Marx Source 2

Gramsci's Marxism: Beyond Lenin and Togliatti Author(s): Paul Piccone Reviewed work(s): Source: Theory and Society,
Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter, 1976), pp. 485-512 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656811 . Accessed: 07/01/2013 03:07
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485
GRAMSCI'SMARXISM: BEYOND LENIN AND TOGLIATTI
PAUL PICCONE
Communism? Towarda Mediterranean If, in the history of Marxism,the period from the Erfurtprogramto 1914 can be characterizedas the age of the Second International,from 1917 to 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 to usher in what may be called a new phase of "Gramscism." This is a result of an internationalsituation wherein both 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 traditional challenges. The Second Internationalfound its historical limit in the political integrationof the labor movement within late capitalism;Stalinism ran out of gas with the industrializationof Russia; and Maoism lost its revolutionary cutting edge with the completion of de-colonization. Yet Gramscism,understood as the strategy of socialist transformationin fully industrializedsocieties, becomes relevant precisely in the age of cybernated imperialism.Notwithstandingits historicalroots in the realitiesof post-World WarI central Europe, Gramsci'sarticulationof Marxism likely to providea is frameworkwithin which to recast the problem of emancipationin a context where Southern Europe becomes the main ideological and political battlefield. From the East German uprising of 1953 through the HungarianRevolution in 1956, down to Czechoslovakiain 1968, the Russian tragedy has become all too clear: de-Stalinizationis impossible without dismantlingthe entire socio-economic apparatus,thus precipitatingmajor political upheaval. Consequently, no significant internal reforms can be carried out to decentralize production and decision-making, up-grade agriculture, and eliminate waste in order to improvethe perenniallydeficient consumer-goods
Department of Sociology, Washington University
486 sector and institutionalize long-overduepolitical freedoms. But the system must deliver at least a minimum of goods and services to prevent the germinationof serious internal dissatisfactionliable to develop into political turmoil. The growing integration of Russia into the orbit of Western imperialism through the purchase of agricultural, high-technology, and specialized consumer goods is a successful short-run solution to these problems. This failure to transcendStalinism,resultingin a perpetualsocioeconomic backwardness eliminableonly througha processof genuineliberalization, entails a high political price: the loss of any lingeringrevolutionary pretense for the rest of the world and the degradationof Russia to the level of a sub-imperialistpower-notwithstanding a growing military might and partialinternationalsuccesses in some areas of the ThirdWorld(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 with the rest of EasternEurope in a relationof crude imperialism with Russia. Whatmade the Maoist model populareven before the Cultural Revolution was its insistenceon a Marxism which, unlike the Russianvariety, did not reduce communism to industrializationand some complementary dubious technological progressautomaticallyguaranteeing human emancipation. It did not forget that the goal of communismis not a whopping GNP, but a new type of human being and a new civilization. Yet, it remained Stalinist in its core - especially with regardto an opportunistic and unprincipledforeign policy reminiscentof Stalin's worst blundersin the 1930s. Geared to industriallybackwardsocieties such as China, the Maoist model turned out to be largely irrelevantin industrializedcapitalist societies where the platitudes of the "Red Book" cannot compete with highly sophisticated culturalindustries. Although this process of theoretical and political involution had already become obvious by the late 1960s - which explains the extraordinary success of aberrationssuch as Althusserianismat that time as efforts to politically rehabilitate orthodox Marxism within a Western context - a systematic reconsiderationof Marxism in the West from the viewpoint of traditional communist parties could begin only after the theoreticaland political thrusts of the 1968 movements had either exhausted themselves or had been successfully repressed.Thus, Perlini is correct in seeing the rising popularity of Gramscism Italy and Franceas preciselythe spearheadof this systematic in reconsideration of Marxism, and the 're-launching' 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 aimingat substitutingthem with
487 a pseudo-left ideology - the masked apology for reformism."2One need only survey the window-displays Roman and Parisian of bookstores crammed with officially and unofficially sanctioned works on or by Gramscito realize that such is at least partially the case. But Perliniand those increasingly rarer remnants of the Italian extra-parliamentary not yet fully reintegrated left within the rapidly expanding umbrella of the Italian Communist Party are blinded by their hatred for the long reformisthistory of ItalianCommunism. They reduce Gramsci'sMarxism(which has always been claimedby the party as its historical matrix) to "a para-Marxism derived from the reversalof Marxismitself into idealism,"3and Gramscism the ideologicalothernessof to Russian policy in WesternEurope seeking the integration of the Common Marketinto the Russianeconomic and socio-politicalorbit.4 Gramsci'swork is almost ideally suited for such an ideological revitalization of Western CommunistParties seeking a difficult blend of continuity with their reformistpast and new perspectivesfor the present on the eve of their participation in bourgeois governments, while clothing the whole project witliin a revolutionarytheoretical garb. But although such an operationmay seem viable in the abstract, it is almost impossibleto carryout in the present political context. The likely counter-productiveresult is that, in spite of itself, the Gramscianideological re-armament undertakenby the Italian and French Communist Parties will generate the political space for a practical reconsideration the meaningof socialismin the late 1970s and early 1980s. of Even if inspired by the darkest opportunistic calculations,the expansion of the long-standinginternal frontist policy not only tendentially checkmates traditionalcentralist postures, but qualitativelychangesthe very characterof the parties involved. Thus, the de-Stalinizationthat has remainedunfulfilled in Eastern Europe, Russia and China, finds its realizationin the theory and practice of the Italian, French and Spanish CommunistParties. Unlike its historicalprecedentin the Second International,this new blend of revolutionary (Gramscian) rhetoric and reformist practice so hated by the extraparliamentaryleft is likely to provide the only hope for a revolutionary socialist alternativein a world hegemonized by the new forms of imperialism based on scientific and technological domination and protractedinvolution 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 FrankfurtSchool and of the new conditions broughtabout by the ongoing post-Vietnamrestructuring
of imperialism.
488 The Genesisof Gramscism Gramsci'sworks have had a strangehistory. His imprisonmentfrom 1926 up to his death, and the combination of both Fascism and Stalinism,succeeded in suppressinghis mature prison writings until well after the end of World War IIs - and then the Gramscianheritage became so successfully instrumentalized as the theoretical support for the policies of the Italian Communist Party that Perlini is right in claiming that "to deal with Gramsci means, first and foremost, coming to grips with [that] Party."6 What happened to Gramsciclosely parallelswhat happenedto Marxafter his death when Engels, in furtherelaboratingand popularizinghis thought, defused it of most of its relevant features, positivized the dialectic, and generallypaved the way for the Marxisms of the Second International.7 In Togliatti, Gramsci found his Engels. Whereas Marx and Engels were two German emigresin England,Gramsciand 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 both cases, there was a lifelong friendship resulting in the two survivors,Engels and Togliatti, becoming the heirs and leading interpretersof Marx and Gramscirespectively.8 But both Togliatti and Engels turnedout to be much more modest thinkersthan their respective friends, with the unfortunate consequence that it took over half a century to rediscoverMarx,and almost as long to properly evaluate Gramsci'sthought. Thus, the resultingmultiplicity of interpretations Marxhas its counterpart of in Gramsci.As Salvadori put it. has What has happened to Gramsciis that he has become a fountain from which everyone takes whateverwater he needs: for some he is the father of a conception of authentic proletariandemocracy; for others, he is a strict Stalinist; for still others, he is a social-democrat,maybe even of a right-wingvariety;there are those who considerhim an orthodox MarxistLeninist; 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.}0 Although this Partyhas alwaysbeen, and remains,the most open and intellectuallydynamic of all Communist parties, its interpretations of Gramsci were hopelessly one-sided. Thus, notwithstandingan immense literature on the matter, the Gramscidebate is far from over. This situation came about when, after the fall of fascism,Togliatti,who had succeededGramscias the head of the ItalianCommunistParty,systematically
489 proceeded to embalm Gramsci'sthought as the main ideologicalpillarof the Party's de facto social-democraticpolicies and theoretical orientation. But WarII period official communistideology since in the immediate post-World was under Stalin's uncontested control and all of Marxisttheory was presented 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. Gramscihad to be subsumedas 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 integrationof Lenin's, Gramsci'sand Stalin's thoughts was necessitated by the particular historical situation of post-fascist Italy. According to Lentini, the task was "to reconcile the rich Gramsciantheoretical heritage, and what is relevantand plausible in his political orientation, with the very different reality of the international communist movement." This was particularlytrue 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 approachother 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 authority for his policies - an authority rooted in Italian politics and culture, in the history of the party, and in anti-fasciststruggle.12 Notwithstanding initial and rather unsuccessful opposition from Crocean intellectuals who saw Gramscias one of their own,13 the instrumentalization of Gramscias the "Italianizer"of what in the post-warperiod was general Soviet policy turned out to be relativelyeasy: a selective readingof his works, the hypostatization of some of his historicallycontingent policies to the level of the party's basic program, and a prudent silence concerning Gramsci's growing opposition to Stalinist policies14 readily generated a politically marketableGramsci.Thus, Togliatti became the main architect of the myth of Gramscias a brilliant theoretical footnote to Lenin - a Lenin which, as already indicated,was an opportunisticStalinistreconstructionmanufactured in Russia to provide its de-facto totalitarian and social-democraticpolicies with a legitimatingantecedent. What is amazing is that the Italian extra-parliamentary Left has generally accepted the party's dubious appropriationof Gramsci and, therefore, has constantly attacked him as a non-Leninist, non-Marxist and generally a social-democrat.15 Accordingto Merli, one of the leadingextra-parliamentary 6 Leftist anti-Gramscians, Gramsci ends up forfeiting the very idea of a
490 "revolutionary break" in favor of a "revolution in two stages," or a "revolution without a revolution," by posing the "war of position" as the first stage of a strategy allegedly leading to the eventual"warof manouvre," which, unfortunately, never comes. Consequently,the party's evolutionistic approach whereby power is to be gained graduallyand through electoral means is seen as a direct continuation of Gramsci's"revolution without a throughand through.Aside revolution"which is rejectedas social-democratic from abstractly condemningGramscifor posing the only viable alternativein a very limited socio-historicalcontext, this "critiquefrom the Left" uncritically assumes as its theoretical measure a Leninist model which, even in its unadulteratedoriginalversion, not only was immensely inferiorto Gramsci's but, as we shall indicate later, on closer examinationturnedout to be a mere extension of predominantbourgeoisideology. is This ideological comedy of errors surroundingGramsci-interpretations furtherobfuscated by the Trotskyists'own positive evaluationand appropriation of Gramsci.17 Whatmakes this appearabnormalis that, at first sight, one would predictthat, 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, "Bordigasaw certain essential things before Trotsky and was more coherent than the latter in drawing the due consequences."18But Bordiga'sperceptive reservations had been very early branded as "sectarian" and "extremist" by Trotsky himself at a time when he still harboredhopes of gaininghegemony within the Russian party and was openly against Bordigan-type factionalism 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 arrestin 1926 concerningStalin"sadministrative handlingof Trotsky and the Left opposition.19Without venturing here into the particularmerits of this for anti-Stalinistinterpretationof Gramsci,20 the presentpurposeit need only be pointed out that Italian Trotskyists have rendered an invaluableservice in helping to clarify a whole series of crucialhistorical points. Yet, on the whole, their account remains unconvincing in light of Gramsci'scommitment to the party. Given the breadth and variety of interpretations of Gramsci, it becomes necessary to investigate what constitutes a Marxist reappropriationof this theoretical heritage, and how to concretely articulate it within a new context which has renderedit largely obsolete. This is a problemwhich, not accidentally,had alreadytaxed to the limit the theoreticalarsenalnot only of Gramscibut of all his contenmporary HegelianMarxistswith respect to Marx,
491 Lenin and the Second International.As already indicated, the history of the processwhereby the wealth of Gramsci'ssocial thought was reducedto only a few of its minor moments is almost identical to the fate of Marx'sworks in the late 19th century. What facilitated these instrumentalizationsand falsifications was that both thinkers followed roughly the same pattern of intellectualdevelopmentfrom initially explicit idealistperspectivesto specific and historically-determinatepositions. Since the original framework was never altogether abandoned but only increasinglyrelegated 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 attempt to realize the political implicationsof these positions. This is why the reductionof Marx's thought to its bare economic componentsresultedin a systematicimpoverishment of Marxismwithin the Second Internationaland led even Lenin to dig out Hegels Logic in orderto make sense out of Capitalthroughthe reintegration of its faded philosophicalbackground."2 Unfortunately, this story has no happy ending, for it is not the case that once the forgotten theoreticalframeworkis reintegrated with its severedmoments, all is well and theory and practice live happily thereafter.History takes its toll. As Korsch put it, "all attempts to re-establishthe Marxistdoctrine as a whole in its original function as a theory of the working class' social revolution are reactionaryutopias."22Pending the dubious achievement of the Hegelian Absolute, all theoretical constructions must be relegated to onesidedness and can only receive their validation as historically grounded mediations not extrapolable beyond the context within which they are created.23Furthermore,within this logic, all theoretical claims to absolute knowledge not only turn out to be epistemologicalfraudsbut, as Castoriadis has pointed out in terms of 20th century realities, they provide the ideological justification for bureaucratic domination.24This is why the more philosophicalmoments of Marx'swork become the most salvageable heritage: whereas the economics of Capital and of Theoriesof Surplus Value remain inextricably bound to the competitive market conditions of 19th century capitalism and, as such, confront us as theoretical elaborationsof a reality long-since past, the Manuscriptsand the Grundrisse- 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. Marxismsurvivesas faith precisely because, as Adorno put it, it was not (and we should add: it could not have been) realized.25 The fate of Gramsci'sthought is very similar. As with Marx,the early works are openly Hegelian (Crocean) - a feature that, although subsequently
492 de-emphasizedin what he wrote as a party official from the formation of the Italian Communist Party to his arrest in 1926, reappearsfull-blown in the Prison Notebooks.26 Also, as in Marx, what has been embalmed as official Gramscian thought consists of generally ideological falsifications and notions least likely to survivethe corhypostatized historically-determinate rosive effects of changing conditions. This construction of the official "Gramsci"was carriedout, as already mentioned, by Togliatti in a series of extremely influential essays written mostly from the end of WorldWarII to 1964 shortly before his death.27 It is useful to closely examine Togliatti's claim not in order to providea merely scholasticrefutation,but as a guide to some of Gramsci's key notions, where distance from both Lenin and the various Marxist-Leninistformulations will indicate their relevance for a radical social theory of late capitalism, a theory irreducible to the neoGramscismunderstood in Perlini's sense of "an insidious ideology of the theory."28 camouflagedas revolutionary adversary MarxistMethodology To the extent that within any theory basic notions receivetheir meaningsin relation to both the logical structureas well as their internal relationswith other notions of the theory in question, it may very well be that similar claims may have substantially different functions and meanings within different theories. Since Togliatti, Lenin and Gramsci have three different theories of Marxism,it follows that although all three may be using similar phrases, they may not mean the same thing. Thus, although Togliatti is correct in claimingthat, for Gramsci,"to do politics means to act in such a way as to transform the world. Hence politics contains everyone's real philosophy along with the substanceof history . . .,"" it does not follow that for Gramscithe truth of his political thought is reducible to "the method which is Marxist and Leninist"30as both Togliatti and Marxist-Leninists understandit. Although Togliatti did not bother to document these claims,it Togliatiand is not difficult to provide an army of quotes to support them13' Gramsci,however, do not mean the same thing by "method." The question of Marxistmethodology, in fact, is one of the most confused within the present state of theoretical discussion.WhereasTogliatti and the official communist version codify the methodology within a formal domain accessible only to the "leaders of the working class" and applicableto the political struggleleading to the overthrowof prevailingcapitalist relations,32 to for Gramscisuch an objectification of method leads Marxism "become an ideology in the worst sense of the word, that is to say, a dogmaticsystem of eternal and absolute truths."33 Although within Marxism-Leninismthe
493 specific content of theory is considered variable as a function of changing historical circumstances,the method whereby this variablecontent is properly dealt with is thereby reified precisely to the metaphysical level of absolute truths. That this method subsequentlybecomes the sole possession of the revolutionarytechnicians of the Party34 and thus considerably contributes to widening the social gap between those who know and those who do not know - preciselywhat, among other things, the revolutionis meant to bridge- makes it into the opposite of what Gramscisought. For Gramscithe Marxianmethod is fundamentallyinformal(i.e., irreducible to a series of steps or procedures)and subjective.To the extent that he sees Marxismas the most recent synthesis of the Westerntradition,presupposing the "Renaissance and the Reformation, German idealism and the French Revolution, Calvinismand Englishclassicaleconomics, secularliberalismand this historicism which is at the root of the whole modern conception of life,"35the goal is none other than the realizationof what this traditionhas been aiming for: that free social individualdescribedby Marxin the Grundrisse36 and prefiguredeven earlierin the citizen of the Greekpolis or in the Christiansoul. Only with the advent of communism,however, is it possible to finally realize this goal by abolishing the last expression of class divisions which have hitherto prevented the majority of mankind from becoming human beings in the fullest sense, thus not only reducingthe freedomof the few to an abstract freedom,but also degrading variousexpressionsof this the Westerntradition to "manifestationsof the intimate contradictionsby which society is lacerated."37Thus, Gramsci saw Marxism as "absolute historicism,"38in so far as its synthesizesthe traditionand concretely works out the means whereby the emancipationof mankindis carriedout by destroying the last and most advancedforms of internal social divisions. Since both the historical content as well as the tradition to be fulfilled are constantly under development, no formal method to mediate between the two can be given once and for all: which explainswhy praxis is the centralMarxistcategory.It is that creative activity which reconstitutes the past in order to forge the political tools in the present, to bring about a qualitativelydifferent future. This is why Gramsci hailed the Bolshevik revolution as "The Revolution against Capital." To the extent that Capital "in Russia. .. was the critical demonstrationof the fatal necessity whereby a bourgeoisiehad 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,"39it had to be put aside. In the official social-democratic interpretation, Capital had been seen as a blueprint for the necessary stages of historical development. This objectivistic interpretationwas politically de-
494 activating: "events have exploded the critical schemes within which the history of Russia would have had to develop according to the canons of historical materialism.""The Bolsheviks are not 'Marxists,"'Gramscicontinues, but "they live the Marxistthought that never dies. . . which always posits man, and not brute economic facts, as the supremefactor in history." Thus, already in 1918 Gramscihad seen the obsolescence of the historically specific features of classical Marxism(at least, as seen by the Second International) and what renderedit still valid: the primacyof human activity over and above its theoretical objectifications,along with the ability of "Marxist thought" to concretely elaborate the revolutionary tradition without becoming inextricablyentrappedin any of its historically specific moments. This is why his Marxianmethod boils down to socio-historicallygrounded political activity faithful to an emancipatoryteleology but irreduclibleto any preconstitutedset of procedures.As Salvadoriput it, "the actively organizing element within Gramsci'swork was not the scientific and philologicalreconstruction of Marx and Engels' thought (as in the case, we could add, of Lukacs), but rather, the concrete requirements of political praxis."40 In Togliatti's interpretation, however, Gramsci's originality is reduced to his mere adherenceto Party politics as it is hierarchically by the needs of the set world communistmovement - something too reminiscentof Togliatti'sown political role.41 This also explains Gramsci'sdescriptionof his own views as "Leninist."The Lenin that Gramsci knew and admired was quite different from both the historical Lenin and the sanctified version embalmed in Red Square. As he wrote in prison, his Lenin is to Marx as St. Paul is to Christ: "they represent two phases: science and action which are homogeneous and heterogeneous at the same time," yet both are "necessary to the same The Lenin whom Gramsciknew was the man of action who had degree."42 successfullycarriedout a major revolution. It has been establishedfor some time now that informationabout Russia,Leninand the BolshevikRevolution around the 1920s was very inadequate43 and by 1968 even leading party intellectuals such as Ragionierihad to conclude that Gramsciwas at least a very different kind of "Leninist" round 1920.44 Furthermore,a rigorous examination 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 foundation of MarxismLeninismwas simply not availableto him (and Lenin himself had managedto junk most of the crude ideas contained in these works). Even after 1918, when Lenin'sname exploded on the world scene with the Bolshevikrevolution, the works which were translatedinto Italian(and other languages,for that matter) for wide circulation, were primarily those "devoted to the
495 immediate struggleof those years, againstsocial chauvinismand centrism,for Withthe the foundation and organizationof the communistInternational."45 possible exception of the pamphletson Imperialismand 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 nonethelessable to of constantly reorient strategy accordingto the requirements changingsocial conditions. At any rate, it is generallyagreedthat what passed for Leninism in the early post-World WarI years was not "really"Leninismas Togliattiand WarII period.46 understandit in the post-World Marxism-Leninism Giventhis state of affairs,Togliatti'sclaim concerningthe Leninistheritageto which Gramsci allegedly provides a footnote - even if a brilliant one appearshighly suspect. Thus, it is instructiveto closely examine Togliatti's full evidence. Accordingto Togliatti, there are in Lenin at least three main chapterswhich determinethe whole development of his action and thought: a doctrine of imperialismas 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, "the decisive factor in Gramsci'swhole evolution as a thinker and as a political man of action." A closer examination of these three chapters, however, reveals that, far from constituting equally fundamental pillars of Lenin's the thought, they are three main tenets of Marxism-Leninism, structureof Lenin's thought is much more ambiguousand complex, and the relationship between Lenin and Gramsciis radicallydifferent. The Theory of Imperialism Almost sixty years after it was originally developed, Lenin's theory of imperalismappears today to be decidedly obsolete. It projected that "The export of capitalinfluences,greatlyacceleratesthe developmentof capitalism in those countries in which it is exported," while it may tend "to arrest development in the capital-exportingcountries."48 Thus, imperialism was to help the economic growth of the Third World- a notion that contradicts all of the historical events of the 20th century. As Emmanuelhas pointed out, there does not seem to have been any significantexport of capital from Britain between 1870 and 1914 - the period that Lenin studied - and he quotes Keynes to the effect that there had not been "any net export of capital since ... 1580, when Queen Elizabethinvested Drake'streasurein the
496 Levant Company and later used the profits to found the West India Company!"49 Furthermore, as Carlo has shown, the whole theory was selfcontradictory from the very beginning since, in another part of the same pamphletLenin emphasizesthe growingimportanceof foreignproducedincome for metropolitan capitalism:thus, from 1865 to 1898 such income growsninefold, while English wealth on the whole only doubles, and serves to maintain the unproductiveconsumption of a significantmass of rentiers(around a million),orto corruptlabor aristocracies finally, to financeextravagant or, horse-races.50 One could go on. The point, however, is that Imperialismwas from the very beginning "a marginalwork which never had any scientific pretensions... and far from being a generaltheory of imperialism,it was only an empirical analysis conditioned by a particular historicalsituation."51 Purelyin terms of Lenin's intellectual biography,Imperialismmust be regarded- contrary to Togliatti's claims - primarily as a political tract rather than a scientific treatise. The success that it has had is due, as Basso has put it, more "to the personality of the author and to the practicalresultsobtainedby his political action than to the book's actual content."52In the context within which it was written, it was a polemic against social-democratic theories which projected the eternaldevelopmentof capitalismor which, as with Luxemburg but still on a similarlymechanisticand economisticvein, saw socialismas the inevitable result of the eventual collapse of capitalismbecause of its irresolvable internal contradictions. In either case, what was not taken into account was precisely what SamirAmin, and Lukaics before him,53see as the lasting contribution of Lenin's pamphlet: "the objective ties between the monopolies and revisionism"in a world context typified by new contradictions as well as by a new type of workingclass.54 Thus, the political thrust of Imperialismconsists in identifying the struggleagainstrevisionismin the advanced capitalist countries as the primary 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 to the extent that what separated Lenin from the rest of the social-democrats- and even Rosa Luxemburg- was his voluntarism and his constant emphasison Bolshevikparty organization,the pamphletImperialism must be seen as essentiallyanotherpowerful bombastmeant to demolishany fatalistic account of imperialism and to reiterate the centrality of the conscious subjective moment, i.e., the party (even if it tended to take on fetishistic forms). But even this "political" readingof Imperialismdoes not bring Lenin much closer to Gramsci, since Lenin still presents what is
497 ultimately an economistic explanation of reformist ideology, whereas Gramsci's account is throughoutfocused on the culturaldimension. In official communist historiography,however, Lenin's views on imperialism have been reintegratedinto a linear theory of history according to which there are necessary stages of social development, and imperialismis once again fatalistically seen as the final phase of capitalism inevitably brouglht about by the logic of the system - exactly along the mechanisticlines of It social-democracy.55 is important to keep in mind this process of socialdemocraticinvolution of official communistphilosophy of history in orderto comprehend the further integration of Gramsci's views on questions of economic development - as, for example, worked out in his famous "Southern Question" - within the official party position. In fact, seen within this official optics, the problemof ItalianSouthernunderdevelopment becomes one of how to modernize its semi-feudal social structure. Thus, contrary to what Gramscihimself says in the unfinishedmanuscripton the subject written immediatelyprior to his arrestin 1926, in "Leninizing" his account, the Italian CommunistParty came very close to reducingit to the "ideology of the lead-ball"according to which the under-developedItalian South is seen as an economic drag on the remaining industrialized and economically dynamic North. But this ideology of the lead-ballis precisely what Gramsci fought as bourgeois ideology and tried to show that the proletariatin Turinhad alreadyrejectedit in 1914 when they offered to have Salvemini, a leading Southern advocate (meridionalista),run as their own 56 candidate. At any rate, it is clear that neither Lenin's own account of imperialism,nor the official communist assimilationof it, has much to do with the Gramscian account, which is by no means a theory of imperialism and focuses primarily on the question of Southern intellectualsas the possible catalytic agents for the revolutionarypolitical action needed to resolve the problem of underdevelopment in a socialist direction. Generaleconomic questions are always seen as secondary and mediated through cultural lenses by Gramsci for whom, consequently, political organization and conscious human intervention is throughout 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 sufficiently analyze the notion of revolution and remained caught within the predominant concepts of science, technology and organization,thus foreshadowing the mechanicalreproductionof capitalistrelations even after the successful overthrow of capitalism, at least in State and Revolution he stressed the qualitative displacement of state bureaucratsby new ones armed workers - and the elimination of all privileges.Official communist ideology after the 1930s reinstated the privileges and merely altered the legitimating rhetoric. Both the Leninist and the official communist versions are qualitativelydifferent from what Gramscihad in mind: the coming into being of a new humanity self-consciousof its potentialitiesand consequently immune to any new form of instrumentalization. avoided the traps into He 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 "it is evident that it is not atomic theory that explainshumanhistory but the other way about: in other words, that atomic theory and all scientific hypotheses and opinion are superstructures."57 Thus, society and politics can neverbe adequatelygraspedby an objectivisticsocial science: The situating of the problem as a searchfor laws and for constant, regular and uniform lines is connected to a need, conceivedin a somewhatpuerile and ingeniousway, to resolvein peremptoryfashion the practicalproblem of the predictabilityof historicalevents.58 In fact, in order to prevent the occlusion of the all-important creative moment in the scientific enterprise,he avoids talking about Marxismas "the science of politics" but uses the less smooth phrase "the art and science of politics." The stressthroughoutis on politics as an activity so that prediction, far from being an extrapolation from the given or a mere extension of past regularities into the future, is primarilyan act of commitment:"in reality one can 'foresee' to the extent that one acts, to the extent that one applies a voluntary effort and therefore contributesconcretely to creatingthe results foreseen."59Bourgeois social sciences presuppose precisely what is in the process of historically disappearing:the passivity of the masses;"statistical laws can be employed in the art and science of politics only so long as the greatmassesof the populationremain. .. essentiallypassive."60 None of this can be found in Lenin, with the result that he hypostatizes science above and beyond society, thus acceptingits application(technology)
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as neutral. But, as George has shown, to the extent that both early 20th century science and technology are primarilysocial relations and, moreover, bourgeois social relations, revolution in Lenin turns out to be a mere shift in management.The organizationalstructure is retained: the Party commissar replaces the capitalist boss. Throughout the revolutionary process, the proletariatremainsessentiallyunchanged: For Lenin, it is a matter of accepting the proletariatas capitalism has constituted it in orderto carryout slightly different tasks. It has been well educated and well adjusted. In other words, the basic personality created by capitalismis the one upon which socialismmust rest. The construction of socialism presupposesalienationin its most profoundsense: submission to authority and repression of individual possibilities of imagination, autonomy, liberty, creativity,i.e., of organization.61 This is strikinglyevident in a comparisonof Lenin'sand Gramsci'sanalysesof 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 awkwardmotions, the elaboration of correct methods of work, the introduction of the best system of accountingand control, etc.62 All would be well, accordingto Lenin, once the Taylorsystem were brought under socialistmanagement.How the brutalitywould be eliminatedremainsa moot point and, since efficiency and brutality are inextricably connected, it is understandablewhy the Russian revolution ultimately capitulated by reintroducing new relations of domination. As Korsch spelled it out shortly afterward(1922), no proletarianrevolution is possible without the revolutionarytransformationof the mode of production and of labor.63Far from being mere Stalinistdeviations,the new relationsof dominationwere to an extent alreadyrooted in Lenin'spartialand confused theoreticalvision. How does Gramscideal with Taylorism?First of all, he does not approachit 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 Gramsciis not primarilyproduction,but what happensto the subjectswho in producingcommodities,produce themselvesas well. Far from focusing on the disciplined proletariansas human robots, which in Lenin are mechanically transposedinto the Party where, owing to their discipline and docility, they
500 Gramscistressesthe changes can readily fit into the Bolshevikorganization,64 the human subject undergoes. What he finds is that the process of utter degradation to the level of a mere mechanical function, rather than destroyingthe producingsubject, providesconditions conducive to the overcoming of alienation. Gramsci's critics never tire of pointing out that in Gramscino notion of false consciousness, alienation or reification is to be found,65and it is futile to search his writingsfor an analysisof the caliberof in of Lukacs'"Reificationand the Consciousness the Proletariat" History and Class Consciousness. But this does not mean that Gramsci did not see alienation as a problem. Of course, neither Gramscinor Lenin was familiar with the Marxian thematic of alienation since the Manuscripts and the were unknown to them. Yet, while Gramsciconcretely deals with Grundrisse the substantialissues involved,Lenin altogetherignoresthem. In Lenin, the focus is always on power and on the organizationalmeans to conquer it. Thus, the coming of socialismtends to be seen as a solution to the capitalistproblems of production, efficiency, and organizationratherthan in terms of the rise of a new humanity, a new civilization, and the abolition of epiphenomenaautomatically domination (which are seen as superstructural taken care of with the establishmentof the "workers'state"). In Gramsci,on the other hand, the stress is always on the latter, with the former being merely the means for its achievement.Unlike Lukacs,for whom the problem of alienation is located squarelyin the capitalistdivisionof labor, in Gramsci This does not mean that Gramscialtogether it is always a political problem.66 the production process. Whenhe dealswith it, however, it is not as if ignores or it were a set of interactingabstractcategories,as in Lukaics, an objective thing as in Lenin, but as a living activity which in capitalismreduceshuman beings to the level of mere animals and consequently generates a political confrontation eventually leading to communism.This is brilliantlycaptured in a long passageworth quoting in full: The compositor ... has to keep his hands and eyes constantly in movement, and this makes his mechanization easier. But if one really thinks about it, the effort that these workers have to make in order to isolate from the often fascinatingintellectual content of a text (and the more fascinating it is the less work is done and the less well) its written symbolisation, this perhaps is the greatest effort that can be requiredin any trade. However it is done, and it is not the spiritualdeath of man. Once the process of adaptationhas been completed, what reallyhappensis that the brain of the worker, far from being mummified,reachesa state of The only thing that is completely mechanizedis the complete freedonm. physical gesture; the memory of the trade, reduced to simple gestures
501 repeated at an intense rhythm, "nestles" in the muscular and nervous centres and leaves the brain free and unencumberedfor other occupations ... Americanindustrialists have understoodall too well this dialectic in the new industrial methods. They have understood that inherent "trainedgorilla"is just a phrase,that "unfortunately"the workerremains a man and even that during this work he thinks more, or at least has greater opportunities for thinking, once he has overcome the crisis of adaptationwithout being eliminated: and not only does the workerthink, but the fact that he gets no immediate satisfaction from his work and realisesthat they are trying to reducehim to a trainedgorilla,can lead him into a train of thought that is far from conformist.67 WhereasAmericanindustrialistshave become aware of this process, the same cannot be said for most Leninistswho tend to deal with the proletariansas trained gorillas - even within the Party! The problemwith Gramsci'saccount - which he could not be expected to have foreseen - is that capitalism during the past half century has proceeded to separate workers physically from one another by means of new political tools such as the assemblyline, and also to colonize their thoughts - to use Aronowitzsphrase68- by means of consumerismand other ideological traits diffused by the mass media in a way that makes it difficult for critical elements to emerge from the laboring process. At any rate, it is clear that whereas for Lenin, what is always central is the form of revolution which, to the extent that it uncriticallyretains capitalist and domineeringcontents, paves the way for the now well-known abstract negations of the Russianrevolution, iu Gramsci,the content is alwaysin the foreground. Thus, although his concept of hegemony has been associated with 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 that the Leninist concept focuses exclusively on political society, while its Gramscian counterpart includes both political and civil society - and the very terms have considerably different meaningsfor the two of them.70Things are complicated,however,by Gramsci's own claim that "the theoretical-practicalprinciple of hegemony has also epistemological significance, and it is here that Illich's (Lenin's) greatest theoretical contribution to the philosophy of praxis should be sought. In these terms one could say that Ilich advancedphilosophy as philosophy in so far as he advancedpolitical doctrine and practice."71 Passagessuch as these, which abound in Gramsci,are what misleadpeople of the caliber of Moldolfo to locate an antinomy "between the libertarianand the authoritariantendency that is embodied in the Gramscianconcept of
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"72 hegemony. But an examination of how Lenin theoreticallyarticulatesthis notion shows that, in his enthusiasmfor the Russianrevolution,Gramscimay have projected onto Lenin his own concept of hegemony. As Bobbio has shown, Gramsciactually owed Lenin far less than he himself acknowledged In concerningthe concept of hegemony.73 the historicalLenin,hegemonyhas very little to do with culture and refers mainly to the class domination that the proletariat exercises through the Party in realizing a narrow view of socialism understood as the collective ownershipof the means of production, But planning, and the abolition of privilege.74 to the extent that there is no attempt or even some provision for the genesis of a "new humanity," the unchanged old content eventually has the better of the new externally imposed social form so that the old relations of domination gradually reappear.In other words, what distinguishesGramsci'snotion of hegemony from Lenin's is that, for Gramsci it is also a theory of the overcomingof alienation,while in Leninit remainsprimarilya theory of domination.
Theory of the Party These same themes reappearin the theory of the party. For Gramsci, the process of creating a new culture in which all members participateas selfconscious subjects is to be mediated by the party as the "Modem Prince" The who takes "the place of the divinity or the categoricalimperative."75 goal is not more efficiency or a more rational organization,however, but the bringingabout of the qualitativelynew. Here Gramsciavoids the pitfalls of a static humanism which sees alienation as the deformation of something initially sound to be overcome by a return to some status quo ante. Whathe meant by the new culture was the qualitativelynew hitherto only prefigured problematicrotates around in thought and expressed as negativity.Gramsci's new State.76Clearly, in this context the notion of self-constitution into a Gramsci returns to an Hegelian notion of the State seen as the highest expressionof civil society ratherthan, as in the orthodox Marxisttradition,a mere tool of class domination. In this conception of the state, Gramsciagain radically differs from Lenin. Whereas Lenin constantly stresses its class character and repressive nature, Gramsci concentrates on its culturalhegemonic function: "Its aim is always that of creatingnew and highertypes Even relatively"visionary"works such as State and Revoluof civilization."77 tion contain little about qualitativechangesresultingfrom the revolutionary process. It is always primarilya mechanicaltransitioninvolvingthe alteration of purely external propertyrelations: We are not Utopians, we do not indulgein dreamsof how best to do away immediatelywith ail subordination... we workersourselves(the Bolshe-
503 viks?), relying on our experience as workers, establishinga strict, an iron discipline,supported by state power and the armed workers,shall reduce the role of the state officials to that of simply carryingout our instructions as responsible,moderatelypaid "managers".78 These differences in emphasis between Gramsciand Lenin do make a great deal of differenceonce they turn from abstractphilosophicalspeculationinto state policies. In comparing Lenin's and Gramsci'stheories of the party, Togliatti unwarrentedly assumes that Lenin did have a theory of the party. As Carlo has convincingly shown, however, Lenin "does not present one, but a series of complex and contradictory positions"79on the question of party organization. A careful study of the 45 volumes of his Collected Worksrevealsthat there is an economistic account duringthe 1890s, the well-known theory of WhatIs to Be Done?, a much looser account duringthe period between 1905 and 1919, the bureaucraticviews implicit in Left-Wing Communism:An InfantileDisorder,and the anxious forebodingsof the very last years. Thereis no justification for the hypostatization of the views contained in What to Is Be Done? to the level of the Leninist theory of the party, other than the unfortunate fact that these views have best fit the bureaucraticcollectivist regimes and, it should be added, generally reflect Lenin's own political practices. The ascription of the views of WhatIs to Be Done? to Gramsci becomes further suspect when it is realized that Gramsci was not even familiarwith this particular work.80 But even if Togliatti had been correct in locating Lenin'stheory of the party in WhatIs to Be Done?, new probleniswould arise. Despite the superficial similarity in the emphasis on intellectuals both in Gramsci and in Lenin, there is no relation whatsoever between the two. In WhatIs to Be Done? Lenin, following Kautsky, sharply differentiatesbetween the intellectuals as historical subjects, who, because of their privilegedposition, can generate socialist theory "as natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought"81and the proletariat as the passiveobject which can be activated only throughthe bourgeoisintellectuals'donation of an otherwise r -unattainable revolutionary consciousness.In fact, the proletariatcould spontaneously attain class consciousnessonly if, as individuals,some exceptional members become intellectuals!Nothing is further from this than Gramsci'sclaim that "all men are intellectuals"82and his constant berating of those who are ordinarilyreferredto as "intellectuals,"i.e., those who think abstractideas. In fact, his definition of organic intellectuals covers the whole groupable to "be an organizerof society in generalincludingall its complex organismsand
504 services, right up to the state organism."83 the extent that being an To intellectual does not merely involve thinking abstractly, but objectifying ideas, and to the extent that the revolutionaryparty does this, all membersof the party are intellectuals. The oft-quoted passageaccordingto which "The popular element 'feels' but does not always know or understand;the intellectual element 'knows' but does not always understandand in particular does not always feel,"84 clearly shows Gramsci'sview of intellectuals in capitalist society as partial beings who can be completed only by reintegration with the social whole. Unlike in WhatIs to Be Done?, it is not a matter of externally manipulatingotherwise passiveproletarians,but of integrating the two and thus remedyingthe shortcomingscreated on both sides by the division between mental and physical labor. The notion of the party as the ModernPrince - the collective will - is in no way reducibleto Lenin's"ten wise men"85 pulling the strings of puppet-proletarians. is, rather, the It of a new society constituted by people able to both think and feel, embryo based on the overcomingof the social divisions. Philosophy Interestinglyenough, Togliatti did not attempt to drawany parallelsbetween Lenin's philosophy (or what official communist orthodoxy has codified as Marxist-Leninist philosophy) and Gramsci's.Such a study, however,has been made by the translator of Gramsci'swork into German.86 Taking Lenin's Materialismand Empiriocriticismas his model of orthodoxy, Riechers finds that Gramsci has reduced Marxism to subjective idealism.87 Although Riechers acknowledges that Lenin's Materialismand Empiriocriticismhas been instrumentalized set the pace for all subsequentSoviet philosophical to debate,88he ignores the scores of criticisms, from both Marxistsas well as non-Marxists,which have shown that the book has very little to do with Marxism,completelly trivializesthe dialecticand, as Korschhas put it, "drags the whole debate between materialismand idealismback to a historicalstage which Germanidealismfrom Kant to Hegel had alreadysurpassed."89 is This not the place to once again flog the dead horse of Materialism and Empiriocriticism with critiques of its infamous theory of reflection, its mechanistic epistemology and generally vulgar materialism.It is sufficient to point out, with Adorno, that although Lenin "wanted to expose the complicity of subjectivepositivismwith the 'powers that be'," the whole effort turnedout to be an anti-intellectualtirade in which this "political need turned against the very theoreticalgoal of knowledge."90 was AlthoughMaterialismand Empiriocriticism availableonly in Russian(the first German translation appeared only in the late 1920s),91 and Italian
505 Communistslearned of its existence duringtheir Moscowvisits between 1922 and 1924, no reference to it is to be found in Gramsci's writingsat that time or later. It was Bordigawho explicitly attempted to resuscitateLenin'svulgar materialismwithin the communist party in 1924 in his journalPrometeo,92 while Gramsci'sjournal OrdineNuovo at that time not only ignoredLenin's philosophical work, but published one of Engels' long essays praisingHegel and the heritageof Germanidealism,while pointingout that a political man's real philosophy is in his politics and action ratherthan his books-something that reappears repeatedlyin Gramsci's Notebooks as well. At any rate, Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism was primarily a political weapon meant to eliminate a wing of the party at a crucialpoint in the history of the Bolsheviks,ratherthan a majorphilosophicaltract.93It has nothing to do with Gramsci'sphilosophy. Far from being a deficiency, as Riechers claims, this frees Gramsci'sMarxismfrom a philosophical provincialism which is usually ascribed to Gramsci, but which should be more ever since.94 correctly ascribed to the Bolsheviks and Marxism-Leninism Gramsci's epistemology remains Hegelian throughout: knowing is never a passivereflection of the givenbut an act creatingthe mediationsnecessaryto direct life. Heritage The Gramscian alleged Leninism,or of the myth of Gramsci What,then, remainsof Gramsci's as Lenin's footnote? Not much. That it has been so widespreadand readily accepted can only be explained in terms of the unresolved ambiguities concerning Leninism,a relativelypoor knowledgeof Gramsci'swork, and the immense 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 Leninismof the official communistparties. To the extent that Gramsciprovideda highly originaland unique reformulation of Marxiantheory, he occupies a special place in the history of Marxism, both in terms of what came before, as well as what came after him. As Auciello has put it, unlike most of the internationalcommunist movementaroundthe 1930s, Gramscisucceeded in perceivingthe generaltrends of a profound process of transformationat a world-widelevel, of the relation between the State and the economy (as produced by the new requirementsand by the new phase of capitalist development) precisely because in the previousyears, and with particularreference to the kind of investigationsand of obser-
506 vations connected with the analysisof fascism, he had graduallycome 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 traditionaltype and sought, rather, to trace the "presence"of the State mass reality which is "civil society".95 in that "private"and "pre-State" In this respect, Gramsciis the only Marxistof his generationwhose thought was able to withstand that historical watershed represented by Fascism, to Stalinismand the shift from entrepreneurial monopoly capitalism. To the extent that he provides a formulationof Marxismfree from all the traditional trappingsof orthodox versions, Gramsciis not only very likely to remain the theoretical guide for the Italian and French Communist Parties, but also to provide a framework from which to transcend their reformismafter they come to power in the next decade.Given the closureof the Marxist perspective elsewhere, if Marxism is to become a meaningful path. political force in the West,it will have to follow a Gramscian
NOTES
1. The almost religious attachment to the uncritically accepted underpinnings of orthodox Marxism - proletariat, party, class, etc. - can be seen in the political trajectory of New Left Review. Unwilling to give up the fundamentals of orthodoxy, and having finally realized the untenability of Althusserianism, the journal has been trying to resuscitate the cadaver of Trotskyism in the search for a viable way to re-cycle Leninism and Bolshevik nostalgia. 2. Tito Perlini, Gramsci e il Gramscismo (Milan, 1964), p. 179. 3. Ibid., p. 170. 4. Ibid., p. 151. 5. For an accurate account of the exodus of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks from Gramsci's death up to the recently published definitive edition, see Valentino Garratana, "Prefazione" to Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere (Turin, 1975), Vol. I, pp. xxix-xxxv. For a generally accurate reconstruction of the history of Gramscian studies, see Alasdair B. Davidson, "The Varying Season of Gramscian Studies," in Political Studies XX:4 (December 1972), pp. 448-461. For a highly polemical, repetitive, and generally disorganized - yet at times penetrating analysis, see Perlini, op. cit., especially pp. 7-35. 6. Perlini, op. cit., p. 8. 7. These developments, however, must to a great extent be traced back to ambiguities in Marx's own works. Gramsci himself was aware of this early in his life when he wrote that: "It is not surprising that Marx introduced in his work positivistic elements. It is explained by the fact that Marx was not a professional philosopher and he occasionally dozed off. What is certain, however, is that the essence of his doctrine is its dependence on philosophical idealism." Antonio Gramsci, in II Grido del Popolo (October 19, 1918); now in English in P. Cavalcanti and P. Piccone, eds., History, Philosoph,.yand Culture in the Young Gramsci (St. Louis, 1976), p. 18. For an excellent discussion of Gramsci's debunking of all positivist and determinist
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elements in Marxism, see Eugenio Garin, Intellettuali Italiani del XX Secolo (Rome, 1974), pp. 352ff. For an account of the Marxism to which Gramsci was reacting, see Albrecht Weilmer, The Critical Theory of Society, trans. John Cummings (New York, 1971), Chapter 2: "The Latent Positivism in Marx's Philosophy of History," pp. 67ff; and Andrew Arato, "The Second International: A Reexamination," in Telos 18 (Winter 1973-74)), pp. 2-52. Ernesto Ragionieri has suggested this parallel without, however, fully drawing all of the consequences. See his "Prefazione" to Palmiro Togliatti, Antonio Gramsci (Rome, 1972), p. xv. Of course, a roughly similar argument could be made for the Lenin-Stalin relation. In fact, Perlini writes: ". . . Gramsci must first of all be ... separated from the Gramscians and from Togliatti who has sought to place himself in relation to Gramsci-Socrates as a new Plato, thus introducing a relation similar to that which Stalin established between himself and the cynically manipulated ghost of Lenin." Op. cit., p. 171. Massimo Salvadori, Gramsci e il Problema Storico della Democrazia (Turin, 1970), p. 164. It is no accident, therefore, that Gramsci's works are usually prefaced by claims that "Gramsci's writings could not be understood and evaluated in their correct meaning independently of the progress made during the first three decades of this century by the theoretical and practical activity of Lenin and Stalin. Gramsci's Marxism is Marxism-Leninism . . ." Cf. "Prefazione" to Antonio Gramsci, Il Materialismo Storico e la Filosofia di Benedetto Croce (Turin, 1966),p. xvi. Cf. also Giansiro Ferrata, "Prefazione" to 2000 Pagine di Gramsci (Milan, 1971), Vol. I, p. 18, where he argues that "nothing can be understood of Gramsci if an 'internal' personality is separated from the fundamental elements of MarxismLeninism." Giacinto Lentini, Croce e Gramsci (Palermo, 1967), p. 95n. Luigi Cortese, "Palmiro Togliatti, la 'Svolta di Salerno' e l'Eredita Gramsciana." in Belfagor XXX (January 31, 1975), p. 10. For an excellent but brief summary of the post-war debate between the Crocean and the Communist Party concerning the Gramscian heritage, see Davidson, op.cit., pp. 453-55. According to Cortese, "As it happened in Russia with the relationship between Lenin and Stalin, the (Gramsci-Togliatti) continuity was idealized at the price of total silence concerning the phases of dissent and clash that took place both before as well as after Gramsci's arrest . .. The real drama of Gramsci's life in jail (was) the torment of loneliness with respect to the Party and its political line which intensified and multiplied the effects of reclusion and of fascist oppression." Op.cit., pp. 10-11. Since the mid-1960s, with the publication of Athos Lisa's 1933 report to the party of his account of Gramsci's opposition to the 1929 Comintern policies of "social fascism" (Lisa was in prison with Gramsci at the time), additional corroborating evidence by other fellow prisoners such as Ley and Ceresa, and Fiore's interview with Gennaro (Gramsci's brother), it is clear that Gramsci was not the faithful Stalinist party-man that Togliatti had hitherto depicted. Rather, he came increasingly to oppose party policies to the point of becoming almost totally isolated from his fellow Communist prisoners. Cf. Athos Lisa, "Discussioni Politiche con Gramsci," in Rinascita (December 12, 1964); now also in Athos Lisa, Memorie. In Carcere con Gramsci (Milan, 1973); Giovanni Ley, "Colloqui con Gramsci nel Carcere di Turi," in Rinascita (February 20, 1965); Alfonso Leonetti, "II 'Cazzotto nell 'Occhio' o 'della Costituente'," in Note su Gramsci (Urbino, 1970), pp. 191-208; Giuseppe Fiore, Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary (London, 1970), pp. 252-258; "Introduction" to Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London, 1971), pp. xcii. Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, in her Per Gramsci (Bologna, 1974), has provided as
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14.
508
the close a reconstructionof the events surrounding breakas is possiblewith the presently availabledocuments. The issue that led to Gramsci'sbreak with the International also led Lukacs, after the "Blum Theses" - which paralleled position - to give up any furtherdirectpoliticalactivity - at least up to Gramsci's to 1956. In view of all this, it is surprising find otherwisealertindependentscholars such as Davidson(op.cit., p. 456n.) uncriticallyaccept spuriousreasonsput forth break.For to and by party watch-dogssuchas Garratana Ragionieri deny Gramsci's argument,see his "II Dibattito Teorico nel MovimentoOperaioInterRagionieri's (Rome, nazionale," in Pietro Rossi, ed., Gramscie la CulturaContemporanea 1969), Vol. I, pp. 134-37. It is obviously impossible, and unnecessary,to cover here all the variousinterpretationsof Gramsci- something,at any rate, already done fairly well by the cited works of Davidsonand Perliii. Specialmention, however,must be made of Antonio Gramsci,La Vita, Il Pensiero, L'Azione (Bari, Giuseppe Tamburrano's interpretation Gramsciand, of 1963) which providedan openly social-democratic although violently rejected by party intellectuals, has had a major influence in studiesin the 1960s. redirecting Gramscian Cf., amongothers, Stefano Merli,"I Nostri Conti con la Teoriadelia 'Rivoluzione senza Rivoluzione',"in Giovane Critica 17 (1967); AndreinaDe Clementi, "La d'Italianel 1921-22 e il RapportoBordiga-Gramsci," Politicadel PartitoComunista "Per una in Rivista Storica del Socialismo 28 (1966); and Giacomo Marramao, Piacentini XI:46 (March,1972). Criticadell 'Ideologia di Gramsci,"in Quaderni however, has since moved away from his earliercrypto-Althusserian Marramao, position; for a self-criticism,see his "Ideologiae Rapporti Sociali," in Rinascita (July 25, 1975), pp. 23-25. This Trotskyistinterpretationof Gramscihad alreadybeen outlined in the mide Attualita di Gramsci Politica Comunista(Milan,1955). 1950s by Livio Maitan's Trotskye il Of particularsignificance,within this literature,is SilverioCorvisieri, Italiano(Rome, 1969). Comunismo Perlini,op.cit., p. 189. Crucialin this respect is a letter from Gramscito Togliatti,publishedalmost 40 years later by the latter. See PalmiroTogliatti, "A Proposito dello Scambio di e Letteretra Gramsci Togliatti,"in Rinascita(June 13, 1964), p. 24. For an almost exhaustiveaccount of these problems,see Perliniwho devotes two full chaptersto them;op.cit., pp. 22-35 and pp. 103-144. Cf. V. I. Lenin,CollectedWorks (Moscow,1965), Vol. 38, pp. 180ff. Karl Korsch, "Ten Theses on Marxism Today (1950)," in Telos 26 (Winter 1975-76), p. 40. in ultimatelyfailed: Marxism History and ClassConsciousness This is why Lukaics' The rediscovery of the Hegelian foundations of Marxism was mechanically reintegratedwith the socio-historicalanalyses of Capital which had long since Cf. ceased to be validoverhalf a centuryafter theirformulation. my "Dialecticand in Materialism Lukacs,"Telos 11 (Spring1972), pp. 105-134. Cf. Cornelius Castoriadis,L'Institution Imaginairede la Societe (Paris, 1975), pp. 82ff. TheodorW. Adorno,NegativeDialektik(Frankfurt,1966), p. 13. Gramsci,Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 404: Marxism "is a reformulationand development of Hegelianism."Even Togliatti, in a famous article originally can publishedin September23, 1925, acknowledgesthese sources:"Marxism be reachedthroughdifferent paths.We reachedit throughthe path followed by Karl Marx, i.e., starting from German idealist philosophy, from Hegel." Palmiro (Rome, 1967), Vol. I, pp. 647-653. Togliatti,Opere, edited by Ernesto Ragionieri Most of these essays are now collected in PalmiroTogliatti,Antonio Gramsci, op.cit.; fourteen more obscurebut relatedarticleshave recently been republished
15.
16.
17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.
24. 25. 26.
27.
509
by Cortese, op.cit., pp. 17-44. Davidson, "The Varying Seasons of Gramscian Studies," op.cit., convincingly shows how, chronologically, Togliatti's views were sharpened in the face of growing criticism to eventually almost explicitly acknowledge that very little of Lenin's theories remain in Gramsci. For Davidson's own views on the relationship between Lenin and Gramsci, see his "Gramsci and Lenin 1917-1922" in The Socialist Register (1974), pp. 125-150. Perlini, op.cit., p. 194. Togliatti, Gramsci, op. cit., p. 136. Ibid., p. 138. Thus, as early as 1918, immediately following the assassination attempt on Lenin, Gramsci wrote an article on "Lenin's Work" (September 14, 1918 - now in History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci, op. cit., pp. 134-139) praising Lenin for "applying the method devised by Marx;" and in the Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 436, he repeatedly makes it clear that the task of "elaborating ... the concept of philosophy of praxis as historical methodology" is central for revolutionary Marxists. That this formal and objectivistic interpretation of Marxist methodology is not merely one of Togliatti's ideological idiosyncrasies can be seen in the fact that it is also widespread among North American Marxists. Cf. Martin Nicolaus, "Foreword" to Karl Marx, Grundrisse (London, 1973). For a detailed critique of Nicolaus' objectivistic metaphysics, see my "Reading the Grundrisse: Beyond Orthodox Marxism," in Theory and Society 2 :2 (1975), pp. 235-259. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 395. For an account of how, starting with Lenin, official Soviet communism reproduces the bourgeois mechanisms that the revolution was to have eliminated, see Francois George, "Forgetting Lenin," Telos 18 (Winter 1973-74), pp. 53-88; and Frederick J. Fleron and Lou Jean Fleron, "Administrative Theory as Repressive Political Theory: The Communist Experience." Telos 12 (Summer 1972), pp. 63-92. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 395. Marx, Grundrisse, op.cit., p. 705. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 404. Ibid., p. 465. Gramsci, "The Revolution against Capital" (November 24, 1917), now in History, Philosophy and Culture in the young Gramsci, op.cit., pp. 123-126. Salvadori, op. cit., p. 1 1. What makes Togliatti's claim all the more credible was Gramsci's constant stress on discipline which, in 1924, had led him to oppose Trotsky even though he was theoretically in agreement with him. Cf. Salvadori, op. cit., pp. 27-29; and Hoare, "Introduction" to the Prison Notebooks, op.cit., who correctly points out how Gramsci's perception of the Russian events of the period were conditioned by a similar situation within his own party brought about by Bordiga's opposition. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 382. See Alberto Caracciolo, "A Proposito di Gramsci, la Russia e il Movimento Bolscevico," in Studi Gramsciani (Rome, 1969), pp. 95-104. Cf. Ragionieri, "Gramsci e il Dibattito Teorico ...." op. cit. Togliatti, Antonio Gramsci, op.cit., pp. 139-140. Davidson has convincingly established through an analysis of the material available at that time to Gramsci, that the Lenin Gramsci knew was closer to De Leon than to the historical Lenin. The first anthology of Lenin's writings was put together by Alfonso Leonetti in 1920 and contains precisely the material to which Togliatti refers. Cf. Davidson, "Gramsci and Lenin," op.cit., pp. 130-131. Cf. Davidson, 'Gramsci and Lenin," op. cit., p. 139.
28. 29. 30. 31.
32.
33. 34.
35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.
42. 43. 44. 45.
46.
47. Togliatti,Antonio Gramsci, cit., p. 161. op.
510
48. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow, n.d.), p. 107. 49, Arghiri Emmanuel, "Colonialism and Imperialism," New Left Review 73 (MayJune, 1972), p. 52. 50. Antonio Carlo, "Towards a Redefinition of Imperialism," Telos 20 (Summer 1974), p. 109. 51. Emmanuel, op. cit., p. 36. 52. Lelio Basso, "La Teoria Dell'Imperialismo di Lenin," in Annali Feltrinelli 15 (1973), p. 713. 53. According to Lukaics, "Lenin's superiority - and this is an unparalleled theoretical achievement - consists in his concrete articulation of the economic theory of imperialism with every political problem of the present epoch." Georg Lukacs, Lenin, A Study on the Unity of his Thought (London, 1970), p. 41. 54. Samir Amin, "La Crisi dell'Imperialismo Contemporaneo," Terzo Mondo 111:27 (January-March, 1975), pp. 3-16. Pushing this line of reasoning to its extreme logical consequences, Emmanuel concludes that the exploitation of the Third World benefits the workers of advanced industrial societies who, in participating in the new world-wide exploitation, no longer have socialism as their objective goal. Unlike in Lenin, where the labor aristocracy remains a privileged minority of the workers in advanced societies, with Emmanuel it is almost the whole working class that becomes a labor aristocracy vis-a-vis the majority of the workers in the Third World. See Arghiri Emmanuel, Unequal Exchange, trans. Brian Pearce (New York, 1972). 55. Amin Calls this phenomenon "the second revisionism" and locates it from the 1930s on. It is typified by the work of Bukharin, Varga and Mendelsohn. Cf. Amin, "La Crisi . . .," op.cit., pp. 10-11. 56. Antonio Gramsci, Il Risorgimento (Turin, 1966), pp. 79-81. Cf. also his La Questione Meriodionale (Rome, 1970), pp. 135-136. Although the authors of the "Introduzione" to this volume point out how Gramsci's account was far from being dualistic or reducible to the above dimensions, it is clear that the debate has tended to focus on the official Party interpretation of the problem. This is why extraparliamentary Left critiques such as that of Carlo and Capecelatro violently attack ideological Trojan horses in their "Against 'The Southern Question'," in International Journal of Sociology, IV:2-3 (Summer-Fall 1974), pp. 31-84. It is interesting that the two authors cannot find one single quote from Gramsci to pin the official communist portion on him; they have to settle with ascribing guilt by association in quoting from an official Communist Party document written by Grieco, for whose work Gramsci was allegedly responsible. The most detailed and exhaustive analysis of this problem is to be found in Massimo L. Salvadori, "Gramsci e la Questione Meriodionale," in Gramsci e il Problema Storico della Democrazia, op.cit., pp. 57-103. Cf. also Perlini, op.cit., pp. 85ff., who reiterates the accusations of Carlo and Capecelatro in a violent polemic with other proGramsci Left positions. 57. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op.cit., p. 468. 58. Ibid., p. 437. 59. Ibid., p. 438. 60. Ibid., p. 428. 61. George, "Forgetting Lenin," op.cit., p. 55. 62. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1965), Vol. 27, p. 259. As quoted in Fleron and Fleron, op. cit., p. 81. 63. Karl Korsch, Arbeitsrecht fur Betriebsrate (Frankfurt, 1968). 64. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1975), Vol. 7, pp. 391-392. 65. Perlini, op.cit., pp. 156, 177. 66. It is well known that, as Lukaics himself admitted in the "Preface to the New Edition (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 without collapsing objectification and alienation in answering this question first in his Dialektik des Konkreten (Frankfurt, 1967) and then in his more political work, La Nostra CrisiA ttuale (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. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., pp. 309 - 3 10. Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of A merican Working Class Consciousness (New York, 1973). For the official Italian Communist Party view, see Luciano Gruppi, Il Concetto di Egemonia in Gramsci (Rome, 1972). For a restrained but accurate critique of Gruppi, see Nicola Auciello, Socialismo ed Egemonia in Gramsci e Togliatti (Bari, 1974), pp. 85-86. Cf. Thomas R. Bates, "Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony," in Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXVI:2 (April-June, 1975), p. 357. Cf. also Hughes Portelli, Gramsci e il Blocco Storico, trans. Maria Novella Pierini (Bari, 1973), pp. 3-11. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 365. Rodolfo Mondolfo, Umanismo di Marx, Studi Filosofici 1908-1966 (Turin, 1968), p. 403. Norberto Bobbio, "Gramsci e la Concezione della Societa Civile," in Pietro Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la Cultura Contemporanea, op.cit. As Paggi has argued, Gramsci's "Leninism" in the Prison Notebooks 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, Antonio Gramsci e ilModerno Principe (Rome, 1970), p. 357. 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. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 133. As Auciello summarizes it (op.cit., p. 100), in Gramsci "civil society appears as that specific level in which the State . . . 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." Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 242. V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (New York, 1932), pp. 42-43. Antonio Carlo, "Lenin and the Party," Telos 17 (Fall 1973), p. 40. It should also be added that Gramsci constantly re-thought the problem of organization and no one theory of the Party can unequivocally be extrapolated from his works. 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 WhatIs to 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 to Be Done? was somewhat dated; Davidson, "Gramsci and Lenin," op.cit. The footnotes to What Is to Be Done? in the English translation of the Prison Notebooks are figments of the translators' Leninist imaginations. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow, 1963), Vol. 4, p. 258. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, op. cit., p. 9.
67. 68. 69.
70.
71. 72. 73.
74.
75. 76.
77. 78. 79.
80.
81. 82.
512
83. Ibid., p. 5.
84. Ibid, p. 418. 85. Lenin, WhatIs to Be Done? (New York, 1943), p. 116. 86. Christian Riechers, Antonio Gramsci, Marxismus in Italien (Frankfurt, 1970). The same author, in 1967, had edited a selection of Gramsci's writings in German, Philosophie der Praxis (Frankfurt, 1967), with an introduction by Wolfgang Abendroth, which has since become an example of how not to translate. For devastating critiques, see Jose Rodriguez-Lores, Die Grundstruktur der Marxismus Gramsci und die Philosophie der Praxis (Frankfurt, 1971); Gerhart Roth, Gramscis
als Deutung des Marxismus Philosophieder Praxis(Frankfurt,1972); Peter Palla,

"Gramsci in Germania," Utopia, 11:7-8 (July-August, 1972), pp. 9-14; and Franco Fergnani, "La 'Questione Gramsci'; una Proposta di Riconsiderazione," Aut Aut 144 (November-December 1974), pp. 25-38. A thesis similar to Riechers had earlier been defended by Mario Tronti in "Alcune Questioni intorno al Marxismo di Gramsci," Studi Gramsciani (Rome, 1959), pp. 305-321. For an excellent critique of Riechers, see Ray Morrow's review of the book in Telos 22 (Winter 1974-75), pp. 174-181. Surprisingly, Perlini, op.cit., pp. 156ff, unreservedly endorses the book not so much because of Riechers' philosophical profundity, but out of an unrestrained hatred for Gramsci and everything associated with him. Marramao, who had initially also endorsed Riechers' work in the previously-cited article, "Per una Critica dell'Ideologia di Gramsci," has eventually changed his mind. For an interesting critique, see Marramao, "Ideologica c Rapporti Sociali," op. cit. 87. Riechers, Antonio Gramsci, op. cit., pp. 131-141. 88. Ibid., p. 145. 89. Karl Korsch, "The Present State of the Problem of Materialism and Philosophy An Anti-Critique (1930)," in Marxism and Philosophy (London, 1970), pp. 115-116. Cf. also Korsch's favorable review of Pannekoek's book "Lenin's philosophy," in Living Marxism, IV:5 (November, 1938), where a similar argument is developed.
90. Adorno,NegativeDialektik,op.cit., p. 203.

91. Pannekoek writes that, if Materialism and Empiriocriticism and Lenin's notions "had been known by 1918 among Western Marxists, surely there would have been a more critical attitude against his tactics for world revolution." Anton Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher (London, 1975), p. 102. (Pannekoek's essay was originally written in the 1930s.) 92. Cf. Eugenio Garin, "Discorsi," in Gramsci e la Cultura Contemporanea, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 25; and Ragionieri, "Gramsci e il Dibattito teorico . . ." op. cit., pp. 122130. 93. For an elaboration of this, see my "Towards an Understanding of Lenin's Philosophy," RadicalAmerica IV:6 (September-October, 1970), pp. 3-20. 94. The most outspoken author of this charge is Eric J. Hobsbawm. Cf. his "The Great Gramsci," New York Review of Books, April 4, 1974, pp. 39ff; and his "Dall'Italia all'Europa," in Rinascita, July 25, 1975, pp. 15ff. Nowhere, however, does Hobsbawm document his claim. Compared to whom is Gramsci "provincial"? Certainly not Korsch or Lukaics, whose problematic during the same time is considerably more limited, or any of the English or German intellectuals who went through the ordeal of the 1920s and 1930s. The idiotic mechanical inference of Gramsci's provincialism from Italy's economic backwardness should either be argued or put to rest. Gramsci was, first and foremost, a European thinker not limited by the problematic of an economically backward society. 95. Auciello, op. cit., p. lUn. Theory and Society 3 (1976) 485-512 ? Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in the Netherlands

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Gramsci's Marxism: Beyond Lenin and Togliatti Author(s): Paul Piccone Reviewed work(s): Source: Theory and Society,

GRAMSCI'SMARXISM: BEYOND LENIN AND TOGLIATTI

Department of Sociology, Washington University

11. 12. 13.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

28. 29. 30. 31.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

47. Togliatti,Antonio Gramsci, cit., p. 161. op.

67. 68. 69.

71. 72. 73.

77. 78. 79.

als Deutung des Marxismus Philosophieder Praxis(Frankfurt,1972); Peter Palla,

90. Adorno,NegativeDialektik,op.cit., p. 203.

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