxist
t hought " to concretely elaborate the revolutionary tradition wi t hout
becoming inextricably ent rapped in any of its historically specific moments.
This is why his Marxian met hod boils down to socio-historically grounded
political activity faithful t o an emanci pat ory teleology but irreduclible to any
preconst i t ut ed set of procedures. As Salvadori put it, "t he actively organizing
element within Gramsci' s work was not the scientific and philological recon-
struction of Marx and Engels' t hought (as in the case, we could add, of
Lukfics), but rather, the concrete requirements of political praxis, ' ' 4~ In
Togliatti' s interpretation, however, Gramsci' s originality is reduced to his
mere adherence to Party politics as it is hierarchically set by the needs of the
world communi st movement - something t oo reminiscent of Togliatti' s own
political role. 41
This also explains Gramsci' s description of his own views as "Leni ni st . " The
Lenin t hat Gramsci knew and admired was quite different from bot h the
historical Lenin and the sanctified version embal med in Red Square. As
he wrote in prison, his Lenin is t o Marx as St. Paul is to Christ: "t hey
represent two phases: science and action which are homogeneous and
heterogeneous at the same t i me, " yet bot h are "necessary to the same
degree. ''42 The Lenin whom Gramsei knew was the man of action who had
successfully carried out a major revolution. It has been established for some
time now t hat i nformat i on about Russia, Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution
around the 1920s was very inadequate 43 and by 1968 even leading part y
intellectuals such as Ragionieri had t o conclude t hat Gramsci was at least a
very different kind of "Leni ni st " round 1920. 44 Furt hermore, a rigorous
exami nat i on of their respective outlooks reveals qualitatively different
theoreticians. Thus, for instance, Gramsci did not know most of Lenin' s
works before 1922. What has since become the foundat i on of Marxism-
Leninism was simply not available to hi m (and Lenin himself had managed to
j unk most of the crude ideas contained in these works). Even after 1918,
when Lenin' s name exploded on the world scene with the Bolshevik revolu-
tion, the works which were translated into Italian (and other languages, for
t hat ma t t e r ) f o r wide circulation, were primarily those "devot ed to the
495
immediate struggle of those years, against social chauvinism and centrism, for
the foundat i on and organization of the communi st International. "4s With the
possible exception of the pamphl et s on Imperialism and State and Revolution
- written between the two main phases of the Russian Revolution - all the
works involved are precisely those which present Lenin as the dedicated
political leader who, never losing sight of the final goal, is nonetheless able to
constantly reorient strategy according to the requirements of changing social
conditions. At any rate, it is generally agreed t hat what passed for Leninism
in the early post-World War I years was not "real l y" Leninism as Togliatti and
Marxism-Leninism understand it in the post-World War I I period. 46
Given this state of affairs, Togliatti' s claim concerning the Leninist heritage to
which Gramsci allegedly provides a foot not e - even i f a brilliant one -
appears highly suspect. Thus, it is instructive to closely examine Togliatti' s
full evidence. According to Togliatti,
there are in Lenin at least three mai n chapters which determine the whole
development of his action and thought: a doctrine of imperialism as the
highest phase of capitalism; a doctrine of revolution and therefore of the
State, and a doctrine of the Party. 47
The acceptance and development of these chapters is, for Togliatti, "t he
decisive fact or in Gramsci' s whole evolution as a thinker and as a political
man of act i on. " A closer examination of these three chapters, however,
reveals that, far from constituting equally fundament al pillars of Lenin' s
thought, t hey are three main tenets of Marxism-Leninism, the structure of
Lenin' s thought is much more ambiguous and complex, and the relationship
between Lenin and Gramsci is radically different.
The Theory of Imperialism
Almost sixty years after it was originally developed, Lenin' s t heory of
imperalism appears t oday to be decidedly obsolete. It projected t hat "The
export of capital influences, greatly accelerates the development of capitalism
in those countries ill which it is export ed, " while it may tend "t o arrest
development in the capital-exporting countries. ''48 Thus, imperialism was
to help the economic growth of the Third World - a not i on t hat contradicts
all of the historical events of the 20t h century. As Emmanuel has poi nt ed
out, there does not seem to have been any significant export of capital from
Britain between 1870 and 1914 - the period t hat Lenin studied - and he
quotes Keynes to the effect t hat there had not been "any net export of
capital s i n c e . . . 1580, when Queen Elizabeth invested Drake' s treasure in the
496
Levant Company and later used the profits t o found the West India Com-
pany! ''49 Furt hermore, as Carlo has shown, the whole t heory was self-
cont radi ct ory from the very beginning since, in another part of the same
pampl' det Lenin
emphasizes the growing i mport ance of foreign produced income for met ro-
politan capitalism: thus, from 1865 to 1898 such income grows ninefold,
while English wealth on the whole only doubles, and serves to maintain
the unproductive consumpt i on of a significant mass of rentiers (around a
million),or t o corrupt labor aristocracies or, finally, t o finance extravagant
horse- races, so
One could go on. The point, however, is t hat Imperialism was from the very
beginning "a marginal work which never had any scientific pr e t e ns i ons . . .
and far from being a general t heory of imperialism, it was only an empirical
analysis conditioned by a particular historical situation. ' ' sl Purely in terms of
Lenin' s intellectual biography, Imperialism must be regarded - cont rary to
Togliatti' s claims - primarily as a political t ract rather t han a scientific
treatise. The success t hat it has had is due, as Basso has put it, more "t o the
personality of the aut hor and to the practical results obtained by his political
action t han t o the book' s actual content. ' ' s2 In the cont ext within which it
was written, it was a polemic against social-democratic theories which
projected the eternal development of capitalism or which, as wi t h Luxemburg
but still on a similarly mechanistic and economistic vein, saw socialism as the
inevitable result of the eventual collapse of capitalism because of its irre-
solvable internal contradictions. In either case, what was not taken into
account was precisely what Samir Amin, and Luk~ics before hi m, s3 see as the
lasting cont ri but i on of Lenin' s pamphl et : "t he objective ties between the
monopolies and revisionism" in a world cont ext typified by new contra-
dictions as well as by a new t ype of working class, s4 Thus, the political thrust
of Imperialism consists in identifying the struggle against revisionism in the
advanced capitalist countries as the pri mary task in a new economic world
order where the heaviest burden of exploitation had already been shifted to
the Third World (thus generating new revolutionary possibilities there).
Precisely t o the ext ent t hat what separated Lenin f r om the rest of the
social-democrats - and even Rosa Luxemburg - was his vOluntarism and his
constant emphasis on Bolshevik part y organization, the pamphl et Imperialism
must be seen as essentially anot her powerful bombast meant to demolish any
fatalistic account of imperialism and t o reiterate the centrality of the
conscious subjective moment , i.e., the part y (even if it tended to take on
fetishistic forms). But even this "pol i t i cal " reading of Imperialism does not
bring Lenin much closer t o Gramsci, since Lenin still presents what is
497
ultimately an economistic explanation of reformist ideology, whereas
Gramsci' s account is t hroughout focused on the cultural dimension.
In official communi st historiography, however, Lenin' s views on imperialism
have been reintegrated into a linear t heory of history according to which
there are necessary stages of social development, and imperialism is once
again fatalistically seen as the final phase of capitalism inevitably brought
about by the logic of the syst em - exactly along the mechanistic lines of
social-democracy, ss It is i mport ant t o keep in mind this process of social-
democratic involution of official communi st philosophy of history in order to
comprehend the further integration of Gramsci' s views on questions of
economic development - as, for example, worked out in his famous
"Sout hern Quest i on" - within the official part y position. In fact, seen
within this official optics, the probl em of Italian Southern underdevel opment
becomes one of how t o modernize its semi-feudal social structure. Thus,
cont rary to what Gramsci himself says in the unfinished manuscript on the
subject written immediately prior to his arrest in 1926, in "Leni ni zi ng" his
account, the Italian Communi st Party came very close to reducing it to the
"ideology of the lead-ball" according to which the under-developed Italian
South is seen as an economic drag on the remaining industrialized and
economically dynamic North. But this ideology of the lead-ball is precisely
what Gramsci fought as bourgeois ideology and tried to show t hat the
proletariat in Turin had already rejected it in 1914 when t hey offered to have
Salvemini, a leading Southern advocate {rneridionalista), run as their own
candidate, s6
At any rate, it is clear t hat neither Lenin' s own account of imperialism, nor
the official communi st assimilation of it, has much to do with the Gramscian
account, which is by no means a t heory of imperialism and focuses primarily
on the question of Southern intellectuals as the possible catalytic agents for
the revolutionary political action needed to resolve the probl em of under-
development in a socialist direction. General economic questions are always
seen as secondary and mediated through cultural lenses by Gramsci for
whom, consequently, political organization and conscious human inter-
vention is t hroughout the axis around which everything revolves. At first
sight, this approach makes him appear very similar, at least in intent, to
Lenin. A closer examination, however, reveals that Gramsci and Lenin
differed significantly on other key notions such as revolution, political
organization, and economics.
498
The Theory of Revolution
This state of affairs becomes clear through an analysis of their respective
views of, for example, state and revolution. Although Lenin did not suf-
ficiently analyze the not i on of revolution and remained caught within the
predomi nant concepts of science, technology and organization, thus fore-
shadowing the mechanical reproduction of capitalist relations even after the
successful overthrow of capitalism, at least in State and Revolution he
stressed the qualitative displacement of state bureaucrats by new ones -
armed workers - and the elimination of all privileges. Official communi st
ideology aft er the 1930s reinstated the privileges and merel y altered the
legitimating rhetoric. Bot h the Leninist and the official communi st versions
are qualitatively different from what Gramsci had in mind: the coming into
being of a new humani t y self-conscious of its potentialities and consequently
i mmune to any new form of instrumentalization. He avoided the traps into
which Lenin readily fell by an unrelenting critique of positivism and its
various guises. There is absolutely no fetishism of science in Gramsci for
whom "i t is evident t hat it is not at omi c t heory t hat explains human history
but the other way about: in other words, t hat at omi c t heory and all scientific
hypot heses and opinion are superstructures. ''sT Thus, society and politics can
never be adequately grasped by an obfectivistic social science:
The situating of the probl em as a search for laws and for constant, regular
and uni form lines is connected to a need, conceived in a somewhat puerile
and ingenious way, to resolve in per empt or y fashion the practical problem
of the predictability of historical events, s8
In fact, in order to prevent the occlusion of the all-important creative
moment in the scientific enterprise, he avoids talking about Marxism as "t he
science of politics" but uses the less smoot h phrase "t he art and science of
politics." The stress t hroughout is on politics as an activity so t hat prediction,
far from being an ext rapol at i on from the given or a mere extension of past
regularities into the future, is primarily an act of commi t ment : "i n reality one
can ' foresee' to the ext ent t hat one acts, to the ext ent t hat one applies a
vol unt ary effort and therefore contributes concretely to creating the results
foreseen. ' ' s9 Bourgeois social sciences presuppose precisely what is in the
process of historically disappearing: the passivity of the masses; "statistical
laws can be empl oyed in the art and science of politics onl y so long as the
great masses of the popul at i on r e ma i n . . , essentially passive. ' ' 6~
None of this can be found in Lenin, with the result t hat he hypostatizes
science above and beyond society, thus accepting its application (technology)
499
as neutral. But, as George has shown, to the extent that bot h early 20th
cent ury science and technology are primarily social relations and, moreover,
bourgeois social relations, revolution in Lenin turns out t o be a mere shift in
management. The organizational structure is retained: the Party commissar
replaces the capitalist boss. Throughout the revolutionary process, the
proletariat remains essentially unchanged:
For Lenin, it is a mat t er of accepting the proletariat as capitalism has
constituted it in order to carry out slightly different tasks. It has been well
educated and well adjusted. In other words, the basic personality created
by capitalism is the one upon which socialism must rest. The construction
of socialism presupposes alienation in its most profound sense: submission
t o aut hori t y and repression of individual possibilities of imagination,
aut onomy, liberty, creativity, i.e., of organization. 61
Tiffs is strikingly evident in a comparison of Lenin' s and Gramsci's analyses of
Taylorism. For Lenin, it was
a combination of the refined brutality of bourgeois exploitation and a
number of the greatest scientific achievements in the field of analyzing
mechanical motions during work, the elimination of superfluous and
awkward motions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the intro-
duction of the best system of accounting and control, etc. 62
All would be well, according to Lenin, once the Taylor system were brought
under socialist management. How the brutality would be eliminated remains a
moot point and, since efficiency and brutality are inextricably connected, it
is understandable why the Russian revolution ultimately capitulated by
reintroducing new relations of domination. As Korsch spelled it out
shortly afterward (1922), no proletarian revolution is possible wi t hout the
revolutionary transformation of the mode of production and of labor. 63 Far
from being mere Stalinist deviations, the new relations of domination were to
an ext ent already root ed in Lenin' s partial and confused theoretical vision.
How does Gramsci deal with Taylorism? First of all, he does not approach it
purely as a technological problem of efficiency, but (in "Americanism and
Fordism") as a social relation inextricably connected with everyday life,
prohibition, sexuality and culture in general. Secondly, what concerns
Gramsci is not primarily production, but what happens to the subjects who in
producing commodities, produce themselves as well. Far from focusing on the
disciplined proletarians as human robots, which in Lenin are mechanically
transposed into the Party where, owing to their discipline and docility, t ho
500
can readily fit into the Bolshevik organization, 64 Gramsci stresses the changes
the human subject undergoes. What he finds is t hat the process of ut t er
degradation to the level of a mere mechanical function, rather t han
destroying the producing subject, provides conditions conducive to the over-
coming of alienation. Gramsci' s critics never tire of pointing out t hat in
Gramsci no not i on of false consciousness, alienation or reification is to be
found, 6s and it is futile t o search his writings for an analysis of the caliber of
Lukfics' "Rei fi cat i on and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" in History and
Class Consciousness. But this does not mean t hat Gramsci did not see
alienation as a probl em. Of course, neither Gramsci nor Lenin was familiar
with the Marxian t hemat i c of alienation since the Manuscripts and the
Grundrisse were unknown to t hem. Yet, while Gramsci concretely deals with
the substantial issues involved, Lenin altogether ignores them.
In Lenin, the focus is always on power and on the organizational means to
conquer it. Thus, the coming of socialism tends to be seen as a solution to the
capitalist probl ems of production, efficiency, and organization rather than in
terms of the rise of a new humani t y, a new civilization, and the abolition of
domination (which are seen as superstructural epi phenomena automatically
t aken care of wi t h the establishment of the "workers' st at e"). In Gramsci, on
the other hand, the stress is always on the latter, with the former being
merely the means for its achievement. Unlike Lukfics, for whom the probl em
of alienation is located squarely in the capitalist division of labor, in Gramsci
it is always a political problem. 66 This does not mean t hat Gramsci altogether
ignores the product i on process. When he deals with it, however, it is not as i f
it were a set of interacting abstract categories, as in Lukfics, or an objective
thing as in Lenin, but as a living activity which in capitalism reduces human
beings t o the level of mere animals and consequently generates a political
confront at i on eventually leading to communi sm. This is brilliantly captured
in a long passage wor t h quoting in full:
The c o mp o s i t o r . . , has t o keep his hands and eyes constantly in move-
ment , and this makes his mechanization easier. But if one really thinks
about it, the effort t hat these workers have to make in order t o isolate
from the oft en fascinating intellectual content of a t ext (and the more
fascinating it is the less work is done and the less well) its written
symbolisation, this perhaps is the greatest effort t hat can be required in
any trade. However it is done, and it is not the spiritual deat h of man.
Once the process of adaptation has been completed, what really happens is
t hat the brain of the worker, far from being mummi fi ed, reaches a state of
compl et e freedom. The only thing t hat is compl et el y mechanized is the
physical gesture; the memor y of the trade, reduced to simple gestures
501
repeated at an intense rhyt hm, "nest l es" in the muscular and nervous
centres and leaves the brain free and unencumbered for other occupa-
t i o n s . . . American industrialists have understood all t oo well this dialectic
inherent in the new industrial met hods. They have underst ood that
"t rai ned gorilla" is just a phrase, t hat "unf or t unat el y" the worker remains
a man hnd even t hat during this work he thinks more, or at least has
greater opportunities for thinking, once he has overcome the crisis of
adaptation without being eliminated: and not only does the worker think,
but the fact t hat he gets no i mmedi at e satisfaction from his work and
realises t hat t hey are trying to reduce him to a trained gorilla, can lead hi m
into a train of t hought t hat is far from conformist. 67
Whereas American industrialists have become aware of this process, the same
cannot be said for most Leninists who t end t o deal wi t h the proletarians as
trained gorillas - even within the Party! The probl em with Gramsci' s account
- which he could not be expect ed t o have foreseen - is t hat capitalism
during the past hal f cent ury has proceeded to separate workers physically
from one anot her by means of new political tools such as the assembly line,
and also to colonize their thoughts - to use Aronowitzs phrase 68 - by means
of consumerism and ot her ideological traits diffused by the mass media in a
way t hat makes it difficult for critical elements to emerge from the laboring
process.
At any rate, it is clear t hat whereas for Lenin, what is always central is the
form of revolution which, to the ext ent t hat it uncritically retains capitalist
and domineering contents, paves the way for the now well-known abstract
negations of the Russian revolution, ir~ Gramsci, the cont ent is always in the
foreground. Thus, although his concept of hegemony has been associated
wi t h Lenin' s 69 and altogether identified with the dictatorship of the
the proletariat, Gramsci' s emphasis is on direction while Lenin' s is on
domination. The result is t hat the Leninist concept focuses exclusively
on political society, while its Gramscian count erpart includes bot h
political and civil society - and the very terms have considerably dif-
ferent meanings for the two of them. 7~ Things are complicated, however, by
Gramsci' s own claim t hat "t he theoretical-practical principle of hege-
mony has also epistemological significance, and it is here t hat Illich' s
(Lenin' s) greatest theoretical cont ri but i on t o the philosophy of praxis
should be sought. In these terms one could say t hat Ilich advanced philoso-
phy as phi l osophy in so far as he advanced political doctrine and practice. "71
Passages such as these, which abound in Gramsci, are what mislead people of
the caliber of Moldolfo t o locate an ant i nomy "bet ween the libertarian and
the authoritarian t endency t hat is embodi ed in the Gramscian concept of
502
hegemony. ,,72 But an examination of how Lenin theoretically articulates this
not i on shows that, in his enthusiasm for the Russian revolution, Gramsci may
have projected onto Lenin his own concept of hegemony. As Bobbio has
shown, Gramsci actually owed Lenin far less than he himself acknowledged
concerning the concept of hegemony. 73 In the historical Lenin, hegemony has
very little to do with culture and refers mainly to the class domination t hat
the proletariat exercises through the Part y in realizing a narrow view of
socialism underst ood as the collective ownership of the means of production,
planning, and the abolition of privilege. 74 But to the ext ent t hat there is no
at t empt or even some provision for the genesis of a "new humani t y, " the
unchanged old cont ent eventually has the bet t er of the new externally
imposed social form so that the old relations of domination gradually
reappear. In other words, what distinguishes Gramsci' s notion of hegemony
from Lenin' s is that, for Gramsci it is also a t heory of the overcoming of
alienation, while in Lenin it remains primarily a t heory of domination.
Theory of the Part y
These same themes reappear in the t heory of the party. For Gramsci, the
process of creating a new culture in which all members participate as self-
conscious subjects is t o be mediated by the part y as the "Modem Prince"
who takes "t he place of the divinity or the categorical imperative. ''Ts The goal
is not more efficiency or a more rational organization, however, but the
bringing about of the qualitatively new. Here Gramsci avoids the pitfalls of a
static humani sm which sees alienation as the deformat i on of something
initially sound to be overcome by a return to some status quo ante. What he
meant by the new culture was the qualitatively new hi t hert o onl y prefigured
in thought and expressed as negativity. Gramsci' s problematic rotates around
the notion of self-constitution into a new State. 76 Clearly, in this cont ext
Gramsci returns t o an Hegelian notion of the State seen as the highest
expression of civil society rather than, as in the ort hodox Marxist tradition, a
mere tool of class domination. In this conception of the state, Gramsci again
radically differs from Lenin. Whereas Lenin constantly stresses its class
character and repressive nature, Gramsci concentrates on its cultural-
hegemonic function: "I t s aim is always t hat of creating new and higher types
of civilization. ''77 Even relatively "vi si onary" works such as State and Revolu-
tion contain little about qualitative changes resulting from the revolutionary
process. It is always primarily a mechanical transition involving the alteration
of purely external propert y relations:
We are not Utopians, we do not indulge in dreams of how best to do away
immediately wi t h all s ubor di nat i on. . , we workers ourselves (the Bolshe-
503
viks?), relying on our experience as workers, establishing a strict, an iron
discipline, support ed by state power and the armed workers, shall reduce
the role of the state officials to t hat of simply carrying out our instruc-
tions as responsible, moderat el y paid "managers". va
These differences in emphasis between Gramsci and Lenin do make a great
deal of difference once t hey t urn from abstract philosophical speculation into
state policies.
In comparing Lenin' s and Gramsci' s theories of the part y, Togliatti unwar-
rentedly assumes t hat Lenin did have a t heory of the part y. As Carlo has
convincingly shown, however, Lenin "does not present one, but a series of
complex and cont radi ct ory positions ''79 on the question of part y organiza-
tion. A careful st udy of the 45 volumes of his Collected Works reveals t hat
there is an economistic account during the 1890s, the well-known t heory of
What Is to Be Done?, a much looser account during the period between 1905
and 1919, the bureaucratic views implicit in Left-Wing Communism: An
Infantile Disorder, and the anxious forebodings of the very last years. There is
no justification for the hypost at i zat i on of the views contained in What Is to
Be Done? to the level of the Leninist t heory of the part y, other t han the
unfort unat e fact t hat these views have best fit the bureaucratic collectivist
regimes and, it should be added, generally reflect Lenin' s own political
practices. The ascription of the views of What Is to Be Done? to Gramsci
becomes further suspect when it is realized t hat Gramsci was not even
familiar with this particular work. s~
But even i f Togliatti had been correct in locating Lenin' s t heory of the part y
in What Is to Be Done?, new problerris would arise. Despite the superficial
similarity in the emphasis on intellectuals bot h in Gramsci and in Lenin,
there is no relation whatsoever between the two. In What Is to Be Done?
Lenin, following Kaut sky, sharply differentiates between the intellectuals as
historical subjects, who, because of their privileged position, can generate
socialist t heory "as natural and inevitable out come of the development of
t hought ' ' sl and the proletariat as the passive ob/ect which can be activated
only through the bourgeois intellectuals' donation of an otherwise , nnat t ai n-
able revolutionary consciousness. In fact, the proletariat could spontaneous-
ly attain class consciousness only if, as individuals, some exceptional members
become intellectuals! Nothing is further from this than Gramsci' s claim t hat
"all men are intellectuals ' ' sz and his constant berating of those who are
ordinarily referred to as "intellectuals, " i.e., those who t hi nk abstract ideas.
In fact, his definition of organic intellectuals covers the whole group able to
"be an organizer of society in general including all its complex organisms and
504
services, right up t o the state organism. ''83 To the ext ent that being an
intellectual does not merely involve thinking abstractly, but objectifying
ideas, and t o the ext ent that the revolutionary part y does this, all members of
the part y are intellectuals. The oft-quoted passage according t o which "The
popular element ' feels' but does not always know or understand; the intel-
lectual element ' knows' but does not always understand and in particular
does not always feel, ''84 clearly shows Gramsci's view of intellectuals in
capitalist society as partial beings who can be completed only by reintegra-
tion with the social whole. Unlike in What ls to Be Done?, it is not a matter
of externally manipulating otherwise passive proletarians, but of integrating
the two and thus remedying the shortcomings created on bot h sides by the
division between mental and physical labor. The notion of the party as the
Modern Prince - the collective will - is in no way reducible t o Lenin' s "t en
wise men ''ss pulling the strings of puppet-proletarians. It is, rather, the
embryo of a new society constituted by people able to bot h think and feel,
based on the overcoming of the social divisions.
Philosophy
Interestingly enough, Togliatti did not at t empt to draw any parallels between
Lenin's philosophy (or what official communist or t hodoxy has codified as
Marxist-Leninist philosophy) and Gramsci's. Such a study, however, has been
made by the translator of Gramsci's work into German. 86 Taking Lenin's
Materialism and Empiriocriticism as his model of ort hodoxy, Riechers finds
that Gramsci has reduced Marxism t o subjective idealism. 87 Although
Riechers acknowledges that Lenin' s Materialism and Empiriocriticism has
been instrumentalized to set the pace for all subsequent Soviet philosophical
debate, 8s he ignores the scores of criticisms, from bot h Marxists as well as
non-Marxists, which have shown that the book has very little to do with
Marxism, completelly trivializes the dialectic and, as Korsch has put it, "drags
the whole debate between materialism and idealism back to a historical stage
which German idealism f rom Kant to Hegel had already surpassed.'89 This is
not the place to once again flog the dead horse of Materialism and Empirio-
criticism with critiques of its infamous t heory of reflection, its mechanistic
epistemology and generally vulgar materialism. It is sufficient to point out,
with Adorno, t hat although Lenin "wanted to expose the complicity of
subjective positivism with the ' powers that be' , " the whole effort turned out
t o be an anti-intellectual tirade in which this "political need turned against
the very theoretical goal of knowledge. ''9~
Although Materialism and Empiriocriticism was available only in Russian (the
first German translation appeared only in the late 1920s), 91 and Italian
505
Communists learned of its existence during their Moscow visits between 1922
and 1924, no reference t o it is to be found in Gramsci's writings at that time
or later. It was Bordiga who explicitly at t empt ed t o resuscitate Lenin' s vulgar
materialism within the communist part y in 1924 in his journal Prometeo, 92
while Gramsci's journal Ordine Nuovo at that time not only ignored Lenin' s
philosophical work, but published one of Engels' long essays praising Hegel
and the heritage of German idealism, while pointing out that a political man' s
real philosophy is in his politics and action rather than his books-somet hi ng
that reappears repeatedly in Gramsci's Not ebooks as well.
At any rate, Lenin' s Materialism and EmpMocritieism was primarily a
political weapon meant t o eliminate a wing of the party at a crucial point in
the history of the Bolsheviks, rather than a major philosophical tract. 93 It has
nothing to do with Gramsci's philosophy. Far from being a deficiency, as
Riechers claims, this frees Gramsci's Marxism from a philosophical provin-
cialism which is usually ascribed to Gramsci, but which should be more
correctly ascribed to the Bolsheviks and Marxism-Leninism ever since. 94
Gramsci's epistemology remains Hegelian throughout: knowing is never a
passive reflection of the given but an act creating the mediations necessary to
direct life.
The Gramscian Heritage
What, then, remains of Gramsci's alleged Leninism, or of the myt h of Gramsci
as Lenin's foot not e? Not much. That it has been so widespread and readily
accepted can only be explained in terms of the unresolved ambiguities
concerning Leninism, a relatively poor knowledge of Gramsci's work, and the
i mmense influence of Togliatti and. of the Italian Communist Party. The
historical Gramsci, however, has very little to do with either Lenin' s own
views or with the falsified Leninism of the official communist parties.
To the ext ent that Gramsci provided a highly original and unique reformula-
tion of Marxian t heory, he occupies a special place in the history of Marxism,
bot h in terms of what came before, as well as what came after him. As
AucieUo has put it,
unlike most of t he international communist movement around the 1930s,
Gramsci succeeded in perceiving the general trends of a profound process
of transformation at a world-wide level, of the relation between the State
and the economy (as produced by the new requirements and by the new
phase of capitalist development) precisely because in the previous years,
and with particular reference to the kind of investigations and of obser-
506
vations connected with the analysis of fascism, he had gradually come to
develop, within his theoretical arsenal, a concept of the state and of its
relations to "civil society" which rejected all dichotomous schemes of
a traditional t ype and sought, rather, t o trace the "presence" of the State
in that "pri vat e" and "pre-State" mass reality which is "civil society". 9s
In this respect, Gramsci is the only Marxist of his generation whose thought
was able to withstand that historical watershed represented by Fascism,
Stalinism and the shift from entrepreneurial to monopol y capitalism.
To the extent that he provides a formulation of Marxism free from all the
traditional trappings of ort hodox versions, Gramsci is not only very likely
to remain the theoretical guide for the Italian and French Communist
Parties, but also to provide a framework from which t o transcend their
reformism after t hey come to power in the next decade. Given the closure of
the Marxist perspective elsewhere, if Marxism is to become a meaningful
political force in the West, it will have to follow a Gramscian path.
NOTES
1. The al mos t rel i gi ous a t t a c hme nt t o t he uncr i t i cal l y accept ed under pi nni ngs o f
o r t h o d o x Mar xi sm - pr ol et ar i at , par t y, class, et c. - can be seen in t he pol i t i cal
t r aj ect or y o f Ne w Le f t Revi ew. Unwi l l i ng t o give up t he f undament al s o f or t ho-
doxy, and havi ng fi nal l y r eal i zed t he unt enabi l i t y o f Al t husser i ani sm, t he j our nal
has been t r yi ng t o r esusci t at e t h e cadaver o f Tr ot s kyi s m i n t he search f or a vi abl e
way t o r e- cycl e Leni ni s m and Bol shevi k nost al gi a.
2. Ti t o Perl i ni , Gramsei e il Gramseismo (Milan, 1964), p. 179.
3. 1bid., p. 170.
4. [bid., p. 151.
5. For an accur at e a c c ount o f t he e xodus o f Gr ams ci ' s Prison Not ebooks f r om
Gr ams ci ' s deat h up t o t h e r ecent l y publ i shed def i ni t i ve edi t i on, see Val ent i no
Gar r at ana, " Pr e f a z i one " t o An t o n i o Gr amsci , Quaderni del Carcere (Turi n, 1975),
Vol . I, pp. xxi x- xxxv. For a gener al l y accur at e r e c ons t r uc t i on of t he hi s t or y o f
Gr amsci an st udi es, see Al asdai r B. Davi dson, " The Var yi ng Season o f Gr amsci an
St udi es , " i n Political St udi es XX: 4 ( De c e mbe r 1972), pp. 4 4 8 - 4 6 1 . Fo r a hi ghl y,
pol emi cal , r epet i t i ve, and gener al l y di sor gani zed - ye t at t i mes penet r at i ng -
anal ysi s, see Perl i ni , op. cir., especi al l y pp. 7 - 3 5 .
6. Perl i ni , op. ciL, p. 8.
7. Thes e de ve l opme nt s , however , mus t t o a gr eat e x t e n t be t r aced back t o ambi gui t i es
i n Mar x' s o wn wor ks. Gr amsci hi ms el f was aware o f t hi s earl y in his l i fe whe n he
wr ot e t hat : " I t is n o t surpri si ng t hat Marx i nt r oduc e d i n his wor k posi t i vi st i c
el ement s . I t is expl ai ned by t he f act t hat Marx was n o t a pr of es s i onal phi l os opher
and he occasi onal l y doz e d of f . What is cer t ai n, however , is t hat t he essence o f his
doc t r i ne is i t s de pe nde nc e on phi l os ophi cal i deal i s m. " Ant oni o Gr amsci , in I1 Grido
del Popol o ( Oc t obe r 19, 1918); n o w in Engl i sh i n P. Caval cant i and P. Pi ccone, eds. ,
History, Philosopl~y and Culture in t he Young Grarnsci (St . Loui s, 1976), p. 18. Fo r
an excel l ent di scussi on o f Gr ams ci ' s debunki ng o f all posi t i vi st and det er mi ni s t
507
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
el ement s in Marxism, see Eugenio Garin, Intellettuali Italiani del XX Secolo (Rome,
1974), pp. 352ff. For an account of t he Marxism t o whi ch Gramsci was reacting,
see Al br echt Wellmer, The Critical Theory of Society, trans. J ohn Cummi ngs (New ~
York, 1971), Chapt er 2: " The Lat ent Positivism i n Marx' s Phi l osophy of Hi st or y, "
pp. 67ff; and Andr ew Arat o, " The Second I nt er nat i onal : A Reexami nat i on, " in
Telos 18 (Winter 1973-74)), pp. 2 - 5 2 .
Er nest o Ragionieri has suggested t hi s parallel wi t hout , however, fully drawing all of
t he consequences. See his "Pr ef azi one" t o Palmiro Togliatti, Antonio Gramsei
(Rome, 1972), p. xv. Of course, a roughl y similar argument coul d be made for t he
Lenin-Stalin relation. In fact , Perlini writes: " . . . Gramsci must first of all b e . . .
separated from t he Gramscians and from Togl i at t i who has sought t o place hi msel f
i n rel at i on t o Gramsci-Socrates as a new Plato, t hus i nt roduci ng a rel at i on similar t o
t hat whi ch St al i n est abl i shed bet ween hi msel f and t he cynically mani pul at ed ghost
of Leni n. " Op.eit., p. 171.
Massimo Salvadori, Gramsei e il Problema Storieo della Demoerazia (Turin, 1970),
p. 164.
I t is no acci dent , t herefore, t hat Gramsci ' s works are usually prefaced by claims
t hat "Gramsci ' s writings coul d not be under st ood and eval uat ed in t hei r correct
meani ng i ndependent l y of t he progress made duri ng t he first t hree decades of t hi s
cent ur y by t he t heoret i cal and pract i cal act i vi t y of Leni n and Stalin. Gramsci ' s
Marxism is Marxism-Leninism . . . " Cf. "Pr ef azi one" t o Ant oni o Gramsci, Il
Materialismo Storieo e la Filosofia di Benedetto Croee (Turin, 1966),p. xvi. Cf.
also Giansiro Ferrat a, "Pr ef azi one" t o 2000 Pagine di Gramsei (Milan, 1971), Vol.
I, p. 18, where he argues t hat " not hi ng can be under st ood of Gramsci i f an
' i nt er nal ' personal i t y is separated f r om t he f undament al el ement s of Marxism-
Leni ni sm. "
Gi aci nt o Lent i ni , Croce e Grarnsei (Palermo, 1967), p. 95n.
Luigi Cortese, "Pal mi ro Togliatti, la ' Svol t a di Sal erno' e l ' Eredi t ~ Gramsci ana. " in
Belfagor XXX ( Januar y 31, 1975), p. 10.
For an excellent but br i ef summar y of t he post-war debat e bet ween t he Crocean
and t he Communi st Part y concerni ng t he Gramsci an heritage, see Davidson, op.eit.,
pp. 453-55.
Accordi ng t o Cortese, "As i t happened in Russia wi t h t he rel at i onshi p bet ween
Leni n and Stalin, t he (Gramsci-Togliatti) cont i nui t y was idealized at t he price of
t ot al silence concerni ng t he phases of dissent and clash t hat t ook place bot h before
as well as aft er Gramsci ' s a r r e s t . . . The real drama of Gramsci ' s life i n jail (was) t he
t or ment of loneliness wi t h respect t o t he Party and its political line whi ch i nt en-
sified and mul t i pl i ed t he effect s of reclusion and of fascist oppressi on. " Op.eit.,
pp. 1 0 - 1 1 . Since t he mi d- t 960s, wi t h t he publ i cat i on of At hos Lisa' s 1933 r epor t
to t he part y of his account of Gramsci ' s opposi t i on t o t he 1929 Comi nt er n policies
of "soci al fasci sm" (Lisa was i n prison wi t h Gramsci at t he t i me), addi t i onal
corroborat i ng evidence by ot her fellow prisoners such as Ley and Ceresa, and
Fi or e' s i nt ervi ew wi t h Gennar o (Gramsci ' s br ot her ) , it is clear t hat Gramsci was not
t he fai t hful Stalinist part y-man t hat Togliatti~had hi t her t o depicted. Rat her, he
came increasingly t o oppose part y policies t o t he poi nt of becomi ng al most t ot al l y
isolated f r om his fellow Communi st prisoners. CL At hos Lisa, "Discussioni
Pol i t i che con Gramsci , " in Rinascita (December 12, 1964); now also in At hos Lisa,
Memorie. In Carcere con Gramsci (Milan, 1973); Gi ovanni Ley, "Col l oqui con
Gramsci nel Carcere di Tuff, " i n Rinascita ( Febr uar y 20, 1965); Al fonso Leonet t i ,
"I1 ' Cazzot t o nel l ' Occhi o' o ' della Cost i t uent e' , " i n Note su Gramsei (Urbi no,
1970), pp. 1 9 1 - 2 0 8 ; Gi useppe Fiore, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary
(London, 1970), pp. 2 5 2 - 2 5 8 ; " I nt r oduc t i on" t o Ant oni o Gramsci, Prison Note-
books, by Qui nt i n Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith ( London, 1971), pp. xcii.
Maria Ant oni et t a Macciocchi, in her Per Gramsci (Bologna, 1974), has provi ded as
5 0 8
close a r econst r uct i on of t he events surroundi ng t he br eak as is possible wi t h t he
present l y available document s. The issue t hat led t o Gramsci ' s break wi t h t he
I nt er nat i onal also led Luk~cs, aft er t he "Bl um Theses" - whi ch paralleled
Gramsci ' s posi t i on - t o give up any f ur t her di rect political act i vi t y - at least up t o
1956. I n view of all this, i t is surprising t o fi nd ot herwi se al ert i ndependent scholars
such as Davidson (op.cit., p. 456n. ) uncritically accept spurious reasons put f or t h
by part y watch-dogs such as Gar r at ana and Ragionieri t o deny Gramsci ' s break. For
Ragi oni eri ' s argument , see his "I1 Di bat t i t o Teori co nel Movi ment o Operaio Int er-
nazi onal e, " in Pietro Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la Cultura Contemporanea (Rome,
1969), Vol. I, pp. 134- 37.
15. It is obvi ousl y impossible, and unnecessary, t o cover here all t he various inter-
pr et at i ons of Gramsci - somet hi ng, at any rat e, already done fairly well by t he
cited works of Davidson and Perlini. Special ment i on, however, must be made of
Gi useppe Tambur r ano' s Ant oni o Gramsci, La Vita, I1 Pensiero, L' Az i one (Bari,
1963) whi ch provi ded an openl y social-democratic i nt er pr et at i on of Gramsci and,
al t hough vi ol ent l y rej ect ed by part y intellectuals, has had a maj or i nfl uence i n
redi rect i ng Gramsci an studies i n t he 1960s.
16. Cf., among ot hers, St efano Merli, "I Nost ri Cont i con la Teori a della ' Ri vol uzi one
senza Ri vol uzi one' , " i n Giovane Critica 17 (1967); Andrei na De Clementi, "La
Politica del Par t i t o Comuni st a d' It al i a nel 1921-22 e il Rappor t o Bordiga-Gramsci, "
i n Ri vi st a Storica del Socialisrno 28 ( 1966) ; and Gi acomo Marramao, "Per una
Critica dell ' Ideol ogi a di Gramsci , " i n Quaderni Piacentini XI: 46 (March, 1972).
Marramao, however, has since moved away f r om his earlier crypt o-Al t husseri an
posi t i on; for a self-criticism, see his "Ideol ogi a e Rappor t i Sociali, " i n Rinascita
(Jul y 25, 1975), pp. 2 3 - 2 5 .
17. This Trot skyi st i nt er pr et at i on of Gramsci had already been out l i ned in t he mid-
1950s by Livio Mai t an' s At t ual i t h di Gramsci e Politica Comuni st a (Milan, 1955).
Of part i cul ar significance, wi t hi n t hi s l i t erat ure, is Silverio Corvisieri, Trot sky e il
Comuni smo ltaliano (Rome, 1969).
18. Perlini, op.cit., p. 189.
19. Crucial in t hi s respect is a l et t er f r om Gramsci t o Togliatti, publ i shed al most 40
years l at er by t he latter. See Palmiro Togliatti, " A Proposi t o dello Scambi o di
Let t ere t r a Gramsci e Togl i at t i , " i n Rinascita ( June 13, 1964), p. 24.
20. For an al most exhaust i ve account of t hese probl ems, see Perlini who devot es t wo
ful l chapt ers t o t hem; op. cir., pp. 22-35 and pp. 103- 144.
21. Cf. V. I. Lenin, Col l ect ed Works (Moscow, 1965), Vol. 38, pp. 180ff.
22. Karl Korsch, " Te n Theses on Marxism Today ( 1950) , " i n Telos 26 (Winter
1975-76), p. 40.
23. Thi s is why Luk~ics' Marxism i n Hi st ory and Class Consciousness ul t i mat el y failed:
The rediscovery of t he Hegelian f oundat i ons of Marxism was mechani cal l y
rei nt egrat ed wi t h t he socio-historical analyses of Capital whi ch had long since
ceased t o be valid over hal f a cent ur y aft er t hei r formul at i on. Cf. my "Di al ect i c and
Materialism in Luk~cs, " Telos 11 (Spring 1972), pp. 105- 134.
24. Cf. Cornelius Castoriadis, L' l ns t i t ut i on lmaginaire de la Soci et b (Paris, 1975),
pp. 82ff.
25. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Di al ekt i k ( Fr ankf ur t , 1966), p. 13.
26. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op.cit., p. 404: Marxism "i s a r ef or mul at i on and
devel opment of Hegellanism. " Even Togliatti, i n a famous article originally
publ i shed in Sept ember 23, 1925, acknowledges t hese sources: "Marxi sm can be
reached t hr ough di fferent pat hs. We reached it t hr ough t he pat h fol l owed by Karl
Marx, i.e., st art i ng f r om Ger man idealist phi l osophy, f r om Hegel." Palmiro
Togliatti, Opere, edi t ed by Ernest o Ragionieri (Rome, 1967), Vol. I, pp. 647- 653.
27. Most of t hese essays are now collected i n Palmiro Togliatti, Ant oni o GramscL
op.cit.; f our t een more obscure but rel at ed articles have recent l y been republ i shed
5 0 9
by Cortese, op.cit., pp. 17-44. Davidson, " The Varyi ng Seasons of Gramsci an
St udi es, " op.cit., convincingly shows how, chronologically, Togliatfi' s views were
sharpened in t he face of growing criticism t o event ual l y al most explicitly acknowl-
edge t hat very l i t t l e of Leni n' s t heori es remai n in Gramsci. For Davi dson' s own
views on t he rel at i onshi p bet ween Leni n and Gramsci, see his "Gr amsci and Leni n
1 9 1 7 - 1 9 2 2 " i n The SocialistRegister (1974), pp. 125--150.
28. Perlini, op.cit., p. 194.
29. Togliatti, Gramsci, op.eit.,, p. 136.
30. Ibid., p. 138.
31. Thus, as early as 1918, i mmedi at el y following t he assassination at t empt on Leni n,
Gramsci wrot e an article on "Leni n' s Work" ( Sept ember 14, 1918 - now in
History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci, op. cit., pp. 134-139)
praising Leni n for "appl yi ng t he met hod devised by Marx; " and in t he Prison
Notebooks, op. cit., p. 436, he repeat edl y makes i t clear t hat t he t ask of
" e l a b o r a t i n g . . . t he concept of phi l osophy of praxis as hi st ori cal met hodol ogy" is
cent ral for revol ut i onary Marxists.
32. That t hi s formal and objectivistic i nt er pr et at i on of Marxist met hodol ogy is not
merely one of Togl i at t i ' s ideological idiosyncrasies can be seen in t he fact t hat
i t is also widespread among Nort h Ameri can Marxists. Cf. Mart i n Nicolaus,
" For ewor d" to Karl Marx, Grundrisse ( London, 1973). For a det ai l ed critique of
Nicolaus' objectivistie met aphysi cs, see my "Readi ng t he Grundrisse:
Beyond Or t hodox Marxi sm, " in Theory and Society 2 : 2 (1975), pp. 235-259.
33. Gramsei, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 395.
34. For an account of how, st art i ng wi t h Leni n, official Soviet communi sm
reproduces t he bourgeoi s mechani sms t hat t he revol ut i on was t o have
el i mi nat ed, see Franqoi s George, "For get t i ng Leni n, " Telos 18 (Winter 1973-74),
pp. 53-88; and Frederi ck J. Fl er on and Lou Jean Fl eron, "Admi ni st r at i ve Theor y as
Repressive Political Theory: The Communi st Experi ence. " Telos 12 ( Summer
1972), pp. 6 3 - 9 2 .
35. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 395.
36. Marx, Grundrisse, op.cit., p. 705.
37. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 404.
38. Ibid., p. 465.
39. Gramsci, " The Revol ut i on against Capi t al " (November 24, 1917), now in History,
Philosophy and Culture in the young Gramsci, op. cit., pp. 123- 126.
Salvadori, op. tit., p. 111.
What makes Togl i at t i ' s claim all t he more credible was Gramsci ' s const ant stress on
discipline whi ch, i n 1924, had led hi m t o oppose Tr ot sky even t hough he was
t heoret i cal l y i n agreement wi t h hi m. Cf. Salvadori, op.cit., pp. 2 7 - 2 9 ; and Hoare,
" I nt r oduc t i on" t o t he Prison Notebooks, op.cit., who correct l y poi nt s out how
Gramsci ' s percept i on of t he Russian events of t he peri od were condi t i oned by a
similar si t uat i on wi t hi n his own part y br ought about by Bordiga' s opposi t i on.
42. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 382.
43. See Al ber t o Caracciolo, " A Proposi t o di Gramsci, la Russia e II Movi ment o
Bolscevico," in St udi Gramsciani (Rome, 1969), pp. 95-104.
44. Cf. Ragionieri, "Gr amsci e i l Di bat t i t o Teori co . . . . "op. ci t .
45. Togliatti, Ant oni o Gramsci, op.eit., pp. 139- 140. Davidson has convincingly
est abl i shed t hr ough an analysis of t he mat eri al available at t hat t i me to Gramsci,
t hat t he Leni n Gramsci knew was closer to De Leon t han t o t he historical Leni n.
The first ant hol ogy of Leni n' s writings was put t oget her by Al fonso Leonet t i i n
1920 and cont ai ns precisely t he mat eri al t o whi ch Togl i at t i refers. Cf. Davidson,
"Gramsci and Leni n, " op. cit., pp. 130- 131.
46. Cf. Davidson, ' Gramsci and Leni n, " op.cit., p. 139.
47. Togliatti, Ant oni o Gramsci, op.eit., p. 161.
40.
41.
5 1 0
48. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow, n.d.), p. 107.
49, Arghiri Emmanuel , "Col oni al i sm and Imperi al i sm, " New Left Review 73 (May-
June, 1972), p. 52.
50. Ant oni o Carlo, "Towar ds a Redef i ni t i on of Imperi al i sm, " Telos 20 (Summer 1974),
p. 109.
51. Emmanuel , op.cit., p. 36.
52. Lelio Basso, " La Teori a Del l ' Imperi al i smo di Leni n, " in Annali Feltrinelli 15
(1973), p. 713.
53. Accordi ng t o Luk~cs, "Leni n' s superi ori t y - and t hi s is an unparalleled t heoret i cal
achi evement - consists i n his concrete articulation of the economic theory of
imperialism with every political problem of the present epoch." Georg Luk~cs,
Lenin, A Study on the Unity of his Thought (London, 1970), p. 41.
54. Samir Ami n, " La Crisi del l ' Impefi al i smo Cont empor aneo, " Terzo Mondo I I I : 27
(January-March, 1975), pp. 3- 16. Pushing t hi s line of reasoni ng to its ext reme
logical consequences, Emmanuel concludes t hat t he expl oi t at i on of t he Thi r d World
benefi t s t he workers of advanced i ndust ri al societies who, in part i ci pat i ng i n t he
new world-wide expl oi t at i on, no longer have socialism as t hei r objective goal.
Unlike i n Leni n, where t he l abor ari st ocracy remai ns a privileged mi nor i t y of t he
workers i n advanced societies, wi t h Emmanuel it is al most t he whol e worki ng class
t hat becomes a l abor ari st ocracy vis-h-vis t he maj ori t y of t he workers in t he Thi rd
World. See Arghiri Emmanuel , Unequal Exchange, trans. Bri an Pearce (New York,
1972).
55. Ami n Calls t hi s phenomenon " t he second revi si oni sm" and locates i t from t he
1930s on. It is t ypi fi ed by t he wor k of Bukhari n, Varga and Mendelsohn. Cf. Ami n,
" La Cr i s i . . . , " op. cit., pp. 10- 11.
56. Ant oni o Gramsci, 11 Risorgimento (Turin, 1966), pp. 79-81. Cf. also his La
Questione Meriodionale (Rome, 1970), pp. 135- 136. Al t hough t he aut hor s of t he
" I nt r oduzi one" t o t hi s volume poi nt out how Gramsei ' s account was far f r om bei ng
dualistic or reduci bl e t o t he above dimensions, i t is clear t hat t he debat e has t ended
t o focus on t he official Part y i nt er pr et at i on of t he probl em. Thi s is why ext ra-
parl i ament ary Left critiques such as t hat of Carlo and Capecelatro vi ol ent l y at t ack
ideological Troj an horses in t hei r "Agai nst ' The Sout her n Quest i on' , " in Inter-
national Journal of Sociology, I V: 2 - 3 (Summer-Fal l 1974), pp. 3 1 - 8 4 . I t is
i nt erest i ng t hat t he t wo aut hor s cannot fi nd one single quot e from Gramsci t o pi n
t he official communi st por t i on on hi m; t hey have t o settle wi t h ascribing guilt by
association i n quot i ng from an official Communi st Part y document wr i t t en by
Grieco, for whose work Gramsei was allegedly responsible. The most detailed and
exhaustive analysis of t hi s pr obl em is t o be f ound i n Massimo L. Salvadori,
"Gr amsci e la Quest i one Meri odi onal e, " i n Gramsci e il Problema Storico della
Democrazia, op.cit., pp. 5 7 - 1 0 3 . CL also Perlini, op.cit., pp. 85ff., who rei t erat es
t he accusat i ons of Carlo and Capecelatro in a vi ol ent pol emi c wi t h ot her pro-
Gramsci Left positions.
57. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 468.
58. 1bid., p. 437.
59. Ibid., p. 438.
60. Ibid., p. 428.
61. George~ "For get t i ng Leni n, " op.cit., p. 55.
62. V. I . Leni n, Collected Works (Moscow, 1965), Vol. 27, p. 259. As quot ed i n Fl er on
and Fl eron, op.cit., p. 81.
63. Karl Korsch, Ar bei t sr echt Jar Betriebsriite ( Fr ankf ur t , 1968).
64. V. I . Lenin, Cbllected Works (Moscow, 1975), Vol. 7, pp. 391- 392.
65. Perlini, op.cit., pp. 156, 177.
66. It is well known t hat , as Luk~cs hi msel f admi t t ed i n t he "Preface t o t he New
Edi t i on ( 1967) " of History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone
511
(London, 1971), the Hegelian identification of objectification and alienation led
him to postulate the identical subject-object of history and, therefore, ultimately
pose the problem of the overcoming of alienation in unresolvable terms - which
eventually led him to reject the whole problematic. But what happens if the theory
of alienation is reconstructed wi t hout collapsing objectification and alienation in
answering this question first in his Di al ekt i k des Konkr et en (Frankfurt, 1967) and
then in his more political work, La Nost ra Cri si At t ual e (Rome, 1969), Karel Kosik
ends up by posing the problem primarily in political terms - precisely along
Gramscian lines. This theme is developed in a forthcoming article on Kosik.
67. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op.cit., pp. 309-310.
68. Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaph~g o f Ameri can Worki ng Class
Consciousness (New York, 1973).
69. For the official Italian Communist Party view, see Luciano Gruppi, I l Coneet t o di
Egemoni a ha Grarnsei (Rome, 1972). For a restrained but accurate critique of
Gruppi, see Nicola Auciello, Soeialismo ed Egemoni a in Gramsei e Togl i at t i (Bari,
1974), pp. 85-86.
70. Cf. Thomas R. Bates, "Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony," in Journal o f t he
Hi st ory o f Ideas, XXXVI:2 (April-June, 1975), p. 357. Cf. also Hughes Portelli,
Gramsei e il Bl occo Storieo, trans. Maria Novella Pierini (Bari, 1973), pp. 3-11.
71. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op.eit., p. 365.
72. Rodolfo Mondolfo, Umanismo di Marx, St udi Fi l osof i ci 1 9 0 8 - 1 9 6 6 (Turin, 1968),
p. 4O3.
73. Norberto Bobbio, "Gramsci e la Concezione della Societ/t Civile," in Pietro Rossi,
ed., Gramsci e la Cultura Conternporanea, op.eit. As Paggi has argued, Gramsci's
"Leninism" in the Prison Not e book s is a function of a reading of Lenin as the
executor of the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: this identification "will constitute
the woof of the philosophical writings in jail." Leonardo Paggi, Ant oni o Gramsei e
i l Moderno Principe (Rome, 1970), p. 357.
74. This has been accounted for in terms of the intrinsic differences between the two
different contexts within which Gramsci and Lenin operated, the East and the
West. Cf. Hughes Portelli, op.cit., pp. 163-164; and Auciello, op.cit., pp. 125-126.
These arguments, however, are not altogether convincing.
75. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op.cit., p. 133.
76. As Auciello summarizes it (op.cit., p. 100), in Gramsci "civil society appears as that
specific level in which the St a t e . . . educates and organizes the consensus of those
that it governs through the exercise of hegemony by the social group in power, thus
it appears as a primary and essential moment of that educational effort which the
State performs in order to raise the cultural and moral level of the masses."
77. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op.cit., p. 242.
78. V. I. Lenin, St at e and Revol ut i on (New York, 1932), pp. 42-43.
79. Antonio Carlo, "Lenin and the Party," Telos 17 (Fall 1973), p. 40. It should also
he added that Gramsci constantly re-thought the problem of organization and no
one theory of the Party can unequivocally be extrapolated from his works.
80. Gruppi points out that this work was not available to Gramsci even though there
had been a German version published in 1903 in Neue Zeit. See Gruppi, op.cit.,
p. 74. Davidson reports that the only account of What Is t o Be Done? that Gramsci
might have seen around the 1920s was in some references made to it in Zinoviev's
speech of September 6, 1918 (translated in French in Vie Ouvriere, April 16,
1920). Yet, even in this article, Zinoviev hinted that Lenin's What Is t o Be Done?
was somewhat dated; Davidson, "Gramsci and Lenin," op.cit. The footnotes to
What I s t o Be Done? in the English translation of the Prison Not ebooks are
figments of the translators' Leninist imaginations.
81. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1963), Vol. 4, p. 258.
82. Gramsci, Prison Not ebooks, op. cir., p. 9.
5 1 2
83. Ibid., p. 5.
84. Ibid., p. 418.
85. Leni n, What l s to BeDone? (New York, 1943), p. 116.
86. Chri st i an Riechers, Ant oni o Gramsci, Marxismus in ltalien ( Fr ankf ur t , 1970). The
same aut hor , i n 1967, had edi t ed a selection of Gramsci ' s writings in Ger man,
Philosophie der Praxis ( Fr ankf ur t , 1967), wi t h an i nt r oduct i on by Wolfgang
Abendr ot h, whi ch has since become an exampl e of how not t o translate. For
devastating critiques, see Jose Rodriguez-Lores, Die Grundstruktur der Marxismus
Gramsci und die Philosophie der Praxis ( Fr ankf ur t , 1971); Ger har t Rot h, Gramscis
Deutung des Marxismus als Philosophic tier Praxis ( Fr ankf ur t , 1972); Peter Palla,
"Gramsci i n Ger mani a, " Utopia, I I : 7 - 8 ( J ul y- Augus t , 1972), pp. 9 - 1 4 ; and
Fr anco Fergnani , "La ' Quest i one Gramsci ' ; una Propost a di Ri consi derazi one, " Au t
Au t 144 (November-December 1974), pp. 2 5 - 3 8 . A thesis similar t o Riechers had
earlier been defended by Mario Tr ont i i n "Al cune Quest i oni i nt or no al Marxismo di
Gramsci , " St udi Gramsciani (Rome, 1959), pp. 305- 321. For an excellent critique
of Riechers, see Ray Morrow' s review of t he book in Telos 22 (Winter 1974- 75) ,
pp. 174- 181. Surprisingly, Perlini, op.cit., pp. 156ff, unreservedly endorses t he
book not so much because of Ri echers' phi l osophi cal pr of undi t y, but out of an
unrest rai ned hat r ed for Gramsci and everyt hi ng associated wi t h hi m. Marramao,
who had initially also endorsed Ri echers' work in t he previously-cited article, "Per
una Critica del l ' Ideol ogi a di Gramsci , " has eventually changed his mind. For an
i nt erest i ng critique, see Marramao, "Ideol ogi ca c Rappor t i Sociali, " op.cit.
87. Riechers, Ant oni o Gramsci, op.cit., pp. 131- 141.
88. Ibid., p. 145.
89. Karl Korsch, " The Present St at e of t he Probl em of Materialism and Phi l osophy -
An Ant i -Cri t i que ( 1930) , " in Marxism and Philosophy ( London, 1970),
pp. 115- 116. Cf. also Korsch' s favorable review of Pannekoek' s book "Leni n' s
phi l osophy, " i n Living Marxism, IV: 5 (November, 1938), where a similar argument
is developed.
90. Ador no, Negative Dialektik, op. cit., p. 203.
91. Pannekoek writes t hat , i f Materialism and Empiriocriticism and Leni n' s not i ons
" ha d been known by 1918 among Western Marxists, surely t here woul d have been a
more critical at t i t ude against his tactics for worl d r evol ut i on. " Ant on Pannekoek,
Lenin as Philosopher (London, 1975), p. 102. ( Pannekoek' s essay was originally
wr i t t en in t he 1930s.)
92. Cf. Eugenio Garin, "Di scorsi , " in Gramsci e la Cultura Contemporanea, op.cit.,
Vol. 1, p. 25; and Ragionieri, "Gramsci e i l Di bat t i t o t e o r i c o . . . " op. cit., pp. 1 2 2 -
130.
93. For an el aborat i on of this, see my "Towar ds an Underst andi ng of Leni n' s Philoso-
phy, " Radi cal Ameri ca I V: 6 (Sept ember-Oct ober, 1970), pp. 3- 20.
94. The most out spoken aut hor of t hi s charge is Eric J. Hobsbawm. Cf. his "The Great
Gramsci , " Ne w York Revi ew o f Books, Apri l 4, 1974, pp. 39ff; and his "Dal l ' It al i a
al l ' Eur opa, " i n Rinascita, July 25, 1975, pp. 15ff. Nowhere, however, does
Hobsbawm document his claim. Compared t o whom is Gramsci "provi nci al "?
Cert ai nl y not Korsch or Luk~cs, whose pr obl emat i c duri ng t he same t i me is
consi derabl y more limited, or any of t he English or Ger man intellectuals who went
t hr ough t he ordeal of t he 1920s and 1930s. The i di ot i c mechani cal i nference of
Gramsci ' s provincialism from I t al y' s economi c backwardness shoul d ei t her be
argued or put t o rest. Gramsci was, fi rst and foremost , a European t hi nker not
l i mi t ed by t he probl emat i c of an economi cal l y backward society.
95. Auciello, op.cit., p. llln.
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9 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amst er dam - Pri nt ed in t he Net herl ands