Rethinking Gramsci (Routledge Innovations in Political Theory)

Rethinking Gramsci

Rethinking Gramsci provides a coherent and comprehensive assessment of Antonio Gramsci’s contributions to the fields of political and cultural theory. It contains seminal contributions from a broad range of important political and cultural theorists from around the world and explains the origins, development, and context for Gramsci’s thought, as well as analyzing his continued relevance and influence to contemporary debates. The volume demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of Gramscian thought to produce new insights into the intersection of economic, political, cultural, and social processes, and provides a vital resource for readers across the disciplines of political theory, cultural studies, political economy, philosophy, and subaltern studies. Marcus E. Green, Ph.D. (York University) is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Otterbein University and Secretary of the International Gramsci Society. He is the author of several articles and book chapters on Antonio Gramsci and subalternity.

Routledge innovations in political theory

1 A Radical Green Political Theory Alan Carter 2 Rational Woman A feminist critique of dualism Raia Prokhovnik

10 Ethics and Politics in Contemporary Theory Between critical theory and postMarxism Mark Devenney

3 Rethinking State Theory Mark J. Smith

11 Citizenship and Identity Towards a new republic John Schwarzmantel

4 Gramsci and Contemporary Politics Beyond pessimism of the intellect Anne Showstack Sassoon

12 Multiculturalism, Identity and Rights Edited by Bruce Haddock and Peter Sutch

5 Post-Ecologist Politics Social theory and the abdication of the ecologist paradigm Ingolfur Blühdorn

13 Political Theory of Global Justice A cosmopolitan case for the world state Luis Cabrera

6 Ecological Relations Susan Board

14 Democracy, Nationalism and Multiculturalism Edited by Ramón Maiz and Ferrán Requejo

7 The Political Theory of Global Citizenship April Carter 8 Democracy and National Pluralism Edited by Ferran Requejo 9 Civil Society and Democratic Theory Alternative voices Gideon Baker

15 Political Reconciliation Andrew Schaap 16 National Cultural Autonomy and Its Contemporary Critics Edited by Ephraim Nimni 17 Power and Politics in Poststructuralist Thought New theories of the political Saul Newman

18 Capabilities Equality Basic issues and problems Edited by Alexander Kaufman

28 The New Politics of Masculinity Men, power and resistance Fidelma Ashe

19 Morality and Nationalism Catherine Frost

29 Citizens and the State Attitudes in Western Europe and East and Southeast Asia Takashi Inoguchi and Jean Blondel

20 Principles and Political Order The challenge of diversity Edited by Bruce Haddock, Peri Roberts and Peter Sutch 21 European Integration and the Nationalities Question Edited by John McGarry and Michael Keating 22 Deliberation, Social Choice and Absolutist Democracy David van Mill 23 Sexual Justice/Cultural Justice Critical perspectives in political theory and practice Edited by Barbara Arneil, Monique Deveaux, Rita Dhamoon and Avigail Eisenberg 24 The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt Terror, liberal war and the crisis of global order Edited by Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito 25 In Defense of Human Rights A non-religious grounding in a pluralistic world Ari Kohen

30 Political Language and Metaphor Interpreting and changing the world Edited by Terrell Carver and Jernej Pikalo 31 Political Pluralism and the State Beyond sovereignty Marcel Wissenburg 32 Political Evil in a Global Age Hannah Arendt and international theory Patrick Hayden 33 Gramsci and Global Politics Hegemony and resistance Mark McNally and John Schwarzmantel 34 Democracy and Pluralism The political thought of William E. Connolly Edited by Alan Finlayson 35 Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict Edited by Maria Dimova-Cookson and Peter Stirk

26 Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory Jason Glynos and David Howarth

36 John Stuart Mill – Thought and Influence The saint of rationalism Edited by Georgios Varouxakis and Paul Kelly

27 Political Constructivism Peri Roberts

37 Rethinking Gramsci Edited by Marcus E. Green

Rethinking Gramsci

Edited by Marcus E. Green

First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2011 Editorial selection and matter, Marcus E Green; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Marcus E Green to be identified as editor of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Rethinking Gramsci / edited by Marcus E Green.   p. cm. – (Routledge innovations in political theory ; 37)   Includes bibliographical references and index.   1. Gramsci, Antonio, 1891–1937–Political and social views. 2. Political   science–Philosophy–History–20th century. I. Green, Marcus E.   JC265.G68R48 2011      320.53’2092–dc22   2010040897 ISBN 0-203-82598-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-77973-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-82598-3 (ebk)

Contents

Contributors Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rethinking Marxism and rethinking Gramsci

x xiv 1

MARCUS E. GREEN

PART I

Culture and criticism 1 Race, culture, and communications: Looking backward and forward at cultural studies

9 11

STUART HALL

2 Dante, Gramsci, and cultural criticism

19

PAUL BOVÉ

3 Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian view

31

DANIEL O’CONNELL

4 Socialist education today: Pessimism or optimism of the intellect?

39

MARCIA LANDY

PART II

Hegemony, subalternity, common sense

53

5 The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony

55

DEREK BOOTHMAN

6 Gramsci cannot speak: Presentations and interpretations of Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern MARCUS E. GREEN

68

viii  Contents

  7 Self-consciousness of the Dalits as ‘subalterns:’ Reflections on Gramsci in South Asia

90

COSIMO ZENE

  8 Gramscian politics and capitalist common sense

105

EVAN WATKINS

  9 Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism

112

FRANK R. ANNUNZIATO

10 Production and its Others: Gramsci’s “sexual question”

131

NELSON MOE

11 Social forces in the struggle over hegemony: Neo-Gramscian perspectives in international political economy

147

ADAM DAVID MORTON

12 From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism

167

RICHARD HOWSON

PART III

Political Philosophy

177

13 Gramsci, Marxism, and philosophy

179

RICHARD D. WOLFF

14 General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci

190

CARLOS NELSON COUTINHO

15 From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx: Historical materialism and the philosophy of praxis

205

WOLFGANG FRITZ HAUG

16 Gramsci and the dialectic: Resisting “enCrocement”

217

STEVEN R. MANSFIELD

17 Gramsci’s critical modernity

238

ESTEVE MORERA

PART IV

On Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

267

18 Unfinished business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

269

DAVID F. RUCCIO

19 Of Prison Notebooks and the restoration of an archive JOSEPH W. CHILDERS

275

Contents  ix

20 The mammoth task of translating Gramsci

281

PETER IVES

21 Cuvier’s little bone: Joseph Buttigieg’s English edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

288

WILLIAM V. SPANOS

22 The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s work in progress

301

JOSEPH A. BUTTIGIEG

Appendix Bibliography Index

306 308 329

Contributors

Frank R. Annunziato is the executive director of the University of Rhode Island Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Derek Boothman teaches translation at the University of Bologna’s faculty for interpreters and translators (SSLMIT). He edited and translated the anthology of Gramsci’s prison writings, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence and Wishart, University of Minnesota Press, 1995), is the author of Traducibilità e processi traduttivi. Un caso: A. Gramsci linguista (2004), has written extensively on Gramsci, and is a member of Rome’s Seminario gramsciano. Paul Bové is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and editor of the journal boundary 2. He has written extensively on culture, modernity, poetry, and intellectuals. He is the author of Intellectuals in Power: A Genealogy of Critical Humanism (1986), In the Wake of Theory (1992), Mastering Discourse: The Politics of Intellectual Culture (1992), Poetry Against Torture: Criticism, History, and the Human (2009), and editor of Edward Said and the Work of the Critic: Speaking Truth to Power (2000). Joseph A. Buttigieg is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow of the Nanovic Institute of European Studies. A specialist in modern literature and critical theory, his recent work focuses on the relationship between culture and politics. He is a member of the boundary 2 editorial collective, the author of A Portrait of the Artist in Different Perspective (1987), editor of Criticism without Boundaries: Directions and Crosscurrents in Postmodern Critical Theory (1987), and co-editor of Gramsci and Education (2002). He is the editor and translator of the multi-volume complete English critical edition of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (Columbia University Press, 1992, 1996, 2007). Several of his articles on Gramsci have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. He is a founding member and the current president of the International Gramsci Society. Joseph W. Childers is Professor of English at University of California, Riverside and the Review Editor for Rethinking Marxism. He is the author of Novel Possibilities: Fiction and the Formation of Early Victorian Culture (1995). He is co-editor and contributor to an edited collection entitled Victorian Prism: Refractions of the Crystal Palace (2007) and, along with Jack Amariglio and

Contributors  xi Stephen Cullenberg, he is co-editor of Sublime Economy: On the Intersection of Art and Economics (2009). Carlos Nelson Coutinho teaches political theory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). A member of the International Gramsci Society coordinating committee, he has published among other books, Marxismo e política (1994), Gramsci: Um estudo sobre seu pensamento político (1999), and Intervenções: o Marxismo na Batalha das Idéias (2006). With Andréa de Paula Teixeira, he is co-editor of Ler Gramsci, entender a realidade (2003). He edited and translated a Portuguese edition of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, Cadernos do cárcere, (1999–2002), and published a Portuguese translation of Gramsci’s political writings Escritos Políticos (2004). Marcus E. Green is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Otterbein University and teaches political theory and American politics. He is currently Secretary of the International Gramsci Society and has published several articles on Gramsci’s social and political thought. Stuart Hall is Professor Emeritus at the Open University and has written widely on politics, culture, and race. From 1968 to 1979, he was director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Birmingham. He is the author of The Hard Road to Renewal (1988) and Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (1997). Wolfgang Fritz Haug is a former Professor of Philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin (1979–2001), the founding editor of the German Marxist journal Das Argument, and the editor of Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (Argument). He has published numerous books and articles on Marxism and philosophy. His publications in English include Critique of Commodity Aesthetics (1986) and Commodity Aesthetics, Ideology & Culture (1987), as well as several articles on Gramsci published in boundary 2 and Socialism and Democracy. His book Philosophizing with Brecht and Gramsci is forthcoming with Brill. He is the co-editor and co-translator of the ten-volume complete German critical edition of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, Gefängnishefte (Argument, 1991–2004). Richard Howson lectures in sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research interests include masculinity, feminist theory, post-Marxism, and hegemony. He is the author of Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity (2005), and along with Kylie Smith, he is editor of Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion (2008). Peter Ives teaches political theory in the Department of Politics at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. He is author of Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School (2004) and Language and Hegemony in Gramsci (2004). Along with Rocco Lacorte, he is co-editor of Gramsci, Language and Translation (2010). His current research investigates the politics of so-called “global English” and its role within democracy, globalization, and neo-imperialism.

xii  Contributors Marcia Landy is Distinguished Professor in English/Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She has published widely on film and culture. Her books include Fascism in Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema, 1931–1943 (1986); Film, Politics, and Gramsci (1994); The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in the Italian Cinema, 1930–1943 (1998); Italian Film (2000); The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (2001); Stars: The Film Reader, with Lucy Fischer (2004); Monty Python’s Flying Circus (2005); and Stardom, Italian Style: Screen Performance and Personality in Italian Cinema (2008). Steven R. Mansfield is the Senior Policy and Management Analyst for the Franklin County Ohio Board of County Commissioners in Columbus, Ohio. His current research interests include social welfare and health policy. Among his academic publications is a translation, with Livio Alchini, of “Gramsci’s Notes on Language,” with an introduction, which appeared in Telos (Spring 1984). Nelson Moe is Associate Professor of Italian at Barnard College, Columbia University. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italian cultural studies, with a focus on literary and cinematic representations of the South and of the Mafia. He is the author of The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (2002). Esteve Morera is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Political Science at York University. He is the author of Gramsci Historicism: A Realist Interpretation (1990) and of a number of articles on Gramsci and Vico. He is currently working on a series of articles on Marxism and philosophy, ranging from the analysis of the concept of materialism to human nature and Gramsci’s views about philosophy. Adam David Morton is Associate Professor of Political Economy and fellow of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests include Marxist political economy, state theory, historical sociology, and development framing modern state formation in Mexico. He is author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (2007). His next book is Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (2011). Daniel O’Connell is Emeritus Professor of English at Hobart and William Smith College and author of The Opposition of Critics (1974). His scholarly interests include literary theory and the work of James Joyce. David F. Ruccio is Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He is a founding member of Rethinking Marxism and served as the editor from 1997 to 2009. He has given talks on Antonio Gramsci and Marxian theory in Australia, Italy, and the United States. His most recent books include Postmodern Moments in Modern Economics (with Jack Amariglio, 2003), Economic Representations: Academic and Everyday (2008), and Development and Globalization: A Marxian Class Analysis (2010).

Contributors  xiii William V. Spanos is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at SUNY-Binghamton. He is founding editor of the journal boundary 2 and author of numerous articles on modern and postmodern literature and theory. He is the author of a number of books, including America’s Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire (2000), American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization (2008), The Legacy of Edward W. Said (2009), Herman Melville and the American Calling (2009), and In the Neighborhood of Zero: A World War II Memoir (2010). Evan Watkins is Professor of English at the University of California, Davis. He has published widely on cultural studies and the politics of education. His recent books include Everyday Exchanges: Marketwork and Capitalist Common Sense (1998), Class Degrees: Smart Work, Managed Choice, and the Transformation of Higher Education (2008), and Who’s Paying Attention? Literacy Work and an Attention Economy (forthcoming). Richard D. Wolff is Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School University in New York City. He has co-authored many articles and books with Stephen A. Resnick including Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical (1987), Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (1987), Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR (2002), and New Departures in Marxian Theory (2006). He has written extensively on the current global capitalist crisis (see www.rdwolff. com) including the book, Capitalism Hits the Fan (2010). Cosimo Zene is Reader in the Department of the Study of Religions, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he was awarded a PhD in Social Anthropology (The Rishi of Bangladesh, 2002). He has recently published several articles on gift-giving in Sardinia and a monograph on the work of the late Danish anthropologist Andreas F. W. Bentzon (Dialoghi Nulesi, 2009). Following his long-standing interest in Gramsci, he is now researching on connections between subalterns/Dalits based on the political philosophies of Gramsci and Ambedkar.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank all of the authors who contributed to this volume and the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) for granting permission to reprint these articles. This book would not have been possible without the rich intellectual community that has developed out of Rethinking Marxism. The journal’s commitment to critical Marxian theory and analysis has created a forum for Gramsci scholars, and its conferences, co-sponsored by AESA, have provided a venue for the activities of the International Gramsci Society in the United States. The idea of this anthology emerged over several years in conversations with David F. Ruccio and Joseph A. Buttigieg regarding the presence of Gramscian scholarship in Rethinking Marxism. I have benefited immensely from their friendship, ideas, and support of the project. Jacinda Swanson, Peter Ives, Adam David Morton, and Steven R. Mansfield provided valuable comments and suggestions at various stages of the project. I want to thank Nicola Parkin and Craig Fowlie at Routledge for taking on and supporting the idea of the book. The final completion of the manuscript was supported by a Summer Writing Award from the Humanities Advisory Committee at Otterbein University. Marcus E. Green The publishers and editor would like to thank Taylor and Francis Ltd (www. informaworld.com) for granting permission to use the following copyright material from Rethinking Marxism, reprinted by permission of the publisher: Annunziato, Frank R. Gramsci’s Theory of Trade Unionism, vol. 1 no. 2 (1988) Boothman, Derek. The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony, vol. 20 no. 2 (2008) Bové, Paul. Dante, Gramsci, and Cultural Criticism, vol. 4 no. 1 (1991) Buttigieg, Joseph A. The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s Work in Progress, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006) Childers, Joseph W. Of Prison Notebooks and the Restoration of an Archive, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006) Coutinho, Carlos Nelson. General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci, vol. 12 no. 2 (2000) Green, Marcus E. Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern, vol. 14 no. 3 (2002)

Acknowledgments  xv Hall, Stuart. Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies, vol. 5 no. 1 (1992) Haug, Fritz Wolfgang. From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx: Historical Materialism and the Philosophy of Praxis, vol. 13 no. 1 (2001) Howson, Richard. From Ethico-political Hegemony to Postmarxism, vol. 19 no. 2 (2007) Ives, Peter. The Mammoth Task of Translating Gramsci, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006) Landy, Marcia. Socialist Education Today: Pessimism or Optimism of the Intellect?, vol. 4 no. 3 (1991) Mansfield, Steven R. Gramsci and the Dialectic: Resisting “EnCrocement”, vol. 6 no. 2 (1992) Moe, Nelson. Production and Its Others: Gramsci’s “Sexual Question”, vol. 3 no. 3-4 (1990) Morera, Esteva. Gramsci’s critical modernity, vol. 12 no. 1 (1994) Morton, Adam David. Social Forces in the Struggle over Hegemony: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International Political Economy, vol. 15 no. 2 (2003) O’Connell, Daniel. Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian View, vol. 6 no. 1 (1992) Ruccio, David R. Unfinished Business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006) Spanos, William V. Cuvier’s Little Bone: Joseph Buttigieg’s English Edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, vol. 18 no. 1 (2006) Watkins, Evan. Gramscian Politics and Capitalist Common Sense, vol. 11 no. 3 (1993) Wolff, Richard D. Gramsci, Marxism, and Philosophy, vol. 2 no. 2 (1989) Zene, Cosimo. Self-consciousness of the Dalits as ‘Subalterns’, vol. 23 no. 1 (2011)

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book.

Introduction Rethinking Marxism and rethinking Gramsci Marcus E. Green

This volume brings together twenty-two seminal essays on Antonio Gramsci previously published in the journal Rethinking Marxism. Since its founding in 1988, Rethinking Marxism has become one of the leading journals of critical Marxian thought in the world. In its project of rethinking Marxian theory from a nondeterminist and non-dogmatic perspective, it has paid considerable attention to the work of the Italian Marxian theorist and activist Antonio Gramsci. The journal has published over three dozen articles on Gramsci’s writings by leading scholars from around the globe,1 and the journal’s record of broad and critical focus on Gramscian thought is unsurpassed by any other English-language journal. The project of Rethinking Marxism emerged from the work of Professors Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In their approach to Marxian theory, Resnick and Wolff (1987) call into question the deterministic theories of knowledge, history, and society prevalent in orthodox forms of Marxism. The school of non-determinist Marxian thought that developed out of Resnick and Wolff’s work – and out of Rethinking Marxism – has emphasized the analysis of the interconnection of economic, political, and cultural processes, along with the exploration and articulation of the philosophical positions that shape Marxian analyses. In the inaugural issue of Rethinking Marxism, the Editorial Board (1988) explained that the journal would “serve as a forum for the current resurgence of interest in Marxism,” particularly in the United States (5), maintain a “multi- and cross-disciplinary” focus (8), and contribute to the development of non-determinist Marxism, non-essentialist class analysis, and to the articulation of a distinct Marxian philosophy. In rethinking Marxian epistemology and methodology from a non-determinist perspective, Rethinking Marxism drew upon Louis Althusser’s notion of “overdetermination” to bring into focus the intersection of economics, culture, society, and politics. Recognizing that the concept had already received varied interpretations, the Editorial Board broadly conceived “overdetermination” as a way to move beyond essentialist and deterministic conceptions of political economy by emphasizing the multi-relational aspects of economic and social processes (Erçel et al. 2008; Ruccio 2009).2 Initially, the journal’s focus on the interconnection of social processes drew more heavily from Althusser’s conception of “overdetermination” than from Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony or historical bloc.3 However, in an article that appeared early in the project, which is included in this collection,

2  Marcus E. Green Richard D. Wolff argues that Gramsci’s “profoundly important” contribution to Marxism is the demonstration of “the complex, mutual interaction between philosophy and epistemology, on the one hand, and politics and economics, on the other” (1989, 41). For Wolff, Gramsci’s non-determinist epistemology provides the basis for a non-dogmatic methodological approach to social theory and analysis that emphasizes the intricate and multifaceted relations among interconnected social processes. In Wolff’s words: “To understand any event means to grasp how it occurs as the effect of all the other events in its environment and how it is simultaneously a contributing cause of all of them. Marxist analysis must be, for Gramsci, the specification of the complex, infinitely sided reciprocity linking and ceaselessly changing all events” (50). In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci carries out a systematic rethinking of Marxism that includes a consistent criticism of positivist and determinist formulations of Marxian thought. In Gramsci’s view, positivism and economic determinism deradicalized and distorted Marxism by separating philosophy from practical activity. In Gramsci’s view, the philosophical basis of economic determinism was founded upon a method of abstraction that separated social theory from the practical activity of history, in that it developed transhistorical nomological principles external to human practice. In Gramsci’s view, abstract formulations that overlook the specificity of history and politics obscure the phenomena of political life and, in turn, inhibit radical political activity. Because of these apparent deformations and deradicalizations of Marxism, Gramsci sought to formulate a historicist method of social research that separated itself from speculative, metaphysical, and objectivist notions and focused on the practical aspects of politics and history. Gramsci conceived the methodology of Marxism as a “philosophy of praxis,” in which abstract concepts and categories are expressed in historical language and account for specific concrete situations and activity. Gramsci described the method of the philosophy of praxis as “living philology,” which signifies “the methodological expression” of ascertaining and specifying particular facts in their unique historical individuality and requires a “systematic exposition” of the practical standards for the research and interpretation of politics and history (Q11§25, Q16§3; Gramsci 1971, 427–30, 414–15).4 Following this view of Marxism, Gramsci formulates his theoretical concepts, categories, and generalizations based upon the investigation and observation of particular, concrete, and practical events and pieces of information and how they relate to broader relations, developments, and structures. In other words, Gramsci’s concepts and generalizations are “historically determined,” meaning that they are founded on concrete historical practices rather than abstract or speculative notions. In the current revitalization and rethinking of Marxism, especially after 1989, Gramsci has emerged as an important figure. It is his open, transdisciplinary way of thinking – particularly his refusal to replace concrete social and political analysis with reductionist theoretical models – that continues to generate international and contemporary attention. As Fabio Frosini (2008) recently remarked, given the amount of critical literature published on Gramsci in the last twenty years, it is possible to speak of a “world-wide Gramsci renaissance” (674), and according to Eric J. Hobsbawm (2010), Gramsci is “perhaps the most well-known and

Rethinking Marxism and rethinking Gramsci  3 influential Italian thinker of the [twentieth] century” (7). In fact, the international Gramsci bibliography, Bibliografia Gramsciana, maintained by the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci in Rome, includes nearly 16,000 titles in at least 27 languages on Gramsci’s life and work.5 The idea of “rethinking Gramsci” in the title of this book is an homage to Rethinking Marxism but is also intended to evoke the idea of rethinking Gramsci in various politico-historical contexts, and to the idea of rethinking Gramsci, particularly in English-reading scholarship, in light of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s project of publishing the complete English translation of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Gramsci’s contributions to social and political theory continue to draw interest across political and historical contexts due to the insights they generate in understanding the politics of the present. In 1947, when Gramsci’s prison letters were first published in Italy, Benedetto Croce remarked that Gramsci attempted “to form a historical and philosophical perspective adequate to the problems of the present” (86). Even though the circumstances in which Gramsci conceived his ideas are far removed from the conditions of the present, Gramsci’s method of analysis provides an example of how to think about the complexities of modern politics and society. As Stuart Hall pointed out in his influential article “Gramsci and Us” (1987), it is not that “Gramsci ‘has the answers’ or ‘holds the key’ to our present troubles,” but rather to “‘think’ our problems in a Gramscian way” offers insights in analyzing the nature of political life and the specificity of the historical conjuncture (Hall 1987, 16). However, the point is not – as many chapters in this volume warn – to transfer Gramsci’s account of politics directly to our own, but rather to “translate” his philosophical and theoretical insights to the analysis of the changing conditions of the present. The idea of “translating” theoretical language conceived in one context to another is Gramscian in itself and requires a continual rethinking of past and present conditions from one context to the next and adapting one’s theoretical perspective according to changing socio-political conditions and circumstances.6 The fact that Gramsci’s ideas continue to elicit attention and generate analyses of situations that transcend his own context raises the issue of his status as a classic thinker. As the late Antonio Santucci (2010) noted, “it is common to regard as a genuine classic that which resists contextcontingency and continues to be the basis of dialogue in subsequent generations, despite being an expression of another time” (165–6).7 The publication of the complete and critical English translation of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, although not yet complete, has presented the opportunity to rethink Gramsci in the Anglophone world.8 A philologically accurate translation of Gramsci’s prison notebooks provides the necessary foundation to see how he worked, to follow the rhythm of his thought, and to see how he reached his conclusions. As I discuss in further detail below, five chapters included in this volume address the significance of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s translation of Gramsci’s notebooks. Although many commentators have derided the Prison Notebooks for their fragmentary, unfinished, and elliptical character, as a text the Prison Notebooks are in fact the embodiment of Gramsci’s method. Gramsci’s scrupulous attention to detail and the particular is apparent throughout the Prison Notebooks, and the complexity and open-ended nature of the Prison Notebooks attest to Gramsci’s

4  Marcus E. Green methodological commitment. Gramsci’s overarching inquiry into Italian history, politics, and culture – which includes analyses of Italian customs, cultural practices, literature, philosophy, common sense, folklore, intellectuals and the relation between state and civil society – demonstrates his attempt to discern the meaning of particular social processes in relation to a broader ensemble of social relations. As a journal, Rethinking Marxism has distinguished itself in Gramscian scholarship by its record of publishing articles on Gramsci from a variety of academic disciplines that follow this methodological approach and demonstrate how particular social processes and events interconnect with a broad ensemble of social relations. The articles that comprise this collection illustrate the emergence of Gramsci’s importance in the revitalization of Marxism, the multidisciplinary nature of Gramsci’s contributions to Marxian theory, as well as Gramsci’s relevance to contemporary debates in political and social theory. The articles were written in the period from 1988 to 2010 and address a variety of issues in Gramsci’s work. Rather than arranging the chapters in chronological order, I have organized the book in four sections, according to particular themes and applications of Gramsci’s thought. The first section of the book includes four chapters on cultural studies, literature, and criticism. The section opens with Stuart Hall’s chapter “Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies.” Even though he does not explicitly refer to Gramsci’s work in this instance, Hall describes his innovative Gramscian approach to cultural studies. As Hall writes, “cultural studies insists on the necessity to address the central, urgent, and disturbing questions of a society and culture in the most rigorous intellectual way we have available.” The chapters by Paul Bové and Daniel O’Connell address Gramsci’s observations on literature and criticism. Bové’s chapter focuses specifically on Gramsci’s reading of Canto X of Dante’s Inferno. Bové shows that Gramsci’s alternative reading of Canto X provides insights into Gramsci’s cultural and political concerns regarding representation and leadership. In his chapter, O’Connell contrasts Gramsci’s views on Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt with James Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom from Ulysses. Through an examination of the two characters’ national and class positions, O’Connell sheds light on Gramsci’s broader comparison of American and European intellectuals, culture, and political economy. Following Stuart Hall’s suggestion of thinking our problems in a “Gramscian way,” Marcia Landy rethinks the idea of “socialist education” in capitalist societies, utilizing Gramsci’s concept of “common sense” as a basis to examine existing intellectual positions and practices. As Landy argues, it is necessary to “explore, identify, and criticize – not prescribe – the various elements that constitute common sense” in order to initiate the struggle for “good sense” and to explore the possibilities of alternative political formations. The second section of the book includes chapters that address the explication and application of Gramsci’s major concepts. The first chapter in the section by Derek Boothman provides a meticulous analysis of the sources of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, which has been a contentious issue in Gramscian studies, especially since the publication of Perry Anderson’s article “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” (1976) and Franco Lo Piparo’s book Lingua, intellettuali e egemonia

Rethinking Marxism and rethinking Gramsci  5 in Gramsci (1979). In my contribution, “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern,” I provide an explication of Gramsci’s concept of the “subaltern” within the overall project of the Prison Notebooks. In his chapter, Cosimo Zene criticizes the Subaltern Studies project for largely ignoring the experience of Dalits in its rethinking of South Asian history. In a somewhat similar approach to Landy, Evan Watkins takes up the Gramscian notion of “common sense” as a way to inventory and begin to demystify the contradictions in everyday economic practices that are reinforced by “capitalist common sense.” In “Gramsci’s Theory of Trade Unionism,” which happens to be the first article Rethinking Marxism published on Gramsci, Frank R. Annunziato examines Gramsci’s views on trade unionism in relation to his party activity and the factory council movement. As Annunziato points out, the significance of Gramsci’s political activity prior to his imprisonment is often ignored or minimized in intellectual discussions of Gramsci’s work. In a close reading of the notes “On Some Aspects of the Sexual Question” from Notebook 22, the thematic notebook on Americanism and Fordism, Nelson Moe examines “how Gramscian and feminist approaches to the politics of culture might productively feed off one another.” In an application of Gramsci’s writings to global politics, Adam David Morton shows how neo-Gramscian perspectives in international political economy provide an alternative to mainstream international relations theory by presenting a critical theory of hegemony that focuses on social forces, relations of production, the state, and the global economic order. In response to the criticism that post-Marxism is incapable of producing effective radical politics, Richard Howson argues that post-Marxists must re-engage with the ethical-political foundations of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to develop a national-popular consciousness capable of transcending the pluralism of identity politics that postMarxism often reinforces. The third section of the book includes articles on Gramsci’s political philosophy and relationship to Marxism. The section opens with Richard D. Wolff’s chapter “Gramsci, Marxism, and Philosophy,” which I discussed above. This is followed by Carlos Nelson Coutinho’s chapter. In considering Gramsci’s political thought within the tradition of modern political philosophy, Coutinho argues that “Gramsci was in dialogue not only with Marx and Lenin, or Machiavelli (which is unequivocal), but also, if at times implicitly, with other great names of modern political philosophy – Rousseau and Hegel in particular.” Coutinho shows how Gramsci draws upon and overcomes the limits of Rousseau’s notion of “general will” and Hegel’s notion of “universal will” with the notion of “national-popular collective will” and the concept of hegemony. The chapter by Wolfgang Fritz Haug examines Gramsci’s conception of the “philosophy of praxis.” Haug argues that Gramsci’s interpretation of Marxism as a philosophy of praxis “wipes out [the] fatalistic evolutionisms, objectivisms, and the false guarantees of a philosophy of history, which have residually afflicted Marxian thinking and which grew like mildew on the official Marxisms.” Haug argues that by reintroducing a dialectical approach to Marxian thinking, Gramsci was able to develop the philosophy of praxis in coordination with three concrete fields of investigation: the systematic study of political and cultural foundations, the formation of “popular-national”

6  Marcus E. Green literature and culture, and the analysis of modes of production, particularly the analysis of Americanism and Fordism. Through an explication of Gramsci’s notion of the dialectic and his critique of Benedetto Croce, Steven R. Mansfield responds to the arguments that, on the one hand, Gramsci retains an essentialist understanding of politics that limits the articulation of identity and difference, and, on the other, that Gramsci retained an understanding of the dialectic that did not transcend Crocean idealism. Mansfield argues that “Gramsci’s dialectics is fundamentally different from Croce’s” and that the dialectic of identity and difference is central to Gramsci’s understandings of hegemony, historical bloc, and political struggle. Although there appears to be many similarities between Gramsci’s ideas in the Prison Notebooks and the ideas of various postmodern thinkers, such as questions concerning knowledge, ideology, and science, Esteve Morera argues that “Gramsci remained a modern thinker” and retained modernist concepts, such as epistemological realism, objectivity, and integral history. Morera notes that his reading of Gramsci differs from Resnick and Wolff’s (1987) reading, and his interpretation of Gramsci’s epistemology differs from the interpretation that Wolff presents in the first chapter of this section. The fourth and final section draws together a group of articles on the translation and organization of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The articles specifically address Buttigieg’s critical English translation of Gramsci’s complete Prison Notebooks (1992, 1996, 2007). When finished, Buttigieg’s edition will make available for the first time a complete English translation of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and provide a philologically accurate representation of Gramsci’s work in English. The chapters in this section developed out of a symposium on Buttigieg’s translation at the 2003 Rethinking Marxism International Conference held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. David Ruccio writes that reading the critical edition of the Prison Notebooks presented “the discovery of a new Gramsci” for him, the discovery of new concepts, contexts, themes, and applications. In particular, Ruccio discusses how Gramsci’s concept of hegemony “can be utilized to illuminate contemporary issues and problems,” such as the global justice movement and the Bush administration’s ascendance to power. Joseph W. Childers discusses how Buttigieg’s translation revives Gramsci’s work and how Buttigieg’s critical apparatus allows the reader “to see how intimately connected Gramsci’s notes are – how ideas develop and change over time, and in the face of enormously oppressive material circumstances.” Peter Ives considers Buttigieg’s translation of the Prison Notebooks in light of Gramsci’s own views on translation. Ives points out that for Gramsci translation is not merely the transmission of information from one language to another but is also a metaphor “for political and cultural analysis, for reading Marx, and for revolution itself.” Thus, as Ives argues, translation in the wider sense ultimately includes a political project of cross-cultural analysis and alteration. In his chapter, William V. Spanos focuses on Buttigieg’s discussion of Gramsci’s method in the introduction to volume 1 of the Prison Notebooks (1992) to highlight the importance of the “structural principle” of the notebooks themselves. In following Buttigieg’s point that the fragmentariness of the notebooks is not an impediment to be overcome, Spanos points out that the seemingly disparate topics of Gramsci’s notes are in fact indicative of his open-ended, aporetic, and

Rethinking Marxism and rethinking Gramsci  7 “transdisciplinary mode of inquiry.” In elaborating on this idea, Buttigieg explains that the fragmentariness of Gramsci’s notebooks does not necessarily distort their meaning, but rather that the incompleteness of the notebooks themselves illustrate the “patently decentered, open, tentative, provisional, exploratory” nature of Gramsci’s project. It is Gramsci’s openness and attention to particular phenomena, rather than a desire to define a system of thought, that enriches his work. As Buttigieg points out, Gramsci viewed philology as the methodology suitable to the philosophy of praxis, for its insistence on the importance of the particular. In picking up on Ives’ observation regarding translation, Buttigieg notes that translation involves a “double move” that implies a rethinking of the text and context: “it brings the translated author into the present conjuncture, and it simultaneously brings to bear on the author the discourse of the current reader and interpreter.” As the chapters in this section demonstrate, Buttigieg’s edition has marked the beginning of a new phase of Gramscian studies in the Anglophone world, in which scholars have begun to rethink Gramsci, the complexity of his writing, and his interweaving analyses of economics, society, politics, and culture.The incorporation of Gramscian insights into the project of Rethinking Marxism demonstrates his importance in the revitalization of Marxism. The chapters included in this volume illustrate the multidisciplinary nature of Gramscian thought in the context of Rethinking Marxism, and how thinking in a Gramscian way can produce new understandings of the intersection of economic, political, and cultural processes. As long as Gramsci’s writings continue to generate insight into analyses of the present conjuncture, he will remain an important thinker. However, such a process requires a continual rethinking of Gramsci and of the historical materialities of the past and present.

Notes 1 See the list of articles in the Appendix. 2 The historical details of Rethinking Marxism are included in Erçel et al. (2008), which consists of interviews with Jack Amariglio, the editor of RM from 1988 to 1997, and David Ruccio, the editor from 1997 to 2009. 3 It is worth noting that Althusser perceived serious theoretical differences between his understanding of Marxism and Gramsci’s. See Althusser (1969, 1970), Haug (1999a), and Thomas (2009). 4 The majority of the chapters in this volume adopt the international standard of citing the critical editions of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1975, 1992, 1996, 2007) by using the letter “Q” to identify the notebook number and the section symbol (§) to identify the note number (Q is in reference to the Italian word for notebook, Quaderno). These references are often followed by specific page numbers. A concordance table that cross-references the critical edition with the major English-language anthologies of the Prison Notebooks is available on the International Gramsci Society website: www.internationalgramscisociety.org/. 5 The Bibliografia Gramsciana was created by the late John M. Cammett and currently edited by Francesco Giasi and Maria Luisa Righi. See Cammett (1991) and Cammett and Righi (1995). The searchable online version is available at www.fondazionegramsci.org/bibliogramsci.htm 6 On Gramsci’s views on translation and on his notion of translatability, see the chapter by Peter Ives in this volume and Ives and Lacorte (2010), especially the chapters by

8  Marcus E. Green Derek Boothman and Fabio Frosini. Also see Adam David Morton’s (2007) critique of austere historicism and of the commentators who claim Gramsci’s relevance is constrained by his politico-historical context (15–38). 7 On Gramsci’s status as a classic, also see Gerratana (1997) and Buttigieg (2009). 8 As of this date, three volumes of the planned five-volume critical English translation of the complete Prison Notebooks have been published (Gramsci 1992, 1996 and 2007). Buttigieg’s edition provides an English translation of the critical Italian edition of the notebooks, Quaderni del carcere (1975), edited by Valentino Gerratana.

Part I

Culture and criticism

1 Race, culture, and communications Looking backward and forward at cultural studies Stuart Hall When I first went to the University of Birmingham in 1964 to help Professor Richard Hoggart found the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, no such thing as cultural studies yet existed. Of course, the departments of languages, literature, history, and the fine arts in our faculties of arts were dedicated to the preservation of the cultural heritage; though they refused to name let alone to theorize or conceptualize culture, preferring it to, so to speak, seep through by a process of academic osmosis. Social sciences, on the other hand, dealt sometimes with what they were pleased to call the “cultural system”; but this was a pretty abstract thing, composed of networks of abstract norms and values. There was little of the concern that Richard Hoggart and I had in questions of culture. Our questions about culture – and I won’t attempt to provide any kind of comprehensive definition of the term – were concerned with the changing ways of life of societies and groups and the networks of meanings that individuals and groups use to make sense of and to communicate with one another: what Raymond Williams once called whole ways of communicating, which are always whole ways of life; the dirty crossroads where popular culture intersects with the high arts; that place where power cuts across knowledge, or where cultural processes anticipate social change. These were our concerns. The question was where to study them? At that time we taught no anthropology at Birmingham and, besides, the English on whom we wished to turn our inquiring, ethnographic gaze had not yet learned to conceive of themselves as “the natives.” I remember sitting in Richard Hoggart’s room discussing what we should call ourselves. “Institute,” he suggested. Well, that sounded suitably grand and austere. But to be honest, the two of us, who constituted at that time the entire faculty and indeed, the students of the enterprise, could not find it in our hearts to take ourselves that seriously. Well, what about “Centre”? Yes, that had a more informal, rallying-point feel to it, and we settled for that. “Cultural Studies” came much more naturally. It was about as broad as we could make it; thereby we ensured that no department in either the humanities or social sciences who thought that they had already taken care of culture could fail to feel affronted by our presence. In this latter enterprise, at least, we succeeded. Today cultural studies programs exist everywhere, especially in the United States – there’s not a touch of envy about that – where they’ve come to provide a focal point for interdisciplinary studies and research, and for the development

12  Stuart Hall of critical theory. Each program, in each place, as is appropriate, joins together a different range of disciplines in adapting itself to the existing academic and intellectual environment. Cultural studies, wherever it exists, reflects the rapidly shifting ground of thought and knowledge, argument and debate about a society and about its own culture. It is an activity of intellectual self-reflection. It operates both inside and outside the academy. It represents something, indeed, of the weakening of the traditional boundaries among the disciplines and of the growth of forms of interdisciplinary research that don’t easily fit, or can’t be contained, within the confines of the existing divisions of knowledge. As such, it represents, inevitably, a point of disturbance, a place of necessary tension and change in at least two senses. First, cultural studies constitutes one of the points of tension and change at the frontiers of intellectual and academic life, pushing for new questions, new models, and new ways of study, testing the fine lines between intellectual rigor and social relevance. It is the sort of necessary irritant in the shell of academic life that one hopes will, sometime in the future, produce new pearls of wisdom. But, second, in thrusting onto the attention of scholarly reflection and critical analysis the hurly burly of a rapidly changing, discordant, and disorderly world, in insisting that academics sometimes attend to the practical life, where everyday social change exists out there, cultural studies tries in its small way to insist on what I want to call the vocation of the intellectual life. That is to say, cultural studies insists on the necessity to address the central, urgent, and disturbing questions of a society and a culture in the most rigorous intellectual way we have available. Such a vocation is, above all, in my view, one of the principal functions of a university, though university scholars are not always happy to be reminded of it. Cultural studies was, therefore, in the first place precisely that. In the aftermath of World War II British society and culture were changing very rapidly and fundamentally. Cultural studies provided answers to the long process of Britain’s decline as a world superpower. It also investigated the impact of modern mass consumption and modern mass society; the Americanization of our culture; the postwar expansion of the new means of mass communication; the birth of the youth cultures; the exposure of the settled habits and conventions and languages of an old class culture to the disturbing fluidity of new money and new social relationships; the dilution of the United Kingdom’s very homogeneous social population by the influx of peoples from the new Commonwealth, the Caribbean, and the Asian subcontinent especially, leading to the formation, at the very heart and center of British cultural life, of Britain’s cities, of their social and political existence, of the new black British diasporas of permanent settlement. In this last aspect we could see the old imperial dream, which had been dealt with, so to speak, at arms length and overseas, at last coming home to roost, completing the triangle that had connected Africa, the metropolitan society, and the Caribbean over such a long time. The paradox was that this coming-home-to-roost of the old empire was happening at exactly the moment when Britain was trying to “cut the umbilical cord,” and also at the moment when Britain was experiencing the cultural trauma, as yet in my view uncompleted and unrequited in English life, of

Race, culture and communications  13 the loss of an old imperial identity and role and the difficulty of discovering a new cultural and national identity. Now, all those sociohistorical changes we could see were profoundly and to the roots transforming English culture: shifting the boundaries that had made the contours of daily existence familiar to people, setting up new disturbances, and letting loose those profound anxieties that always accompany radical social change. In short, a kind of cultural revolution was taking place in front of our eyes. And nobody, that we could see, was studying this revolution seriously. Nobody thought it worthwhile, let alone right and proper, to turn on this dramatically shifting, kaleidoscopic cultural terrain the search light of critical, analytic attention. Well, that was the vocation of cultural studies. That is what cultural studies in Britain was about. It is not my purpose to review its history nor, indeed, to comment on the role of the Centre for Cultural Studies, in which I worked for over fourteen years, in this enterprise. But I would insist on this starting point; I would insist on the tension characteristic in this work, which has marked my own intellectual development and my own intellectual work ever since. That is, the maximum mobilization of all the knowledge, thought, critical rigor, and conceptual theorization one can muster, turned into an act of critical reflection, which is not afraid to speak truth to conventional knowledge, and turned on the most important, most delicate, and invisible of objects: the cultural forms and practices of a society, its cultural life. Perhaps readers will better understand what I’ve been saying if I take an example. The one I’ve chosen is the work I’ve been involved with in the area of race, culture, and communications. Now, someone from England trying to tell audiences in the United States about race is a little bit like carrying coals to Newcastle, if readers will forgive the simile. And, yet, one of the things that cultural studies has taught me is, indeed, the importance of historical specificity, of the specificity of each cultural configuration and pattern. There may undoubtedly be, and I think there are, general mechanisms in common across the globe that are associated with the practices of racism. But in each society, racism has a specific history that presents itself in specific, particular, and unique ways, and these specificities influence its dynamic and have real effects that differ from one society to another. One thing that cultural studies has taught me is, indeed, not to speak of racism in the singular, but of racisms in the plural. Though readers today might find it hard to believe, in the early 1960s when cultural studies began there was apparently no visible, urgent question of race in contemporary English culture at all. Of course, the question of race had permeated the whole history of imperialism and the contacts established over five centuries between Britain and peoples of the world. The history of the rise of Britain as a commercial and global power could not have been told without encountering the fact of race. But it was very largely relegated to the past and those who studied it: those who studied the Atlantic slave trade; those who looked at the family fortunes that had made possible the growing revolution of the eighteenth century; and those who had been involved in studying the antislavery movement, or who were experts in colonial history and administration. It seemed to have no active purchase as a contemporary theme in understanding British twentieth-century culture, which has already

14  Stuart Hall been spoken of as “postcolonial.” The ways in which the colonizing experience had, indeed, threaded itself through the imaginary of the whole culture, what one can only call racism as the cup of tea at the bottom of every English experience, as the unstirred spoonful of sugar in every English child’s sweet tooth, as the threads of cotton that kept the cotton mills going, as the cup of cocoa that sweetened the dreams of every English child – these things had been somehow relegated to the past and suppressed as an active cultural question. The way in which the popular culture of English society – from advertising to the music halls, to pageantry, to celebration, to the diamond jubilees, to the heritage industry, to theatrical melodramas, and so forth – had been orchestrated around the theater, the spectacle of empire had been largely forgotten. The way in which English masculinity, itself, had proved itself, not simply on the playing fields of Eaton but in the foothills of Hyderabad or facing down the howling dervishes in the Sudan, or the very English drama of corruption and conscience nicely balanced against one another, continually reenacted face-to-face with the heart of darkness; well, these things had been effectively liquidated from the culture in an active way. They had been blown away by, what the then prime minister, Harold MacMillian, was pleased to call, “the winds of change.” It was the great migrations of the 1950s and 1960s from the Caribbean and from the Asian continent and the formation of black communities at the heart of English experience that brought the theme of racism in a new form to life again. And when it emerged, though it assumed many of the forms we had come to understand by the term “the past,” and from other societies, it had also acquired specifically different forms. In terms of the way in which the black experience was represented in the culture, in the media, it carried, of course, all the connotations that racism has had elsewhere: of an alien culture and peoples who are less civilized than the native ones; of a people who stand lower in the order of culture because they are somehow lower in the order of nature, defined by race, by color, and sometimes by genetic inheritance. But, in the new forms of racism that emerged in Britain in this period, and that have come to define the field in English culture since, these earlier forms have been powerfully transformed by what people normally call a new form of “cultural racism.” That is to say, the differences in culture, in ways of life, in systems of belief, in ethnic identity and tradition, now matter more than anything that can be traced to specifically genetic or biological forms of racism. And what one sees here is the fact, the existence of racism contracting new relationships with a particular form, a defensive and besieged form, of argument around not “who are the blacks?” but “who are the English?” This question went right to the heart and center of English culture. And I can give readers an example of what I’m calling cultural racism. Two years ago the white parents of a school in Dewsbury in Yorkshire withdrew their children from a predominantly black state school. One reason they gave for doing so was that they wanted their children to have a Christian education. They then added that they were not, as it happens, Christian believers at all; they simply regarded Christianity as an essential part of the English cultural heritage. They regarded the Anglican Church as part of the English way of life, rather like roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Race, culture and communications  15 Now, how to study the many different ways in which these new manifestations of race, ethnicity, and racism were figured and represented in the mass media was one of the problems that confronted us in the Centre for Cultural Studies: how to bring to light the deeper historical traces of race in English culture. What were available to us were principally the models developed in communication studies elsewhere, borrowed from societies that had confronted these problems much earlier than we had. And cultural studies, as was appropriate then and now, devoured them. We were alerted to the nature of racial stereotyping, to the negative imagery of race and ethnicity in the mass media, to the absence of accounts of the black experience as a central part of the English story, to the repetition in the mass media of a very simplified and truncated way of representing black history, life, and culture. These provided us with certain methods of analysis and study that were of immense importance to us in the early phase. So, the point that I want to make comes across in the ways in which my own understanding of and work on the questions of race and racism have been subsequently transformed by developments within the field of cultural studies itself. I am only able to hint at this transformation here, but it is something that I want to do in order to return to my central point below. I note a shift, for example, in the way in which we understand how the media construct and represent race. The earlier approach led us to ask questions about the accuracy of media representations. We wanted to know if the media were simply distorting, like a distorting mirror held up to a reality that existed outside of itself. But what cultural studies has helped me to understand is that the media play a part in the formation, in the constitution, of the things that they reflect. It is not that there is a world outside, “out there,” which exists free of the discourses of representation. What is “out there” is, in part, constituted by how it is represented. The reality of race in any society is, to coin a phrase, “media-mediated.” And distortions and simplifications of experience, which are certainly there, and above all, absences – we had to develop a methodology that taught us to attend, not only to what people said about race but, in England the great society of the understatement, to what people could not say about race. It was the silences that told us something; it was what wasn’t there. It was what was invisible, what couldn’t be put into frame, what was apparently unsayable that we needed to attend to. If you want to ask, “what can content analysis teach you?” well, one of the questions you have to ask is, “what about the people who appear to have no content at all – who are just pure form, just pure, invisible form?” You can count lexical items if they’re there; but you need a different approach if you really want, as it were, to read a society and its culture symptomatically. And that is, indeed, what we had to try to begin to learn to do in face of the logics of racism, which worked, we were to discover, rather more like Freud’s dreamwork than like anything else. We found that racism expresses itself through displacement, through denial, through the capacity to say two contradictory things at the same time, the surface imagery speaking of an unspeakable content, the repressed content of a culture. Every time I watch a popular television narrative, like “Hill Street Blues” or “Miami Vice,” with its twinning and coupling of racial masculinities at the center of its story, I have to pinch myself to remind myself

16  Stuart Hall that these narratives are not a somewhat distorted reflection of the real state of race relations in American cities. These narratives function much more, as Claude Lévi-Strauss tells us, as myths do. They are myths that represent in narrative form the resolution of things that cannot be resolved in real life. What they tell us is about the “dream life” of a culture. But to gain a privileged access to the dream life of a culture, we had better know how to unlock the complex ways in which narrative plays across real life. Once we look at any of these popular narratives which constantly, in the imagination of a society, construct the place, the identities, the experience, the histories of the different peoples who live within it, then we are instantly aware of the complexity of the nature of racism itself. Of course, one aspect of racism is, certainly, that it occupies a world of Manichean opposites: them and us, primitive and civilized, light and dark, a black and white symbolic universe. But, once you have analyzed or identified this simple logic, it seems all too simple. You can fight it. But you can’t spend a lifetime studying it; it is almost too obvious to spend any more time on. It is kind of a waste of time to add another book about a world that absolutely insists on dividing everything it says into good and bad. My conviction now would be completely different from the conclusion of one graduate student who had come to the Centre to study popular narratives of race. After two years, she said, “It’s just so (forgive me) bloody obvious. There’s nothing more to say. Once I’ve said it’s a racist text what do chapter five, and chapter six, and chapter seven do, just say the same thing over again?” I would now give her very different advice from that which I gave her then. Contrary to the superficial evidence, there is nothing simple about the structure and the dynamics of racism. My conviction now is that we are only at the beginning of a proper understanding of its structures and mechanisms. And, that is the case because its apparent simplicities and rigidities are the things that are important, symptomatically, about it. It is racism’s very rigidity that is the clue to its complexity. Its capacity to punctuate the universe into two great opposites masks something else; it masks the complexes of feelings and attitudes, beliefs and conceptions, that are always refusing to be so neatly stabilized and fixed. The great divisions of racism as a structure of knowledge and representation are also, it now seems to me, a deep system of defense. They are the outworks, the trenches, the defensive positions around something that refuses to be tamed and contained by this system of representation. All that symbolic and narrative energy and work is directed to secure us “over here” and them “over there,” to fix each in its appointed species place. It is way of marking how deeply our histories actually intertwine and interpenetrate; how necessary “the Other” is to our own sense of identity; how even the dominant, colonizing, imperializing power only knows who and what it is and can only experience the pleasure of its own power of domination in and through the construction of the Other. The two are the two sides of the same coin. And the Other is not out there, but in here. It is not outside, but inside. This is the very profound insight of one of the most startling, staggering, important books in this field, Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks: “The movement, the attitudes, the glances of the Other fix me here, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye. I was indignant, I demanded an explanation, nothing

Race, culture and communications  17 happened, I burst apart and now the fragments have been put together by another self.” We can see in this quotation that in addition to the mechanisms of directed violence and aggression, which are characteristic of racial stereotyping, are those other things: the mechanisms of splitting, of projection, of defense, and of denial. We come to understand the attempt to suppress and control, through the symbolic economy of a culture, everything that is different; the danger, the threat, that difference represents; the attempt to refuse, to repress, to fix, to know everything about “the different” so that one can control it; the attempt to make what is different an object of the exercise of power; the attempt to symbolically expel it to the far side of the universe. And, then, we understand the surreptitious return where that which has been expelled keeps coming back home, to trouble the dreams of those who thought, a moment ago, that they were safe. The violence, aggression, and hatred implicit in racist representation is not to be denied. But we understand very little, as yet, about its double-sided nature, its deep ambivalences. Just as so often in the cultures of the West the representation of women has appeared in its split form – the good/bad girl, the good and the bad mother, madonna and whore – so the representations of Blacks keep, at different times, exhibiting this split, double structure. Devoted, dependent, childlike, the Blacks are simultaneously unreliable, unpredictable, and undependable; capable of turning nasty or plotting treachery as soon as you turn your back. And despite being the object of an infinite benevolence, they are, inexplicably in a society predicated on freedom, given to escaping from us along the freedom trail. Or, in a society that calls itself Christian, they are given to singing songs about the promised land. They just won’t be where they ought to be. And side by side with those representations is a discourse that cannot seem to represent nobility or natural dignity or physical grace without summoning up the black primitive. For example, in modern advertising, the tropics, which are in fact savaged by debt and ravaged by hunger and malnutrition, have become the privileged signifier of the erotic, of good times, of pleasure, of playing away. The period of nobility of any aging chief or of the natives’ rhythmic force simultaneously express a nostalgia, a desire in civilized society for an innocence, an erotic power of the body that has been apparently lost to so-called civilized societies. At the same time, these images represent a fear at the heart of civilization itself of being overrun by the recurrence of a dark savagery. This double syntax of racism – never one thing without the other – is something that we can associate with old images in the mass media; but the problem about the mass media is that old movies keep being made. And so, the old types and the doubleness and the old ambivalence keep turning up on tomorrow’s television screen. Today’s restless native hordes are still alive and well and living as guerrilla armies and freedom fighters in the Angolan or Namibian bush. Blacks are still the most frightening, as well as the most well-dressed, crooks and policemen in any New York cop series. They are the necessary fleet-footed, crazy-talking, hip undermen who connect Starsky and Hutch to the drug-saturated ghetto. How else would they know where to go? The scheming villains and their giant-sized bullyboys of the adventure novel have spilled out into everything that now passes for what we call adventure. The sexually available, half-caste slave girl is still

18  Stuart Hall alive and kicking, smoldering away on some exotic television set or on the cover of some paperback, though she is, no doubt, simultaneously also the center of a very special covetous aspiration and admiration, in a sequined gown, supported by a white chorus line. Primitivism, savagery, guile, unreliability are always just below the surface, just waiting to bite. They can still be identified in the faces of black political leaders or ghetto vigilantes around the world, cunningly plotting the overthrow of civilization. The old country (white version) is often the subject of the nostalgic documentaries on English television: prewar Malaysia, Sri Lanka, old Rhodesia, the South African veld where hitherto reliable servants, as is only to be expected, plot treason in the outback and steal away to join ZAPU or the ANC in the bush. Tribal men in green khaki. If you try to analyze racism today in its complex structures and dynamics, one question, one principle above all, emerges as a lesson for us. It is the fear – the terrifying, internal fear – of living with difference. This fear arises as the consequence of the fatal coupling of difference and power. And, in that sense, the work that cultural studies has to do is to mobilize everything that it can find in terms of intellectual resources in order to understand what keeps making the lives we live, and the societies we live in, profoundly and deeply antihumane in their capacity to live with difference. Cultural studies’ message is a message for academics and intellectuals but, fortunately, for many other people as well. In that sense, I have tried to hold together in my own intellectual life, on one hand, the conviction and passion and the devotion to objective interpretation, to analysis, to rigorous analysis and understanding, to the passion to find out, and to the production of knowledge that we did not know before. But, on the other hand, I am convinced that no intellectual worth his or her salt, and no university that wants to hold up its head in the face of the twenty-first century, can afford to turn dispassionate eyes away from the problems of race and ethnicity that beset our world.

Acknowledgment This chapter is a revised text of a convocation address that I presented in February 1989 on the occasion of having conferred upon me an honorary degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I am particularly grateful to the Department of Communication and to Professor Sut Jhally for providing me, on this occasion and in the past, invitations to visit the university.

2 Dante, Gramsci, and cultural criticism Paul Bové

1 Antonio Gramsci produced several brief but important remarks on Dante. The most important of these are to be found in a letter mailed from prison to his sisterin-law, Tatiana, in which Gramsci theorizes about “political leadership” in relation to the figural problematic of “paternity” and “pedagogy.” A close reading of these remarks illustrates not only the importance of culture (and cultural history) in Gramsci’s politics, but also his readers’ obligation to give careful and precise attention to language in retheorizing his thinking, his activity, and his writing. Attention to language is important because it suggests that efforts to “conceptualize” Gramsci, to think abstractly about his putative “concepts” – such as those of “leadership” or “party” – will always oversimplify, always reify and academicize the positionality, the tactical, interventionary character of his intellectual production and political struggle. Such “conceptualizing” also portrays Gramsci as a systematic political philosopher, as a “mind,” in the neo-Kantian or Cassirean mode; in addition, such a procedure narrativizes Gramsci’s work in terms of figures of “development,” “maturation,” or “deepening.” In sum, it pictures Gramsci as a “high modernist” intellectual, supremely confident in his “vision,” instantaneous in his apprehension of truth, and stylistically self-identified in his writing. In other words, it either aestheticizes Gramsci as a political visionary or normalizes him as a systematic philosopher thinking conceptually and abstractly about matters that can be represented unproblematically in instrumental language. In contrast to such a conceptualizing model, a reading of Gramsci’s writings on Dante reveals some of how Gramsci reflects upon the problems of representation – semiotic and political – and also how these troubling theoretical reflections find their place in the linguistic, that is, rhetorical and literary, formulations of his writing. Such a reading indicates that those commentators who ignore these concerns misunderstand Gramsci, misunderstand the cultural politics of representation within and about which Gramsci writes, and misunderstand the importance of the problematic of representation to political thought and action. Of course, that Gramsci’s writing is marked by the problematic of representation does not mean that Gramsci is a politically inactive “metatheorist” of the sort that some critics feel (perhaps partly unjustly) can be found among so-called “deconstructors.” It means, rather, that Gramsci should be seen as a political man who takes seriously

20  Paul Bové not only culture and its institutional forms and traditions, but also the politicotheoretical consequences – for action and thought – of culturally burdened, culturally enabled, culturally “inscribed” forms of verbal representation. Seen in slightly different terms, Gramsci appears as a political writer producing interventions into culture which themselves carry the inescapable traces of political, cultural history – traces within the effects and systems of genealogically burdened representations – traces that need to be acknowledged and dealt with in the very interventions the political person makes within culture. Gramsci’s struggles, that is, take place partly and necessarily within the field of representation – and it means he needs to be read in light of this fact of his writing. Reading Gramsci in this way has consequences: he would no longer be “read” conceptually, as a writer (or “activist”) uninterested either in the consequences of language for political expression or in the burdens of culture inscribed within the language culturally aware political activists and theorists inherit from their pasts. His writings would have to be read as themselves central places for engaging in a political battle in the politically central sphere of culture. His writings would have to be read as contesting for the politically appropriate deployment of the culturally central resources of a tradition that could either constrain or free the future. In other words and more specifically, Gramsci’s writing on Dante must be read as an inventory of the historical, cultural, and political burdens and possibilities haunting and enabling his own thinking about leadership, the party, the intellectual, fatherhood, and cultural teaching – as well as the real chance for significant political action in these areas of culture.1 Indeed, working through some of the entanglements within the problematic represented by the nexus of figures in his reading of Dante – paternity, party, pedagogy – shows Gramsci’s testimony to the cultural and historical complexities that inscribe his thinking about matters central to his politics. It also shows that this “thinking through” is, itself, within the sphere of cultural politics, a politically significant battle against ideological enemies as well as the hegemonic constraints of tradition in the idioms of cultural, critical, and political discourse. The force of Gramsci’s commitment to make present, to confront, to exploit, and to overcome the various traces of this specific political-cultural history can be seen by contrast with other powerful modern readers of Dante, particularly T. S. Eliot – whose readings of Dante define the international high modernists’ use of his work – and Benedetto Croce – whose book on Dante presents the most important immediate politico-cultural adversary for Gramsci. Croce’s text both gives Dante a certain ideologically and culturally material position within fascism and sums and perpetuates (or redeploys) a tradition of Dante commentary whose historical material role within the culture Gramsci confronts in the critical, political agon staged by his reading of the Inferno’s tenth Canto.

2 Gramsci’s revision of what he calls the pedantic criticism of Dante’s great poem is important. The pedants, as it were, the highly specialized and academic critics of the academy and other high cultural institutions – teachers, journalists, priests

Dante, Gramsci and cultural criticism  21 – constitute the material, institutional nexus, the memory, and political effectivity of a certain image of Dante’s value within both the high culture and the common sense of the Italian tradition. Gramsci, however, directs his efforts to revising that tradition against Croce rather than the anonymous pedants. Although Gramsci’s intellectual work provides a crucial model for the detailed study of the materiality of culture, politics, and tradition, it must be pointed out that his own writings often stage political contests with the leading figures – in both the biographical and rhetorical sense of that word – of the traditions, the discourses, the ideologies, and the parties with which he and his allies must contend. And that is just the case here. Gramsci turns his remarks not only into a critique of Croce, the most important intellectual of his time, but also against the empowered and enabling tropes central to the maintenance of the dominant cultural tradition he hopes to exploit and oppose. In such of his writings as the early political journalism, in various specific notes throughout the Prison Notebooks, but especially in the essay on “The Southern Question,” Gramsci offers remarkably important insights into the workings of cultural materiality in its most specific and often anonymous forms. In particular, the essay on “The Southern Question” exemplifies how that sort of analysis might be done. But the remarks on Dante show Gramsci at a different sort of work, one meant to drive at the source, as it were, of the cultural system sustained by the anonymous pedants. The critique is of Croce himself, of course, for his errors and against his influence; but, so to speak, it is also a critique and struggle against his functionality, his positionality, against the kind of figure and position represented by Croce and the tradition to which he belongs. In trying to think through the politically fraught question of the nature of leadership in a democratic political movement, Gramsci critiques and struggles to displace a certain functioning notion and positionality of (especially intellectual) leadership and some of the kinds of cultural production upon which the maintenance of that implicitly antidemocratic kind of leadership rests. So the critique of Croce is not merely a debate about the “correct” way to read even a culturally traditional text; it is also a revelation of that unacceptable positionality, of its powerful inscription within the dominant culture – or in the way the then-dominant culture takes its tradition – and that inscription’s traces within even the oppositional language and practice of Gramsci himself. It is an essay on the nature of tradition and its inescapable conflicts, burdens, and empowerments. It shows the oppositional intellectual’s awareness of how traditions, coming to individuals different by virtue of their class, their region, their language, their knowledge, and their politics, nonetheless compel conflict both within those individuals and their languages – to arrange the traditions’ forces to the desired ends – and between individuals and their positions within the empowered culture – to bring about the desired social ends. Class-based political struggles cannot be carried out without struggles over and within the cultural effects of tradition. On one level, these are struggles over who will “control” or “interpret” or “inherit” a tradition, indeed, over what of the past will come to make up the “dominant tradition.” But on another level, these are struggles that also show how profoundly “molested” even powerful oppositional leaders are by the absolutely inescapable genealogical obstacles – as well as opportunities – already established traditions create even within the very words

22  Paul Bové of the oppositional, critical, political resistance itself. It is within the space of this awareness that Gramsci’s notes contend with Croce, who is now taken quite precisely as the figure of the entire problematic of cultural burden within and against which the oppositional political leader must contend.

3 Gramsci focuses his reading of Dante around Canto X of the Inferno. In this canto, Dante the pilgrim encounters two dead souls, Cavalcante and Farinata, both heretics and both politicians prominent in the violence that rent Florence for about thirty years or so. Farinata, the leader of the Ghibellines, and Cavalcante, one of the important Guelf bourgeois, are punished in the same way: locked forever in tombs of fire, unable to know the present and destined, when the future ends, to have no knowledge at all. The canto explicitly involves Dante the pilgrim in the politics of Florence, in the struggle between the imperialist and middleclass factions, and does so in a way that depends upon the particular fate of these damned. Cavalcante must ask Dante about his son, Guido, precisely because this heretic is damned to know nothing of the future. It is around this necessary question, arising from paternal love, that Gramsci builds his reading of Dante – as had most important commentators in the past. In his reading, Gramsci specifically refutes Croce’s then authoritative claim that, in Canto X, the drama is Farinata’s. Croce has it that after Cavalcante’s disappearance from the scene, Farinata’s role changes to what Croce calls “structure”: he loses his “poetic” status. Gramsci reads the canto differently, insisting that the drama is Cavalcante’s and that Farinata’s “pedagogic” remarks after the former’s fall back into the tomb are necessary to Dante’s representation of the punishment appropriate to this circle: Dante’s silence in response to Cavalcante’s shock at Dante’s “ebbe” comes from his not understanding Cavalcante’s punishment and his consequent ignorance of Guido’s fate. Farinata’s explanation that, as epicurean heretics, they are punished with no knowledge of the present lets Dante see why Cavalcante responded with such horror to Dante’s use of the past tense. More important, however, Gramsci’s reading stresses that Dante’s art is one of action: Cavalcante is the one punished in the circle. No one has observed that if the drama of Cavalcante is not taken into consideration, one does not see the torment of the damned in that circle being enacted. The structure ought to have led to a more exact aesthetic evaluation of the canto, since every punishment is represented in act (1985, 151). The crucial word in the line “Forse cui Guido vostro ebbe a disdegno” is not “cui” or “disdegno,” but only “ebbe.” The “aesthetic” and “dramatic” accent on the line falls on “ebbe,” and it is the source of Cavalcante’s drama, interpreted in the stage directions of Farinata. And there is the “catharsis.” Dante corrects himself and takes Cavalcante out of his torment. In other words, he interrupts his punishment in action. (Gramsci 1985, 156)

Dante, Gramsci and cultural criticism  23 In these and other remarks on Canto X, Gramsci clearly revises and displaces Croce’s dualistic aesthetic that divides a poem into poetry and structure and, in so doing, as in the following quotation, equates poetry solely with the lyrical: since the structure that we have briefly delineated arises from a didactic and practical rather than poetic motive, research does not serve either to indicate the particular poetic character, assuming that there is one, of each canto, or the passage from one poetic situation to another, but can yield only what is in its nature to yield, namely, things which are external to the poetry and determined by structural connections. As Dante would have it, every effort made to convert structural reasons into artistic reasons is a sterile waste of intelligence. (Croce 1922, 90–1) Gramsci’s reading of Canto X is a direct response to Croce’s conclusion; as he says in his letter of 20 September 1931 to Tatiana: “This interpretation should completely undermine Croce’s thesis about poetry versus structure in the Divina Commoedia. Without structure there would be no poetry, thus structure itself has a poetic value” (1973, 210). Many critics claim that Gramsci does not completely escape the Crocean categories in his reading of this canto (1973, 212, n. 7). By contrast, Frank Rosengarten argues in an extended essay that Gramsci’s remarks on Canto X dialecticize Croce’s terms, Dante’s poem, and the role of the critic (1986, 87). Gramsci’s critics nonetheless object that he errs in preserving Croce’s idealistically derived terms. Such objections, however, miss the fact that Gramsci must necessarily contend with and within the most powerfully authorized terms for the discussion of this politically active and important literary political figure of Italian culture, one who, of course, must be given a newly central place in the culture of the fascist state – and precisely by Croce’s efforts. The political and intellectual importance of Gramsci’s remarks appears clearly if Gramsci’s difference from much important modern critical commentary on Dante is kept in focus. Unlike nearly every other modernist critic of continuing importance, Gramsci did not try to make of Dante a representation of his own intellectual status and function. Perhaps the two most telling examples of critics who used Dante as part of an economy of intellectual self-authorization are T. S. Eliot and Erich Auerbach. (Since I have treated Auerbach at length elsewhere [Bové, 1986, 196–203], I will focus on Eliot in this chapter.) T. S. Eliot represented Dante as epitomizing the imagination and culture of a not yet modern society. With the famous “dissociation of sensibility,” Eliot identifies the “split” between mind and emotion, the division of personality and culture, as a “fall into time,” into history, into modernity. Of course, the politics of this figure bring Eliot into conflict with Gramsci in a double way. This conflict, however, exists only because Gramsci and Eliot have common and traditional ground in their readings of Dante. For Gramsci, Cavalcante’s experience in Canto X is, among other things, paradigmatic of Dante’s expressive poetics, his representation of intensity in act and drama. For Eliot, similarly, from the first “deciphering” of Dante’s language comes “some direct shock of poetic intensity.” “Nothing but

24  Paul Bové laziness,” says Eliot, “can deaden the desire for fuller and fuller knowledge” (1964, 200). Like Eliot, Gramsci also tirelessly ridicules Dante’s unresponsive pedantcritics for failing to explore his work fully and for accepting historical, aesthetic clichés in lieu of serious intellectual work. Gramsci, for example, commenting on Vincenzo Morello’s (Rastignac) comfortable assurance that scholarship has solved all the problems in any reading of Dante, writes the following: “How nice to be so easily satisfied. And it is very convenient to work on this kind of assumption: it lets one off the tiring task of individually filtering out and looking closely at the results reached by historical aesthetic criticism” (1985, 157). Eliot and Gramsci also both take Dante as a test case for critical intellectual acumen and, more important, as a site of utopian, visionary, and political energy. Eliot, for example, often speaks of how the shock of Dante’s imagination inspires desire for knowledge of more. As Frank Rosengarten’s work usefully suggests, something very similar is at work in Gramsci’s interest in Canto X: his reading is personally motivated because there are significant parallels between his situation and that of Cavalcante. Rosengarten shows how Gramsci stresses the human, personal value of Dante’s achievement in representing Cavalcante’s paternal suffering. Indeed, one effect of Gramsci’s efforts is traditionally humanistic: his reading of Dante preserves a transhistorical capacity for human suffering that, in its various historical manifestations, foregrounds something like a universal human quality.2 Of course, an attentive reading of Gramsci’s remarks in the context of his own hopes for a different socialist future suggests that this sort of horrendous suffering might become something of the prerevolutionary past; but in these comments on Dante there is nothing to suggest that after any change in sociopolitical realities will a father’s sufferings change or be any less appropriately veiled as a representation of human nature. These are among the few somewhat surprising common grounds between Gramsci, the Communist worker, and Eliot, the archconservative Anglican classicist. But, of course, the differences are what matter. Eliot can make Dante into a prelapsarian figure because he identifies the dissociation of sensibility, in part, with the development of nationalism. That Eliot can read Dante as coming before the emergence of nationalism is an act of misprision that requires some explanation (Eliot 1964, 202). Even though Gramsci’s remarks do not enter into the complex details of Florentine politics his treatment of Dante places him in the factional divisions of the communal warfare of that city as a political intellectual hoping to find some agent that can restore a sort of peace, a status quo ante. As Gramsci sets up his reading of Dante, in contrast to Eliot’s representative interpretation, it is quite specifically the case that Florentine politics require a nationalist solution and are already tending in that direction when Dante writes his poem, a poem that both emerges from the defeat of his desires and intervenes in the national development – even though a national solution is not reached, as Machiavelli’s efforts testify. Eliot, by contrast, needs a Dante who is not only a reactionary but a latecomer, a last link with the state of grace represented by the myth of a universal middle ages and its universal language, Latin: “medieval Latin tended to concentrate on what men of various races and lands could think together” (201). Dante’s Italian, for Eliot, is valuable because it can represent and share in this mind of Europe:

Dante, Gramsci and cultural criticism  25 “and the localization (‘Florentine’ speech) seems if anything to emphasize the universality, because it cuts across the modern division of nationality. … Dante, none the less an Italian and a patriot, is first a European.” Eliot’s linguistic idealization and universalization of Dante gradually makes him over – not only from a specific historical political figure involved in concrete cultural political practice but also from the mythicized heroic figure of the lost communal past – into an articulation of what Eliot desires in the present and for the future. Dante, Eliot claims, is “easy to read.” It is not that Dante’s language is simple or his thought or representations less than complex; rather, Dante is “easy to read” because Eliot sees him as a stylist in a way that, despite Eliot’s own conservative politics, has a potentially progressive ideological tendency: The style of Dante has a peculiar lucidity – a poetic as distinguished from an intellectual lucidity. The thought may be obscure, but the word is lucid, or rather translucent. In English poetry words have a kind of opacity which is part of their beauty. I do not mean that the beauty of English poetry is what is called mere “verbal beauty.” It is rather that words have associations, and the groups of words in association have associations, which is a kind of local self-consciousness, because they are the growth of a particular civilization … The Italian of Dante … is not in this way a modern language. (201) It is progressive that Eliot should note the historical, material embeddedness of modern European languages; what is modernist – and so to many unacceptable – about this is his projection of a lost origin (through a restatement of the myth of the fall) upon a premodern and prelapsarian Dante. Eliot’s Dante marks the end of old Europe and the onset of modernist nationalism which fulfills itself, for Eliot, in the Treaty of Versailles. Not only is this Treaty the calamitous conclusion of modernization and nationalism, but for Eliot it is also the harbinger of their necessary overcoming by those (poet/critics) who, like Eliot, so to speak, learn well from the Dante who is “so easy to read.” For Eliot, only those who can read this Dante – only those who are summoned to their own identity as poets – can begin the cultural and political change that will overthrow modernism and nationalism in favor of a new, but traditional, aristocratic order. It is not difficult to uncover the rhetorical tactics at work in Eliot’s essay. “Reading” Dante in this way is to be taken as an act of “recognition” in which the reader and the poet set each other off – on the one hand as (benevolent) father and on the other as (equally benevolent) son; each is inspirited by the violence of this fantastic recognition: The experience of a poem is the experience both of a moment and of a lifetime. It is very much like our intenser experiences of other human beings. There is a first, or an early moment which is unique, of shock and surprise, even of terror (Ego dominus tuus): a moment which can never be forgotten, but which is never repeated integrally; and yet would become destitute of significance if it did not survive in a larger whole of experience; which survives inside a deeper and a calmer feeling (212).

26  Paul Bové Terror is the ephebe’s experience of the sublime master’s integral alterity by contrast with which his own need for inspiration, power, and completion compels the ephebe’s ritual return to the divine and yet natural source of energy in the master.3 Of course, all this is a dialectic of self-making, or, if you will, godmaking, in the process of which and in the representations that are produced in processu, the ephebe makes himself in the heroic “afterimage” of the projected image of the master (O’Hara, 1985). In Eliot’s terms, this is allegory: “clear visual images. And clear visual images are given much more intensity by having a meaning” (204). According to Eliot then, and in terms not far from those of recent literary and linguistic theory, allegory is a diachronic elaboration of the synchronic; but, for Eliot, its possibility depends upon the hypothetical and residual existence of a premodern imaginative mode, namely, “vision” (de Man 1983; Bové 1990). Dante has, Eliot tells us, “a visual imagination” because “he lived in an age when men still saw visions.” We have lost the trick: “We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions – a practice now relegated to the aberrant and uneducated – was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming” (204). Eliot’s remarks importantly limn the critical allegory in and by which Dante becomes for a number of authorized poets and critics a projected image of antiand ante-modernist authority, a figure, a persona, or a “mask” reconstructed to resonate with their unhappy but powerful energies, repressions, and desires (O’Hara 1985, 1–9). In this long essay on Dante, distilled from the longer and still unpublished Clark lectures, Eliot creates retrospectively his own genealogy; but it is as a representation of a particular modern use of Dante, and in contrast to Gramsci, that it has its importance. Like Vossler, Auerbach, and Croce, Eliot privileges his master with the capacity of fully developed humanity, what Eliot calls “the system of Dante’s organization of sensibility” (235). This phrase, which momentarily can be taken to epitomize Eliot’s poetics as an expressive theory of individual vision dependent upon and represented by the unique bodily organization of the individual poet’s integral nervous system – this phrase is so ideologically burdened as to lead to Fredric Jameson’s mocking rejection of the authoritarian heterocosms of high modernist writing (1981, 225). In Eliot’s expressive poetics, the poem projects the poet’s sensibility thus organizing the sensorium of experience in a wholeness, complete and entire: “The smell of steaks in passageways/Six o’clock.” Yet there is a progressive moment in this modernist poetics that Jameson’s focus on the totalitarian demands of the putatively privileged sensibility cannot consider; it is perhaps best described abstractly as a hermeneutic model of readerly openness, that is, self-abnegation in interpretation. Allegorically, the poetics of sensibility can lead to a hermeneutics of generosity, a suspension of critical apparatus and judgment in the name of empathy. R. P. Blackmur has it that the critic must always judge and that the road to judgment must always be slow and filled with failures. “What we need,” Eliot writes in a similar way, “is not information but knowledge: the first step to knowledge is to recognize the differences between [the poet’s] form of thought and feeling and ours” (237). This hermeneutics is dialogic at best, not historicist; nonetheless, it calls for respect for the

Dante, Gramsci and cultural criticism  27 otherness of the text and a (perhaps momentary) concession of right to the text: it requires, again in Blackmur’s vocabulary, a moment of critical humility, of selfabnegation in reading and judgment (1981, 372). Of course, there are moments in Eliot not so generous as this; true to his poetic projection of heroic, originary mastery – which obliges readers to forget the desire to be inspirited by the imagined and projected other4 – Eliot crystallizes this “self-abnegation” as a foundational moment in the birth of the poet. It becomes the Law of critical reading and a moment akin to faith: “We have to learn to accept their forms: and this acceptance is more important that anything that can be called belief. There is almost a definite moment of acceptance at which the New Life begins” (237).

4 That part of Gramsci’s visionary and utopian energies are at work in his readings of Dante bears upon his politics, especially upon his understanding of the relationship of political leaders to their followers – just as it does upon his so-called “aesthetics.” Indeed, a reading of some of his remarks on Dante suggests that some of the conventional ways for discussing these matters in political and philosophical circles – is he a Leninist? an anti-Leninist? a Hegelian? and so on – might better be put aside in favor of an approach that treats his writings as dramatized formulations of matters not given to abstract conceptualization and nominalization. Gramsci allegorizes a formative response to Dante and this act aligns him not just with (and against) Eliot but with a wide variety of modern poets and writers. Needless to say, Gramsci’s energies do not produce a simulacrum of Eliot’s allegory for they have different “imaginings” of that which might come to be. In Gramsci’s correction of Croce (in the letter to Tatiana for Professor Cosmo, his old Dante professor), there is a revealing gambit on a set of what quickly come to be defining binary oppositions: De Sanctis, in his essay on Farinata, commenting on the harshness of the tenth canto of Dante’s Inferno, attributes it to the fact that Farinata, after having been depicted as heroic in the first part of the episode, becomes in the last half a pedagogue. Using Croce’s scheme, Farinata changes from poetry to structure. And again, drawing the line between Farinata and Cavalcante, Gramsci writes: Here the difference between the two emerges. Farinata, upon hearing Florentine spoken, becomes once more a man of politics, the Ghibelline hero. Cavalcante’s thoughts, instead, are directed toward Guido. … Cavalcante’s drama passes subtly, but is marked by an unutterable intensity. (1973, 208–9) By the end of this letter, Gramsci, of course, has overcome Croce’s singularly dull distinction between poetry and structure, but he has left the other opposition “heroic”/“pedagogic” standing unchallenged. Why so? In La Poesia di Dante

28  Paul Bové (1922), Croce uses the figure of the heroic Farinata not just as a representative instance of the political man, not just of poetry, indeed, not even just of their identity, but as a representation of the poet himself, of Dante in the most sublime incarnation of human completion. Croce’s reference is to the scene at the beginning of Canto X: The mind of Dante is full at this moment of his ideal journey, of images of men, of events, of struggles going on in his city. But the imagination no longer places before him images of hate; the new feeling is admiration for the great and strong men of Florence, which is no longer the sower of every vice, vituperated by Ciacco, but the “noble fatherland,” of which it is his joy and boast to be a native, the fatherland that one curses and loves, for which one suffers and of which one is proud and which really does stand at the apex of the soul as a sacred thing. Farinata rises up, the figure in which this sentiment of poetic elevation expresses itself; Farinata the magnanimous, who like a true epic hero completely and wholly the warrior devoted to his cause, to his political ideal, to the city to which he belongs and which for that reason belongs to him; all other affection is foreign to him. Now he makes himself superior to the evils which surround him, holding his head high, with a look on his face as though he had a great contempt for Hell. He is careless of human loves and sorrows, and does not deign to pay attention to Cavalcante who is close to him; nor is he in the least moved by his solicitude and paternal affection. His first inquiry is that of the partisan and warrior. (Croce, 1922, 117–18) Cavalcante is contrasted to Farinata: “Then there arose to sight alongside of him a shade, visible to the chin: I think he had raised himself on his knees” (Dante, 103, 11: 52–4). Cavalcante’s unheroic self-presentation suggests that the guiding opposition of hero/pedagogue, if read through its displacing and doubling opposition – political/paternal – contrasts not just two moments in Farinata, but contrasts Farinata with Cavalcante and finally Dante with Croce, which means, of course, Croce with Gramsci. For Croce, heroism consists in the replacement of all other affections by the love of the fatherland and glory won in political struggle: Cavalcante, by the standard of the hero, is weak and so not an adequate representation of the poet’s spirit sublimely full of its power and imaginings. Farinata becomes a “pedagogue” – the term is Gramsci’s not Croce’s – when he becomes structure, as Croce calls him, “a sop to the readers of the theologicalethical romance” (1922, 120). But Cavalcante is above all for Gramsci a father, a “pedagogue,” pedagogo. Pedagogo, of course, is from paid-agein, to lead or direct a child, usually a young boy. This etymology suggests part of how burdened the figure of Farinata is for Gramsci and the tradition in which he is working. Rosengarten studies some of the parallels between Cavalcante’s relation to Guido and Gramsci’s relations to his sons. He also makes the point that Cavalcante’s punishment – an inability to see the present while being able to see the future, the ironically perfect punishment for the visionary poet – roughly corresponds to Gramsci’s fulsome state

Dante, Gramsci and cultural criticism  29 in prison. Indeed, one of Gramsci’s notes on Farinata supports this idea: in The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci writes that Dante “wants the knot which prevented him from answering Cavalcante to be untied” (1985, 153). “Pedagogue” opens this personal level onto the political and suggests another reading of the “hero”/“pedagogue” binary. Farinata, of course, is the pedagogue designated in the text, but may we not see him as a displacement from the figure of Cavalcante as father? Etymology as well as established tradition bring the father and the pedagogue together in this context, rather than dividing them as, for example, would be the case with Philip’s bringing Aristotle to tutor Alexander. In reading Gramsci’s “pedagogo,” we must recall how often he expresses his anxiety about his sons growing up without paternal direction and how, sometimes, he tries to provide guidance through his letters to Giulia. In personal practice and in his reading of Canto X, the father and the pedagogue are one for Gramsci. The pedagogue is Cavalcante whose veiled sufferings are as a father, the director of his son whose fate is unclear to him. This, in turn, suggests two political elements in Gramsci: first, the idea of the political leader as a director figured on the model of the paternal pedagogue; second, the idea of domination as both cultural and political hegemony. In contrast to Croce, who valorizes Farinata only in a reading that figures him as a heroic sublime representation of the lyrical poet singing the politics of the noble fatherland, and in contrast to Eliot whose complex represents Dante as a father in the image of his own needs – in contrast to both of these moderns, Gramsci’s representations of paternity, leadership, and hegemony in opposition to both “heroism” and “poetry” suggests something of the democratic vision of Gramsci’s politics, of how this, in part, comes from personal experience, of how it implicitly involves a critique of representation on the level of text and political institution alike, and of how it involves critical interventions into the hegemonic culture of literary and critical traditions themselves. Croce asserts that Farinata is a mimetic representation of the lyrically ineffable sublimity of the Poet; Eliot, in a complex game of doubling projection, enacts a drama of authorization and legitimation. In both sets of moves these conservative intellectuals assign representative status to themselves and their authorized and authorizing representations; and both do this in the dynamics of sublime and privileged sensibility. Gramsci, by contrast, emphasizes rather differently, rather somewhat less than heroically, the commonality of experience in pedagogy. (Its latent sexism is a larger and more important matter inviting discussion and critique.) It is not Farinata’s sublime disdain that represents Dante, nor is Dante represented in a simple displacement by Cavalcante’s paternal pedagogy. For Gramsci, Dante represents and comes to be represented, in a double displacement, by what he makes of Farinata as the representation of what Gramsci would have be outside representation altogether: the unseen suffering of Cavalcante, of a father, of a pedagogue, of (finally) a democratic leader whose heirs – those who make the future he hopes for – have a most uncertain fate. (This is, of course, a story on the verge of political defeat.) The nature of leadership in Gramsci’s thought has been a problem for his interpreters precisely because, like the leader himself, “leadership,” itself, needs to be represented as outside representation: both to avoid nonorganic modes of

30  Paul Bové representative politics and to avoid figuring the leader in either Eliot’s or Croce’s tropes of masterful fathers or vanguard political intellectuals. A critique of representation – as ideology, language, and government – emerges from Gramsci’s plaintive and enabling obsession with Canto X. His hope for a better future, for another polity of human relations requires that the disdain of a Farinata which is the desire of a Croce, be disempowered precisely by disempowering the authorizing and authorized workings of representation: indeed, even Eliot’s self-consciously ironic allegory of representation, with its enabling figure of the privileged sensibility, fulfills the double logic of representation. In sum, then, Gramsci’s concern for a leadership that does not usurp the people’s right and ability to struggle to make their own future (with the use of poets’ visions) is continuous with his experience of paternal loss and his, at least, textual comprehension of the politics of representation.

Notes 1 For a theoretical sense of this problematic which has been very important to criticism’s discussion of modernity, see Said (1975). 2 Gramsci struggles to align Cavalcante’s anguish with other classical images of suffering such as Timanthes’s veiled portrait of Agamemnon at the moment of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. This is a move that typically aligns him with traditional conservative idealistic humanists. See, for example, the similar gesture in Altieri (1981). 3 On this structure of relation, taken psychoanalytically, see Bloom (1973). 4 See O’Hara (1988) for the best working out of the dialectics of such imagination.

3 Bloom and Babbitt A Gramscian view Daniel O’Connell

The publication of Franco Moretti’s Signs Taken for Wonders in 1983 was part of a shift in critical perspective on the work of James Joyce, a movement toward reading the political significance of Joyce’s text – a tendency that by now has become fairly widespread in Joyce criticism. In his chapter on Ulysses, which he calls “The Long Goodbye,” Moretti reads Joyce’s texts as “a monumental autopsy of an entire social formation,” that of British capitalism (Moretti 1983, 185). Britain, in Moretti’s argument, began at the end of the nineteenth century to fall behind Germany and America because of its inability to adapt itself to the newer economic realities of international capitalism. In particular, the lagging ideological development of the British bourgeoisie caused it to hold on to outmoded notions of liberal noninterference by the state in financial matters, with disastrous consequences for Britain’s relative economic position. Moretti reads Ulysses as an expression of the imminent decline of British (and, by implication, Irish) influence on the world economic stage. He characterizes Irish culture, as presented by Joyce, as anticipating a future of “paralyzed mediocrity” as a result of these historical forces (1983, 189). Moretti’s claim is that Joyce’s peripheral perspective as an Irishman allowed him a privileged point of view on the coming crisis. Moretti’s argument that colonial writers like Joyce can often see hidden aspects of the major culture – in this case, England’s imminent economic decline – seems a valid point; his conflation of the English and Irish situation is, however, less convincing. Leopold Bloom’s difficulties are a function not only of Ireland’s peripheral participation in “British” economic decline, but also of the peculiar disadvantages, in developing global capitalism, of societies that find themselves held back by a combination of economic and cultural forces, working in tandem. The Irish were, and continue to be, an even more radical example than their British counterparts of these constraining conditions, as I will now attempt to illustrate with the help of some theoretical perspectives provided by Antonio Gramsci. My starting point is a series of remarks made by Gramsci in his recently published Cultural Writings on the subject of “Americanism and Babbitt,” which continues Gramsci’s discussion of “Americanism and Fordism” in the Prison Notebooks. Gramsci was attempting to confront what he designated European Babbittry, and to distinguish it from its “American” variety.1 As Gramsci saw it, the American Babbitt, with all of his faults, constitutes a strength in his culture – is “energetic and progressive,” in Gramsci’s words – in contrast to his European

32  Daniel O’Connell counterpart, who reflects a weakness in the European context. Gramsci’s position is that Europeans take a false consolation in the Philistinism of Americans like George Babbitt in order to ignore their own limitations. The particular remark that leads to James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom is Gramsci’s claim that “no European writer has been able to depict the European Babbitt for us” (Gramsci 1985, 279, 280). A question arises as to whether or not Bloom represents a European Babbitt as imagined by Gramsci. Since Joyce’s Bloom and Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt appeared in 1922, there is no question of influence; the parallels nonetheless are striking, including Lewis’s testimony that initially he planned his novel to be 24 hours in George Babbitt’s life. It seemed that it might be productive to examine the two novels comparatively, using Gramsci’s analytic categories, and to pay particular attention to the weakness/strength opposition put forward by Gramsci as the significant difference between the European and American contexts, in the interplay between cultural and economic levels. From Gramsci’s socialist perspective, the historical dimension of the question is crucial; historical study is necessary in order that history be “overcome,” for socialism to be realized. The inherent paradox in the position is reflected in Gramsci’s view of American culture; it is not a simple matter of European political cynicism and assumed intellectual superiority versus naive American political optimism and intellectual inferiority. In fact, Gramsci, like many left revolutionaries of his generation, was profoundly ambivalent about America and what it represented in the context of historical tradition. What Gramsci called “Fordism,” the Taylorized assembly line and the ideological supports for it that drove American capitalism, represented simultaneously the highest development of capitalist efficiency and alienation and a set of developments that would, if brought to Europe, abolish the last remnants of what Gramsci called “feudalism,” cultural conditions that he believed acted to keep Europe in an economically and socially backward position, as compared to America’s rapid development in the economic sphere in the absence of such constraints. Opposition to “Americanism,” Gramsci observed, tended to come from Europe’s most reactionary elements (1971, 281). Gramsci appreciated that even a phenomenon like prohibition, which provided a target of easy ridicule for Europeans, was a necessary condition for the development of a new kind of Taylorized worker, and no mere “Puritanical” gesture, in the difficult transition from the older European forms of work to the newer, more efficient American planned economy. Gramsci observes that Taylorist notions of worktime required the limitation of alcoholic consumption by workers in order that “the whole life of the nation revolve around production” (1971, 285). It is characteristic of Gramsci’s complex understanding of the causality operating between economic and cultural phenomena that, while never lapsing into economism, he nonetheless insists upon the infrastructural basis of such a phenomenon as prohibition, and avoids attributing it to merely “moral” intentions. As an Italian southerner, from impoverished Sardinia, Gramsci was especially sensitive to the fact that he hailed from a “backwater” of Europe, a region that economically speaking had not yet entered the twentieth century whereas, as Gertrude Stein observed, America had gotten there first. The ideological

Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian view  33 differences were epitomized in Gramsci’s remark that “America has the Rotary and the YMCA; Europe has Free Masonry and the Jesuits” (1971, 286). Apart from characterizing the differences between the cultures inhabited by Babbitt and Bloom, the two national types also represent the difference between the unproductive and socially parasitic Italian petit bourgeoisie and its very different American counterpart. As Fredric Jameson has observed, “Joyce had no more talent for or interest in the representation of aristocrats than Dickens, and no more experience with working-class people than Balzac” (1982, 134). The same could be said for Sinclair Lewis; their common subject matter was the everyday life of the petit bourgeoisie.2 The central values of the class typically involve order and acceptance of convention, values that the emerging fascist movements were able to take advantage of in the early 1920s.3 At this early stage, Gramsci saw Italian fascism as simply the “latest performance” of the national petit bourgeoisie, represented by figures like D’Annunzio, whom James Joyce thought “semi-fanatic” (Ellmann 1959, 673). Fascism’s main clientele, at least in its early stages, were middlestrata personnel and small businesspeople: the class whom both Joyce and Lewis focused upon. Both writers chose to describe the trivialities of the daily lives of this class rather than either great capitalists or proletarians, an artistic choice for which they were attacked by critics of the Left like Lukács and Radek. By contrast, neoMarxist theory, and Gramsci in particular, have concentrated increasingly upon such middle-strata social groups, and on the ideology of everyday life, as against the more traditional questions of political ideology. These newer critical concerns indicate a need to reevaluate writers like Joyce and Lewis who have attended to the life experience of such middle-strata personnel. Henri Lefebvre, the French Marxist usually credited with adding the concept of the “everyday” to our critical vocabulary, characterizes the nature of the everyday in the modern period as managed, administered, and, in particular, as reflecting the dominance of the repetitive (Lefebvre, 1971). In both of our novels this thematic of repetitiveness is dominant: George Babbitt is intermittently conscious of the repetitive nature of his daily work and expresses some resentment of it, but it is Joyce who most systematically calls attention to this central quality of modern experience in Leopold Bloom’s unconscious reiteration of the travels of Homer’s Ulysses. Although neither Bloom nor Babbitt suffers the Taylorized efficiencies of the industrial assembly line, both experience the nausea of the quotidian, a tone that permeates both texts. One of the questions that engages Gramsci in his “Americanism and Fordism” essay is how it could be possible, in these spiritkilling circumstances of daily life, that an ordinary, uneducated man could achieve a more philosophical consciousness. Gramsci asks rhetorically, “Is the worker who spends his day enmeshed in a mechanical process of depersonalized operations likely to soar into philosophical consciousness in his nonworking hours?” (1971, 309). Leopold Bloom’s difficulty in making that leap, either in his internal musings or in his dialogue with the poet and philosopher Stephen Dedalus, is one dimension of his particular pathos. George Babbitt is scarcely aware that such a leap is possible. Initially, it would seem to be the parallels between Bloom and Babbitt, along these lines, that are most significant. These potential philosophers – and, for

34  Daniel O’Connell Gramsci, every man and woman is a potential philosopher – not only belong to the same class but also share the same occupation: they are both salesmen. Babbitt sells real estate, Bloom advertising space. Both share an interest in effective business prose and are impressed with imaginative advertising techniques. Both inhabit middle-sized cities, not great megalopolises, where the “personal touch” is perceived to be essential to business success. Dublin and Zenith are both still sufficiently human-scale cities as to be representable through relatively intimate social networks: in Dublin, the pub or newspaper office; in Zenith, the Booster’s club or barber shop. Joyce and Lewis provide us with sympathetic portraits of their protagonists, for all of their faults. Bloom’s compassion extends from the impoverished condition of Stephen’s sister Dilly Dedalus and her brother the downat-heels poet Stephen himself, to whom Bloom becomes both good Samaritan and surrogate father, to the condition of various horses, dogs, and cats whom he encounters during the course of his long day; Bloom displays an admirable capacity for empathy in relation to a whole spectrum of fellow sentient beings. George Babbitt, possibly as a function of his more ruthlessly competitive culture, cannot afford such a degree of general compassion – one price that America has paid for its relative economic success, perhaps. Both Bloom and Babbitt engage in feeble revolts, what Gramsci characterizes as “the romantic tinsel typical of the petit bourgeois” in his Prison Notebooks (1971, 304). Babbitt has a brief affair with a widow to whom he has rented an apartment, and Bloom risks an affair by mail with a woman named Martha Clifford. Both Joyce and Lewis concentrate intensively on getting the sounds of their culture’s voices: Joyce’s Dublin dialects and the “brassy assurance” of American Booster club rhetoric are both memorable, although where Lewis fairly revels in the vulgarity of a generalized American businessmen’s speech, Joyce is at pains to establish differences among his speakers. Bloom’s would-be genteel speech is a considerable distance from Stephen Dedalus’s ironies, and the rhetorician Professor McHugh, in the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses, is positively contemptuous of his own colonial English: “I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money” (Joyce 1986, 110). For Professor McHugh, from his Irish perspective, the English represent the summit of efficient modern materialism, but Gramsci understood that America had carried the maxim even further toward its full realization. American productive and ideological conditions had generated what Gramsci characterized as a “new type of man,” especially suited to new and higher levels of capitalist efficiency. America, said Gramsci, represented “the biggest collective effort to date” to create such a type of human being, which was why to see a measure like prohibition as merely American “Puritanism” was to miss its larger historical significance. Alcoholic consumption, like the sexual instinct, must be strictly regulated, in the interest of the rationalization of the work process and higher productivity (Gramsci 1971, 294ff.). All of this Taylorization did pay off, for Americans; for all of the culture’s philistinism, American capitalism did deliver the goods for millions of Babbitts, to the envy of Europeans. Babbitt sold real estate by selling confidence and optimism, America’s official values; his Boosterist metaphysic provided the ideological center of a worldview, a religion of business:

Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian view  35 Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided … what he should think about disarmament, tariff and Germany, so did national advertisers … fix what he believed to be his individuality. (Lewis 1980, 81) As compared to the individualistic and nonconformist Bloom, the conformist Babbitt is much more representative of the modern mass-person; but the price Bloom pays for his individualism is his relative failure in those practical forms of everyday life at which George Babbitt and his fellow Boosters excel. Compared to the inefficient Bloom, whose entire commercial accomplishment for the long day of 16 June 1904 is to advise the printer Nannetti on the design of a single advertisement in the Freeman’s Journal newspaper, Bloom’s employer, George Babbitt is a dynamo of activity and efficiency. It may be an empty and meaningless efficiency as compared with the Joycean reader’s perception of Bloom’s Odyssean meanderings, but of his own “classical” significance Mr. Bloom is of course blissfully unaware. Finally, on Gramscian principles, it is the differences between Bloom and Babbitt that are most significant, differences that Gramsci’s analysis of American versus European culture makes visible and intelligible. Gramsci observed that Babbitt was a great success not only in Europe but eventually in America as well; Lewis was offered the Pulitzer Prize by his countrymen and eventually received the Nobel Prize from Europe, the first American to be so honored. Although he acknowledges that it is no great work of literary art, Gramsci maintains that Babbitt was of great cultural importance to Americans in that the novel reflected America’s self-confidence in its capacity not only to tolerate but even to celebrate a work that exposed some of the culture’s more embarrassing aspects. Having become confident of its strengths – this is the America of the early 1920s – the American populace was willing to contemplate its weaknesses. Forgivable sins, for a culture aggressively on the move, a kinetic society, in the “takeoff stage” of capitalist development. Gramsci’s point is that Lewis is in touch with this society and is read by it; Lewis became a genuinely “popular” writer. When we turn to the case of Joyce, Gramsci’s characterization of typical European intellectuals seems apt. In contrast to their American counterparts – peripatetic, free-floating types, unanchored in a local context – European intellectuals are seen as having “completely broken loose by making up a caste in themselves, without roots in a national-popular life” (Gramsci 1985, 279). At first glance, this description would seem inaccurate for Joyce; the localism of Joyce’s writing is indisputable and his content is his native Dublin’s various human species. But in another sense Gramsci’s description is accurate; not only did Joyce become a citizen of Europe and avoid Ireland for virtually all of his adult life, but in terms of readership he was, and continues to be, largely cut off from his own compatriots. This indifference on the part of the Irish, which tormented and galled Joyce during his lifetime, is only partly explained by the formal complexity and high-culture content of a novel like Ulysses; the other aspect of the book’s unacceptability is that Ireland continued to be the kind of culture that Gramsci characterized, like

36  Daniel O’Connell Italy in the 1920s, as “feudal.” Not only the dominance of the Church but also the underdeveloped economic situation locate Ireland in the category of a relatively “static” culture, one still suffering from what Joyce called “paralysis.” Nothing is more striking to visitors to contemporary Ireland than how little has changed, in terms of daily life, from the Dublin described by Joyce more than fifty years ago. Despite the success of the nationalist movement and the achievement of semiindependent status for the Irish Republic, it was not capable of tolerating the kind of ruthless scrutiny that Joyce’s texts subjected it to; the resistance of the Irish to their greatest writer is too well known to reiterate here. Today, apart from forming part of the Irish tourist industry for visiting Americans and Europeans, he is still read less widely in Ireland than in Europe and the United States. Ireland continues to export thousands of immigrants, who cannot find employment in their own country, to the United States, where many become undocumented workers; very few know Joyce as anything but a name. He has not become part of the curriculum in Irish schools as Lewis has been in America for decades. Ironically, it is precisely those aspects of Joyce’s texts, absent from the more “popular” and accessible Lewis, that have appealed to the international audience; the classical literary and cultural tradition that Joyce tapped in Ulysses is what separates the common reader from his work. Gramsci’s observation in “Americanism and Fordism” on America’s lack of “great historical and cultural traditions” cuts two ways: on one hand, it produces a relative cultural impoverishment in Americans which, if we are to believe the recent alarms sounded by cultural prophets like Alan Bloom and E. D. Hirsch, is getting worse; on the other hand, it has produced fewer obstacles to social and economic development in “organizing an entire nation around the central role of greater production” – that is, Babbitt values (Gramsci 1971, 285). British and Irish workers have proven fairly impervious to appeals for greater productive efficiency; the tea break or pub stop has not been abandoned in favor of an American work ethic. The work rhythms of Leopold Bloom and his fellow Dubliners in Ulysses illustrate Gramsci’s point; neither Stephen Dedalus nor Bloom reflects Taylorist values to the slightest degree. In fact, Stephen expects to be dismissed very soon from his teaching position, and Bloom has little material success to show for his rather frequent changing of jobs. Gramsci speaks, in a memorable phrase, of the “gladiatorial futility” of the Babbitt-type, which produces, in Gramsci’s description, “a superior kind of puppet, modeled on the basis of rhetorical predicates, which will collapse into nothingness the moment the strings are cut which give from outside the appearance of motion and life” (1971, 307). Babbitt is intermittently aware of this underlying nothingness in his life experience, but his Boosterist ideology generally allows him to overcome his awareness of it; Bloom seems to suffer less from such angst, and since the reader of Ulysses reads Bloom’s activities through the lens of the literary tradition, there is an inherent meaningfulness in his every action, however fruitless it may seem on the naturalistic level. Poor George Babbitt, for all of his culture’s go-ahead values, is lacking the manipulations of a classically trained puppeteer to provide the sort of meaning that Joyce’s literary Dubliners enjoy. But the philosophical emptiness of the Babbitt-type did not prevent early

Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian view  37 twentieth-century American capitalism from thriving; in Gramsci’s view, a rich historical and cultural tradition actually contributed to Europe’s relative economic stagnation. Americans have long since absorbed the criticism of Sinclair Lewis; today’s Babbitts are ironic about their Babbittry, if contemporary advertising is to be taken as typical. Babbitt was the face of the American future while Bloom, in his interest in modern advertising techniques, was an Irish anomaly, a “bloody dark horse,” as Joe Hynes says of him in Joyce’s Cyclops chapter. Joyce’s contextualization of Bloom in the literary tradition of Europe placed his character in precisely that “burdened” position that, as Gramsci saw it, was typical of the “feudal” relations that helped to keep European nations in a relatively undeveloped social position, under the weight of constraining cultural conditions. When combined with its colonized history, these conditions made it doubly difficult for Ireland to escape its status as what Joyce called a “backwater of Europe.” In Gramsci’s view, the cultural price paid in Babbittry is rewarded in the rapid development of productive relations; for all of the citizen’s boast that Irish trade will soon revive – “Our harbors that were empty will be full again” – the narrator of the Cyclops chapter of Ulysses is closer to the truth of the Irish reality: “All wind and piss like a tanyard cat” (Joyce 1986, 269). Gramsci’s claim that no European writer has depicted the European Babbitt for us is comprehensible in this context; European intellectuals, like Stephen Dedalus, or even failed intellectuals, such as Leopold Bloom, have more on their minds than their American counterparts. In his own way, Bloom shares that “burden” of history that dogs Stephen Dedalus’s consciousness; by comparison, George Babbitt has a very different history and cultural memory, which produces no “nightmares” in his sleep; we do not feel the weight of the dead generations on the shoulders of George Babbitt. In an editorializing interjection near the end of his novel, Lewis’s narrator observes that America’s businesspeople are “like the ruling class of any other country … but more vigorous” (Lewis 1980, 311). From a Gramscian perspective, that American vigor, as well as the “paralytic” nature of the Irish situation, are to be understood in the radically different relations in which the two cultures stand to their respective historical traditions.

Notes 1 I retain Gramsci’s usage of the term American for the United States; he consistently uses the former term, even though his reference is clearly to the United States and its particular economic and cultural conditions, the native ground of Taylorism. 2 The large and tortured question of class presents itself at this point. In the interest of avoiding a reductionist notion of class, I refer the reader to a discussion of the subject by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff (1986). The authors present three criteria, or “groupings,” as the basis for determining class position: property, power, and appropriation of surplus labor, or some combination of the three. As it happens, Leopold Bloom and George Babbitt qualify on all three grounds in the novels under discussion. They should properly be included in Marx’s category of “subsumed” classes. See the same authors’ Knowledge and Class (1987, 124ff). 3 Leonardo Salimini, among others, has discussed the success of the Italian Fascists in integrating the middle classes ideologically, in contrast to the relative failure of the

38  Daniel O’Connell Italian left, in the 1920s. See his The Sociology of Political Praxis (1981, 10ff.). In a recent study of Diderot, Dennis Porter points out that as early as the eighteenth century, the term bourgeois had already designated a whole may of identifiable characteristics, including “an urban dwelling place, an intermediate social status, a system of values, an attitude to work, a set of behaviors, a mode of self-representation, forms of domestic life, and a style of life.” See his Haunted Journeys (1991, 84ff.).

4 Socialist education today Pessimism or optimism of the intellect? Marcia Landy

The topic “Socialist Education in Capitalist Societies” is formidable, one that cannot easily be addressed by a circumscribed analysis of pedagogical practices but requires a reexamination of existing intellectual positions and practices. The massive repudiation of Marxism in the last decades by prophets of both Left and Right has made the task of creating socialism a gargantuan one (see Kaldor 1990). Never has socialism, let alone socialist education, seemed so remote and yet never has it seemed so imperative. Thus, at this time of neoconservative hegemony, it seems appropriate to invoke the name of Antonio Gramsci, not because he was a victim of fascism but because in his writings he offered both an analysis of the totally administered society and tentative suggestions for how to struggle in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles, including those generated by the Left. This is not to say that Gramsci offers his readers a set of prescriptions for social transformation but rather that he offers a diagnosis of problems of state and civil society that is instructive for rethinking questions of social and political change through education. For example, in an essay entitled “Gramsci and Us,” Stuart Hall cautions himself and his readers to be wary of an uncritical appropriation of Gramsci’s work by those interested in countering present challenges to Marxism. “I do not claim that in any simple way,” he writes, “Gramsci ‘has the answers’ or ‘holds the key’ to our present troubles. I do believe that we must think our problems in a Gramscian way – which is different” (1988a, 161). And in British cultural studies much effort has been expended particularly by the Centre for Popular Culture in Birmingham, in an attempt to develop a “Gramscian way” of theorizing cultural work. My chapter is geared toward situating Gramsci’s work in relation to current cultural/political analyses, to identifying those elements in his writings that might map directions for socialist education. While in his preprison and prison writings, Gramsci attempted to describe alternative educational institutions, this chapter does not presume to offer such a blueprint for a number of reasons: the time is not propitious for such thinking; such proposals were advanced a decade ago and have been assimilated into existing pedagogies with contradictory results; it is far more pressing, at this moment, to examine the failure of institutional remedies. Above all, the issues involving education that need to be reconfigured involve conceptions of collectivity and democracy in relation to theory and practice. Gramsci’s career in this respect is an exemplary one insofar as his works were geared to resisting a valorization of either theory or practice.

40  Marcia Landy A reading of the social text in the “Gramscian way” as a means for charting socialist education in capitalist society entails confronting, first of all, the notion of culture as political and the notion of capitalism itself as confounding the relations between economics and politics. It also involves a rethinking of the term “political.” Such a study of culture does not yield itself as a mirror of immediate social, economic, and political relations but involves a painstaking reassessment of the ways in which social knowledge is created and disseminated. In this context, Gramsci’s notion of common sense seems particularly important. Rather than comprising a unified set of ideas that have been assimilated in undiluted fashion from contemporary social institutions, knowledge of social life is multifarious, more akin to what Gramsci has identified as common sense. To describe knowledge as common sense is to identify it as fragmented and distorted, derived as it is from a number of public and private discourses including the law, religion, the family, schools, and the media. Not only does this knowledge serve to perpetuate existing social practices; it also contains the potential for different conceptions of society and of subjectivity. This notion of knowledge as common sense implies a critique of conceptions of ideology as monolithic, as false consciousness, and as completely retrograde. Above all, it has implications for rethinking the nature and meaning of subalternity away from melodramatic notions of oppressor and oppressed toward a more complex understanding of the ways in which the subaltern is implicated in existing formations through mechanisms of both coercion and consent. Gramsci’s understanding of the “culture of consent” – the ways in which lines between dominant groups in power and the subaltern are not clearly demarcated but interdependent – is a precondition for an understanding not only of resistances to change but for identifying resistances, both past and present, to existing formations. More than ever, education needs to be reconsidered as crucial for the creation of alternative positions that can actively generate alternative political practices by producing new forms of knowledge capable of challenging and altering the exploitation and manipulation of large sectors of the world. As Robin Blackburn writes: “As we address the death-throes of the former Communist world, we should not forget the different, but very serious, ills of the capitalist world”: gross inequities in economic and political power, unemployment, “merciless repression and death squads, and ecological crises” (1991, 6). Ideology functions to eradicate the possibility of alternatives, presenting as inevitable the present state of affairs. The Left is implicated insofar as it continues to hold on to traditional analyses of power and domination in its romanticizing of the subaltern; its Eurocentrism; its participation in reformist politics; and its denial, contrary to Gramsci, that it can speak for and liberate the subaltern groups without their active understanding and participation. In the refusal to acknowledge changing historical conditions for the realization of socialism and to develop strategies more suited to present conditions, the Left’s position as a voice for change is foundering. Working with traditional models and positions of class, knowledge, and economism, it is in danger of losing any political relevance because, as Stuart Hall writes,

Socialist education today  41 Basically, that model has committed us over the years to an analysis which no longer has at its centre an accurate description of contemporary social, economic, and cultural realities. Second, it has attached itself to a definition of how change occurs in society which in no way accurately reflects the actual social composition of the class forces and social movements necessary to produce it or the democratic realities of our society. Third, it is no longer able to politicize and develop the majority experiences and dispositions of the popular forces which the left must enlist. Fourth, it is wedded to an automatic conception of class, whereby the economic conditions can be transposed directly on to the political stage. Marx’s formidable distinction between a class “in itself” and one which has developed sufficient political, cultural, and strategic unity to become an active force in history – for “itself” – is wholly foreign to it, though “Marxism” as a sort of magic invocation is constantly on its lips. (1988a, 242)

1 Hall’s words strike a chord for me as I rehearse my own historical involvement with teaching as a radical practice. As someone involved in the particular feminist and anti-imperialist struggles of the late 1960s and early 1970s, I seized on the classroom as an opportunity to politicize the study of literature and film. Although my students and I did confront questions of social class, gender, race, and imperialism, in retrospect I have realized that these encounters were marked by a naiveté about the pervasive and innovative strategies of late capitalism in mobilizing popular consent in the face of political and economic crises. They were also marked by a naiveté about popular movements, devoid of any sense of the ways in which power works, of how the impetus toward “reformism” is inextricably linked to counterstrategies of containment. Above all, they were marked by a lack of understanding of “passive revolution” in the Gramscian sense. As he wrote: “no social formation disappears as long as the productive forces which have developed within it still find room for further forward movement [and] … that a society does not set itself tasks for whose solution the necessary conditions have not already been incubated” (1971, 106). The early 1970s, with their emphasis on the ideology of excellence, economic retrenchment, and the instrumentalization of changes concerning literacy, revealed that there was clearly room left for this “forward movement of the productive forces” and that there had been no incubation for “necessary solutions.” It also made me aware of how socialist education cannot be theorized without rethinking the role of culture and of intellectuals in relation to new conceptions of politics. I began to confront the dizzying array of questions that bore the name “theoretical practice” in an attempt to develop a more stringent critique of taken-forgranted practices about the role of intellectuals, models of learning, and strategies for political transformation. The question of what constitutes a political practice became incredibly more complicated as it became clear that the neoconservatives had adopted the familiar strategies of protest employed by oppositional groups, thus complicating further the question of effective political practices in the name of socialism.

42  Marcia Landy This work has not been done in isolation. With a few exceptions, I have more often learned from my students rather than faculty colleagues. In my recent experiences in teaching I have been extremely fortunate to have as my guide a group of students – Amy Villarejo, Mhadava Prasad, Matthew Tinkcom, Barbara White, Sally Meckling, Joy Fuqua, to name a few – who understand and struggle with current political theories and practices as they relate to questions of gender, sexuality, history, mass culture, representation, and above all, to a critique of existing pedagogical practices. The courses we have shared are predicated on the need to rethink traditional forms of political discourses, to reexamine Marxism in the light of the serious questions that have been raised by poststructuralism concerning the role of the intellectual in the period of late capitalism, and to seek new strategies and tactics that can constitute effective forms of political subversion that do more than serve prevailing institutional interests which can easily deflect oppositional strategies by incorporating and silencing them. This form of subversion differs from traditional forms of protest politics in fundamental ways, since it is geared first and foremost to the creation of political alignments based on an understanding of (1) existing antagonisms which are the creation of new subjectivities whose consent can no longer be negotiated and whose position is dictated by a recognition of the perpetual crisis nature of capitalism; (2) the ways in which capitalism seeks to manage these crises; and (3) the need to see these subjectivities in relation to economic and political formations rather than in solely psychological and affective terms. In our readings of Marx, Foucault, Antonio Negri, the Frankfurt School, Baudrillard, and Gayatri Spivak, among others, we have sought to make bridges between Marxist and poststructuralist concerns. The figure of Gramsci has remained for us a crucial barometer in our quest to understand configurations of subalternity. What follows is an attempt to review some of our investigations.

2 Our studies have explored the ways in which poststructuralism has raised questions concerning language, subjectivity, sexuality, textuality, and modernity that have a political potential but need to be evaluated in relation to theories of learning and change and also in relation to how they can be translated and assimilated into existing pedagogies that are geared toward maintaining traditional forms of behavior. The political dimensions of these theories, indebted as they are to some form of Lacanian psychoanalysis, have raised the hitherto marginalized issue of the formation of gendered and sexual subjects. Likewise, the Althusserian focus on ideology has allowed for a more complex entry into the difficult question of the persistence of dominant ideological practices, requisite for a rethinking of Marxism, connections among economics, politics, and culture, and the need to configure the nature of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. The work of Foucault, in particular, while critical of traditional Marxism, has offered in its genealogies of power, its interrogation of classical notions of institutional hierarchies and of victimage, complicated – and at times problematic – theories concerning the relationship between subalternity and social institutions, recalling Gramsci’s discussions of coercion and consent, the complex nature of hegemony, and the

Socialist education today  43 relationship between civil society and the state. Also, Derrida’s critique of logocentrism, particularly of the tendency to maintain and hierarchialize strict divisions between center and margins, oppressor and oppressed, has helped to call into question the persistence of modes of totalizing thought that have characterized Western speech and writing, deeply inflecting the way we think and act. Even though the reception of these theories has tended to neutralize their radical political potential by placing them in the service of reading competencies and formalism, the theories themselves are deeply concerned with exposing resistances to change, though critics such as Edward Said, wanting to maintain a space for political activism, continue to be uneasy about how such theories are deployed in the interests of inhibiting change. The recent media dramatizations over “political correctness” and the role of theory as the Bad Other indicates, among other things, that there is a recognition of the subversive dimensions of contemporary theory, especially in its attacks on the subject and on totalizing modes of historicizing. This attack seems to represent the other side of the 1960s’ assault against more familiar and direct forms of political practice. In either case, it is clear that the divide between theory and practice is symptomatic of one major form of resistance to change, and as a counterposition to any division between theory and practice, permit me to invoke Spivak’s words: At a time when a rage for order defeminates the academies from every side … I am interested in the theory-practice of pedagogic practice-theory that would allow us constructively to question privileged explanations even as explanations are generated … What I look for … is a confrontational teaching of the humanities that would question the students’ received disciplinary ideology (model of legitimate cultural explanations) even as it pushed into indefiniteness the most powerful ideology of the teaching of the humanities: the unquestioned explicating power of the theorizing mind and class, the need for intelligibility and the rule of law. (1987a, 117) While not offering prescriptions for or affirmations of revolutionary struggle and transformation, poststructuralisms do invite a radical critique of the power of the state, of specific civil institutions, the positions of gendered and sexual subjects, racial and ethnic groups, the legitimacy of juridical, medical, and academic discourses; they explore and challenge notions of representation as constitutive of the real and seek to undermine the social imaginary. The efficacy of this critique can in part be validated by neoconservativism’s militant invocation of traditional representations of nation, patriotism, family, rights of the unborn, religion, and individualism. In education, too, a process of stressing formal competence and narrow disciplinary skills has served to block moves to interrogate the means and ends of traditional forms of learning. In fact, even current theory has been appropriated in the service of more narrowly instrumental and disciplinary ends. That this attempt at recuperation of knowledge has taken place in no way invalidates the seriousness of the poststructuralist critique. A most important mode of enquiry has evolved in the last decades from an interrogation of the role of media – as exemplified by such diverse critics as Raymond Williams and Paul Virilio

44  Marcia Landy – on the central role played by media in social representations and the transmission of knowledge. This work has made it clear that one cannot discuss such questions as ideology, subject positions, and value without interrogating media representations. Thus, education that claims to be socialist needs to contend with what Baudrillard has termed the “political economy of the sign,” to examine the transmission of images in complex ways that challenge conventional oppositions between total domination and total autonomy and provide better modes of understanding reception and dissemination, production and consumption. For example, with the exception of Gramscian-oriented forms of media study as exemplified by British critics (and some US critics) of mass culture, the study of media has veered largely toward formalist or psychoanalytic directions in which questions of subjectivity are either neglected or considered apart from other social formations.

3 There is a Marxist history to this concern with intellectuals, mass culture, and power which is often elided or derided by contemporary critical theory as we have explored in our readings. The writings of Adorno and the Frankfurt School were preoccupied with what was termed “the culture industry,” the affirming aspects of mass culture generative of fascism. The work of Walter Benjamin was characterized by a recognition of the importance of addressing mass culture as affirming but also oppositional, not as an issue subsidiary to economic transformation but as a central facet of modern life which needs to be addressed if change is possible at all. This work, represented by such theorists as Lyotard and Baudrillard, has pointed to the necessity of rethinking the ways in which we perpetuate cultural value. These conceptions of modernism and postmodernism challenge us to reexamine issues of production and consumption. Are we doomed to be consumers, trapped in the science fiction world of technologically transmitted images? What do we mean by consumerism and the role of the consumer? Are responses to mass media so monolithic? In this context, the figure of Gramsci intervenes and introduces different methodologies and practices, with implications for notions of education and social change. Gramsci’s conception of traditional and organic intellectuals especially deserves elaboration in the context of notions of postmodernity, education, and social transformation. His statement that all people are intellectuals, though not all function in professional terms as such, has more cogency now than ever, despite his writing at an earlier moment of Western industrialism and modernization, a period he termed Fordism. His notion that, even under Taylorized modes of production, workers are not bereft of a conception of the world, invites a different set of speculations about the nature of the subaltern, one that does not make totalizing assumptions about subalternity but rather poses it as a complex problematic which directly concerns the issue of socialist education. Antonio Negri, however, wants to mark a rupture between Fordism and late capitalism through positing a change between what he calls the “mass worker” and the “socialized worker” (1989, 75–88). His postmodern “socialized worker”

Socialist education today  45 is theorized on the basis of the subsumption of contemporary civil society into the political, and also on the general availability of knowledge formerly denied to the mass worker. If Gramsci’s work written in prison under the fascist regime was in large part an attempt to account for the rehegemonization of the bourgeoisie, Negri’s work is also an attempt to account for the “innovativeness” of capitalism. Both writers understand that, through Marxist theory and through an understanding of the crisis nature of capitalism and the means used to either suppress or capitalize on crisis, the work toward change can be retarded or advanced. A major difference between Gramsci’s position and Negri’s resides, however, as Negri himself admits, in the phrase employed by the Third International, institutionalized in Bolshevism: “pessimism of the intellect/optimism of the will.” Its reversal for Negri implies a refusal to settle for voluntarism, for a blind belief “against the dictates of reason,” ending often in reformism which in the name of eclecticism or pluralism assumes the possibility of “negotiating” difference without the hard work of distinguishing between workable and unworkable alliances, without acknowledging historically incompatible positions, and above all, by assuming that working to broaden existing institutions is sufficient to guarantee change. In this sense, one can argue that Gramsci’s notions of hegemony have often been read (like his Notebooks generally) in totalizing ways against the background of traditional interpretations and practices. The most blatant misreading of his work comes from attempts to interpret his conception of “bloc” in abstract terms as general, and merely additive, confusing the popular and populism to which it becomes erroneously linked. This reading ignores the important element in Gramsci of the role of understanding history as a means for identifying existing antagonisms and specific social groups as a preliminary step to producing new social transformation. Gramsci has variously been transformed into a Crocean, Hegelian, humanist, Eurocommunist, if not anti-Marxist. If Gramsci’s Marxism was critical of Bolshevism, spontaneism, and vulgar materialism, his work nonetheless remains within a Marxist orientation, attentive to the need to understand culture and social institutions from a historical materialist position. However, in discussing relations between civil society and the state, the nature of hegemony and counterhegemony, and the wars of siege and maneuver, Gramsci’s work charts rather than prescribes. Neither his historical analysis nor his conception of materialism fits the mold of a master narrative of the realization of class conflict or of scientific socialism. In the recent reappropriation of Gramsci, what gets emphasized in totalizing fashion are his notes on hegemony, on culture, on intellectuals, and on education, shorn of their historical specificity and of his struggles to create a notion of a party that is not elitist, bureaucratic, or authoritarian but an effective instrument in the creation of socialism. Gramsci’s elaborations on the wars of siege and maneuver are not merely classificatory and descriptive but intimately linked to a specific and local analysis of existing antagonisms and of ways of exploiting them in the interests of new and more efficacious alliances. In Gramsci, the analysis of hegemony springs from certain basic assumptions concerning preconditions for organization, a rereading of the nature of the political in relation to the economic, a corresponding recognition of the civil as the terrain of struggle, and an ongoing concern to understand,

46  Marcia Landy not prescribe, the nature of subalternity. These are all attributable to a specific set of historical convergences but open to a translation into more contemporary problematics: the changing nature of work, the nature of the consumer society, the always menacing nature of the nuclear state, and the changing nature of knowledge/power. Thus, rethinking Gramsci in Hall’s terms requires, as Gramsci himself continually suggests, the need to historicize the notion that “if yesterday the subaltern element was a thing, today it is no longer a thing but an historical person, a protagonist” (Gramsci 1971, 337). In other words, what are the historical dimensions of the present that transform the subaltern from thing to “person”? It would seem that socialist education in a capitalist society, if one follows Gramsci, is a means toward this transformation; it would entail a rethinking of the notion of the subaltern in ways suggested by Gramsci’s notion of intellectuals, of common sense, and of history away from the sense of determinism but also from the notion of a linear conception of progress toward the realization of revolution. Much as Negri returns to his Marx (as Althusser had done earlier and for different ends) to read texts not as a continuous, unified articulation but as disjointed, so too Gramsci’s work requires a rereading in a much less continuist vein – not only because his writings as prison notes are fragmentary and tentative (Buttigieg 1990) but because his arguments are, like all positions, subject to historical interrogation, challenge, and revision. The efficacy of Gramsci’s investigations depends then on their translatability to present conditions. Thus, Negri’s analysis of contemporary society rather than displacing Gramsci’s offers a way of extending Gramsci’s abiding concerns with the transformations wrought by mass society, the crucial role of civil society in retarding or enhancing change, and their implications for producing new forms of political practice and, in particular, for aligning knowledge with existing class antagonisms. The implications of this type of analysis are far-reaching, extending beyond the notion of media programs of study and challenging socialist educators – as Hall in The Hard Road to Renewal has done – to come up with new strategies and tactics capable finally of confronting these new forms of knowledge and power. If cultural analysis is to be more than another form of intellectual consumption, it has to be situated not only within the larger concerns posed by many of the poststructuralists concerning the formation of subjectivity but as it is implicated in capitalist and imperialist structures and as it stands in relation to the formation of social movements. Such critical work benefits from a Gramscian perspective. Though Gramsci was rightly skeptical about the growing power of the mass media, his comments about the nature of the passive revolution, his concerns for what he termed the “national popular,” and his preoccupation with the building of hegemony suggest possibilities for a dynamic and differentiated and differentiating understanding of mass culture. His work conveys the imperative to face the resilience of capitalism, and to acknowledge the importance of cultural politics both in creating new forms of hegemony and in challenging existing hegemonic formations. Nowhere has Gramsci been so misread as in the notion of hegemony which does not signify either a simple set of oppositions between dominant and subaltern

Socialist education today  47 nor a fusion between the two but rather a complex relationship (not prescribed but negotiated) among various subaltern groups. In the struggle to create new hegemonic formations, Gramsci’s emphasis on intellectuals is central, since consent as mobilized in the name of pleasure and profit, rather than of pure coercion, is a major means toward mobilizing acceptance of and compliance to things as they are. In his concern with developing a complex sense of struggle on both the cultural/politica1 as well as economic fronts, Gramsci’s writings on education and mass culture provide a starting point for examining the more complex ways in which consent is shaped in late capitalist society.

4 From comments in his Notebooks, it can be seen that Gramsci was aware of the communications revolution. He states: The art of printing … revolutionized the entire cultural world … allowing an unprecedented extension of educational activity … Even today, spoken communication is a means of ideological diffusion which has a rapidity, a field of action, and an emotional simultaneity far greater than written communication (theatre, cinema, and radio, with its loudspeakers in public squares, beat all forms of written communication, including books, magazines, newspapers and newspapers posted on walls) – but superficially, not in depth. (1984, 382–3) This note which is embedded in his concerns to explore the need to overhaul traditional rhetorical and oratorical forms in the schools and universities acknowledges the power of these new modes of dissemination. Yet it appears that while he is critical of their “superficiality,” he is aware not only of their power but of the need to understand their role within the culture. In his examination of popular literature, Gramsci’s purpose “in mapping popular taste” was, according to David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, not to produce a static descriptive picture but rather to explore the relations between dominant and subaltern cultural forms in dynamic terms as they act upon each other historically. Just as folklore contains the sediments of earlier dominant cultures that have seeped down into subaltern cultures, so Gramsci sees in the popular literature residues of earlier dominant literary forms … By a converse practice, he sees popular cultural forms being “raised” into the dominant “artistic” literature. (Gramsci 1984, 344) These comments touch on a number of issues central to a rethinking of the importance of Gramsci for current political and cultural study, issues that concern the theorizing of cultural forms. Most particularly, his insistence on the multilayered nature of popular articulations as developed in his conceptions of folklore and common sense are effective in combatting the monolithic interpretations concerning social texts and their reception. In this respect, Gramsci’s conceptions

48  Marcia Landy of common sense as a key to popular thought can be related to the processes of deconstruction with their emphasis on multiplicity and the transgressive nature of social discourses. Also, in relation to the reading of popular novels and film, Gramsci’s notes on common sense have been most useful in British cultural studies in breaking down resistances to examining popular culture and, more particularly, in developing ways to discuss texts. According to Gramsci, Every social class has its own “common sense” and “good sense” which are basically the most widespread conception of life and man. Every philosophical current leaves a sedimentation of “common sense”: this is the document of its historical reality. Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. “Common sense” is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood), and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place. (1984, 420–1) These comments on common sense are important because they indicate that Gramsci was not working toward a monolithic sense of cultural artifacts, but saw cultural texts, as he saw individuals and groups, as heterogeneously formed rather than as unified. He also recognized the importance of grappling with this form of knowledge in order to develop a basis from which to elaborate new forms of organization based on an understanding of both resistances and already emergent positions. In talking about the human subject, he sees conceptions of the world as “disjointed and episodic” and the individual as belonging “simultaneously to a multiplicity of mass human groups.” Common sense would seem to be the term to describe this multiplicity. Gramsci’s conception of common sense suggests that in order to understand the ways in which individuals operate within cultural constraints and possibilities, socialist education must explore, identify, and criticize – not prescribe – the various elements that constitute common sense, paying specific attention to what has been displaced or elided, what appears as residual and as emergent, as oppositional and as alternative, in order to work toward more critical/ political formulations (Williams 1980, 40–2). The emphasis on heterogeneity would seem to align itself with current reading practices in the teaching of reading and writing that valorize heterogeneity over unity. Multiplicity and heterogeneity have in fact become code terms for eclecticism, personal agency, and are, in fact, indicative of the existence of the very common sense Gramsci identifies. These terms are also indicative of the presence in the classroom of what Spivak has termed “pop psych” or “babysitting,” the transformation of the relationship between students and texts into a form of personal encounter that erases the complexity of determinations involved in the construction of the “personal.” By contrast, education, in Gramsci’s terms, involves a critical understanding of

Socialist education today  49 the political uses of antagonisms and contradictions rather than their pacification through confessional narratives (Foucault 1980a, 58–68). A common-sense reading of texts – the students and the cultural text under consideration – would rather seek to explode the genre of confessional and to confound the quest for origins and for simplistic historical explanation and focus rather on locating the various articulations that appear to approximate the “way things are.” In his acknowledgement of the sedimented and disjointed nature of experiences as expressed in cultural production, Gramsci’s position would seem to diverge from those formalist conceptions that seek to classify and differentiate categories, measuring communication against some abstract norm. Also, and more importantly, it would seem that Gramsci, while an advocate of a classical education, recognized the importance of identifying and enhancing the possibilities for a popular culture as well as understanding the nature and limits of mass culture. His broad concerns involve questions concerning the struggle for hegemony against existing hegemonic formations. In other words, the struggle for “good sense” is a matter “of a struggle of political ‘hegemonies,’ and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper” (Gramsci 1971, 333). Gramsci’s views on the struggle for good sense are based on the notion that workers are neither bereft of awareness of their condition nor passive in the face of these conditions. Like Negri, he sees the history of the working class as marked by antagonisms inherent to capitalism, but antagonisms that must be seized and made revolutionary and that are too often channeled into reformism. The problem for both Negri and Gramsci is to understand and work with these antagonisms. Thus, Gramscian “good sense” begins with an awareness of the need to account historically for the continuing success of traditional political positions despite poststructuralist critiques. In this process of rethinking, it is necessary to rethink conceptions of subalternity not as monolithic but in terms of the different ways in which resistance is a possibility – in relation to gender, race, sexuality, and class. Common sense becomes a metaphor for mapping the palimpsest, the layering of archaic and contemporary positions that need to be disarticulated in order to rethink both the relations of force as well as those of consent. In this process, it is imperative to distinguish the “conjunctural” from the “organic” since a major problematic of much political thinking involves the misrecognition of strategy and tactics. “This leads,” Gramsci says, “to presenting causes as immediately operative which in fact only operate indirectly, or to asserting that immediate causes are the only effective ones. In the first case there is an excess of ‘economism’, or doctrinaire pedantry; in the second, an excess of ‘ideologism’” (1971, 178). In the case of “economism,” the danger lies in developing reductive and linear analyses of events which in no way allow for a questioning of cause-effect relations necessary to rethinking positions nor allows for addressing the interrelationship between economics and politics, questions of civil society and the state, the important question of the formation of the subaltern subject, and the multiplicity of determinations. In the case of “an excess of ideologism,” Gramsci seems to be wary of “an exaggeration of the voluntarist and individual element,” the placing of too great a burden on a form of historical analysis that does not take into account the “disposition of social forces” that would include economic determinations.

50  Marcia Landy Such distinctions are to be read in relation to social texts from the past but also in relation to the present and future and are crucial elements in the consideration of pedagogical practices that are aimed at developing criteria and methodologies for an understanding of cultural phenomena.

5 Gramsci’s concern with intellectuals, culture, and education suggests a mapping of still other concerns that involve education, namely, the role of media as an increasingly important source for the production and dissemination of knowledge and the role of the teacher in selecting texts and in the methodologies for understanding the nature of these texts. Much of the “reading” of film and television texts has served the interests of disciplinary ends and has overshadowed the political implications of the works. While the study of media has found its way into school and college curricula, the study of film and television often takes the direction of formalism and aestheticism to the detriment of developing accounts of textual reception, questions of production, alternative media, alternative readings of media, and their relation to questions of imperialism and power. Too often, film and television studies reproduce single-text readings that stay within the bounds of a given culture and do not address the ways in which media are part of a global network that is involved in changing traditional notions of center and margins. Furthermore, in contrast to the traditional curriculum which assumes that students must become literate, one can claim that a certain degree of literacy already exists through the accessibility of mass media, though in the form of common sense rather than of “good sense.” Therefore, the teaching of media would seem to require pedagogical strategies that are able to identify the multifarious ways in which these mass texts are sites of pleasure as well as of antagonism, the ways in which they depend on a wide array of spectators and draw on a wide array of cultural lore. Hence, examinations of media need also to be cautious of both economism and ideologism in accounting for the complex ways in which these texts are neither simply dystopian nor utopian, national popular or univocally international, but are, like common sense, comprised of numerous sediments that attempt to fuse the local and the national, the national and the international, private and public spheres, past and present. The challenge is to disarticulate these different layers in order to see their heterogeneity rather than seeking to reinforce a totality of interpretation which only rehearses clichés about communication and refuses to confront the nature of the political impact of media as mass culture. Another area, related to the study of media, one addressed by Gramsci in his notes on education and the need for specialized education as opposed to traditional pedagogy, involves the role of technology. On one hand, recognition of the importance of technology seems to be uncontested and has been institutionalized in most areas of teaching. On the other hand, critical work on the nature, uses, and implications of technology is not as well developed. Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux in Education Under Siege warn that “We are in for a heavy dose of the new technization of the curriculum” (1985, 63). For example, technocrats have moved into the teaching of writing. In literature departments, we have our counterpart

Socialist education today  51 to the social science functionaries, that goes under the name of composition and, at one extreme, computer methodologies have come to play a dominant role in the teaching of composition and are, in part, responsible for producing a new literature concerning the history, aims, and subjects of literacy and for standardizing elements of the composition curriculum. While the reawakening of literacy concerns can be traced to the 1960s, an examination of the routes this concern has taken reveals yet another instance in which antagonisms arising from social inequities have been channeled and contained through a number of different factors, among which are the following: academic “deregulation” and tightening of state funds; the adoption of the model of the sciences in its emphasis on grantsmanship; the marketing of computer hardware; the hegemony of the conservatives and the routing of the Left; the need to appease different political constituencies; and the reintroduction of requirements into the curriculum in the interests of skills and competencies rather than of developing and enhancing cultural analysis. Apart from the technological impetus, another source for this pedagogical transformation has come from an appropriation of the language of poststructuralism in the service of creating a “pedagogy of literacy”: the aims and methods of such “pedagogy” involve bringing critical theory to bear on the ways in which students think and write. In the name of cultural diversity, feminism, decolonization, new subject formations, the composition “pedagogy” has personalized, psychologized, and functionalized teaching. Barthes, Foucault, Bahktin, Derrida, and other critical theorists are invoked as pedagogical models in the emphasis on self-shaping. On one hand, these concerns seem to have a political concern at their base, the liberal concern with addressing the “culturally disenfranchised,” but on the other hand, the form of this enfranchisement is dependent on modes of endless self-reflection and of eclecticism which obscure the constituencies and the very differences that such programs claim to address, bereft as they are of any sense of history and of critical analysis. While English departments can claim greater longevity and more students (owing to requirements) and larger graduate programs as a consequence, programs have, in fact, become quite standardized and orthodox in their strategies for reading and writing. Insofar as they have produced discontents, they have functioned to further call into question liberal social projects. Insofar as they have succeeded, they have reinforced the ideology of competence and the interests of power and social containment of conflict. One aspect of a Gramscian analysis would be to understand the contradictory position of this movement, to see what interests it serves, to expose its cooptation of the language of change in the form of “pop psych,” but also to identify, in the vein of common-sense analysis, what residual elements it reinforces and what emerging discourses it seeks to circumvent. Another area of concern for socialist pedagogy has been that of cultural studies, with its emphasis on theory, comparative methodologies, and interdisciplinarity. It appears that cultural studies, like issues of mass culture, technology, and literacy, have had to contend with similar problems. The concern for interdisciplinary work may have arisen from the necessity of addressing issues of cultural representation with the help of more adequate methodologies and with an awareness that disciplinary boundaries are more than artificial: they obscure the interrelationship

52  Marcia Landy of the natural and social sciences and other cultural discourses. The notion of interdisciplinarity was developed out of the need to examine critically the regimes of truth as purveyed through the various disciplines, and might be construed as a mode of exposing mystifications that have been constructed around technology, specifically in relation to technologies of gender, sexuality, race, and so on. Interdisciplinarity could serve to introduce connections among politics, philosophy, and cultural production. But, here too it is possible to instrumentalize the process, to see the move to breaking down boundaries in formalist terms as one of methodology to the exclusion of a questioning of interests, positions, and powers. In practice, interdisciplinarity has become a way of maintaining disciplinarity rather than a means for interrogating (1) the genealogy of “disciplines,” the conditions for their appearance; (2) the episteme to which they gave rise; (3) their present position within the changing conceptions of information, science, and technology; (4) their relation to existing modes of production; and (5) the availability of more adequate modes for accounting for social formations and transformation. If, for example, these reformulations address non-Western cultures but fail to address the ever-shifting discourses of exploitation and commodification, the economic and political dimensions of global relations between “centers and margins,” their implications for the female and male workers in the world market, their historical formations and deformations, the interested positions of commentators, and the persistence of the ethnographic investigation now in the form of the “post-colonial subject” and the discourse of “postcoloniality,” then knowledge will continue to serve the very ethnographic interests that a socialist pedagogy would seek to question. In short, socialist education is confronted by the difficult task of undoing much traditional thought concerning history, behavior, science, the human sciences, and the role of culture. Socialist education at the present time involves a recognition of the need to confront the challenge of poststructuralist positions and particularly of theories of postmodernism in the political terms first raised by Gramsci in his identification of the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of Fordism but further problematized by the “post-Fordist” concerns raised by Negri and others. Gramsci raised many of the problems; it is imperative that intellectuals concerned with the viability of socialism explore the possibility of solutions for the present and for the future.

Acknowledgment I want to thank Paul Bové for his careful reading of the manuscript, his challenging comments, and his continuing commitment to intellectual struggle.

Part II

Hegemony, subalternity, common sense

5 The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony Derek Boothman

This chapter attempts to single out key sources, avoiding any unilateral attribution, for the concept of hegemony as developed by Antonio Gramsci throughout the entire course of his prison writings. Among these sources one may point to the well-established (albeit usually ignored) use of the term by Italian socialists when Gramsci was a young journalist. Later, when he was a member of the Comintern Executive in Moscow (1922–3), the term circulated freely among leading Bolsheviks (Lenin included), as Bukharin confirms explicitly, and shortly afterward began to appear in Gramsci’s letters and other writings. Major inputs, as seen from the Prison Notebooks, also stem from Benedetto Croce and from various aspects of Machiavelli, including language. Gramsci’s university linguistics studies also proved important, with the questions of linguistic substrata (which foreshadow later sociolinguistic notions) and the dialect/national language relation being crucial. Overriding all, however, is Gramsci’s reading of the concrete situation. In this chapter we attempt to identify the principal theoretical origins, about a half-dozen of them including a strong linguistic input, that converged to influence the concept of hegemony as subsequently developed by Gramsci throughout the whole of his prison notebooks, from its first appearance there, where “leadership” and “political hegemony” are used synonymously. Not all sources are explicitly stated as such in the notebooks, but they may be traced by assessing both Gramsci’s comments there and his experience before prison. Shedding light on this subject is helpful for challenging often unilateral or debatable interpretations of the concept, whether by friendly commentators, who sometimes overlook or deny economic and class factors, or by hostile ones, who neglect consensual aspects. Both sides, too frequently, also ignore hegemony’s essential role as the component that transforms Marx’s somewhat static structure/superstructure metaphor into Gramsci’s more dynamic metaphor of the historical bloc.

The starting point for the concept of hegemony Gramsci’s notion of hegemony rests, as he himself states, on a fundamental text of Marx’s, the 1859 preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, which he translated in a part of Notebook 7 set aside for such work (Gramsci 1975, 2358–60).1 A literal English translation of the main lines of interest reads:

56  Derek Boothman “With the change in the economic base the immense superstructure is overturned more or less rapidly. In observing such upheavals one must always draw a distinction between a material overthrow of the conditions of economic production, which is to be faithfully ascertained by the methods of the natural sciences, and the juridical, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical forms: in a word, the ideological forms, on whose terrain men become aware of this conflict and resolve it.” The kernel idea of the fight among conflicting forces on the ideological terrain is what indeed is developed throughout the notebooks, and feeds into the concept of hegemony; just how the “superstructures” are related to the structure itself is “the crucial problem of historical materialism” (first draft) and is a problem that has to be “accurately posed and resolved if the forces which are active in the history of a particular period are to be correctly analysed” (second draft) (Q4§38 and Q13§17; Gramsci 1996, 171, and 1971, 177, respectively), which then implies the question of the relations between such forces: that is, the whole question of hegemony.

Left concepts of “hegemony” before the Prison Notebooks In order to trace Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, a first question of importance to be asked regards the use of the word and concept “hegemony” in socialist and then in communist circles in the years before his imprisonment. Italian socialist usage First of all, then, it may be observed that, in the decade he spent in Turin, the word was in current use among Italian socialists. At this time, control of the northern and eastern Adriatic was highly sensitive from an Italian nationalist perspective. For most of the sixty-odd years from the collapse in 1797 of the Doges’ republic to the foundation of the kingdom of Italy, Venice was under Austria, but before this it had for centuries controlled much of Dalmatia (the coastal zone of today’s Slovenia and Croatia); a recognizable and easily readable Venetian “pan-Italian” functioned as a Mediterranean lingua franca in a striking example of linguistic hegemony.2 The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire saw the largely Italianspeaking Istrian peninsula of the northeastern Adriatic come under Italian rule, passing later into Tito’s Yugoslavia, so it is no surprise that there were polemics about who was “entitled” to what. It is sufficient to leaf through the 1916–17 numbers of Critica Sociale, then the major theoretical organ of the Italian socialists, to see articles on “wars of hegemony,” “Italo-Serb relationships for hegemony in the Adriatic,” and so on. Echoes of this are found in Q2§89 (Gramsci 1992, 331–2), with its references to “irredentism” and the “special form assumed by the national question in Trieste and in Dalmatia (for the Italians).” This concept, stemming from ancient Greece, of hegemony as the system of power relations between competing – or between dominant and vassal – states is found in the Notebooks in sections, for example, on how US power was created (Q2§16; Gramsci 1992, 260–5) and on the history of subaltern states explained by that of hegemonic ones (Q15§5; Gramsci 1995, 222–3).

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  57 Lenin However, it was another sector of the Left that provided a greater input for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. For him, the principal contemporary architect of the modern theory of hegemony was Lenin who, as a theoretician, had on “the terrain of political organization and struggle, and with political terminology … reappraised the front of cultural struggle and constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the State-as-force and as a contemporary form of the 1848 doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’” (Q10I§12; Gramsci 1995, 357). In other words, the leadership of the proletarian forces had to be developed independently on all fronts “in opposition to the various tendencies of ‘economism,’” as Gramsci writes in the same paragraph in commenting on Lenin’s position.3 Especially in light of an internationally influential, but sometimes flawed, article of Norberto Bobbio’s on Gramsci, where “hegemony” is claimed to be more characteristic of Stalin (Stalin 1934, 361–2) than Lenin, whose “habitual language” is said not to have included gegemoniya (Bobbio 1969, translated as Bobbio 1988), it is doubly worthwhile examining the input from Lenin. Some of the main policies advocated by Lenin for leadership over both allied and oppositional classes are outlined in this subsection. The concept and practice of “hegemony” – but not necessarily the word – are present under various guises in his work from long before the Bolshevik revolution. The word gegemoniya makes an early appearance in the classic 1902 pamphlet What is to be Done? whose standard English translation, however, contains not “hegemony” but a gloss. Advocating strategies mirrored in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Lenin says the Bolsheviks had a “bounden duty” in the struggle to overthrow the autocracy to guide the activities not only of the urban proletariat, but of other “opposition strata” (Lenin 1967, 84). In the same decade, the concept also comes into Lenin’s writings on the Paris Commune, where he notes that the “socialist proletariat” could achieve “democratic tasks to which the bourgeoisie could only pay lip service” (1931, 18), a task similar to that he later faced regarding agrarian reform. This leadership role is also shown in his observation on Engels, who, “in calling the Commune a dictatorship of the proletariat had in view … the ideological leading participation of the representatives of the proletariat in the revolutionary government” (59; emphasis in original).4 The innovative elements to note are, in the first case, the role of one class (the proletariat) which, by carrying out tasks classically assigned to other classes, potentially was able to weld together a class alliance; in the second case, other classes spontaneously recognizing the proletariat’s ideologically superior positions, judged by Gramsci as essential to hegemony. Later, in the first period of the Bolshevik government, one main problem was the modus vivendi between the Russian proletariat and their former masters and, in May 1918, we find Lenin defending the need to use the former capitalists to run state industry since they were the only ones with the necessary expertise (1968, 21–2); the hegemonic aspect emerges here in the exercise of power by the proletariat over an antagonistic class. Subsequently, his 1919 article “The III International and its Place in History,” written just a month after the foundation

58  Derek Boothman of the Communist International (Comintern), does in fact contain the word egemonia three times in the Italian translation that Gramsci published (Lenin 1976, 245–6). In the international movement, hegemony – here a recognized leading position – passed to the German socialists after 1870, while Kautsky in 1908 said it could pass to the Slavs, before it did actually go to the Russians after 1917.5 Other Marxists seem to have used the word in the official documents of the First Congress of the Comintern, notably Bukharin and Eberlein in their “Platform” of the International and also, possibly, the Russian drafter Obolensky (Ovinsky) of the theses on the international situation and the Entente (The Third International 1980, 42, 54); in the latter case, the English translation has “leading position” where the Italian has egemonia. A particular concept of hegemony and the word itself were, then, as Anderson describes in a widely quoted essay (1976, 15–18), in use by Marxists, including Lenin, in the whole period up to the foundation of the Comintern. Just after Lenin raised the question of relations between antagonistic classes in postrevolutionary Russia, a rather different aspect of hegemony was posed by another politico-economic issue – namely, the nature of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, especially in the transition from “war communism” to the New Economic Policy (NEP). In order to rule, the urban proletariat had to come to terms with a backward agricultural system based on the various strata of the peasantry and reach an understanding with the majority of these latter (Lenin at the Tenth Congress of the R. C. P, quoted in Carr 1966, 277). Carr goes on to note that small producers and cultivators, the great majority of the Russian population, were present in almost all countries and, according to the Bolsheviks and the International, “the chief question of the revolution” consisted in the struggle against them. They could not be expropriated like the capitalists but, at least in Russia, the NEP fulfilled the purpose of maintaining “the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, in order that the proletariat may keep the role of leadership and state power” (Lenin, speech at the Third Congress of the International, quoted in Carr 1966, 278). The peasantry was therefore simultaneously both the object of struggle and an essential ally; the two aspects – dominance and leadership, involving force and consent, respectively – that for Gramsci were to characterize hegemony are thus present. Lenin’s innovative policy toward the peasantry is well known and requires no further comment, but his theses on the agrarian question at the Second Congress of the International are of equal originality and shot through with the notions of hegemony while the word itself is not actually used (The Third International 1980, 113–23). It matters little if the term gegemoniya was, as Bobbio claims, used little by Lenin. Nowhere in the Prison Notebooks does Gramsci ascribe the actual use of the word to Lenin but, as seen, it is in the original Russian of What is to be Done? and it is present in other writings (Two Tactics, The Electoral Struggle in St. Petersburg and the Mensheviks, and even, as regards the banks, in his Imperialism) as well as in the Italian translation of the Third International article. More important, what Gramsci would develop as “hegemony” is, as indicated, ever present in Lenin’s political practice.

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  59 Use by other Bolsheviks and communists The above is consistent with what Anderson (1976) writes, but his statement that “in the aftermath of October, the term ceased to have much actuality in the USSR” needs qualification. In his lectures on Lenin’s contribution to the revolution, Bukharin (1925, 44–9), for one, begins by observing that Lenin was “the most outstanding existing among Marxists.” Precisely on the working class-peasant alliance, he goes on to say that in the dual struggle against “liberal Marxism” and the Narodniki, “the radical Narodniki always placed the peasantry first. The liberal Narodniki stood for an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, which was to have hegemony over the peasantry”; thus, “it was the problem of an ally of the working class that was being solved … this problem was connected with yet another deep-rooted problem which had to be acknowledged both theoretically and practically – this was the problem of the hegemony of the proletariat” (emphases in the original). Attention should be paid to what Bukharin says shortly afterward: it is “superfluous to speak here about the hegemony of the proletariat and the role of the working class as leader, because this is a theoretical point about which we are already acquainted and which does not need any commentary.” In other words, the term gegemoniya was well enough known not to require any further explanation; were the word used the normal one for leadership (rukovodstvo), there would of course be no need for his comment. In the whole of this part of the lectures, hegemony is present as a word and the concept, prefiguring one Gramscian sense of it, is ever present in his reasoning. This general currency of the term among the Bolsheviks is also demonstrated by reference to Trotsky. In the 1904–6 period, when the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, or even, as he says, of the “proletariat, peasantry and intelligentsia,” was still something of the future, he asked, “who is to wield the hegemony on the government itself, and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers’ government, by this we reply that hegemony should belong to the working class” (Trotsky 1986, 72, repeated at 109). Some twenty years later, in a speech to a Party Central Committee in May 1924, now in some anthologies of his Literature and Revolution, he notes that “the task of the proletariat is that of bringing the peasants to socialism, maintaining a complete hegemony over them” (Trotsky 1973, 491–511). In the introduction that same year to his First Five Years of the Communist International, he discusses “the question of the hegemony of the Communist Party in the workers’ movement” and, in his Military Writings, in relation to interstate relations, he observes that US hegemony had supplanted that of Britain on the seas (Trotsky 1981). Somewhat confusingly, “hegemony” is used in English translations of Lukács, referring to the rule of a class in power in the essay “Class Consciousness” – but readers should be warned that the original German is Herrschaft, not Hegemonie (Lukács 1971, 52–3, 65–6; 1970, 129, 148) – and to the “hegemony of large-scale capital” in his “Blum Theses” of the late 1920s (1972, 248). The predominant sense of hegemony as the political leadership of an actual (or potential) governing class seems, on the whole, not to have changed until Gramsci’s prison writings began to appear in Italy in the late 1940s.6 Summing

60  Derek Boothman up, after taking into account linguistic and translation problems, it is clear that the germ of the idea that was to become “hegemony” in his prison reflections was current among communists in the turbulent atmosphere of the 1920s. Hegemony: The working class in the metropolis and the colonies After the Russian Revolution, including the period Gramsci spent in Russia, other important subjects were discussed and decisions taken within the International connected with the relationship between proletarian and peasant forces. These included the problems at a world level of burgeoning nationalism and the growth of anti-imperialist movements. In determining where alliances were advisable and where lines of distinction and demarcation were to be drawn, important issues regarding what constitutes the hegemony of the proletariat were posed. In this context, the word seems to have gained some international currency so that in a speech on his return from the Fifth Comintern Congress, the Scottish communist Bob Stewart could assert the need to “establish the complete hegemony of the working class by linking the workers of the colonies with the workers of this country” (in Murphy et al. 1924, 9).7 He apparently felt no need to simplify his language by using a gloss for “hegemony,” presumably meaning “political leadership,” thus providing a hint that the word was comprehensible to his politicized audience albeit maybe not in everyday use even among party leaders. The successful resolution of relations between workers in the metropolitan and in the colonial countries runs through the Comintern debates throughout the 1920s, including those at the 1928 Sixth Congress. While Gramsci was at that time already imprisoned, some comments on the positions adopted up to and including the Congress (naturally from a fascist viewpoint), and even direct quotes from some Congress resolutions, were included in articles that attracted his attention (Q5§89; Gramsci 1995, 118; 1996, 343–4, citing Gabrielli 1929: 375–84). Inklings thus trickled through to him of the substance of the Congress debate, whose concluding resolution on the colonies declared that in bourgeois-democratic revolutions the “basic strategical aim of the Communist movement” was “the hegemony of the proletariat” (Communist International 1929, 26; emphasis in original), and that, without this, “an organic part of which is the leading role of the Communist Party, the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be carried through to an end, not to speak of the socialist revolution” (21). “Hegemony,” as used in the resolution, involved allying with bourgeois forces and even “patriarchal and feudal chiefs and rulers” who opposed foreign oppressors, while not excluding struggle by the working class against them as the situation demanded, a conflictual relation not far from Gramsci’s concept. Hegemony: The first decade after the October Revolution What emerges from the handful of publications cited is that the term “hegemony,” in its several guises, was current in the theoretical and policy elaborations of Communist leaders in the 1920s. From the instances quoted here, “hegemony” often seems used to indicate a leading role of the proletariat in class alliances

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  61 involving consent, as contrasted with the “domination of the capitalist system” defined in the documents of the Sixth Congress of the International. The emergence of an independent working-class force in the colonies “directly opposing itself to the national bourgeoisie” led to a struggle with this latter “for hegemony in the national revolution as a whole” (Communist International 1929, 8, 20, 30). Why a minority can dominate ideologically did not seem widely discussed except in the work of individuals like Lukács; the fallback position, not further developed, seems to have been Marx’s dictum that the dominant ideas of an epoch are those of the ruling class. Just how this may be challenged is a key area of Gramsci’s prison reflections. The documents of the various Bolsheviks cited here suggest, schematically as may be, the following breakdown to be plausible. For Stalin, “hegemony of the proletariat” is “proletarian leadership of the masses” (Stalin 1934, 361–2, on successive lines). Trotsky uses the term across various contexts, including its original, ancient Greek one of military leadership, and, like Gramsci, recognizes the necessary role in the exercise of hegemony of what he calls the intelligentsia, here at times exaggerating somewhat. In his appreciation of Lenin, Bukharin uses the term “hegemony” very widely in the context of building alliances and, indeed, his biographer claims, probably relying on positions such as those of Bukharin’s 1925 booklet, that, going beyond the political, he “hoped for Bolshevik ‘hegemony’ in economic, cultural and ideological life” (Cohen 1971, 208). However, there is no clear indication that anyone, apart from Lenin himself, gives the term a meaning extending beyond a synonym for “political leadership.” In all this, from summer 1922 to autumn 1923, Gramsci was in Russia and abreast, health permitting, of writings, debates, and developments as a member of the Comintern Executive and delegate at its Fourth Congress. Shortly afterward, indeed, the word “hegemony” appears in the letters he wrote to the Italian party from Vienna, before his election to Parliament, the concept being subsequently elaborated on and having its contours sharpened in the Prison Notebooks.

The Crocean input Besides Marxist and other leftist sources, an important and quite different type of input consisted in the idealist philosophy of Benedetto Croce, who functioned for Gramsci rather like Hegel did for Marx. Just as Marx had to stand Hegel’s dialectic on its head in order to extract its rational kernel, Gramsci had to reinterpret certain aspects of Croce’s discourse in order to translate them into his own paradigm of the philosophy of praxis. And it is one element in particular of Croce’s speculative philosophy – his concept of “ethico-political history” – that is indeed translated by Gramsci for use in his own paradigm of the philosophy of praxis as a basis for the notion of the expansion of hegemony, especially after a successful revolution. Gramsci draws specifically on two of Croce’s essays from the first half of the 1920s, which introduce “ethico-political history” viewed as the history of “moral or civil life,” the history of the complex of moral institutions in the broadest sense, as opposed to histories that consider “economic life as the substantive reality and moral life

62  Derek Boothman as an appearance,” or “merely military and diplomatic” ones (Croce 1946, 67–77, especially 67, 71–2, 125–30). For Gramsci, Croce’s “ethico-political history” represented merely “an arbitrary and mechanical hypostasis of the moment of hegemony, of political leadership, of consent in the life and development of the State and civil society.” This side of history was not, however, excluded by the philosophy of praxis which “in its most recent stage of development consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony as essential to the concept of the State and in attaching ‘full weight’ to the cultural factor, to cultural activity, to the necessity for a cultural front alongside the merely economic and political ones” (Q10I§7; Gramsci 1995, 343, 345). Where Gramsci differs from Croce is in his refusal to reduce history to “ethico-political history”; this is amplified a few pages later in the observation that Croce completely neglects the moment of force in history, essential instead in the formation of a state. Is it possible, Gramsci asks rhetorically, to conceive of nineteenth-century European history without “an organic treatment of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars” or “without dealing with the struggles of the Risorgimento” in Italy? By leaving out the moment when one system of social relations disintegrates and another is established, Crocean history becomes “nothing more than a fragment of history” which, in the European case, was, in a phrase that Gramsci borrows from Vincenzo Cuoco, the “‘passive’ aspect of the great revolution which began in France in 1789,” making its effects felt right up to 1871 by “a ‘reformist’ corrosion.”8 On Italy he adds that the hegemonic system was maintained “and the forces of military and civil coercion kept at the disposal of the traditional ruling classes” (Q10I§9; Gramsci 1995, 348–50). His well-known generalization of this is that hegemony is consent backed up by coercion: that is, in a classical parliamentary regime, “the ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony … is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent” (Q13§37; Gramsci 1971, 80 n. 49). Gramsci takes one term of Croce’s discourse but radically alters it to render it compatible with his own paradigm – that is, to translate it, analogous to the operation he carries out on Cuoco’s “passive revolution” factor.9

The stimuli provided by Machiavelli Machiavelli’s “centaur” The combination of coercion and consent within hegemony can also quite evidently be traced to Machiavelli, whose centaur, “semi-animal, semi-man,” indicates “that a prince must know how to use both natures, and that one without the other is not durable” (Machiavelli 1950, 64). This dual nature represents for Gramsci “the levels of force and consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilization, of the individual moment and the universal moment (‘Church’ and ‘State’), of agitation and propaganda, of tactics and strategy, etc.” (Q13§14; Gramsci 1971, 170, whose first draft, Q8§86, explicitly refers to Croce’s “Church and State” essay; see Croce 1946, 125–30). This description comes very close to his metaphorical one of Jacobins, “imposing themselves” on adversaries (force:

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  63 see Q1§44 and Q19§24; Gramsci 1992, 147 and 1971, 77, respectively) at the same time that they built consent by stimulating the “active intervention of the great popular masses as a factor of social progress” (Gramsci 1995, 341). Indeed, Gramsci portrays Machiavelli as a Jacobin avant la lettre (Q8§35). Machiavelli: Negotiation and language Benedetto Fontana has taken the argument regarding the Machiavellian source of hegemony one step forward by noting that, for a stable state, Machiavelli required that the “Prince” and the people should negotiate and share common goals. The precondition for this is that individuals should be converted from a “multitude” (multitudine sciolta in Machiavelli’s phrase), in which each member looks to his or her private interests or bene particulare, into a collective subject or a “people” (populo) with a public interest or bene commune: that is, the people are created as a potentially hegemonic force in a “public space” where the moment of force is transcended through dialogue and agreement is reached between prince and people, leaders and led (Fontana 1993, 130–1). In contemporary terms, this means that the sides come together as equals with, for Gramsci, an interchange of personnel between the “prince-as-party” and the people so that, tendentially, substantial differences become erased and fusion between them is obtained. Gramsci explains that “in the hegemonic system there exists democracy between the leading groups and the led to the extent to which the development of the economy and hence legislation … favors the molecular passage from the led groups to the leading [sc. ‘governing’] ones” (Q8§191): that is, promotion of individuals of the subaltern classes into the ruling class, analogous, as he says, to Roman citizenship being possible for conquered peoples. Making the link back to Machiavelli, without the “public space” that allows dialogue and, as seen here for Gramsci, formation of a collective leadership, the alternative for a nondemocratic leadership based purely on force is, according to Machiavelli’s Discourses, to “build fortresses” and “keep a good army always ready to take the field” or to “scatter, disorganize and destroy” the people as a collectivity and reduce them to individuals (1950, 363). However, “to hold one’s own country, fortresses are injurious,” he concludes (368). Machiavelli’s transformation of multitudine into populo, by way of a “public space” for arriving at a common position, finds its equivalent in Gramsci’s striking metaphor of an orchestra whose single instruments produce a cacophony in tuning up, “yet these warm-ups are the necessary condition for the orchestra to come to life as a single ‘instrument’”; again, unless people are bound by a sense of responsibility (Machiavelli’s populo), they can act like a crowd (the multitudine) forced to take shelter “under a roof during a downpour,” a situation in which “individualism not only is not overcome but is driven to an extreme through the certainty of impunity and irresponsibility” (Q15§13 and Q7§12; Gramsci 1995, 16, 275). In this transformation, leaders cannot resort to old-style rhetoric and flights of oratory but must instead convince through reason (Q11§41 and Q10II41ii; Gramsci 1995, 297–8, 406, respectively; also Q11§25; Gramsci 1971, 429). Further, while “the popular element ‘feels’ but does not always know or understand, the intellectual

64  Derek Boothman element ‘knows’ but does not always understand and in particular does not always ‘feel.’” Gramsci instead looks forward to the situation in which relations between “intellectuals and people-nation, between the leaders and the led, between the rulers and the ruled” become cohesive to the extent that “feeling-passion becomes understanding and thence knowledge” (Q11§67; Gramsci 1971, 418, cited in Fontana 2000, 305). Only then, as Gramsci continues, can the relationship be “one of representation” with the “exchange of individual elements,” thus one “brings into being the shared life … one creates the ‘historical bloc.’” The language input in this aspect of hegemony is not to be underestimated. One of Machiavelli’s models was the Greek philosopher Isocrates whose dictum, logos hegemon panton, or “speech and language are the ruler and guide of all things” (Fontana 1993, 126), is found in Machiavelli’s insistence on language as the medium for reaching agreement (pace Wittgenstein). This approach then assumes even greater importance in Gramsci, for whom speech and language are the principal means for realizing a culture.

The university linguistic input In various ways, then, language informs Gramsci’s reflections on and development of the concept of hegemony. But the role of language in hegemony does not stop there. In a path-breaking book, the Italian linguist Franco Lo Piparo examined in depth the dialect/national language question, both as it transpires in the Notebooks and in terms of how linguists studied by Gramsci at university had considered it, in order to show how it feeds into the subaltern/hegemonic relationship. Indeed, the notion of “linguistic hegemony” or “cultural hegemony,” with hegemony often replaced by near synonyms such as “prestige” or “primacy” and even “dictatorship” (sic), was fairly widespread among these linguists (Lo Piparo 1979, 106–8). One in particular, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, had taken issue with Alessandro Manzoni, Italy’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and president of the parliamentary national language commission, which concluded that this language should be created by teaching, on a national scale, the standard Florentine dialect. Ascoli, on the other hand, “more historicist” than Manzoni, did “not believe in cultural hegemonies by decree, i.e. not supported by a deeper and more necessary national function” (Q23§40; Gramsci 1985, 173); or, according to the first draft, did “not believe in linguistic hegemonies enacted by legal decree, without a supporting economic-cultural structure” (Q1§73; Gramsci 1992, 179). For Gramsci, after the decay of medieval Florence, Florentine as a national language had become “the language of an exclusive caste which has no contact with a historical spoken language” (Q1§73; Gramsci 1992, 179). Indeed, on unification, Italy, divided linguistically into scores of dialects, numbered less than 3 percent of speakers of the Florentine that solely among the “educated classes” functioned as a national language. In other words, Manzoni’s purely rationalistic approach to language reform represented linguistic “force” rather than “consent” in using state means to impose from above a linguistic “Florentine hegemony,” regardless of both the absence of trained personnel to teach the language and

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  65 even local variations around Florence, sometimes closer to dialect forms found elsewhere. Here one may detect the influence of Francesco De Sanctis, Italy’s greatest literary historian and critic and minister of education in the (bourgeois) left government subsequent to that of the “historic right” of Manzoni’s reforms: dialects were linguistically positive factors for pupils if due attention were paid to the elements of similarity between them and the budding national language (Dardano 1984, 143). Here Gramsci is dealing with what, in terminology borrowed from Ascoli, may be called “substrata” of the population and their use of language, a position that foreshadows sociolinguistic ideas of class language developed only decades later. Gramsci’s full-fledged position sees language as the mode of expression of the culture characteristic of a class or other group of the population (cf. Ives 2004a, especially 33–6), different linguistic codes thus being one aspect of the conflictual relationships between subaltern and hegemonic cultures. Here, in his position as a speaker of the Sard language,10 but also through his contacts with the cultures and dialects from all over Italy present among Turin’s automobile workers, Gramsci had to confront the dialects and minority language versus national language question. For him language and culture, including the culture on which a politics is based, are more than just closely linked: in one way, as Dante Germino remarks, “in a vital sense language is politics, for it affects the way people think about power” (1990, 27) and, in other ways, as Gramsci observes, language is to be “understood as an element of culture,” each language constituting “an integral conception of the world” (Q3§76 and Q5§123; Gramsci 1996, 74, 366). The whole question is summed up in Gramsci’s very last notebook where, yet again, he brings together language, culture, and politics, concluding that “every time the question of language surfaces,” other questions – most notably that of the reorganization of “cultural hegemony” – are being posed (Q29§3; Gramsci 1985, 183–4). Lo Piparo is right, then, to maintain that an important input to the subaltern/ hegemonic relationship comes from the dialect/national language dyad. Dialect is generally limited to a narrow cross-section: usually but not always the subaltern classes and strata, Ascoli’s linguistic “substrata” here showing their influence. For Gramsci, dialect cannot deal with the grand themes of world culture for which a national language – with all its flexibility, depth, historical development, and capacity of expression – is needed. The overall conclusion to be drawn on language’s input to hegemony is that Gramsci is influenced partly by the linguists he studied at university but, as Fontana has shown, also by Machiavelli’s insistence, through Isocrates, on consent, characteristic of the human part of the centaur, through language as “ruler and guide of all things.”

The main sources of hegemony There can be no definitive word on the Gramscian concept and use of hegemony since, as with other concepts of his, first, it was in continual evolution and, second, it assumes different contours according to the situation. What may be done when considering its principal uses in the Notebooks is to bear in mind the multiple origins of the concept, comparing when necessary the early uses

66  Derek Boothman with those found later on (i.e., in and after the central monographic Notebooks 10–13 on philosophy, on the intellectuals, and on Machiavelli), where the notion becomes more fleshed out. The present reconstruction suggests that the inputs to the concept include Marx, the Italian socialists, the early international communist movement, Croce, Machiavelli, and his linguistics studies including, in his words, the language question, bound up as it is with the culture of societal groups and classes, and, as such, always posing the subaltern/hegemonic relationship. Last but by no means least comes his own reading of history and social reality, a key factor here being Jacobinism, which is extended metaphorically by Gramsci from the French revolutionary movement to other experiences. The examples quoted here from Lenin’s practice illustrate the fact that hegemony’s range goes wider than the merely political field. One of Gramsci’s central achievements is to have developed and woven together all these various strands of hegemony for its innovatory application on the civil, social, national, and international political, cultural, and economic planes.

Acknowledgments The background research for this chapter was supported by a grant to the Dipartimento di Studi Interdisciplinari su Traduzione, Lingue e Culture (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna. The author wishes to thank the University of Wollongong for the invitation to participate in the doctoral seminar “Hegemony: Explorations into Consensus, Coercion and Culture,” which provided the stimulus for the article, and for the warm hospitality encountered there, as well as the paper’s referees for their criticisms and suggestions.

Notes 1 Gramsci’s translation includes the crucial central part of the preface. In quoting the critical edition of the Notebooks (Gramsci 1975) we will give the number of the notebook, the part number (in Roman numerals) for Notebook 10, and the paragraph number, with a page number for long paragraphs, together with the published translation in English where such is available. 2 Testimony to this are late-sixteenth-century letters in Dubrovnik’s ethnological museum authorizing Dalmatian sea captains to seek food elsewhere in the Mediterranean during food shortages. Not the popular dialect as such but the Venetian language, based on a Latin model (Q3§76; Gramsci 1996, 75), was the language of government in territories under Venice’s sway. 3 The emergence of the concept in Russian Marxism before Lenin is due to Plekhanov who, however, “never left a clearly worked-out definition of hegemony in his writings” (see Lester 2000, 17–18, 37, 40, for the words quoted). 4 On that same page, Lenin notes the leading position both of members of the First International (IWMA) and of “some of the avowed enemies of the International,” collaborating within the Commune, thus recognizing the compromises necessary in a hegemonic relationship. The original articles date to 1908 and 1905, respectively. 5 In these three uses of egemonia, the English translation (Lenin 1972) has “leadership.” 6 A rider has to be added here. Maurice Dobb uses the word in a volume first published in 1946 but whose gestation dates back to the mid-1920s (Dobb 1967, 13, 106, 144, 155, 156, 385). The reference on page 13 to challenges to hegemony has a particularly

The sources for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony  67

  7

  8

  9 10

Gramscian ring (cf. the section of this chapter on the starting point for hegemony), and an indirect influence due to Piero Sraffa cannot be excluded since Sraffa, with whom Dobb collaborated on the former’s edition of Ricardo, received in Cambridge copies of all Gramsci’s letters to his sister-in-law directly from her, including those of spring 1932 on Croce that use egemonia explicitly. Stewart was important especially in the first two decades of the British party. He was British CP representative in Moscow in 1923–4, then acting Party General Secretary in 1925 when twelve top leaders were jailed on trumped-up charges. He himself was arrested three days into the general strike of May 1926. This “‘passive’ aspect” is taken by Gramsci from Cuoco, the Neapolitan patriot and leading member of the short-lived Parthenopean Republic (1799) and, as modified, used fundamentally to mean a ruling class’s tactic of conceding just enough from above to head off demands for radical measures. This brief subsection of the present chapter summarizes, without attempting to argue fully, the positions developed by Boothman (2002, 102–19, especially 107–11, and, in a slightly revised form, in Boothman 2004, 111–36). As such he aided his linguistics professor, Giulio Matteo Bartoli, in comparative research on Latin-based languages. Discussion of the influence on Gramsci of Bartoli’s glottology course appears in an article in the proceedings of the International Gramsci Society’s 2007 conference.

6 Gramsci cannot speak Presentations and interpretations of Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern Marcus E. Green Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern, like many of his other concepts, is often referred to and appropriated by others but rarely defined or systematically analyzed within Gramsci’s own work. In fact, Gramsci’s conception of the subaltern is often misunderstood and misappropriated. The main reason for such misunderstanding is that many English-reading scholars and critics of Gramsci’s work have relied heavily or exclusively on Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971). The Selections include only a few of Gramsci’s notes on the subaltern and, because the notes appear in a section with some of Gramsci’s notes on the Italian Risorgimento and fall under the title of “Notes on Italian History,” it appears that Gramsci’s interest in the subaltern, as a concept, is related to his investigation of the Risorgimento, while in fact Gramsci’s interest in the subaltern is a part of his overarching inquiry into Italian history, politics, culture, and the relation between state and civil society. From the notes included in the Selections, it is not apparent or even suggested that Gramsci wrote many notes on the subaltern or that he devoted an entire notebook to the concept. Gramsci’s notion of subaltern social groups does not immediately appear in the prison notebooks as a clearly defined concept; Gramsci develops the concept over a period of time. In his first notebook (1929–30), Gramsci uses the term “subaltern” in the literal sense, referring to noncommissioned military troops who are subordinate to the authority of lieutenants, colonels, and generals (Notebook 1, §48, §54).1 In later notes, he uses the term figuratively, in nonmilitary instances, in regard to positions of subordination or lower status. For instance, toward the end of Notebook 1, Gramsci states that the “[Church] is no longer an ideological world power but only a subaltern force” (§139). In Notebook 4, Gramsci makes an interesting entry regarding the issue of how to study Marx’s unfinished works and notes edited by Engels after Marx’s death. Gramsci does not question Engels’s “absolute personal loyalty” to Marx, but raises the issue that Engels is “lacking in theoretical skills (or at least occupies a subaltern position in relation to Marx)” (Notebook 4, §1). It is in this figurative or metaphorical sense that Gramsci uses the term “subaltern” when referring to subordinate social groups or classes. In Notebook 3, §14, Gramsci first uses the term “subaltern” with regard to social class. He writes, “Subaltern classes are subject to the initiatives of the dominant class, even when they rebel; they are in a state of anxious defense.” It

Gramsci cannot speak  69 is in this sense that subaltern groups are subordinate to a ruling group’s policies and initiatives. Between 1929 and 1930, Gramsci wrote several notes referring to subaltern groups in his notebooks that contained miscellaneous notes. In 1934 he began Notebook 25, which was a “special,” thematic notebook devoted exclusively to the subaltern, entitled “On the Margins of History (The History of Subaltern Social Groups).” In this Notebook, he began to copy, regroup, rewrite, and expand the notes from his earlier notebooks.2 In Notebook 25, Gramsci identifies slaves, peasants, religious groups, women, different races, and the proletariat as subaltern social groups (Gramsci 1975, 3:2279–94).3 His historical focus includes ancient Rome, the medieval communes, and the modern state as well as a discussion of the bourgeoisie as a subaltern group that transformed its sociopolitical position after the Risorgimento. Many of the notes that comprise the sixteen pages of the Notebook are extensive, while others provide short memoranda and bibliographic references to work that Gramsci most likely planned to read or re-read in the process of his research. Because Gramsci took the time to organize and rewrite the notes in a separate notebook, one can assume that his thoughts and ideas on the subaltern were developing, that he planned to expand his work, and that he was interested in producing an actual history of subaltern groups. In an investigation of Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern, as with most of Gramsci’s writings, one must recognize the fact that Gramsci was unable to finish his inquiry. Due to his incarceration, Gramsci did not have access to the books and historical records he required, and when he was able to proceed with the materials that were available to him, he was under surveillance and in poor health. In this sense, Gramsci produced his work in a subaltern or subordinate position; he was subject to the prison authorities and the Fascist government and could not work freely. Therefore, one should keep in mind that Gramsci’s notes on the subaltern, as with all his prison notes, are exactly that: they are notes. They are fragmentary, unfinished, and cryptic, but they nonetheless contain great insights. Nevertheless, even though Gramsci did not write his last word on the subaltern, he left a substantial amount of writing that can provide one with a partial understanding of the concept as he viewed it. But since the notes are not complete, one should attempt to understand Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern within the totality of the prison notebooks and general trajectory of his thought. Gramsci’s interest in the subaltern was threefold. From his notes, it is clear that he was interested in producing a methodology of subaltern historiography, a history of the subaltern classes, and a political strategy of transformation based upon the historical development and existence of the subaltern. This threefold approach creates a nexus where a variety of Gramsci’s concepts converge. History, politics, literary criticism, and cultural practices are all under consideration in his analysis of subaltern history. In his notes, Gramsci is interested in how the subaltern came into being, what sociopolitical relations caused their formation, what political power they hold, how they are represented in history and literature, and how they can transform their consciousness and, in turn, their lived conditions. In this sense, the concept of the subaltern interrelates with Gramsci’s other concepts, thoughts, and strategies of radical sociopolitical transformation. In order for one

70  Marcus E. Green to understand how Gramsci understood the subaltern, one must understand how the subaltern relates to Gramsci’s thought as a whole. In fact, isolating Gramsci’s notion of the subaltern as a separate concept from the rest of his thought is a difficult, if not impossible, task. His analysis of the subaltern is interwoven with his political, social, intellectual, literary, cultural, philosophical, religious, and economic analyses.

Political society + civil society = “integral state” Although Gramsci did not develop the concept of “subalternity” until he was in prison, his interest in the condition of subalternity is apparent in his pre-prison writings, especially in his final, yet unfinished, essay before his arrest, “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” (Gramsci 1978, 441–62). In the “Southern Question,” Gramsci’s analysis focuses on the social and class structures of the Italian South with regard to Southern intellectuals, specifically with the function intellectuals fulfill in perpetuating the interests of dominant social groups. When Gramsci conceived his project of study after his arrest, he thought of it as a continuation and elaboration of his thesis in the “Southern Question,” but extended to include practically all aspects of Italian society and history (Buttigieg 1995, 24–5). Through this extended investigation, while in prison, Gramsci expanded his analysis of intellectuals and redefined his conceptions of state and civil society, which he viewed as an unified “integral state.” Through Gramsci’s analysis of the integral state, many key concepts begin to emerge in his prison notebooks, including “hegemony” and “subalternity.” In many ways, Gramsci’s definition and understanding of “subalternity” is directly linked with his conceptions of hegemony and state and civil society (or integral state). In the essay “Some Aspects of the Southern Question,” Gramsci describes the South as a “great agrarian bloc,” “of extreme social disintegration” that is divided into social layers: “the great amorphous, disintegrated mass of the peasantry; the intellectuals of the petty and medium rural bourgeoisie; and the big landowners and great intellectuals” (Gramsci 1978, 454). Gramsci contends that the “Southern peasants are in perpetual ferment, but … incapable of giving a centralized expression to their aspirations and needs” because they are politically linked to the big landowners through the mediation of intellectuals (1978, 454, 456). In Gramsci’s view, this has occurred because the great Southern intellectuals, such as Giustino Fortunato and Benedetto Croce, who represent European high culture and universal views, disassociate themselves from the cultural roots of the South and the interests of the masses. Because the great intellectuals have such a tremendous influence, middle-ranking intellectuals, who are connected to the rural bourgeoisie, find support for their reactionary views and antipathies toward the peasantry, which in turn support the status quo. For instance, Gramsci attributes the calming down of the radical tendencies of the South to the influence of Fortunato and Croce. Because of their influence, Fortunato and Croce were able to ensure that the approach to the Southern question “did not go beyond certain limits [and] did not become revolutionary” by steering Southern intellectuals away from rebellion toward “a middle way of classical serenity of thought

Gramsci cannot speak  71 and action” (Gramsci 1978, 459–60). “In this sense,” Gramsci writes, “Benedetto Croce has fulfilled an extremely important ‘national’ function. He has detached the radical intellectuals of the South from the peasant masses, forcing them to take part in national and European culture; and through this culture, he has secured their absorption by the national bourgeoisie and hence by the agrarian bloc” (Gramsci 1978, 460). The significance of Gramsci’s analysis in “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” is that he becomes aware of the integral function that intellectuals perform in political leadership: they provide a noncoercive element of consent in political domination that the state cannot fulfill on its own. That is, intellectuals provide a noncoercive reinforcement of the state and the power and authority of dominant groups. This discovery moves Gramsci away from his limited and instrumentalist conception of the state that he held prior to writing “Some Aspects of the Southern Question.” In his previous writings, Gramsci typically views the state as the “protagonist of history,” as the realm in which ruling or dominant social groups maintain their power and compel society to conform to their conception of the world and way of life through legitimized, coercive power and leadership (Gramsci 1977, 73–4).4 In “Some Aspects of the Southern Question,” Gramsci moves away from the view that power is concentrated in the state and the view that the goal of revolutionary struggle is to capture state power. This change in focus provides Gramsci with the basis to expand his concept of the “state” and to develop his notion of “hegemony,” which he undertakes in his prison writings. In several of his prison letters to his sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht, Gramsci described the work in his notebooks and the topics he planned to study. In a 19 March 1927 letter, he tells Tatiana that he would like to begin a study that is fur ewig (forever) that would include “a study of Italian intellectuals, their origins, their groupings in accordance with cultural currents, and their various ways of thinking, etc.” This study, Gramsci notes, would include an expanded development of his thesis in “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” (Gramsci 1994a, 1: 82–5).5 In early February 1929, Gramsci began his first notebook with a list of sixteen main topics that included, among other things, a study of the development of the Italian bourgeoisie, the formation of Italian intellectuals, and the “southern question.” A little over two years later, Gramsci wrote to Tatiana describing the progress of his study, which now included an expanded notion of the “state,” which he refers to as an “integral state”: the notion that the state constitutes both political society and civil society. This expanded notion of the state provides an explanation for the role of intellectuals in the political process and their relationship to the dominant group’s political position of power. As Gramsci explains to Tatiana: The research I have done on intellectuals is very broad … At any rate, I greatly amplify the idea of what intellectual is and do not confine myself to the current notion that refers only to the preeminent intellectuals. My study also leads to certain definitions of the concept of State that is usually understood as political society (or dictatorship, or coercive apparatus meant to mold the popular mass into accordance with a type of production and economy at

72  Marcus E. Green a given moment) and not as a balance between the political Society and civil Society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society, exercised through the so-called private organizations, such as the Church, the unions, the schools, etc.); and it is within the civil society that the intellectuals operate (Ben. Croce, for example, is a sort of lay pope and he is a very effective instrument of hegemony even if from time to time he comes into conflict with this or that government, etc.). (Gramsci 1994a, 2: 66–7) Gramsci goes on to say that this conception of intellectuals explains one reason for the fall of the medieval Communes. The government, as an economic class, was “unable to create its own category of intellectuals and thus exercise hegemony and not simply dictatorship.” The Communes, in this sense, were “syndicalist” and not integral because the government, although in power, lacked hegemony within civil society (67). For Gramsci, the state, in its expanded integral meaning, consists of both political society and civil society. Political society, in this instance, comprises the elements of the limited notion of the state or the idea of a juridical-administrative state: government, the military, the police, the judiciary, and so on. Political society in many ways represents Gramsci’s notion of the “state” in his earlier, pre-prison writings. Civil society, on the other hand, constitutes the voluntary organizations within society, “that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private,’” such as trade unions, churches, cultural clubs, newspapers, publishers, political parties, and the like (Notebook 12, §1; 1971, 12). Gramsci’s conception of civil society is distinct from both Hegel’s and Marx’s conceptions in that civil society for them designates the sphere of economic relations, whereas Gramsci views the economic structure as the underlying form of both political and civil society (Notebook 10 II, §15; 1995, 167).6 In metaphorical terms, economic relations are structural and political, and civil society is superstructural but, in Gramsci’s view, the superstructure is determined by both economic and political forces (Notebook 13, §17; 1971, 177–85; also see Morera 1990, l50–60). Moreover, Gramsci insists that political society and civil society are not two separate spheres: they comprise an organic unity, for they are both elements of modern society. In reality, Gramsci writes, “the distinction [between political society and civil society] is purely methodological and not organic; in concrete historical life, political society and civil society are a single entity” (Notebook 4, §38). That is because, in concrete life, political society and civil society are both existent; the public and governmental institutions of political society exist alongside private organizations of civil society. They are two aspects of one social organization and, as we will see below, the state in many ways controls the development and organization of civil society. Thus, in broad sociohistorical analysis, political society and civil society constitute an organic unity. According to Gramsci’s analysis, the state, even in its expanded integral meaning, still remains an instrument of class domination. However, domination, in this sense, is not pure juridical or political domination, as in the case of the limited notion of the state. In modern society, pure political domination is a necessary requirement for ruling social groups to maintain power, but it is

Gramsci cannot speak  73 not sufficient. Ruling groups that control political society, according to Gramsci, must also exercise a degree of hegemony in civil society in order for subaltern groups to consent to their own subordinate position and to the authority of the ruling groups. Civil society, in this regard, is the sphere of the integral state where ruling or dominant social groups manufacture, organize, and maintain consent by promoting their hegemony – that is, their ideology, philosophy, ways of life, and so forth. In this sense, civil society is not entirely a domain of free expression or organization, as in the liberal conception. In fact, Gramsci’s conception is quite distinct from the liberal conception. In liberal ideology, civil society is viewed as a nongovernmental realm of freedom whereas, for Gramsci, civil society is a realm of hegemony (Buttigieg 1995). It contains the cultural elements of conformity, in which a dominant group’s values and ideology become the predominant values throughout society. Ultimately, in Gramsci’s view, civil society is just as political as political society. Civil society, he writes, “operates without ‘sanctions’ or compulsory ‘obligations,’ but nevertheless exerts a collective pressure and obtains objective results in the form of an evolution of customs, ways of thinking and acting, morality, etc.” (Notebook 13, §7; 1971, 242–3). In many ways civil and political society have a reciprocal relationship. They support and reinforce each other. The hegemony within civil society supports the leading group’s authority over political society, and the juridical apparatuses of political society protect the dominant group’s hegemony within civil society through coercive measures. The coercive apparatuses of political society, such as the law, courts, and police, can discipline those groups who do not consent, either passively or actively, to the ruling group’s power and hegemony (Notebook 12, §1; 1971, 12–13). Law is basically a coercive instrument to direct civil society, “to create a social conformism which is useful to the ruling group’s line of development” (Notebook 6, §84; 1971, 195). Gramsci understood the reciprocal relationship between political and civil society through his own personal political experience. His imprisonment by Mussolini’s Fascist government illustrates the extreme measures a ruling group will undertake in the attempt to protect its authority and hegemony within civil society, by using the coercive apparatus of the state to physically stop leaders and intellectuals from counterhegemonic struggles. A ruling group can declare a countergroup’s party, press, and rights of association and assembly illegal, as the Fascists did to the Communists (see Gramsci 1978, 285–92; 1994b, 230–3). In this sense, the integral state is not only political society + civil society but also “dictatorship + hegemony” (Notebook 6, § 117; 1971, 239) or, as Gramsci explains, “it should be remarked that the general notion of state includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that state = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armor of coercion)” (Notebook 6, §88; 1971, 262–3). In basic terms, hegemony is protected by coercion and coercion is protected by hegemony, and they both protect the dominant group’s political and economic positions. Gramsci’s conception of the integral state is not inconsistent with regard to his earlier conception of the state. Rather, his notion of the integral state is an elaboration and extension of his earlier analysis. As he wrote in 1919, as quoted

74  Marcus E. Green above, he viewed the state as the “protagonist of history” and the instrument of class struggle, in which ruling social groups form a unity in an attempt to maintain their power and supremacy through the coercive “organs” of the state. Civil society, in its integral conception, accomplishes the same ends through the means of hegemony and consensus. In this sense, political power is not only force but force + consensus, the unity of political society and civil society. As Gramsci writes in Notebook 25 with regard to his study of subaltern groups: The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State, and their history is essentially the history of States and of groups of States. But it would be wrong to think that this unity is simply juridical and political (though such forms of unity do have their importance too, and not in a purely formal sense); the fundamental historical unity, concretely, results from the organic relations between State or political society and “civil society.” (Notebook 25, §5; 1971, 52)

Gramsci’s method and methodology of subaltern historiography Like most of Gramsci’s other concepts and ideas, he analyzes the subaltern in their particular historical contexts. His method is somewhat similar to Machiavelli’s in the sense that he analyzes history in an attempt to find evidence of certain norms, tendencies, and patterns. As Joseph A. Buttigieg points out in his introduction to the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci incorporates particular events, pieces of information, and observations, throughout the notebooks, in order to support and formulate general conclusions and theories (Buttigieg 1992, 48). Gramsci states in Notebook 3 that it is the theoretician’s task to incorporate and account for new particular pieces of evidence in his or her theory and, if the evidence does not conform to the theory, the theoretician should alter the theory. The theoretician’s task, Gramsci explains, is “to ‘translate’ the elements of historical life into theoretical language, but not vice versa, making reality conform to an abstract scheme” because, as he points out, “Reality will never conform to an abstract scheme” (Notebook 3, §48). The type of “theoretical language” Gramsci has in mind is founded upon “historically determined” categories that are formulated from concrete historical developments and account for actual social practice rather than “arbitrary,” “pure,” or “abstract” schemes that are completely separated from historical reality (Notebook 10 II, §32; 1995, 171–3). In this sense, Gramsci has a nondogmatic and open-ended methodological approach, in which he attempts to support his theoretical concepts and general conclusions with particular facts and elements that correspond to “real historical development” (Notebook 9, §63; 1971, 200–1). Gramsci approaches the study of the subaltern in a similar way, attempting to understand the subaltern as a historically determined category that exists within particular historical, economic, political, social, and cultural contexts. He attempts to understand the process, development, and lineage of the subaltern; how they came into existence, how some survived at the margins, and how others

Gramsci cannot speak  75 succeeded in their ascent from a subordinate social position to a dominant one. In short, he wants to understand how the conditions and relations of the past influence the present and future development of the subaltern’s lived experience. Many of these notions come across in Gramsci’s notes on the subaltern when he refers to “integral history.” His idea of integral history is interwoven into his method of historical analysis. In Gramsci’s view, the “integral historian” is not just a historian who documents historical developments in some sort of positivistic manner but is one who understands the socioeconomic, political, and cultural implications of such developments – how particular historical events relate to broader sociopolitical contexts. It is the goal of the integral historian to analyze particular events in order to conceptualize the processes of historical development and understand the way in which the processes relate to peoples’ lived experiences. As Esteve Morera points out, Gramsci’s theory of integral history grasps “the totality and complexity of the historical process, from the tendencies of the economic structure to the forms of popular culture that shape … the consciousness of the masses” (Morera 1990, 61). On the first page of his notebooks, Gramsci listed sixteen main topics that he planned to address in his notebooks. The first topic he listed was a “Theory of history and of historiography” (Notebook 1). Gramsci’s development of methodological criteria for studying the subaltern can be viewed as a contribution to the fulfillment of this proposed plan. In Notebook 3, §90, Gramsci lays out his “Methodological Criteria” for the historical research of the subaltern in six steps or phases, each step indicating an area in which the integral historian should study the subaltern. According to his methodology, he contends that it is necessary to study the following: 1 2 3 4 5 6

the objective formation of the subaltern class through the developments and changes that took place in the economic sphere; the extent of their diffusion; and their descent from other classes that preceded them; their passive or active adherence to the dominant political formations; that is, their efforts to influence the programs of these formations with demands of their own; the birth of new parties of the ruling class to maintain control of the subaltern classes; the formations of the subaltern classes themselves, formations of a limited and partial character; the political formations that assert the autonomy of the subaltern classes, but within the old framework; the political formations that assert complete autonomy, etc.7

This is not a complete, ahistorical, or essentialist methodology since Gramsci contends that these phases of study could be more detailed with intermediate phases and combinations of phases, and he states: “The historian must record, and discover the causes of, the line of development towards integral autonomy, starting from the most primitive phases” (Notebook 25, §5; 1971, 52). From this statement one can deduce that these six phases do not just represent the methodology of

76  Marcus E. Green the subaltern or integral historian, but also represent the phases in which a subaltern group develops, from a “primitive” position of subordination to a position of autonomy. That is, the phases represent the sequential process in which a subaltern group develops and grows into a dominant social group or, in other instances, is stopped in its ascent to power by dominant social groups or political forces. In order to illustrate this point, I shall paraphrase each step as if it were a stage in development. First, there is a change in the economic sphere, such as a change in property relations, which alters the organization of society, relegating a social group to a subordinate social position. Second, the subaltern group either adheres (passively or actively) to the new dominant political formations or the group attempts to influence the new formations with its own demands. Third, the dominant social group creates new parties or government programs to maintain control of the subaltern groups. Fourth, the subaltern group realizes that the new social formations, parties, and institutions do not account for its needs so it forms its own organizations, such as trade unions. Fifth, the subaltern group organizes a political formation that represents its concerns, expresses its autonomy and its will to participate in the established political framework. An example in this instance would be a political party working within the established political framework. Sixth, the subaltern group realizes its interests will not be met within the current sociopolitical system so it organizes its own social and political formation that will eventually replace the existing one. An example in this instance would be a revolutionary party that attempts to transform the state and its correlating social relations. In this notion, subalternity exists in degrees or levels of development: some groups maintain higher levels of political consciousness and organization than others, and some groups exercise more autonomy and initiative than others. This notion also implies that groups that are undeveloped or unorganized socially or politically are harder to research in historical records than groups that have organized political parties or other institutions that represent their views. A group of unorganized peasant farmers could perhaps represent an example in this instance, in which the farmers are not conscious, individually or collectively, of their position within the prevailing social relations. This group of farmers would tend to be more difficult to trace than, let us say, a trade union or political party organized by urban proletarians, because the farmers would be less likely to leave evidence documenting their activity or have their activity documented by others. This example, which is somewhat consistent with the situations in Italy that Gramsci addressed, illustrates that subaltern groups are not equivalent, that they are differentiated by their level of political organization. There are a number of instances in the Prison Notebooks where Gramsci’s terminology reflects the idea of subalternity in degree. For example, in Notebook 14 in his discussion of Alessandro Manzoni’s novel The Betrothed, Gramsci states that the subaltern “‘have no history’: [that is to say] there are no traces of their history in the historical documents of the past” (Notebook 14, §39; 1985, 294). If this statement pertains to all subaltern groups, then Gramsci’s methodology for subaltern history would be meaningless for it would be impossible, or nearly impossible at the very least, to study the subaltern for there would be no evidence

Gramsci cannot speak  77 of their existence. However, this is not an inconsistency on Gramsci’s part for, in his discussion of spontaneity and conscious leadership in Notebook 3, §48, he writes: One may say that the element of spontaneity is … characteristic of the ‘history of subaltern classes’ and, especially, of the most marginal and peripheral elements of these classes, who have not attained a consciousness of the class per se and who consequently do not even suspect that their history might possibly have any importance or that it might be of any value to leave documentary evidence of it. From this note, it becomes clear that there are “marginal” or “peripheral” elements of the subaltern that are not developed, meaning that they have not achieved political consciousness of their position or attempted to organize politically. Because of this, these groups do not leave evidence of their activities in historical records, which makes the groups difficult to “trace.” One could say that groups with these characteristics fall into the first phase of subaltern development. In the same note, Gramsci provides another example of the degree in variation of subaltern development, with an example that corresponds to the sixth phase of development. He writes: “The ‘spontaneous’ movements of the broadest popular strata make it possible for the most advanced subaltern class to come to power.” The distinction of the words “marginal” and “peripheral” in the former quotation and the word “advanced” in this later quotation point to the subtlety with which Gramsci identified variations in subaltern development. Some groups lack consciousness and political organization and thus leave no traces of their development, while others have “advanced” to the point where they have the ability to come to power.8 Finally, in a more obvious instance prior to the previous note, in Notebook 3, §14, Gramsci writes, “The history of subaltern classes is necessarily fragmented and episodic; in the activity of these classes there is a tendency toward unification, albeit in provisional stages, but this is the least conspicuous aspect, and it manifests itself only when victory is secured.” In this instance Gramsci explicitly states that unification – hence the movement toward victory – occur in “provisional stages.” What this illustrates is that at the time when Gramsci wrote notes 14 and 48 he recognized that the subaltern develop in degrees or levels of variation, and it was not until note 90 that he established his six-point “methodological criteria,” which correspond to the various levels of development. From this one can conclude that subaltern groups have phases of development, and that they can be studied in a historical approach according to these phases.

Tracing the subaltern: Ideology, intellectuals, and representation At the end of the note “History of the Subaltern Classes: Methodological Criteria,” Gramsci discusses the difficulty in producing subaltern history and the difficulty in tracing the “fragmented and episodic” elements of subaltern development. As

78  Marcus E. Green he explains in Notebook 25, §2, “Every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern groups should … be of incalculable value for the integral historian. Consequently, this kind of history can only be dealt with monographically, and each monograph requires an immense quantity of material which is often hard to collect” (1971, 55). In a number of his notes on the subaltern, Gramsci merely cites the bibliographic information from books and articles which he most likely thought contained “traces” of subaltern activity.9 In other, more substantial notes, Gramsci not only cites but paraphrases and details the information in books and articles that contained evidence of subaltern historical development. In some instances, Gramsci may not agree with a particular author’s views but utilizes the author’s work for its evidence of subaltern activity. For instance, in Notebook 3, §16, Gramsci describes the development of the medieval commune. In doing this he refers to an article by Ettore Ciccotti (trans. “Elements of ‘truth’ and ‘certainty’ in the historical tradition”). The significance of Ciccotti’s article for Gramsci is that it provides an historical case study of how a subaltern group can become a dominant group. In the thirteenth century, the common people in the communes of Siena and Bologna gained enough political power to overcome the power of the nobility. The phases in which the people gained power and eventually created their communes is consistent with Gramsci’s six phases of development. In this particular instance, however, what gave the common people the opportunity to gain power and liberate themselves was directly related to the fact that the majority of them held arms. Due to the wars among the communes during the period, most of the common people possessed arms. Through their activity in the military forces, the common people became aware of their strength, consolidated their ranks, unified, created councils, and appointed officers (the fourth phase of development). Through this concentration and organization of power, the common people held most of the power in the military, and the purpose of the military, which was originally intended to protect the commune from external forces, began to grow and include the protection of the people from the nobles. Eventually the people entered the fifth phase of development, in which they demanded emancipation and participation in the major public offices, and “[they] formed themselves into a real political party.” When the authorities failed to meet the people’s desired reforms, the people entered the sixth phase of development, seceding from the commune completely. When the people failed to obtain desired reforms from the commune authorities, they seceded, with the support of prominent individuals from the commune, and after forming an independent assembly they began to create their own magistracies similar to the general systems of the commune, to award jurisdiction to the captain of the people, and to make decisions on their own authority, and giving rise … to a whole legislative authority … The people succeeded, at first in practice and later formally, in forcing the inclusion into the general statutes of the commune of provisions that previously applied only internally to those registered as “People.” The people, then, came to dominate the commune, overwhelming the previous ruling class. (Notebook 3, §16)

Gramsci cannot speak  79 From Gramsci’s perspective, this is an example of how a subaltern group that was subordinated to a dominant group gained power and eventually became the new dominant group. This note also illustrates Gramsci’s desire and ability to trace the subaltern in various texts or “monographs.” Although Gramsci does not agree with all aspects of Ciccotti’s work,10 he does insist that Ciccotti’s references to the development of the popular class in the communes merit “special attention and separate treatment” (Notebook 3, §16). In Notebook 3, §12, which later became the first note in the “special” thematic Notebook on the subaltern, Gramsci refers to an article by Domenico Bulferetti, in which Bulferetti discusses a number of different books on David Lazzaretti and his political movement. What interests Gramsci in this note is not only Lazzaretti’s political movement but how the movement is interpreted and represented by Italian intellectuals. Lazzaretti (1834–78) was a commoner in the southeastern corner of Tuscany. He worked with his father as a carter and volunteered in the national army in 1860. In 1868 he experienced religious visions and underwent a spiritual conversion. His visions revealed to him that he was a descendant of a French king and that a prophet would liberate the people from the despotism and misery of their conditions. His religious-political visions attracted many supporters, who were mostly peasants, and he established a number of congregations and communist colonies. Eventually Lazzaretti convinced himself and his supporters that he was the messiah of a new moral and civil order and that he was going to establish a republic of God that included land and crop redistribution. However, on the day Lazzaretti ceremoniously came to present himself to thousands of his supports as the messiah and to proclaim his establishment, he was shot and killed by military police (Hobsbawm 1965, 65–73).11 Lazzaretti and his movement represent an attempt by a subaltern group to establish a new state and conception of the world based upon various religious, political, and economic principles. The case of Lazzaretti also represents an instance in which a subaltern group was politically organized and historically traceable, yet failed in its political ascent due to the power of the state. The point that interests Gramsci, however, is the way in which Lazzaretti and his movement are portrayed and represented by Italian intellectuals. Cesare Lombroso, who was known for his view that criminality was biologically determined and whom Gramsci often described as a “positivist,” viewed Lazzaretti as a psychologically abnormal “madman,” not as a member of a marginalized group. Giacomo Barzellotti, on the other hand, viewed Lazzaretti’s movement as purely religious and not political. In Gramsci’s view, Barzellotti did not consider the socioeconomic, political, or historical conditions Lazzaretti and his movement confronted. Gramsci sees both Lombroso and Barzellotti as contributing to a broader custom of the time in which Italian intellectuals tended to neglect the historical origins of an event and provide “narrow, individual, pathologic, etc. explanations of single explosive incidents,” such as finding “the protagonist to be a madman” (Notebook 3, §12). Gramsci’s critical analysis of the authors who wrote on Lazzaretti further illustrates the difficulty in tracing the subaltern for, even when traces of the subaltern exist in the historical records, the interpretations and representations of the subaltern may be misinformed or ideologically influenced. This creates an additional

80  Marcus E. Green obstacle in tracing and producing a subaltern history for the integral historian since he or she has to critically engage and analyze the evidence of the past. However, this is a circumstance Gramsci was very well aware of and actually addressed in a number of his writings regarding literary criticism. Gramsci’s analysis of intellectuals and his interest in constructing a subaltern history are related to his analysis of popular literature, especially with the development of the historical novel and its representations of subaltern activity. For instance, Gramsci focused on the work of Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873), especially with regard to how Manzoni’s conceptions of the world and history influenced his descriptions of common people in his novels. Like Gramsci, Manzoni was interested in creating a portrait of the common people, which Manzoni referred to as “humble classes,” meaning peasants, artisans, servants, villagers, and so on – in Gramscian terms, the subaltern classes. What interests Gramsci in Manzoni’s work is the way in which Manzoni presents the common people. Gramsci describes Manzoni as having an “aristocratic” and Catholic disposition because of his “jocular sympathy” and “caste attitude” toward the common people. Gramsci points out that in Manzoni’s historical novel The Betrothed, “there is not one common person who is not teased or laughed at … They are depicted as wretched and narrow people without an inner life. Only the nobles have an inner life.” Although Manzoni positions common people as the principal characters in his novel, he portrays them as not having an “inner life” or “deep moral personality.” In this regard, Gramsci sees Manzoni’s work as comparable to Shakespeare’s in the sense that Shakespeare “sides with the upper classes” and presents the common people in a “scornful or repugnant manner” (Notebook 23, §51; 1985, 289–91). Gramsci was not displeased with Manzoni’s interest in and focus on “the humble”; rather, he was interested in the greater significance of how and why Manzoni portrayed the common people the way he did. For Gramsci, portraying the people as humble and the nobles as enlightened was symptomatic of Italian intellectuals, as exemplified in the cases of Lombroso and Barzellotti. Unlike Dostoyevsky, for instance, Italian intellectuals did not see themselves as having a mission toward the people or believe that the people must be freed from their “humble” positions. Rather, in Gramsci’s view, Italian intellectuals traditionally separated themselves from the people in a superior and paternalistic manner. “It is like the relationship between two races, one considered superior and the other inferior, like the relationship between adult and child in the old schools or, worse still, like that of a ‘society for the protection of animals.’” It was in this sense that Gramsci was concerned with how literary representations of the subaltern reinforced the subaltern’s subordinated positions (Notebook 21, §3; 1985, 293–4). Although Gramsci is engaged in a form of literary criticism, his focus is not art per se. Rather, he is engaged in cultural, political, and social criticism, in a critique of social life. He is attempting to destroy certain beliefs and attitudes towards the world and life that are presented as truth but are in fact “narrow and impoverished” (Notebook 23, §51; 1985, 291). The significance of Gramsci’s focus on literature that depicts the subaltern in passive, humble, or subordinated positions is to show that such work actually reinforces the positions of the subaltern and contributes

Gramsci cannot speak  81 to their further subordination. The dissemination of such views contributes to the consciousness and common sense of the masses to an extent that they do not question such views and accept them as facts rather than opinions. This is an aspect of research that the integral historian has to take into account in his or her research of the subaltern. Texts or “monographs” depict the subaltern in a variety of ways, and the historian has to understand the implications of these depictions for they will influence the historian’s own opinions. In this sense, the subaltern or integral historian has to analyze not only the historical events of the subaltern but also the historical processes in which the subaltern are perceived, presented, and depicted in literary and historical documents. In historical or literary documents, the subaltern may be presented as humble, passive, or ignorant, but their actual lived experiences may prove the contrary. Hence, the integral historian has to analyze critically the way in which intellectuals represent the conditions and aspirations of the subaltern (Notebook 25, §7; 1985, 238–41). Following Gramsci’s analyses, several conclusions can be drawn regarding his interpretation of subaltern groups and their activity. First, it is clear Gramsci believed that it was possible to produce a history of subaltern classes, even if it was an arduous task. Second, he argued that subaltern groups develop in various degrees or phases that correspond to levels of political organization, which the historian has to take into consideration. Third, subaltern groups are faced with an ensemble of political, social, cultural, and economic relations that produce marginalization and prevent group autonomy. Fourth, although subaltern groups face many difficulties, they have the ability to transform their subordinate social positions. In fact, the transformation of the subaltern’s subordinate social position was Gramsci’s ultimate goal and, through his analyses, he formulated a political strategy for such a transformation.

Recent interpretations and appropriations of the “subaltern” Within the last twenty years, subaltern studies has become a very popular enterprise. Books and articles claiming to be inspired by Gramsci have been published on the activity and history of subaltern groups in India, South America, and Ireland. The current popularity of subaltern analysis stems mostly from Ranajit Guha’s Subaltern Studies collective and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s famous article, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” which is not only a critique of the method and focus of Subaltern Studies but also a critique of the notion of Europe as a Subject and political representation in the work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Both Guha and Spivak refer to Gramsci’s conception of subaltern social groups, but their references and representations of the concept are limited in scope due to the fact that they rely heavily on the presentation of the notes included in the Selections from the Prison Notebooks. In the preface to Subaltern Studies I, Ranajit Guha states that the aim of the collective is “to promote a systematic and informed discussion of subaltern themes in the field of South Asian studies, and thus help rectify the elitist bias characteristic of much research and academic work in this particular area” (Guha 1982, vii–viii). In other words, the point of the collective is to challenge elitist

82  Marcus E. Green historiography and to illuminate aspects of subaltern history as they relate to class, caste, age, gender, and so forth. Guha states that he hopes that “the range of contributions to this series may even remotely match the six-point project envisaged by Antonio Gramsci in his ‘Notes on Italian History’” (vii–viii). Although this project is appreciated, it is not clear how Gramsci’s six-point project is to be used: if Guha views Gramsci’s six points purely as methodological criteria, or if he believes that subaltern groups develop in varying degrees that correspond to the six points. With the exception of a short quotation, Gramsci’s concept of subaltern groups is not defined or discussed further. In fact, in contrast to Gramsci’s definition, Guha defines subaltern groups as “the people” or “nonelite.” In Weberian fashion, he categorizes the elite into three ideal categories: dominant foreign groups, dominant indigenous groups, and regional and local groups that act on the behalf of the other two groups. “It is the task of research,” Guha writes, “to investigate, identify and measure the specific nature and degree of the deviation of these elements from the ideal and situate it historically” (8). In her critique of Guha’s approach to rewriting Indian colonial history from a subaltern perspective, Spivak contends that the idea of defining the subaltern “as a difference from the elite” and attempting to “investigate, identify, and measure the specific” is “essentialist and taxonomic” (Spivak 1988, 284–5). The major problem with such a project is that it requires one not only to know the consciousness and position of the subaltern but also to represent that consciousness. This problem is illustrated in the fact that the subalternists rely on British, nationalist, and colonialist records to research and validate their work. In Spivak’s view the subaltern leave little or no traces of their existence within elite, colonial documents and, if the subaltern are represented at all, they are represented as the Other within dominant, elite ideology. It is in this sense that the subaltern cannot speak, according to Spivak, because representations of the subaltern are embedded within the dominant discourse. Related to Spivak’s understanding of Gramsci’s conception of the subaltern is the issue of representation that she raises with regard to the work of Foucault and Deleuze. Following Marx’s definition of class as a descriptive and transformative concept in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (where Marx points out that class is an economic condition that can be transformed through organized political representation), Spivak points out that there are two types or senses of representation: “representation as ‘speaking for,’ as in politics, and representation as ‘re-presentation,’ as in art or philosophy” (1988, 275–7). In German, these two different senses are distinguished by two different words: Vertretung refers to political representation and Darstellung refers to aesthetic representation or the concept of staging as representation (278). Spivak contends that Foucault and Deleuze confuse these distinct types of representation with the notion of a unified European Subject, while in Marx the distinction is apparent with regard to the concept of class, for Marx recognizes that class is a condition but that classes are not unified (276, 279). According to Spivak, one should realize the distinction between the double sense of representation in an attempt to avoid subjective essentialism and to understand that macrological representations (Darstellung) affect political representations (Vertretung). She writes that

Gramsci cannot speak  83 the relationship between global capitalism (exploitation in economics) and nation-state alliances (domination in geopolitics) is so macrological that it cannot account for the micrological texture of power. To move toward such an accounting one must move toward theories of ideology – of subject formations that micrologically and often erratically operate the interests that congeal the macrologies. Such theories cannot afford to overlook the categories of representation in its two senses. They must note how the staging of the world in representation – its scene of writing, its Darstellung – dissimulates the choice of and need for “heroes,” paternal proxies, agents of power – Vertretung. My view is that radical practice should attend to this double session of representations rather than reintroduce the individual subject through totalizing concepts of power and desire. (Spivak 1988, 279) Following her discussion of representation, Spivak moves on to discuss the nature of the subaltern. She makes one short comment on Gramsci’s conception of subaltern classes. Antonio’s Gramsci’s work on the “subaltern classes” extends the classposition/class-consciousness argument isolated in The Eighteenth Brumaire. Perhaps because Gramsci criticizes the vanguardistic position of the Leninist intellectual, he is concerned with the intellectual’s role in the subaltern’s cultural and political movement into hegemony. This movement must be made to determine the production of history as narrative (of truth). In texts such as “The Southern Question,” Gramsci considers the movement of historical-political economy in Italy within what can be seen as an allegory of reading taken from or prefiguring an international division of labor. Yet an account of the phased development of the subaltern is thrown out of joint when his cultural macrology is operated, however remotely, by the epistemic interference with legal and disciplinary definitions accompanying the imperialist project. (283) In this instance, it appears that Spivak is only considering Gramsci’s notion of the subaltern with regard to the proletariat and peasants. Gramsci does not use the term “subaltern” in his essay “Some Aspects of the Southern Question,” but he does follow Marx’s “class-position/class-consciousness argument” from The Eighteenth Brumaire in that Gramsci states: “The proletariat can become the leading [dirigente] and the dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in creating a system of class alliances which allows it to mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois State” (Gramsci 1978, 443).12 However, it is not clear how Gramsci’s “account of the phased development of the subaltern is thrown out of joint when his cultural macrology is operated,” as Spivak claims. She may think that Gramsci’s focus on the subaltern is too macrological because he situates the subaltern within an ensemble of social relations: relations of production, “legal and disciplinary” functions of the state, and relations of hegemony within civil society. At any rate, it seems clear that Spivak does not agree with Gramsci’s notion of phased development. The reason for this

84  Marcus E. Green is that she defines the subaltern differently than both Gramsci and Guha. For her, the subaltern are not merely the nonelite; they are “the paradigmatic victims” of the international division of labor – namely, “the women of the urban subproletariat and of unorganized peasant labour” (Spivak 1985a). For Spivak, the subaltern are not just the oppressed; the subaltern are those people that are so displaced they lack political organization and representation. It is in this sense that she contends that the proletariat is not a subaltern group because it is organized in most instances (Spivak 1990b, 90–l; 1992, 45–6). This conception is quite distinct from Gramsci’s conception in that it lacks specificity. For Gramsci, disorganization is an element of subalternity but not the determining element, since a subaltern group can exercise some level of political organization without any level of hegemony and therefore still be subject to the activity of dominant groups (Notebook 25, §2; 1971, 55). In Gramsci’s conception, organization alone will not resolve group marginalization; only the transformation of the relations of subordination will resolve group marginalization. In two of Spivak’s interviews (1992, 2000), she insists that Gramsci used the term “subaltern” in his prison notebooks out of the necessity to censor himself from using the word “proletariat.” In a 1992 interview, she states: Now, the word “subaltern” as one knows is the description of a military thing. One knows that Gramsci used it because Gramsci was obliged to censor himself in prison. One also knows that the word changed in its use when Gramsci presciently began to be able to see what we today call north-south problems, sitting in prison in Italy, because he was talking on southern Italy, just class-formation questions were not going to solve anything. And so then the word “subaltern” became packed with meaning. (Spivak 1992, 45) I do not question that Gramsci had the issue of the Southern question in mind when he was writing in prison and thinking of subaltern groups but, as I have tried to show above, Gramsci used the word “subaltern” literally and figuratively in many instances.13 I question the notion that the term is a euphemism for “proletariat” or anything else, and I also question that Gramsci changed his use of the word just in relation to “class formation” in Southern Italy, since Gramsci uses the term in many other historical contexts. However, Spivak’s analysis of subaltern representation by others is definitely consistent with Gramsci’s approach, for the subaltern historian has to always question an author’s interpretations, motivations, and ideological and political bias in writing a text and representing marginalized groups. In contrast, Spivak’s definition and political understanding of the subaltern are at odds with Gramsci’s conception. For Spivak, as stated above, the subaltern are unorganized and do not often speak, meaning that they do not represent themselves politically or textually. For her, representation and organization are key to subalternity and once they are achieved the subaltern cease to be subaltern. In an interview, she states: I don’t think that I declare myself to be allied to the subaltern. The subaltern is all that is not elite, but the trouble with those kinds of names is that if you

Gramsci cannot speak  85 have any kind of political interest you name it in the hope that the name will disappear. That’s what class consciousness is in the interest of: the class disappearing. What politically we want to see is that the name would not be possible. So what I’m interested in is seeing ourselves as namers of the subaltern. If the subaltern can speak then, thank God, the subaltern is not a subaltern any more. (Spivak 1990a, 158) In this sense, if the subaltern are organized and represent themselves, they are no longer subaltern. But does this mean that they have somehow transformed themselves into dominant groups within society? Does it mean that the subaltern have transformed the social and political relations of subordination that caused their marginalization? In Spivak’s earlier works it would be difficult to find answers to these questions, but in her most recent book she writes, “When a line of communication is established between a member of subaltern groups and the circuits of citizenship or institutionality, the subaltern has been instituted into the long road to hegemony” (1999, 310). In Gramscian terms, establishing “a line of communication” and being “instituted into the long road to hegemony” require political struggle. Subaltern groups have to become conscious of their social position, organize, and struggle to transform their social positions, since organization and representation alone will not transform the relations of subordination. Although these aspects of subaltern activity may not signify the idea of phased development for Spivak, they do for Gramsci.

Gramsci’s revolutionary project for subaltern liberation As I stated above, Gramsci’s interest in the subaltern is threefold: he is interested in creating a methodology of subaltern historical analysis, an actual history of subaltern social groups, and from these two projects he is interested in formulating a revolutionary and practical political strategy that will liberate subaltern groups from their subordinated existence. In this sense, Gramsci is consistent with the doctrines of historical materialism, for it is historical analysis that informs theory and theory that informs practice. For Gramsci, there is not merely a unity of theory and practice but a unity of historical analysis, theory, and practice or, as he says, a “philosophy of praxis.” For Gramsci, one studies history in all its various facets with the purpose of informing historical political analysis and formulating revolutionary political strategy (Notebook 11, §27; 1971, 465). As he explained in his L’Ordine Nuovo article entitled “The Party School,” in our ranks one studies in order to improve, to sharpen the fighting ability of individual members and of the organization as a whole, to better understand the positions of our enemy as well as our own so that we are better able to adapt our day-to-day action to these positions. Study of culture, for us, [is] nothing other than theoretical knowledge of our immediate and ultimate goals, and of the manner in which we can succeed to translate them into deeds. (Gramsci, as quoted by Buttigieg 1992, 20; cf., Gramsci 1994b, 266)

86  Marcus E. Green Gramsci viewed socio-historical-cultural analyses as partial ends in themselves (for instance, with the purpose of writing books), but ultimately Gramsci utilized his analyses for the purpose of informing practical political activity, to justify particular actions, initiatives, and tactics (Notebook 13, §17; 1971, 185). Essentially the task of the integral historian or subaltern intellectual is to contribute to the form and development of concrete political strategies founded upon sociohistorical analysis. For Gramsci, a self-aware and historically informed conscious leadership combined with the spontaneous political activity of the people is the “real political action” of subaltern groups (Notebook 3, §48). From Gramsci’s historical analysis, he concluded that the liberation of subaltern groups necessarily requires a transformation of the state and its oppressive social relations, since subaltern groups can only cease being “subaltern” once they have transformed the relations of subordination that cause their marginalization. In Gramsci’s view, “Subaltern groups are always subject to the activity of ruling groups, even when they rebel and rise up: only ‘permanent’ victory breaks their subordination” (Notebook 25, §2; 1971, 55). “Permanent victory,” in this sense, is the transformation of the oppressive state and the formation of a new “ethical State.” “[T]he State,” in his analysis, “is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (Notebook 15, §10; 1971, 244). Dominant social groups, in this sense, maintain control of the state through a hegemonic hold over civil society, and they maintain their hegemony over civil society through the promotion of their ideology, cultural values, social practices, morality, ways of thinking, religion, customs, and so on – as seen in the work of Croce, Lombroso, Barzellotti, and Manzoni, for instance. “[T]he supremacy of a social group,” Gramsci writes, “manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’” (Notebook 19, §24; 1971, 57). If a social group can successfully pro mote its values as the dominant values of society, it then can obtain the power and legitimacy to dominate other social groups. For example, if the dominant social groups are bourgeois, Catholic, male, a particular race, and have an aristocratic disposition, and if the dominant social groups are the organizers and founders of the current state, then the prevailing social relations will represent those dominant groups’ values and norms, which they portray as “neutral” and “universal” and the subordinate social groups accept as “truth” and “common sense.” For Gramsci, the development of a new state based upon egalitarian social relations can be achieved through a broad alliance of subaltern social groups, who have the capacity to win the struggle for hegemony. Because subaltern groups exist in varying degrees of political organization, more organized groups have to become intellectual and moral leaders and attempt to create a subaltern class alliance that would be capable of presenting a new set of cultural values, social relations, and a new conception of the state.14 Therefore, prior to creating a new state, subaltern groups first have to become a counterhegemonic force capable of challenging dominant cultural values and winning control over civil society. Gramsci compares the superstructures of civil society to “a powerful system of fortresses and earths” that protect the state and economic structure from falling or

Gramsci cannot speak  87 being attacked (Notebook 7, §16; 1971, 235, 238). Therefore, Gramsci insists that subaltern groups engage in a “war of position” in which the subaltern promote a new set of social values as a counterforce to the dominant group’s values in an attempt to take control of and promote a new conception of civil society. The war of position, in this sense, is the struggle for hegemony, and the struggle for hegemony requires subaltern groups to construct a sociocultural force of their own that is capable of uniting the masses in a common political struggle (Notebook 10, §44; 1971, 349). If subaltern groups are successful in this struggle, they have the potential to become the next dominant social groups and found a new state. As illustrated in the fifth and sixth phases of subaltern development and in previous historical examples, a subaltern war of position is not merely an ideological struggle but also a practical political struggle in which the subaltern organize political formations that represent their views, promote their conception of the world, and assert subaltern autonomy and political power. For Gramsci, a subaltern political party is the practical political organization that can provide intellectual and moral leadership for the subaltern and act as the embryo that will develop into a state. The subaltern, as a party, can work within the established political formations (fifth phase), obtaining positions as the personnel of the state, the government, and other institutions, while other members continue to promote a counterhegemony (Notebook 3, §119). Once the hegemonic struggle is won, the “war of movement” or sixth phase of development begins, in which the members of the party who are the personnel of the old state become the personnel and leaders of the new state. In other words, if the subaltern are going to promote a new hegemony and attempt to create a new state, they have to become a governing body and political and intellectual leaders within the old society before winning power, which requires “infinite masses of people” (Notebook 6, §138; 1971, 238–9). In this strategy, therefore, subaltern social groups do not merely seek legal protections from the state to overcome their subordination; they become the cultural leaders of society, organize a political party, become the new dominant social groups, and eventually become the state (Notebook 25, §5; 1971, 52). The state Gramsci has in mind is the formation of an “ethical State,” a state that can transform the oppressive state and transform the relations of subordination that created and perpetuated group marginalization. “[T]he social group that poses the end of the State and its own end as the target to be achieved can create an ethical State – i.e. one which tends to put an end to the internal divisions of the ruled, etc., and to create a technically and morally unitary social organism” (Notebook 8, §179; 1971, 259). Ideally, what Gramsci has in mind is a postsubaltern state, a democratic state that disallows the domination of one group by another. In short, according to Gramsci’s analysis, subaltern social groups have to look beyond their current subordinated identities, situations, and conditions; they have to historicize and conceptualize the relations that cause their subordination and attempt to transform the relations and systems of power that created and maintain the relations. Such a project requires a revolutionary transformation of the state and society; a hegemonic transformation that includes a coalition of all subaltern social groups with a common political aim, which is the creation of a state and

88  Marcus E. Green society that is founded upon the principles of equality and democracy, free from subordination and exploitation in all spheres of life. Ultimately, Gramsci’s study and conception of the subaltern are transformative. Gramsci is undoubtedly interested in a historical, political, social, and cultural transformation that will produce human liberation, and he sees this transformation occurring from below, meaning that subaltern groups, who are subordinated and do not hold any sociopolitica1 power, will attempt to overcome their subordination through a broad struggle that will affect every aspect of society and, in turn, their social being. Because political power rests within the state but is reinforced within social and cultural practices, Gramsci views the struggle for subaltern transformation occurring in a hegemonic fashion, in which a new conception of society is not only presented in politics but throughout the superstructural realms of ideology, culture, philosophy, literature, and so on. Thus, in Gramsci’s analysis, he attempts to capture the totality of subaltern existence. He is interested in the integral relationship between their economic, political, and social positions; the stages of their development in history; their significance in cultural forms; how they are represented in literature; and so forth. Gramsci’s study of the subaltern reveals not only the difficulties involved in subaltern analysis but also the many factors that contribute to group marginalization and the elements which prevent groups from overcoming their marginalization. Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern creates not only a new terrain of struggle but also a methodological criterion for formulating such a struggle founded upon the integral analysis of the economic, historical, cultural, and ideological roots of everyday life.

Acknowledgments This chapter was presented at the Rethinking Marxism 2000 conference held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 21–4 September 2000. I wish to thank Esteve Morera and Joseph A. Buttigieg for many conversations on Gramsci’s work and for their comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes 1 To be consistent with the standard reference practice that is being adopted in relation to the critical editions of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1975, 1992, 1996), I provide the notebook number and note number (§) in my references. However, since only notebooks 1 through 5 of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s critical English edition of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (1992, 1996) have been published thus far, I provide the notebook number, note number (§), date, and page number to all other English translations of Gramsci’s notebooks. 2 As of this date, only four of the eight notes in Notebook 25 have been translated into English from the original Italian: §1 (1995, 50–5), §2 and §5 (1971, 52–5), and §7 (1985, 238–41). However, all the notes from Notebooks 1 and 3, which Gramsci wrote between 1929 and 1930, have been published in the first two volumes of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s critical English translation of the notebooks (1992, 1996), Prison Notebooks, vols. 1 and 2. Buttigieg, following Valentino Gerratana’s critical Italian edition (Gramsci 1975), refers to the earlier notes as “A texts,” and their revisions, which appear in the later notebooks, as “C texts” (Buttigieg 1992, xv, 366). Therefore,

Gramsci cannot speak  89

  3   4   5

  6

  7

  8   9 10 11 12

13 14

in some citations of Notebook 25, I make reference to the original and earlier “A texts” as they appear in Buttigieg’s translation and provide other references where appropriate. I should point out, however, that Gramsci made a number of revisions when he copied these notes to Notebook 25. Therefore, there are some differences between the earlier and later notes that comprise Notebook 25. Also see Gramsci (1996), Notebook 3, §12, §18, §90, §98, §99. For Gramsci’s view on women, see “The Sexual Question” (1992, 170–1; 1971, 294–7) and his review of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” (1985, 70–3). Also see Gramsci (1977, 39–40; 1994a, 56). Gramsci worked on the draft of “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” between September and November 1926. He was arrested on 8 November 1926. After nearly six months from when he started writing the draft, he wanted to expand the focus of the chapter. Also see Morera (1990, 180) and Simon (1991, 71–2). It is worth noting that Marx’s conception of civil society appears in his early works, such as “On the Jewish Question” and German Ideology, but he later replaces the term “civil society” for “relations of production.” Marx explains this in the preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (Marx 1987, 261–6). In this earlier A text form of the note, quoted from Notebook 3, §90, Gramsci uses the words “subaltern classes.” When Gramsci rewrote the note in Notebook 25, the special notebook on subaltern groups, he uses the terms “subaltern classes” and “subaltern groups” interchangeably. Therefore, although the terms are different, they do not represent a difference in meaning for Gramsci. Compare this A text with the C text as it appears in Notebook 25, §5 (Gramsci 1971, 52). The idea that subaltern groups develop in various degrees or levels is very similar to Gramsci’s discussion of the development of political forces in “various moments or levels” (see Gramsci 1971, 180–1). See for example, Notebook 1, §95; Notebook 4, §95; Notebook 6, §132, §158. For example, Gramsci (Notebook 3, §15) refers to Ciccotti’s historical materialism as “very superficial” and a “very positivistic sociology.” Hobsbawm (1965) provides details of the socioeconomic conditions for the region of Lazzaretti’s movement. For Gramsci (1978, 443, 460–2), the proletariat has the potential to lead a “system of class alliances,” which includes peasants. But such an alliance of subaltern groups requires a mass of Left intellectuals that is capable of expressing the aspirations and needs of the alliance, and he sees these intellectuals developing within the proletariat. For instance, see Notebook 1, §48, §57, §139; Notebook 3, §14, §18, §48, §90, §117; Notebook 4, §1, §38, §49, §53, §59, §66, §95. In his essay “Some Aspects of the Southern Question” (1978, 443, 460–2), Gramsci contends that the proletariat has the capacity to be a leader in creating a “system of class alliances.”

7 Self-consciousness of the Dalits as “subalterns” Reflections on Gramsci in South Asia Cosimo Zene Becoming “Dalit” is the process through which the caste subaltern enters into circuits of political commensuration and into the value regime of “the human.” Anupama Rao (2009, 264)

In this chapter I reflect on Gramsci’s category of the “subaltern,” taking into consideration recent contributions to this topic, particularly those offered by Joseph A. Buttigieg (1998), Giorgio Baratta (2007, 2008) and Marcus E. Green (2002). The latter, besides presenting an eloquent critique of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s article Can the Subaltern Speak? (1988), allows me to return to Gramscian sources so as to carry out a radicalization of Gramsci’s positions with reference to the experience of “Untouchables”/Dalits in South Asia. There is little doubt that the enquiry into the “Subaltern Question” in India today cannot ignore the “Dalit Question” as “the political unconscious of India society” (Rao 2009, xiii). The case study referring to the Rishi-Dalits of Bangladesh accentuates still further the precarious position of these groups as subalterns, but also their aspiration to overcome subalternity.

Gramsci and the subaltern: Methodology and historiography Green’s systematic analysis of the concept of the “subaltern” underlines abuses and misconceptions of this category in the Anglophone world, showing that the passage of the term from a literal to a figurative usage is already evident by the end of Notebook 1 (Green 2002, 2). Having made several comments in the Notebooks regarding the subalterns, in 1934 Gramsci embarked on writing Notebook 25, where – under the title “On the Margins of History (The History of Subaltern Social Groups)” – he copied, transcribed, and developed the notes of Notebooks 1 and 3. Besides not concluding his project, Gramsci found himself in a position of “subalternity” which gives his notes an often indicative and fragmentary perspective, though containing relevant intuitions. Significantly, Green points to the need to interpret this concept as “interwoven with his political, social, intellectual, literary, cultural, philosophical, religious, and economic analyses” (Green 2002, 3). We might say that Gramsci was interested in developing a multidisciplinary approach to the study of subalterns.

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  91 Within this methodology, we need to take into account the development of the Gramscian concept of the sovereign state as “the protagonist of history” in relation to the “integral State” where both political and civil society intervene to preserve power for dominant groups through the hegemony of consent and coercion. There is a remarkable closeness between the two expressions “State as Protagonist of History” and the definition of subaltern groups as being “On the Margins of History,” including slaves, peasants, religious groups, women, different races, and the proletariat. It is clear that Gramsci has in mind “subaltern groups” both in Italy and in Europe, where a process of colonization was already taking place even prior to the development of a territorial colonialism outside Europe. Despite Gramsci’s interest in proposing a theory für ewig and formulating general theories and conclusions, his methodology is based on “particular events, pieces of information, and observations” (Green 2002, 8; Buttigieg 1992, 48), in order “to ‘translate’ the elements of historical life into theoretical language” (Q3, §48). In summary Green writes, “He wants to understand how the conditions and relations of the past influence the present and future development of the subaltern’s lived experience” (Green 2002, 8). I return below to the “subaltern’s lived experience,” since this affects what Gramsci calls their “common sense,” their understanding of reality or, their “philosophy.” In order to accomplish a translation into theoretical language, and to understand these “conditions and relations of the past,” Gramsci appeals to “integral history” as a versatile workshop which takes into account political, socio-economic, cultural, and religious dynamics, in which the “integral historian” is able to perceive “the totality and complexity of the historical process, from the tendencies of the economic structure to the forms of popular culture that shape … the consciousness of the masses” (Morera 1990, 61; in Green 2002, 9). In Notebook 3, §90 Gramsci offers a methodological process divided into six progressive phases which should be further developed to include intermediate phases, so that, as he specifies in Notebook 25, §5: “The [integral] historian must record, and discover the causes of, the line of development towards integral autonomy, starting from the most primitive phases.” It is noteworthy that in the transition from Q3 to Q25, already at a methodological level and perhaps intentionally, Gramsci uses the expressions “subaltern classes” and “subaltern groups” interchangeably (Green 2002, 9). In order to prove the Gramscian thesis on phases of development, Green refers to other passages in the Notebooks where Gramsci discusses Manzoni’s position in relation to subalterns, who “‘have no history’: [that is to say] there are no traces of their history in the historical documents of the past” (Q14, §39). This example points towards the famous note of Q3 where Gramsci analyzes the “element of spontaneity” as “characteristic of subaltern classes.” Theirs is a history considered so marginal and peripheral that they “have not attained a consciousness of the class per se and … consequently do not even suspect that their history might possibly have any importance or that it might be of any value to leave documentary evidence of it” (Q3, §48). Those who have conducted research among Dalits have experienced the difficulty of proving the researcher’s genuine interest in

92  Cosimo Zene their history and their life. While Dalit scholars might question the validity of “outsiders” producing insightful accounts on Dalits, serious scholarship remains sensitive to this problematic issue (Rao 2009). Nevertheless, I advocate a historiography of a more recent kind, with reference to Michel de Certeau, who seems to validate Gramsci’s thesis in relation to the methodological criteria used by Gramsci to retrace even those minimal signs of initiative found amongst subaltern groups, despite the fact that their history is “necessarily fragmented and episodic” (Q3, §14). In his famous note of Q25, §2, Gramsci writes: Every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern groups should … be of incalculable value for the integral historian. Consequently, this kind of history can only be dealt with monographically, and each monograph requires an immense quantity of material which is often hard to collect. Certeau explains the production of historiography as “operation” and “fabrication” of texts by the “circles of writing” and “institutions of power” which transform findings through the “practice of interpretation” into a “science,” thus preserving the authority of official history and achieving a kind of hegemony. According to Certeau, this is History with a capital “H,” since all others are “small histories,” in lower case. Yet “official History” – although a fabrication – contains “traces” that the hegemonic historiography is unable to eliminate, thus preserving traces of “small histories” if only to contradict them. Certeau returns continuously to the idea of “traces as inassimilable fragments of alterity” which spring up time and again “to importune” the interpretative apparatus of centers and institutions of learning and knowledge (Certeau 1988). These traces reveal the tactics – as opposed to the “strategies” of power – used by groups which find themselves “at the margins of history” and which occupy “zones of silence” (Certeau 1988, 79): heretics, mystics, possessed, as Certeau defines them; people not dissimilar to the Lazzaretti personage examined by Gramsci (Green 2002, 13; Hobsbawm 1965, 65–73). Differently from the interpretation given by Italian “intellectuals” (Lombroso and Barzellotti) who presented “narrow, individual, pathologic, etc. explanations” (Q3, §12), Gramsci analyzes the conditions and the historical processes that have determined subordination. He displays even more sarcasm when commenting on Manzoni’s “caste attitude,” towards the so-called “humble classes.” “In the novel The Betrothed,” Gramsci writes, “there is not one common person who is not teased or laughed at … They are depicted as wretched and narrow people with no inner life. Only the nobles have an inner life” (Q23, §51). Gramsci cannot avoid noticing that the official interpretation of the subalterns offered by Italian intellectuals does not rest merely on a narrow definition but strikes at the very heart of their personhood as human beings, leaving them incapable of “an inner life.” As a conclusion to his analysis, Green summarizes the Gramscian position thus: (1) it is possible to produce a history of the subalterns; (2) these groups evolve according to phases or degrees of political organization; (3) the hegemonic context in which subalterns find themselves (the political, social, economic, and

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  93 cultural milieu) promotes and strives to maintain the situation of subalternity; and (4) despite these difficulties, subaltern groups are able to transform their social subordination (Green 2002, 15). At this point, Green examines recent trends in publications by the Subaltern Studies collective, headed by Ranajit Guha, which taking inspiration from Gramsci has disseminated the term “subaltern” internationally. In his analysis, Green includes Spivak’s article (1988) and prefaces his argument by maintaining that both Spivak’s and Guha’s reading of Gramsci is based almost exclusively on Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971) and therefore offers a very restricted interpretation of the Gramscian concept of the “subaltern.” Yet whilst Guha’s reference to Gramsci seems motivated by an acknowledgement of Gramsci’s relevance to the Subaltern Studies project (Guha 2009), Spivak’s intentions seem to be different, as I demonstrate below (Buttigieg 1998, 56). The shortcomings of Guha’s approach is emphasized also by Spivak, who defines as “essentialist and taxonomic” Guha’s description of subalterns as “different from the elite.” According to Spivak, the discourse of Subaltern Studies is intrinsically flawed because it relies on British, nationalist, and colonialist documents, in which subalterns leave minimal traces. If the representation of subalterns finds itself “inscribed” into the dominant discourse, Spivak concludes “the subaltern cannot speak.” Clearly, this position dissociates itself from a Gramscian approach when referring to the search for “traces” offered by the subaltern.

Can the subaltern speak? Not merely a rhetorical question Taking into consideration Green’s meticulous analysis, I want to propose a further reflection on Spivak’s question Can the Subaltern Speak? which “has gone around the world” (Baratta 2008) and never ceases to challenge our intellect. Spivak does not seem at all interested in deepening a reflection on the Gramscian discourse on the subaltern, as she herself has pointed out (Spivak 2004).1 Rather, Spivak underlines at various stages that her critique of both the occidental “desire” to problematize the subject and the way in which the “third-world” subject is represented in Western discourse, finds pertinent and ample support in Marx and Derrida, thus making Gramsci – presumably – redundant. She maintains that the occidental intellectual production colludes with the international economic interests of the West, a position with which I am in complete agreement. What leaves me perplexed is not so much her proposal of an alternative analysis of relations between “Western discourses” and the possibility of “speaking of (or for) the subaltern woman” (Spivak 1988, 271), and not even so much her choice of casestudy – the abolition of the “widows’ sacrifice” (sati) by the British in India – but more the process she adopts to reach this end. It seems clear that Spivak is interested not only in exposing the deficiencies of “the Western subject,” but she is also interested in taking an explicit position within the struggle for “intellectual supremacy” in the West. At a time when on the US intellectual scene the alternative choices are between the poststructuralist positions of Foucault/Deleuze or Derrida, Spivak sides with the latter. Indeed, this is apparent when she states that her essay was written “whether in defence of

94  Cosimo Zene Derrida or not” (291), or when she affirms that “this is not an apology” (292). The counterposition Foucault-Derrida is most noticeable at the beginning of part three of her article, where Spivak writes with perceptible dissent referring to the choice of US academics and students who prefer Foucault to Derrida (Spivak 1988, 291). This critique had already been raised in an apparently harmless note: It is important to note that the greatest “influence” of Western European intellectuals upon US professors and students happens through collections of essays rather than long books in translation. And, in those collections, it is understandably the most topical pieces that gain a great currency. (Spivak 1988, 309) No objection can be raised to this argument, except that Spivak is accusing her North American colleagues of operating in the same way she has in relation to Gramsci. I confine myself here to the substantial acknowledgment by Spivak of the advantages of deconstruction as a methodology appropriate to resisting the assimilation of Alterity, as this happens in the imperialist formation of the colonial subject. In more specific terms, Spivak maintains that even efforts carried out by anthropology, history, political science, and sociology “will, in the long run, cohere with the work of imperialist subject constitution, mingling epistemic violence with the advancement of learning and civilization. And the subaltern woman will be as mute as ever” (1988, 295). Perhaps we should deduce that, precisely because Derrida’s text does not contain the word “woman,” the latter becomes an inaccessible absence and for that very reason inassimilable by Derrida’s text and hence not exposed to logocentrism. This motivates Spivak’s choice to propose for reflection the silence of a woman (her grandmother’s sister) who, in 1926, hanged herself in her own father’s house in Calcutta. Ten years after her death, it was discovered that Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri – this woman – was part of a group supporting independence and, unable to carry out a political assassination assigned to her, killed herself. For Spivak this suicide becomes “an unemphatic, ad hoc, subaltern rewriting of the social text of sati-suicide” (308), given that at the end “the subaltern as female cannot be heard or read.” (ibid.).2 Spivak’s critique, both against British imperialism in its intent to carry out a civilizing mission, and against fanatical nationalism, is impeccable both from historical and literary perspectives. The analysis of texts leads Spivak to conclude that sati is the result of a “grammatical error,” thus stressing once again the impossibility of recovering the subaltern woman as a subject. In her very last paragraph, Spivak reiterates once more the supremacy of Derridian deconstruction – “which I do not celebrate as feminism as such” (308) – over the positions of Foucault and Deleuze. I fully concur with Spivak that Derrida’s radical critique has had a decisive impact in exposing “the danger to appropriate the other by assimilation.” I also share her view that Derrida provides us with useful analytical tools with which to contest the violent supremacy of the occidental Logos-subject. But I also maintain that Derrida is not the only theorist within Western thought to question the subject and to motivate ethical responsibilities that resist the assimilation of the

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  95 Other. I believe a return to Gramsci’s thesis on subaltern groups is imperative to avoid mystifying traps: Gramscian theory, always directed towards praxis, is no less demanding. Without diminishing the value of Spivak’s reading of events, we could perhaps put forward a more radical critique meant to contrast both Western imperialism in India and the persistence of colonialism within postcolonial India. The original title of Spivak’s article was “Power, Desire, Interest” and as such it awakens possible Gramscian reflections. There are, indeed, a few questions which need to be addressed. The first would be: why did the British feel the need to abolish the “widows’ suicide” (sati) and, judging it an abhorrent tradition, try to justify their colonial enterprise as a “civilizing mission”? Why did the abolition of “Untouchability” not receive the same consideration by the colonizers? In a sense, Untouchability more than sati would seem to include Western ideological imperialism connected with colonial economic exploitation, as Spivak rightly maintains. Whilst the practice of sati had been formally abolished in the Presidency of Bengal in 1829, only as late as 1833 did the British Parliament approve the “Slavery Abolition Act.” In South Asia today, Dalits represent the quintessence of this reality, not only from an economic and social point of view, but also from an ontological perspective, touching the order of being and of human personhood. Our main concern is that at the basis of their subalternity there lies an ideology defining them as less-than-human, which is then translated and ramified in very concrete terms in the daily life of Dalits. For them subalternity becomes a spatial/territorial, economic, social, educational, and, above all, religious/ontological segregation. This is also the poignant and powerful meaning of the word “Dalit” – “broken, downtrodden.” The adoption of the term Dalit as self-designation springs out of the awareness and perception of the oppression/humiliation (Guru 2009) they have to endure: the real subaltern in Gramscian terms. When the word Dalit is spoken by a non-Dalit it might have the character of a derogatory remark. Yet for Dalits themselves the term has become a place of resistance and a reason for struggle. The question thus returns – making today an ever more urgent appeal – for the subaltern-Dalits of South Asia: “Can the subaltern speak?” If Derridian deconstruction of the occidental subject prevents us from hearing the cry of the subaltern, then Gramsci becomes indispensable in calling the Western subject to its ethical responsibilities, because this is an ethical question. If upholding the sati tradition can be ascribed to a grammatical error, then which grammatical error is it that allowed Untouchability to exist and persist in South Asia? If it is true that the Western subject has imposed an imperial domination through the “violence of episteme,” which episteme and what different epistemology validate the continuity of Untouchability? Besides the Manusmirti there is also the interpretation of these scriptures by the “centers of knowledge” and the creation of apparatuses – including mythologies (Zene 2007) – which further validate caste and Untouchability. We witness here the confluence of hegemony employed by civil society – in different ways within South Asia – with hegemony exercised by the State (Buttigieg 1998, 59–60) in a concurrence that preserves caste and Untouchability, notwithstanding the fluidity of these concepts and their different construal from the precolonial through the postcolonial period.

96  Cosimo Zene I do not stand in opposition to the feminist stance adopted by Spivak. My proposal is in fact to radicalize Spivak’s position even further. If a young woman belonging to a high caste kills herself without explanation and that gesture is interpreted as the “silence of the subaltern,” my reply is that Dalit women are doubly subaltern, both as women and as Dalit. Not only does the Dalit woman speak and talk, but she wants to be listened to through words, poetry, singing, dancing, and working – and more precisely the always underpaid extra-work. Often the Dalit woman finds herself compelled to subtract a handful of rice from the family dinner, sell that rice, and pay for her daughter’s education, so that the latter will not, like her, be illiterate, but will learn to defend herself from within and outside the group (Zene 2002). Besides inspiring a different understanding of “dalitness” within their own communities, Dalit Women have also motivated feminist scholarship to challenge Brahmanical feminism (Rao 2003; Tharu 2003; Rege 2004, 2006; Narayan 2006), to address anew the “Caste Question” (Rao 2009) and to postulate the Dalit as a “new political subject” (Rao 2008). There are thus many reasons – around 200 million reasons in fact, equal to the number of Dalits in South Asia – that compel me to radicalize our reflection, in this sense Gramscian, on the subaltern.

“Learning to learn from the subaltern” In more recent interventions (Spivak 1990b, 1993, 1999, 2000), especially a keynote address delivered at the UCSB (Spivak 2004), Spivak reaffirms some key concepts when, for instance, she says: “No one can say ‘I am a subaltern’ in whatever language.” She reiterates well-known positions, such as her dedication to theoretical study, asserting clearly that she is not a political activist, and that she proposes to recuperate the role of abstraction when upholding concepts such as the State and secularism. In her UCSB communication, Spivak maintains that the “old subaltern” is replaced by a “new subaltern,” asserting that she “read Gramsci separately.” This “new subaltern,” however, highlights Spivak’s own trajectory: by way of her commitment (“my fieldwork”) during the past 15–20 years promoting education among tribal groups (Adivasis) in North Bengal, Spivak has discovered multiple levels of subalternity. The “new subaltern” appears to her as “very permeable” and thus exposed to the risk of being not only represented, but also exploited by the global market. Through this, Spivak has reached a conclusion that leads her to a pedagogic philosophy: “learn from the subaltern,” and more precisely “learn to learn from below.” For this to happen we must acknowledge that subalterns are in fact able and allowed not only to speak and to talk but also “to teach.” She makes references, for instance to the pertinent “logic” used by Adivasis, insisting that “logic is not the property of Europe.” Once again, I believe that Derrida is not alone in highlighting the problematic character of the occidental subject and that a deconstructivist position leaves us insolvent until a manifest ethical stance intervenes to urge the Western subject to become accountable and responsible. Spivak’s intention of “learning how to learn from the subaltern,” can be put into practice when this ethical subject is ready “to learn how to listen to, in order to learn from the subaltern.” This pedagogy seems eminently Gramscian to me, in that it looks at

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  97 “integral history” as an “integral historian,” ready to listen and to search for those “traces” that will allow us to recognize elements of resistance. In her speech at Santa Barbara, Spivak hints at personal details – she belongs to the Bengali middle class, she is an “old socialist,” a non-believer and so does not consider herself Hindu – all reasonable standpoints and irreproachable personal choices. However, when these choices are pushed to the extreme, they prevent Spivak from seeing reality through the eyes of the integral historian. The fact that she does not consider herself Hindu does not mean that a great part of the hegemonic Indian civil society has renounced considering itself Hindu. In renouncing to be a Hindu, Spivak does not seem to feel the need to discuss in depth the presence in India of the caste system as a direct consequence of Hinduism at a social level. Once again, this does not acknowledge that for many the caste system constitutes a most “painful” reality. As a consequence, she prefers to talk, even in Marxist terms, of social class. However, given this premise, I think that one cannot avoid taking caste into consideration, even when one proposes a discourse on class consciousness. It appears impossible not to perceive that this hegemonic religious ideology justifies an apparently immutable stratification of society, hence providing a validation for the presence of subaltern groups within the caste system. Moreover, we need to move “beyond caste” in order to identify those human groups who are not even considered worthy to belong to the castes and are thus defined as “Outcastes,” and hence “Untouchables.”3 This is so because some religious-legal texts deem them to be permanently “impure” (asuci), as defined by those who regard themselves as “pure” and want to remain so. If, on the one hand, the choice of those who do not share a caste ideology seems commendable, on the other, it represents a blind choice from the point of view of “integral history,” given that castes do not disappear simply by being ignored, and that the subjugation of Dalits and others still persists. The latter, for instance, lament that when they adhere to left-wing movements and parties, they are still treated as Untouchables by leaders and “intellectuals” who belong to high castes (Bandyopadhyay 2008).4 Returning to Spivak, but also to Gramsci, I would like to point out: (1) If we wish to propose for South Asia a prototype of subaltern who embodies those characteristics expressed by Gramsci, we cannot but think of the Dalits or, more precisely, of Dalit women. (2) The categories used by Spivak to identify the “new subaltern” clearly point back – in addition to a different comprehension of this reality by Spivak – to the phases proposed by Gramsci for subalterns. The diverse groups of Dalits in South Asia reflect this Gramscian classification of phases of subalternity, precisely because they are compelled to progress from the lowest possible level of non-humanity. (3) Gramscian terminology, which contemplates not just “subaltern classes” but also “subaltern groups,” allows us to open up to different circumstances and scenarios, such as those present in South Asia. (4) In their history these Dalit groups manifest moments and “traces” of self-consciousness of their subaltern condition and they offer palpable examples of resistance and a willingness to overcome subalternity – at different levels and to varying degrees – despite the persistence of “disaggregation, multiplicity and juxtaposition.”5 (5) Gramsci invites us to consider “integral history” as an effective methodology employed to discover those “traces” present in the history of Dalits. It

98  Cosimo Zene is a history that takes into account how Dalits express themselves, in order to manifest and overcome their subalternity through their own means and their metalanguage: folklore, popular religiosity, so-called “superstitions,” tales and myths, proverbs, music, dance, theater, figurative arts, or what Boninelli (2007) calls “indigestible fragments” or, more poetically, “Gramscian paths.” No one can be prevented from choosing and defending secularism or agnosticism, as the affirmation of a humanism free from “absolute” ideologies. But we cannot avoid asking ourselves why for subalterns, in this case for Dalits, religion represents an important reality, expressed through both their adherence to various reformist movements within Hinduism (Bhakti, Vaisnava, Sanskritization) or their conversion to other religions such as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity (Zelliot 2004). Even prior to judging whether their commitment to these movements and religions has effectively resolved their condition of subalternity, we must question the reasons behind their choices and seek to understand their ultimate motivations (Díaz-Salazar 1991). In a socio-historical context that defines human beings in terms of their ability to relate to and get closer to the divine, it seems obvious that for those who are excluded, ostracized, and effectively denied this choice, there remains no alternative but to demonstrate their ability to achieve proximity to the divine, if only in a polemical manner. If “religious language” is reserved by hegemonic powers to maintain the subaltern’s subjugation, then it seems logical – even when different from Western logics and epistemology – that subalterns use this very language to reaffirm themselves and their human dignity.6 In other words, if to possess Dharma – which we commonly translate as “religion,” but which also implies law, moral code, and duty – means to be human and hence capable of practising dharmikota (religiosity/religiousness) and of taking upon oneself the range of implied responsibilities, then it is evident that Dalits, deprived of the possibility of achieving Dharma, will do everything in their power to prove and assert their dharmikota. If this is what is asked of me in order to attest to my “being a person,” then I will consider all possible mechanisms and will use every means to attain this. I have no alternative but to use the existing language-code also as a metalanguage in order to “announce” (to speak and to talk) that I too am human. And there is nothing more “Gramscian” than this. Following Eleanor Zelliot’s lead, recent scholarship in India has emphasized the socio-religious and cultural dimensions present in the Dalit-subaltern experience (Bhagavan and Feldhaus 2008a, 2008b; Zelliot 1996, 2004).

“We too are humans” (Amrao je manus) The question of “humanity” seems to be at the core, even in Gramscian terms, when summing up all other concerns that affect the life of Dalits. This is the issue taken up by Baratta in his reflection on the subaltern when he asks, “What is a human being?” thus combining the Gramscian enquiry with a Heideggerian slant on the “sense of being” (Baratta 2004, 128). If Dalits in South Asia experience a negation of their being as “humans” – not just as a social practice but from an ontological perspective (“the ontological hurt endured by untouchables”: Gheeta

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  99 2009, 107) – then we must conclude they have been placed at the lowest degree of subalternity. Furthermore if, once they have reached the far end of “non-being,” they continue to tell us “I am a human being, too!” then it becomes a duty for the integral historian to retrace their journey – perhaps together with them – so as to discover those “traces of resistance” that their history offers. I share Spivak’s pedagogical philosophy according to which we need to “learn how to learn” from the subaltern, a philosophy I find most Gramscian: learning how to be taught and how to understand, hence to experience how to merge theory with practice, to then return to “my initial theory” in order to purify it from the many trivialities that are burdensome, so as to make it more human and humanizing. I share this position also because I have experienced it myself, while conducting research in Bangladesh among the Rishi, ex-Untouchables and Dalits.7 In my historical-anthropological research, I contacted various Rishi groups distributed in the south-west region of Khulna. Some of these groups have, since 1856, converted to Christianity. My research took me also among those who had not converted and were “affiliated” with Hinduism. One evening during 1989 while in Chuknagar, a missionary who had resided with the Rishi for several years organized a meeting so I could interview their headmen. After exchanging views on the general situation of the group, our conversation turned to the issue of “conversion,” since the missionary had not wanted to “accept” them into Christianity. According to the missionary, they were not yet ready. The headmen insisted, but all their remarks received equally “logical” replies from the missionary. After a long pause, the eldest among them got up and before leaving said to the missionary: “Remember, Father, we too are human beings” (Amrao je manus – Zene 2000). Those words have never left me and still motivate my present research. The elder headman was teaching us to understand his experience as Untouchable-Subaltern and to recognize his desire to define himself differently from the way others identified him. During my stay among the Rishi, I came to verify how those words translated into a common praxis within the group, a praxis “necessarily fragmented and episodic” (Notebook 3, §14), but still containing traces of opposition to hegemonic power. For example, when at election time a local candidate promised to provide a tube-well or build a road for the Chuknagar Rishi in exchange for votes, they asked instead for a small temple, at the center of their quarters, where their rituals could be celebrated. Besides challenging those who drive them “out of the temple,” they were also making a statement to all others that, if the divine was in their midst, they too must be humans. This choice, well beyond “Sanskritization” or against religious ostracism, reveals a desire to obtain socio-religious and political visibility, as the following example shows: likewise during election time, the big Rishi electorate in Dumuria was divided among three different polling stations, so that they could not unite their votes to elect their own candidate, but they nevertheless gained a small majority. Again, the Chuknagar Rishi, hired by the caste-Hindus to play for the Durga Puja, played their drums throughout the night in celebration of Narajan, one of the lesser divinities, always with the intention of showing that they too knew how to be in touch with the divine. The last example comes from the successful Rishi community of Tala, who have become

100  Cosimo Zene agriculturalists and are no longer “cow skinners.” They refused the invitation of the caste-Hindus to celebrate the Durga together with them, and instead did so on their own, spending lavishly and showing great pride. All these “Hindu”-Rishi groups have put much effort, with the help of missionaries, into the education of younger generations. After much time spent among these Rishi groups, it became easier to ask them how they saw themselves. Initially, in fact, their comments were a reflection of what others – caste-Hindus, Muslims, missionaries, police, teachers – would say about them. Only later did they feel at ease to let me know what they thought about themselves. At times I judged their statements false, until I realized that they were projecting a vision of themselves in the future, not just as they were seen by others but most of all as they “wanted to be” seen. I was re-reading Heidegger at that point and I had in front of me the clearest example of the “futurity of being.” I also remembered a passage in Notebook 14, where Gramsci discusses “Pirandello’s Theatre,” introducing there a variation on the question “what is the human being?”: “It seems to me that ‘one’s real nature’ is determined by the struggle to become what one wants to become” (Gramsci 1985, 145). There are many more examples relating to the history of the Rishi that could be cited as a commentary on this “struggle to become what one wants to become.” These examples correspond to the traces left by these “groups without history,” inscribed within the histories of colonial powers or in missionary diaries. For instance, in response to the Census Reports from 1850 onwards, the Rishi used different names in their entries – Chamar, Rishi, Muchi, and also Kristan (Christian) – thus confusing the officials in charge of logging the census data. The Rishi of Baradal, at the beginning of 1900, refused the invitation of the Calcutta Jesuits to convert to Christianity. However, in 1937 they sent a delegation to Calcutta to invite the Jesuits back in order to be “protected” from the police and the many lawsuits made against them. They had been accused of carrying out “illegal activities” and had been threatened to be registered under the Criminal Tribes Act (1871). Later, in 1947, soon after the partition of India, these Rishi found themselves in East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and the Belgian Jesuit Fr. Koster helped them carry out their activity as smugglers, not to enrich themselves, but to survive. The Jesuits, and others subsequently, understood that the “conversion” of the Rishi was a slow process entailing a great deal of bargaining and, according to this logic, the Rishi tried to achieve benefits for themselves, while negotiating with Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, and Protestants (Zene 2002).

From “untouchables” to Dalits If we broaden our reflection to include other Dalit groups in Bangladesh, we will obtain an even more radical perspective, particularly when taking into account certain factors: (1) “Untouchability” should not be part of the ideology of the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. However, neither the partition of India (1948) nor the independence of the country (1971) were sufficient to guarantee equality for Dalits. (2) The Bangladeshi Dalits constitute a substantial minority, and in a more precarious position compared to Indian Dalits. (3) Only ten years ago,

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  101 the word “Dalit” was scarcely used by Bangladeshi Untouchables (BDHR – IDSN 2006). This confirms an unmistakable emergence of self-awareness among Bangladeshi Dalits and a decisive will to make their status as subaltern firstly recognized and then transformed. At present, Dalits in Bangladesh are creating networks both at regional and national levels and seeking collaboration with international organizations (IIDS – IDSN 2008, BDERM, NU and IDSN 2009; AITPN 2009). In 2001 the association Bangladesh Dalits’ Human Rights (BDHR) was created, and in 2005 the Network for Socially Excluded Communities, thus inaugurating a series of meetings of Dalit organizations in the country. In 2006 the BDHR network organized a consultative meeting, with the participation of UN and other international delegates, in order to assess the situation of Dalits in Bangladesh, to prepare a detailed proposal on the presence and consistency of Dalit groups and the creation of an association of these groups. Another suggestion established how Dalits who worked on their own would be free to help fellow Dalits. The representatives insisted that Dalits should take upon themselves the responsibility of the leadership. This self-awareness made them realize it was not enough to gain “small victories” but they had to have an impact at national level. In other words, their interlocutor needed to be the State itself. The sweepers, always considered impure and Untouchables, declared themselves “ready for strike-action.” However, they still needed to solve internal problems regarding their Dalit identity: either keeping the old name of Harijan or adopting instead the name of Dalit: Naming someone Harijan implies that the person is a “son of God” i.e. a person without a father (born of a prostitute or sexual worker), whereas Dalits means “the oppressed people.” … [I]t carries more stigmas for people to label themselves Harijans. … Now there is a conflict because the elderly have always identified themselves as Harijans. ( BDHR – IDSN 2006, 21) This quote contains many “traces” referring to the precarious internal cohesion of Dalits, to the difficulties that await them on the road towards full consciousness of their identity and to the ability to implement possible political choices, but it also represents the effort to overcome those limitations. The whole endeavor confirms that these subaltern groups do experience different degrees of selfconsciousness and find themselves at different stages, in Gramscian terms, in the process of overcoming their subalternity. However, as Spivak recognized, these groups just as other subalterns, are exposed to manipulation by unscrupulous “entrepreneurs” – the “jackals of development” – who see them as exploitable assets on the international market.

Conclusion The present moment seems to be particularly favorable in the history of Gramscian studies. There is no doubt that Gramsci’s ideas have reached places of prestige as well as remote corners of all continents, including South Asia.

102  Cosimo Zene These reflections have been favored by recent translations of his writings, such as the Prison Notebooks, which finally will be available in a complete English edition (Buttigieg 1992; Gramsci 1992, 1996, 2007). Moreover, there has been a real osmosis between Gramscian studies outside Italy and new reflections within Italy, where the novelty of “Gramsci beyond Gramsci” (Baratta 2007) confronts itself with well-established critical-philological studies on the Gramscian lexicon (Frosini e Liguori 2004; Liguori e Voza 2009) and on translation and translatability (Boothman 2004; Jervolino 2008). My own efforts also take this direction, as I try to make Gramsci “readable” and translatable for the Dalits of South Asia, about whom he too, in his own way, had already spoken. Many of the authors quoted here suggest ways to recover and put to good use a Gramscian methodology that recognizes the presence of the subaltern in new contexts and at times different from those analyzed by Gramsci himself. Our task will be to recover those “traces” present in the fragmented history of these groups so as to detect the vital elements that will assist them in overcoming their subalternity. Today, more than ever, the Dalits of South Asia are able to express their resistance to oppression through media to which in the past they had no access. To the renowned creativity of the Dalits who express their experience through singing, music, poetry, dance, and the “beating of drums” (Clarke 2000), a great number of new reflections and publications have now been added, both in the shape of detailed monographs discussing Dalits’ experiences (Charsley and Karanth 1998; Shah 2001; Gorringe 2004; Narayan 2006), and more general studies (Bhatt 2005; Chatterjee 2004; Das 2004; Jenkins 2003; Yagati 2003; Anand 2005; Yadav 2002; Shah 2002; Webster 2007) addressed to current topics in the processes and developments of contemporary Dalit movements (Hardtmann 2009). These efforts are consolidated by the use of the Internet by concerned scholars as well as by Dalits themselves who find it a valuable means to convey their ideas and programs of action (Seminar 2001, 2006). During the past few years a major change has been taking place: the emphasis seems to have shifted from Dalits’ mere awareness of their “oppression,” towards the mobilization of consciousness as a “transforming agent” of subalternity, and hence towards a new path taking them from “desperate cries” to liberating action. This new line of thought, in addition to regaining the historic figures of the “Dalit question” – such as Jotirao Pule, Valangkar, Periyar, and Ambedkar (Chatterjee 2004) – addresses the formation of methodological concepts which, by revealing the many spheres in which subalternity is present, offer feasible solutions to overcome it. A few months before his death in 1956, in a last desperate attempt to recover his humanity, the Dalit leader Ambedkar (Zelliot 2004) converted to Buddhism, along with a large number of “Untouchable” Mahars. Prior to this, in 1927, Ambedkar, together with his followers, publicly burned copies of Manusmirti, and in 1930, while prompting them to enter Hindu temples, he exhorted them with these words: It is not true that entry into Hindu temples will solve your whole problem. Our problem is very broad. It extends into the political, social, religious and economic spheres. Today’s satyagraha is a challenge to the Hindu mind.

Self-consciousness of the Dalits as subalterns  103 From this true satyagraha we shall see whether Hindu society is ready to treat us as human beings.8 For many countries in South Asia, the existing presence of subaltern groups, particularly of Dalits, reveals a certain failure of the “democratic State.” The situation of Dalits in contemporary India, defined as the “most populous democracy in the world,” invites us to think critically and rigorously about those categories so intertwined with the grasp of “subalternity”: state, civil society, and hegemony. All this prompts us to consider how, for Gramsci, “hegemony and civil society remit to unequal power relations” and that Gramsci “highlights the limits of modern democracy” (Buttigieg 1998, 55). At this point the question – the Gramscian question – returns to mind as significant as ever, open and still unanswered: “Which conclusions could an analysis of civil society reach, when accomplished today in a Gramscian style – hence an analysis which is critical, concrete, specific, and from the point of view of the subaltern?” (Buttigieg 1998, 62). Or, from the point of view of our reflection: “if, indeed, the Dalit is an inaugural political subject, then how is it possible to write an account of India’s [and South Asia’s] political modernity without engaging with the problem of Dalit freedom and emancipation?” (Rao 2008, 25).

Acknowledgments I wish to thank Annamaria Baldussi and the participants at the Convegno Internazionale “Gramsci in Asia e in Africa” (Universitá di Cagliari, 12–13 February 2009); Francisco Fernandez Buey and the participants at the Congreso Internacional “Gramsci y la Sociedad Intercultural” (Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 3–5 December 2009). I am also grateful to Joseph Buttigieg, Giorgio Baratta, Antonio Deias, David Ruccio, Anne Sassoon, Marcus Green, Fabio Gironi, Tullio Lobetti, Sergio Targa, Carla Tronu Montané and one anonymous RM reviewer for their pertinent comments.

Notes 1 Spivak affirms that: “I was just beginning to read the Subaltern Studies then and I was therefore dependent upon that group’s reading of Gramsci’s notion of the subaltern. In my essay I made it clear that I was talking about the space as defined by Ranajit Guha” (Spivak 1993, 288). However, she never felt the need to return to Gramsci: “I think the word ‘subaltern’ is losing its definitive power” (ibid. 290). 2 Spivak refers to the subtle distinction between “to speak” and “to talk,” according to which “within the definition of subalternity as such there is a certain not-being-able-tomake-speech acts that is implicit” (1993, 290–1). 3 The authors of Subaltern Studies have often uncritically adopted the position of Louis Dumont (1970) with regard to the interpretation of the caste system. 4 See “Feminist Narratives of Indian Left,” available online at http://readerswords. wordpress.com/2008/04/14/feminist-naratives-of-indian-left/ (accessed 18 November 2010). 5 “It may remain a practical impossibility to organize Untouchables as a single, all-India, political force, but as a whole Dalits are now more committed than ever before to what

104  Cosimo Zene they increasingly recognize as their common struggle” (Mendelsohn and Vicziany 1998, 1). 6 “We argue that, for Gramsci, fragmentation of any social group’s ‘common sense,’ worldview and language is a political detriment, impeding effective political organization to counter exploitation but that such fragmentation cannot be overcome by the imposition of a ‘rational’ or ‘logical’ worldview. Instead, what is required is a deep engagement with the fragments that make up subaltern historical, social, economic and political conditions” (Green and Ives 2009, 3). 7 The (Muchi)-Rishi of Bengal and Bangladesh are leather-workers, skinners, and musicians by trade and share the fate of the Chamars present all over the Indian Subcontinent (Zene 2002). 8 From the speech of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, 2 March 1930, at the Kala Ram Mandir, in Nashik (Maharashtra), in the presence of 15,000 Dalits.

8 Gramscian politics and capitalist common sense Evan Watkins

“Gramsci” is a name that has been used for a long time by a lot of people to authorize political attention to cultural practices, as against many different versions of economism that would seem to ignore fields of culture altogether. Some of that borrowed authority is of course legitimate enough; Gramsci’s writings do involve lengthy critiques of economism. But some of it is far-fetched indeed, since I think it’s rather difficult to read much of the Notebooks while trying to sustain the idea that economics was only a secondary interest or concern for Gramsci. The existing imbalance of attention, however, means that much interpretive work still remains to be done on Gramsci’s texts. We need to follow up early and pioneering essays that pointed out the importance of economics for Gramsci and the importance of what Gramsci had to say about economics. We need to understand better how Gramsci understood the ensemble of relations linking economic and cultural practices in specific historical moments. Some of that work is now being done, and I certainly don’t want to deny its force and value by trying to sidestep for the moment the interpretive dilemmas it raises. My more limited immediate interest, however, involves thinking about economics and economic issues in the context of a far more typically studied and commented on series of passages in the Notebooks regarding “common sense.” These passages have assumed a great deal of importance for a number of different reasons. In some of the early and heavily ethnographic work produced at the Birmingham Center, for example, Gramsci’s remarks provided a rationale for taking seriously how people understood their everyday behaviors in ways that couldn’t be reduced to some top-down theorizing of ideological indoctrination. For while Gramsci recognized that such everyday common-sense making was keyed around a complex of culturally dominant “leading ideas,” he also emphasized that something always happened to those leading ideas in the multiple spaces of everyday behaviors. That “something” wasn’t always a matter of overt political challenge by any means. Gramsci was no simple populist imagining one could find radical wisdom just by listening to the true “voice of the people.” Indeed, his discussions of common sense emphasize that there always are many voices to be heard, often in the same statement, that rarely if ever line up coherently. The generative insight for this cultural studies work involved the importance of registering all voices, in all their complexities, rather than trying to parse them cleanly across some unequivocal divide between the politically progressive and the politically reactionary.

106  Evan Watkins In more general terms, these passages in the Notebooks seemed to a great many theorists an almost paradigmatic instance of how Gramsci demonstrated the material effects of a complex cultural ensemble of relations. That is, they could be played straight into the image of “Gramsci” as “cultural theorist.” Without going very far into the formidable interpretive difficulties posed by Gramsci’s remarks on common sense, two things at least seem clear. On the one hand, the equivocal, multiform, and often contradictory character of common sense at any given historical moment makes it available to be mobilized in the service of potentially very different political directions. Thus, common sense can become a material force not despite but because of its “incoherence.” Gramsci often makes this polemical point in the Notebooks, in challenging political leaders who attempt to ground their assertions in what “everybody knows” as just “common sense.” On the other hand, it is altogether unlikely that any direction can be realized that doesn’t in some way engage itself deeply with some determinate aspect of that multiform common sense in the present. Common sense also becomes a material force insofar as it imposes parameters of constraint on what is possible politically at any given moment. It is indeed important to recognize and understand the material effects of complex cultural relations, and Gramsci’s discussions of common sense have contributed a great deal to that understanding as it has been realized in so much recent cultural studies work. But one unfortunate fallout from this emphasis on cultural relations is a retreat from any comparable attempt at rethinking the complexities of economic relations. It doesn’t seem to me much of an exaggeration to claim, as J. K. Gibson-Graham does in The End of Capitalism (as we knew it) (1996), that for left theorists no less than for the hymnists of the global triumph of capitalism, “the economy” seems a massive, stable, determinate, and omnipresent force – no hope there for initiating radical political change. Left theorists, that is, often seem to be telling virtually the same story as “The Triumph of Capitalism,” only with the narrative values reversed from millennial blessing to millennial monster. In contrast to such a monumental demonizing of “the economy,” and though I know of no such usage of adjectival modifier in Gramsci’s own writing, I do think it is consistent with his discussion of common sense to imagine a specific complex at work that we might call a capitalist common sense – a range of everyday practices, values, beliefs, behaviors, and so on that foregrounds specifically economic relations. The choice of “capitalist” as an adjective – rather than, say, a more generic “economic” common sense – would recognize what both left and right imaginaries mythologize into the omnipresence of global capitalism. But linking the adjective to a Gramscian understanding of the multiform, even contradictory character of common sense yields a significantly different picture than the image of some vast, stable, unidirectional force of the economy. In what follows, I want to explore briefly some hopeful possibilities – and some dangers – in pursuing my Gramscian-inspired figure of a capitalist common sense. The much-publicized “collapse of Communism” and the corresponding perception of a now completely global “free-market” system make Fred Block sound almost prophetic toward the beginning of Post-Industrial Possibilities. He’s been

Gramscian politics and capitalist commonsense  107 talking about what he calls the “popular understanding” of society when he adds: “In our own period it is economic ideas – and, ironically, pre-Keynesian economic ideas in particular – that have filled the vacuum left by the silences of contemporary social theory” (1990, 2). I’m not completely comfortable with the terms of this formulation. The vacuum metaphor seems to imply that we’ve been hit by a natural disaster, and find ourselves in the eye of a hurricane rather than in the midst of a historically constructed space of political direction. And I don’t think “social theory” has been all that silent by any means. Yet Block’s insight seems to me a useful way to begin filling out a notion of what capitalist common sense might involve. As Jack Amariglio and David Ruccio explain in “The Transgressive Knowledge of Ersatz Economics” (1999), professional economists are likely to treat everyday discourses with disdain. Nevertheless, as Block suggests, economics and economic issues have now become common parlance, in often surprisingly intricate detail. The capitalism that during the cold war, for example, often signified simply the ideologically desirable alternative to communism, now appears in a great many multiple ways in a number of different discourses, generating seemingly endless debates over whose capitalism, for whom. Yet there is much to support in Block’s designation of this complex of commonsense currents as predominantly “pre-Keynesian,” by which I understand him to mean more specifically a kind of neoclassical economics that seems relatively untouched by Keynesian assumptions. Crude ideas of competition, for example, have something of the explosive force of a return of the repressed – justifying everything from the familiar downsizing and outsourcing of work forces to the prodigies of effort to which Gates drove his Microsoft employees in the development of Internet Explorer 3.0. Likewise, the dismantling of the welfare state (with the corollary that any attempt to establish economic direction and control through state-directed formulation of specific policies is a mistake from the beginning) simply seems to have walked around Keynesian arguments into some much earlier form of thinking about the “proper” relation between the state and “the market.” Even the now quite elaborately realized corporate vocabulary of flexibly specialized production, as the ostensible successor to the Fordist mass production Gramsci examined, nevertheless often projects the self-image of a return to what conservative commentator James Glassman (1996) succinctly labels “good old unfettered capitalism.” And not surprisingly, it is possible to find similar currents of ideas in a whole range of publicly expressed opinions, from newspaper letters to the editor to citizen voices at city council meetings and the admonitions of small business associations in local communities. While Block could point, quite rightly, to this complex of ideas as pre-Keynesian, it doesn’t seem to me entirely far-fetched either to say, for example, that much of the corporate thinking associated with flexible specialization, and with what Rifkin (1995) calls just-in-time employment – the now widespread practice of outsourcing work to temporary workers – often sounds instead like at least some versions of a “post”-modern form of reasoning. Perhaps even more tellingly, the marketing message spread by motivational guru Tom Peters and others should certainly have a familiar “post-” ring to it. Peters sums up his marketing philosophy with what he claims is the essential question to ask. He’s not interested in

108  Evan Watkins old-fashioned attempts to manufacture consumer desires, or manipulate the result of marketing surveys, or whatever. The essential question to ask yourself before marketing anything, he says, is, “is it weird enough?” Peters may sound like he’s acting out a version of our familiar intellectual formula of capitalist appropriation (i.e. find whatever weirdnesses you can in the culture around you and market them), but he’s not really into co-opting cultural stuff in that sense. He’s been explaining how to produce weirdness faster than anyone else. It’s certainly true that “classical” formulations of market capitalism, going back to Adam Smith, have emphasized that markets always appear disorderly, chaotic, and so forth, to the despair of would-be state planners. Smith’s famous “hand” after all is, precisely, “invisible,” not an exoskeletal precision of organization laid out in front of you. What seems to me post-like about Peters’s argument is his delight in parading an assumption of fundamental weirdness throughout – what you see is what you get. The subjectivities engaged in market activities are explosively different; don’t ever expect some hidden harmonies to emerge. If you’re lucky, they won’t. Gramsci’s work yields a useful answer to this apparent puzzle of how widespread economic ideas could appear simultaneously pre-Keynesian and postmodern. For Gramsci’s familiar characterization of common sense as equivocal, contradictory, and multiform suggests that we should hardly be surprised to find such contradictory currents within a specifically capitalist common sense. Such a Gramscian-inspired recognition of multiple currents of capitalist common sense in the present – for which I’ve used “pre-Keynesian” and “postmodern” labels as a conveniently dramatic contrast – seems to me one good way to begin the kind of critique of ideas of a monumentalized global capitalism that Gibson-Graham finds so necessary for left politics. If, as Gramsci always argued, no leading direction could emerge except by mobilizing within these multiple currents of common sense, then there’s reason to question an image of implacable capitalist advance around the globe. Any such “advance” would have to be recognized instead as having proceeded in fits and starts, reshaping itself differently on different occasions and in different locations, and always vulnerable to interruptions and countermobilizations of different currents of common-sense practices. Nevertheless, there seems to me some considerable danger in a potential tendency to freeze Gramsci’s characterization of common sense into an intellectual formula, in effect a kind of complacent common sense of intellectual critique that has perhaps become all too comfortable. Gramsci’s own discussions, after all, give no particular emphasis to what now so often appears as the operative, tactical corollary to his characterization of common sense: whatever gaps, dissonances, silences, even contradictions seem apparent to critical analysis in common-sense formations, common sense nevertheless always seems to make sense to those caught within its interstices. In my context, this would translate into the assertion that while upon inspection capitalist common sense may well evidence multiple, even contradictory currents, people are still mystified into an acceptance of a uniform and omnipresent capitalism as natural, normal, even desirable. I’ve called such an assertion a tactical corollary to Gramsci’s discussion, because it is this corollary that assigns a crucial and potentially insurrectionary

Gramscian politics and capitalist commonsense  109 role to critical intellectuals: the task of ideological demystification, the process of making visible the incoherence of what common sense takes at face value. Demystification, that is, is the primary means by which intellectuals can begin to bring “good sense” out of “common sense.” Thus, if capitalist common sense somehow always manages to legitimize even the most brutal forms of economic exploitation, our task as critical intellectuals begins in the demonstration of the fundamental incoherence of that legitimizing efficacy. As I suggested above, Gramsci’s discussions of common sense seem to me usefully extended toward a notion of capitalist common sense, as a critical challenge to the monumentalizing of global capitalism. But for a number of reasons I’m not comfortable at all with this tactical corollary, or with the importance it assigns to an intellectual’s task of critical demystification of common sense. Gramsci taught us to look for equivocal, contradictory currents of common sense, but he never implied that we should expect this multiply realized common sense always and everywhere to work in exactly the same way. On the whole, I think it is reasonably accurate to say that looking at common-sense formations in 1930s Italy, Gramsci did often suggest that common sense seemed mystified, allowing one to behave as if acting on a coherent set of assumptions when they were in fact – sometimes radically incoherent. I see no reason to assume automatically, however, that multiple currents of capitalist common sense in a late-1990s United States work by a similar process of masking incoherencies. And if they don’t, it’s worth questioning the value of assuming some process of intellectual demystification as a primary political task. What if the emergent formation of capitalist common sense that I have sketched, perhaps melodramatically, by pointing to its impacted logjams of pre-Keynesian and postmodern currents, works instead by accustoming us not only to recognize but to be at home with such contingencies, partialities, and even contradictions? To expect neither coherence nor telic security? To revel in (as Peters does) the pleasure of weirdnesses exploding everywhere from so many differently inflected vectors of subjectivities and desires? Or, alternatively, to be content with a cynical passivity of clean knowledge that the “invisible hand” has disappeared entirely? Suppose, indeed, capitalist common sense in our present circumstances in the United States works by this double process of familiarizing contradiction and encouraging cynical passivity rather than by masking contradictions and projecting some image of immanent and always hidden coherence. Wouldn’t it then seem little more than redundant to such a working version of capitalist common sense to “demystify” it by announcing, “Hey folks, the pieces don’t really fit together”? Rather than galvanized to political action, one might imagine a common-sense response to such intellectual demonstration as resembling the actions of the driver and passenger in that inimitable Volkswagen commercial, who simply dump the smelly chair they’ve picked up and continue on to the syncho beat of their minimalist German music. My guess is that, like myself, most of us have come to treasure those classroom moments when some student or another explodes with the sudden realization that utterly incommensurable imperatives lurk within the bland facade of familiar, business-as-usual practices. And in my experience of late, a surprising

110  Evan Watkins number of these bursts of awareness have arrived in relation to economic issues. But if you treasure such moments, today’s classrooms are likely to be increasingly frustrating, and you’re likely to leave the classroom feeling more like a smelly chair than a political catalyst. Not because the moments of student awareness are rare – or becoming even rarer – but because as they seem to me to multiply, they bring less and less in their wake. Or perhaps more exactly, the disturbances they generate are subsumed within what seems almost an equilibrium – a permanent condition of constant stress, projected inward, and constant irritation, projected outward. It’s a condition that, like the hope inscribed on the cryogenically frozen body, remains imposed by an absent future – without anything else going on at all. However viral these symptomologies of irritation and stress, the immanent demystification promised by critical intellectual work just doesn’t seem to me to offer an effective diagnosis. Historically, any form of cool, cynical, knowing passivity has always posed a particularly difficult challenge to left activism. The forms such knowing cynicism seem to me to have taken in a capitalist common sense in the present are no exception, and perhaps the more difficult insofar as they now appear as, precisely, part of everyday common sense rather than confined to disengagé intellectuals. But surely it should be possible to recognize also that such cynicism arises in part at least from a perception that, contradictory or not, global capitalism is now the only going game around. Alternatives of any kind have simply disappeared. So – cynically, or ecstatically (like Peters) – you play, regardless. Rather than continuing to refine the efforts of demystification in these circumstances, I think we’d be much better off by, among other things, trying to show where, how, and why capitalism in any form is not always the only game in town. After all, it’s not always the case by any means that goods or services produced in recognizably capitalist ways are also marketed in capitalist ways. Conversely, any of a wide range of goods – from craft goods to show dogs – might well be sold in a familiar capitalist marketplace while evidencing little or no signs of a capitalist-organized form of production. So-called black markets in even the most “developed” countries often combine the most high-tech, mobile – and “flexible” – production techniques with marketing that seems in contrast downright feudal. And on closer examination, the much-ballyhooed internationalization of both goods production and finance capital is in fact restricted to relatively few corporate players and countries. Meanwhile, the vast and always expanding service sector should give pause to anyone who thinks local markets are doomed to be absorbed in a relentlessly global market system. As Gramsci always warned in speaking about common sense, there is no reason to infer in speaking about these multiform ensembles of actually existing economic practices that revolution is just around the comer if we would only recognize a “truly radical economics” going on “out there.” There is no automatically radical set of economic practices around any more than there is some authentically populist “voice of the people” in common sense, at least as Gramsci understood it. But against the pedagogies of ecstasy and cynicism in existing currents of capitalist common sense that proclaim global capitalism to be the only game in town, it seems to me worth shifting our focus from the now familiar

Gramscian politics and capitalist commonsense  111 practices of ideological demystification of common sense to a pedagogy that might make more headway by mobilizing and extending alternative economic practices already emergent in any number of locations. The separation of economics from the ostensibly everyday world of cultural practices thus appears in this context as a profound critical mistake for any left politics of cultural studies today. When you assume that cultural practices are everyday, at least potentially open-ended and involving everyone, while economics in contrast appears an alien, global Enemy controlled by international financiers and legitimized by the arid discourses of professional economists, the separation is doubly debilitating. On the one hand, it results in interminable and insoluble debates over the respective importance of economic conditions and cultural factors in determining the real configurations of power relations. And on the other, if perversely, the separation functions to reinforce a dominant commonsense perception of a now global capitalist marketplace that permits no possible alternative. Either way, you must forget a great deal of Gramsci in the process. I don’t mean to suggest, however, that the “answer” lies in some direct “return” to Gramsci’s thinking about common sense, now applied to economic matters. As always in reading Gramsci, the point is that interpretation is only part of the work involved. In order to understand Gramsci’s analysis of common sense, it is necessary to reconstruct what he found in the multiple, contradictory currents of common sense and the many conflicting appeals to common sense in Fascist Italy. But it’s folly to expect to transfer his account directly into our present – to expect that common sense in the present functions exactly like the common sense Gramsci observed. I would justify my perhaps melodramatic sketch of how capitalist common sense functions today in the United States as a way of emphasizing that Gramsci can’t tell you how to do the necessary work now, no matter how well you read him. Correlatively, however, unless you remember why Gramsci was interested in common sense at all, it’s altogether possible that we’ll all be condemned to an economic futures market weird enough for Peters and company to take to the bank.

9 Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism Frank R. Annunziato

The Marxist tradition has long recognized the importance of the trade union in the development of an economic, political, and ideological strategy for social transformation. One of Marx’s earliest formulations on trade unionism can be found in his 1847 polemic against Proudhon, The Poverty of Philosophy. In this work, Marx states that trade unions historically help to end the competition among workers in establishing wage rates. He also advances a more revolutionary, although mechanistic theme: Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. (1963b, 173) Trade unions, or combinations, arise in history to end competition among the workers in order to maintain wages. In the process of building these trade unions, the workers encounter “repression” from the capitalists. The struggle, at first defensive, that is, class against class, now assumes a political characteristic whereby the workers constitute themselves as “a class for itself” and develop class consciousness. In the Communist Manifesto, assessing the historical ascendancy of capitalism, Marx and Engels view trade unionism as an early response to the imposition of capitalist relations of production: The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious, the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (Trade Unions) against the bourgeoisie; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks into riots. (1965, 31)

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  113 The theme is clear: trade unions are theorized again to be defensive institutions created by workers to assist in keeping up their wages. It is also clear that historically workers formed trade unions prior to the birth of Marxism. Trade unions are therefore organizations with an ideological memory that predates Marx’s philosophical revolution. What is not clear, however, is the role these trade unions play in the development of capitalist relations of production. More importantly, from a theoretical/political perspective, and to refer to the second theme of The Poverty of Philosophy, we may ask what are the conditions under which these trade unions develop class consciousness? After the death of Marx and Engels, these unresolved issues created a divisive debate in the Second and Third Internationals concerning the role of the trade union in a strategy for social transformation. This debate continues to this day, consciously or not, in progressive movements throughout the world. Marx never fully explored the dimensions of this debate, because his life’s work was devoted to the gigantic discoveries of Capital. However, from his 1865 speech to the General Council of the First International, later entitled Value, Price and Profit, we learn that trade unions, in and of themselves, do not develop class consciousness: Trade unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system. (1976a, 62) Again, the theme of the trade union as a defensive institution is stressed, but an important critique is added: the trade union need not be revolutionary, and indeed is not revolutionary, unless it seeks the abolition of capitalism. While Marx never fully develops this idea, it nonetheless reappears in both his and Engels’s later writings.1 A fuller theoretical understanding of the historical role of the trade union awaited the second generation of Marxists, notably Lenin2 and the subject of this chapter, Antonio Gramsci, the leader of the Italian Communist Party.

The focus of Gramsci’s Marxism The idea that Gramsci developed Marxist theoretical knowledge of trade unionism may sound strange. Over the last two decades, much has been written about Gramsci’s views on culture, literary criticism, democracy, ideology, and political science. The names of several of the workshops held at a conference at the University of Massachusetts in 1987 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Gramsci’s death could not be more removed from what seems, by comparison, the prosaic world of the trade unions: “Intellectuals, Organic to Artificial”; “Trenches, Lightnings, Stars – Three Media Wars”; and “‘It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing’: Can musicologists understand jazz?” Since the publication of the Quaderni many scholars, both within and outside of the Marxist tradition, have

114  Frank R. Annunziato become familiar with, and regularly employ what has now become a specialized Gramscian lexicon: hegemony, political society, civil society, war of maneuver, war of position, passive revolution, organic intellectuals, and so on. For some scholars, Gramsci is portrayed as an original Marxist thinker in such areas as “power,” “dominance” and “democracy.”3 For others, Gramsci is perceived to be a “productionist,” fascinated with the organization of the modern autocratic factory developed by Frederick Taylor, and therefore “puritanical and contemptuous of popular traditions” (Clark 1977, 69–70). Yet what is forgotten, or at least not sufficiently emphasized in all of this is that Gramsci as a Marxist theoretician, as the head of the Italian Communist Party, as a leading personality in the Communist Third International, devoted his whole life to the creation of socialist revolution. Further, Gramsci’s political practice prior to his imprisonment in 1926 was based almost exclusively upon three sites of human activities: the political party (first the Italian Socialist Party and later the Italian Communist Party), the trade union, and the factory council. He sought to transform these human institutions for the defeat of capitalism and for the establishment of a new socialist order. One can say, in fact, that the brilliant and exciting insights of the Quaderni represent the understandings Gramsci reached in analyzing his real experiences on behalf of the political party, trade unionism, and the factory council, within the framework of Marxist theory.

Gramsci and economism As a preliminary matter, Gramsci’s political and theoretical relationship with the Italian trade unions of his era must be understood in the broader context of the recurring debate (mentioned earlier) within the Marxist tradition concerning the role of organizations, like the trade union, within a strategy for social transformation. What kinds of organizations, politically, economically, and ideologically, are the trade unions? Are trade unions appropriate sites for socialist political intervention? If they are appropriate sites, what are the forms such intervention should take? Are trade unions, in and of themselves, revolutionary organizations? What is the relationship between the economic reforms that trade unions advocate, like higher wages and improved working conditions, and socialist transformation? These represent just a few of the questions raised in this debate. From his early days as a young militant writing for the Socialist Party newspapers Avanti and Il Grido del Popolo, to his direct activities on behalf of the Torino factory councils while editor of Ordine Nuovo during the biennio rosso of 1919–20, and finally as a founder and later capo, General Secretary, of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci actively and powerfully intervened in this debate to advance Marxist theoretical/political practice. From 1917 to 1926, Gramsci worked incessantly with trade unionists throughout Italy and throughout the world. What did Gramsci contribute to a Marxist understanding of trade unionism?4 To answer this, one must understand, in the first instance, some of the major ideological positions that Gramsci and his allies advanced against the riformisti, both within the Italian Socialist Party and within the trade union bureaucracy of their

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  115 era. At the end of this ideological and brief historical excursion, we will arrive at a Gramscian theoretical position on trade unionism. Throughout his political life, Gramsci emphasized that communist militants must participate simultaneously in three kinds of organizations: the trade union, the factory council, and the political party. Gramsci urged this strategy in large measure because of his belief that socialist transformation could be accomplished only through an economic, political, and ideological revolution. He actively fought against the riformisti within the Italian Socialist Party, like Turati, Treves, and d’Aragona, who taught that socialism could be accomplished through parliamentary and trade union means exclusively, within the structure of liberal capitalist democracy. Gramsci wrote in 1919: The Socialists have often, on their knees, accepted the historical reality produced by capitalist initiative; they have fallen in the error of the psychology of the liberal economists: they believe in the perpetuity of the institutions of the democratic State, in their fundamental perfection. According to them, the form of the democratic institutions can be corrected, here and there touched over, but must be fundamentally respected. (1955, 16) In this theoretical fight against what Lenin called “economism” in What Is to Be Done? Gramsci allied theoretically and politically with Lenin in Russia, Rosa Luxemburg in Germany, and Daniel DeLeon in the United States. Economism, called more positively “evolutionary socialism” by its principal theoretician, Edward Bernstein, became a powerful movement within the Second International, and manifested itself in socialist parties everywhere. Bernstein argued that the attainment of parliamentary democratic rights and the legitimation of trade unions in Europe and the United States meant that socialism could be achieved peacefully in modern capitalist liberal democracies through what we would call today the collective bargaining activities of trade unions (the site of economics) and through the election of socialist representatives to parliament (the site of politics). The modern liberal state did not need to be “overthrown” or “smashed” because, according to Bernstein: Feudalism, with its unbending organizations and corporations, had to be destroyed nearly everywhere by violence. The liberal organizations of modern society are distinguished from those exactly because they are flexible, and capable of change and development. They do not need to be destroyed, but only to be further developed. For that we need organization and energetic action, but not necessarily a revolutionary dictatorship. (1975, 163–4) Contrast Bernstein’s words from 1899 to what Gramsci wrote in 1919: We are convinced, after the revolutionary experiences of Russia, Hungary, and Germany, that the socialist state cannot come about from the institutions of the capitalist state, but is a fundamentally new creation with respect to them, if not with respect to the history of the proletariat. The institutions of

116  Frank R. Annunziato the capitalist state are organized for the purpose of free competition: it is not enough to change their personnel to channel their activity in another direction. The socialist state is not yet communism, that is, the implementation of solidaristic economic customs and practices, but it is the state of transition which has the task of suppressing competition by the suppression of private property, classes, and the national economies: this task cannot be accomplished by parliamentary democracy. (1955, 17) The young Gramsci positions himself clearly in the camp of the Leninists within the socialist movement by his condemnation of the strategy followed by the “economists,” namely, changing the personnel in the institutions of the capitalist state.

The theoretical underpinnings of economism For Gramsci, the theoretical basis of economism consisted in its philosophical assumption that politics, economics, and ideology are separate and distinct sites of human activity. This assumption represented a fundamental departure from the dialectical materialism of Marxism, with grave and dangerous consequences. “The economic struggle,” Gramsci wrote, “cannot be separated from the political struggle, and neither the one nor the other can be separated from the ideological struggle” (1971b, 53). In Gramsci’s discourse, no site of human activity, be it economic, political, or ideological, can be separated from any other site of human activity; rather, all sites contain within them tensions and contradictions arising from all other sites. Each site acts and interacts with all other sites and, through this dynamic and continuous interaction, changes the other sites and is changed as well. In truth, each site contains within it the causes and effects of itself and of all other sites. This separation of politics from economics and ideology arises with the hegemony of capitalism as a world system. Gramsci wrote: The schism between economics and politics is an intimate necessity of capitalist civilization; the bourgeoisie is broken down into an infinity of strata with contrasting interests, whence the authoritarian state which balances and regulates these activities, and is alone the synthesis of the entire class. (quoted in Paggi 1970, 65) Capitalism is not merely an economic phenomenon in human history, but must also be understood as a phenomenon which has acquired as well political and ideological hegemony. The theoretical position taken by the “economists” fails to recognize that the capitalist state cannot just be developed, as Bernstein said, but, according to Gramsci, must be replaced. “The revolution which acts to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus and to construct a new state apparatus will interest and involve all the oppressed classes of capitalism” (1955, 136). Socialism is perceived to be a total change in social, political, and cultural relationships that will not only include all “oppressed classes,” but from an important strategic point of view, will also excite these groups so that they will enthusiastically participate in the transformation.

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  117

Gramsci and the Russian Revolution Gramsci’s theoretical/political task as a socialist revolutionary struggling against capitalist hegemony, as well as against the economism which had dominated the socialist movement, led him to rethink, to reanalyze, to reconstruct the traditional Italian workers’ organizations, especially the trade union. This task took a particular twist when the young Gramsci was inspired, like many other revolutionaries of his era, by the success of the October Revolution. The concrete historical proof that socialist transformation was possible within an economically backward country like Russia compelled Gramsci to believe that, by extension, such a revolution was also possible in an economically backward country like Italy. Theoretically, the Russian Revolution also meant a decisive defeat for the economism of the Second International which had interpreted Marx to mean that socialist transformation was only possible in advanced liberal democratic countries. Positing the primacy of economic development in human history, the “economists” had established the “fixed stages” theory of human history, with an unswerving belief in economic determinism.5 Socialism, from their perspective, can only reach its historical moment after a society’s economy has moved, in a more or less linear way, from primitive communism, to slavery, through feudalism, and then to capitalism. Gramsci attacks this attitude in his essay La Rivoluzione Contro il Capitale, in which he praises the Bolsheviks as the antithesis of these “Marxists”: They are not “Marxists” in the sense that they have not compiled from the works of the master a foreign doctrine of dogmatic and undiscussible affirmations. They live Marxist thought, that which will never die. And that thought always poses as the most important factor in history, not ugly economic facts, but man, the society of men, men who develop a social and collective will, and understand the economic facts, judge them, and adapt them to their will, until this [collective will-FRA] becomes the driving power of the economy, the molder of objective reality. (quoted in Macciocchi 1974, 70) The Bolsheviks actively engaged in Marxist political and theoretical practice. They refused to apply abstract formulae to societal realities. For Gramsci, the Bolsheviks sought to understand these social realities, including but not limited to the economic realm, and, in Marxist theory, such understandings are revolutionary. The Russian Revolution also provided Gramsci with a model for the new socialist state, the soviet, as the antithesis of the capitalist democratic state. As an organization of workers, peasants, and soldiers, the soviet eliminates the bifurcation between politics and economics which Gramsci held was created by capitalist society. He wrote in 1919: The Soviet has demonstrated itself to be immortal as a form of organized society which adheres flexibly to the multitudinous, permanent, and vital needs (economic and political) of the Russian people and which incarnates and satisfies the aspirations and hopes of all the world’s oppressed people. (1955, 8)

118  Frank R. Annunziato As a state model based upon production rather than geography, as in capitalist liberal democracies, the soviet involves workers directly and intimately in the new kinds of political and economic questions and decisions created by the newly transformed socialist society. Gramsci describes this distinction from liberal capitalism: Since the workers’ state is a moment in the process of human development which tends to identify its relationships of political life to the technical relationships of industrial production, the workers’ state is not founded on territorial circumstances, but on the organic formations of production: the factories, the work yards, the arsenals, the mines, the farms. (1955, 142) Unlike capitalist ideology, which says that the realm of the political does not extend to production, Gramsci’s theoretical understanding of socialist society not only debunks such a separation, but actively encourages the formation of new institutions which unite both realms. The institution of the Russian soviet system also represented for Gramsci the fulfillment of the theoretical and political strategy that Marx discussed in his analysis of the Paris Commune of 1870–1. Marx had described the revolutionary government established by the Parisian workers and their allies: “It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor” (Marx 1976b, 60). For Gramsci, these words of Marx established the litmus test for socialist revolution: the unification of the political with the economic through the establishment of a workers’ government whereby the producing class assumes political and economic hegemony over the appropriating capitalists. The Russian soviet system exemplified for Gramsci the twentieth-century equivalent of the Paris Commune. He described the Bolsheviks who, “following in the footsteps of Karl Marx had reunited the soviets, the system of soviets with the Paris Commune.” Gramsci would also state in the same article: “the industrial nature of the Commune would be utilized by the Russian communists to understand the soviet, to elaborate the idea of the soviet, to trace the line of action from their party, and to become the party of government” (1955, 148). Based upon the revolutionary success of the Russian soviet system, Gramsci posed the following question to Italian revolutionaries, including himself: It was necessary to study what was happening within the midst of the working masses. Does there exist in Italy, as an institution of the working class, something which can be comparable to the soviet, which participates in its nature? Something which will allow us to affirm: the soviet is a universal form, not just a Russian institution … does there exist a germ, an inkling, a hint of soviet government in Torino? (1955, 147) Gramsci’s response to the inquiry was “yes,” a hint of the soviet system existed in the form of la commissione interna, the internal committee. Included for the first

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  119 time in their collective bargaining agreement with the automaker Italia in 1906, or more than a decade prior to the 1919–20 Torino insurrections, the internal committees were established by the Federation of Italian Metalworkers to intervene in worker disciplinary and discharge claims and their function was clearly limited to this area. They were not intended, as Gramsci and his comrades would later urge, to be involved with either production or distribution questions, and certainly not with the fundamental issues involved with socialist workers’ control of industry. By 1918, the eve of the biennio rosso, the Italian autoworkers union had established internal committees in virtually every department and branch of Fiat, the largest automaker in Italy, and in the metal, gas, rubber and other ancillary feeder industries (Gradilone 1959, 143). The political task for Gramsci and his revolutionary comrades was to transform ideologically these internal committees into factory councils, the Italian equivalent of the soviets. In the Gramscian paradigm, workers at the departmental level would elect delegates to a factory (a generic term for Gramsci meaning all work sites) council. This assembly of delegates elected from the entire factory would in turn elect delegates to a citywide factory council. In his conception, factory councils from throughout Italy, along with councils elected in a similar manner from the agricultural regions, would meet to form the new socialist workers’ government. Political power would be established at the point of production and democracy would be direct and immediate. For example, factory council delegates could be recalled at any time by the workers if their interests were not being served. Gramsci urged as a rallying cry for the Italian revolution, “All power to the State of workers’ and peasants’ councils!” This cry is remarkably similar to the slogan of the Bolsheviks, “All power to the Soviets.” Gramsci was convinced that the new socialist state must be based, politically and economically, at the point of production. The dictatorship of the proletariat can only come to life in a new type of organization which is specific to the proper activities of producers and not of wage-earners, slaves of capital. The factory council is the first cell of this organization. Since in the council all the branches of labor are represented proportionally to the contribution which each craft and each branch of labor gives to the creation of the object which the factory produces for the collective, the factory council is of a class and social nature. Its raison d’être is in labor and in industrial production, which is a permanent fact, and not in wages, in the division of society in classes, in a transitory fact which will be overcome. (1955, 36) The transformation of the internal committees into factory councils is then for Gramsci a radical event which is both necessary for, and accompanies, the success of socialist transformation. As organizations of “producers” the factory councils will be of a different nature than the kind of organization that summons workers together as “wage-slaves,” the trade union.

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Tensions and contradictions Some of the difficulties inherent in Gramsci’s strategy for socialist transformation now become apparent. He had selected as the Italian equivalent of the soviet an institution, the internal committee, whose birth and very existence depended upon the Italian trade union movement. On the one hand, the internal committees provided the potential for such transformation because they represented historically a successful effort by the Italian workers to seize from their bosses the exclusive prerogative to discipline and fire workers. In this historic victory, the internal committees were correctly the “germ” of the new kind of socialist state where presumably all decisions would be made and implemented directly and immediately by the workers. On the other hand, however, the internal committees were created and nourished under the reign of capitalism and specifically by another institution, the trade union, which also owes its birth and existence, in a very real sense, to capitalism. In addition, these internal committees were controlled by the trade unions with close political, economic, and ideological ties to the riformisti wing of the Italian Socialist Party. Gramsci’s call for and agitation on behalf of a new Italian socialist state based upon factory councils represented for many of the riformisti a direct theoretical/ political attack on their organizational hegemony. Gramsci sought support for a counter-institution, the factory council, instrumental to his theory of social transformation; if successful, however, the utility of the two institutions which the riformisti relied upon authoritatively in their theory of social transformation, the trade union and the parliamentary system, would be radically reduced at best, and at worst, from their theoretical perspective, eliminated. Gramsci, to his great theoretical genius, understood that all human institutions were fraught with contradictions. Each institution, through the development of these contradictions and in relationship with natural processes, contains the remnants of past lives and the seeds of future incarnations. The factory council manifests, on the one hand, the remnants of capitalist society, and on the other hand, the birth of socialist society. The old capitalist world and the new socialist order are possible and present within the same institution. For Gramsci, the trade union – as progenitor of the internal committees – has played under the reign of capital an important role in the history of the workers’ movement; now, the time has arrived for the birth of a new institution within the new socialist order, the factory council, truly bursting forth from the shell of the old. The ideological trick for Gramsci, and indeed for the Marxist movement throughout history, is how to understand and influence these contradictions so that their unraveling will be in a revolutionary direction. The first step in pulling off this ideological trick, for Gramsci, was to understand the trade union and trade unionism. “There is no specific definition of a trade union,” he wrote, “the union becomes a determined definition and, therefore, assumes a determined historic form when the strength and will of the workers who compose it, impress upon it a direction, and impose upon its actions those ends which are affirmed by their definition” (1955, 131–2). Like all human institutions,

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  121 trade unions are created by and, in turn, create history. One cannot discuss any human institution without analyzing it within a specific and concrete historical context. The trade union, as a historical and human institution, changes as the will of the workers who compose it changes. This theoretical perspective carries with it important strategic and tactical consequences: if a trade union is subject to change, depending upon the will and the strength of the workers, then socialist revolutionaries, like Gramsci, must work within these trade unions to change the workers’ attitudes. The trade union becomes a site for socialist political work, not just because it is a workers’ organization, but, more importantly, because it must be transformed into a revolutionary organization.

Lessons of the Torino general strike Gramsci’s theoretical outlook, that the trade union is a site for socialist theoretical and political agitation, led him and a group of comrades to establish Ordine Nuovo, a newspaper dedicated to the principles of the factory council movement. Gramsci explains the purpose of its editors: Various problems of the revolution were discussed in the columns of this weekly newspaper: the revolutionary organization of the masses who must conquer the trade unions to the cause of communism; the transformation of the trade union struggle from its narrow corporatist and reformist outlook, to the terrain of revolutionary struggle, to the control of production, to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Thus, the Factory Council was placed on the workers’ agenda.6 This agitational work was successful. The workers throughout Fiat rallied to establish the factory council. Gramsci describes their organizational power in an event which took place on 3 December 1919: Behind the orders of the socialist sections, which had concentrated in their hands the entire mechanism for a mass movement, the Factory Councils mobilized without any preparation, 120,000 workers throughout their factories within one hour. An hour later, the proletariat army rushed to the center of the city like an avalanche and swept away from the streets and the piazzas all the nationalistic and militaristic elements. (1955, 184) Gramsci noted that the revolutionary movement not only met “ruthless” resistance from the industrial capitalists, but also from the trade union bureaucrats who were ideologically tied to the riformisti. In fact, Gramsci argued that the “whole” bureaucratic mechanism of the trade unions was set in motion to prevent the workers in the rest of Italy from following the example set by the Torino autoworkers. This trade union hostility to the factory council movement encouraged, according to Gramsci, the industrial capitalists to make an all out attack upon

122  Frank R. Annunziato the Fiat autoworkers. In March and April 1920 Torino became a battlefield of armed police; cannons and machine guns surrounded the city. The autoworkers occupied the factories and for 30 days the city was under siege; all industries closed, all communications paralyzed. The strike, begun by the Fiat autoworkers, soon became a general strike of the whole Piedmont region. By its conclusion, more than half a million workers were mobilized and almost four million people directly involved in the strike’s day-to-day activities. In the end, however, the industrial capitalists were successful and the movement was broken: The Italian capitalists used all their power to suffocate the Torinese workers’ movement; all the means of the bourgeois state were put at their disposal, while the workers fought on alone without any help either from the directors of the Socialist Party or from the General Confederation of Labor. On the contrary, the directors of the Party and the Confederation mocked the Torinese workers and did everything possible to restrain the workers and peasants throughout Italy from any revolutionary action with which they could show their solidarity with their Torinese brothers to bring them effective support. (1955, 177) Instead of convincing Gramsci to abandon the trade union as a site for theoretical/political work, the defeat of the Torino general strike convinced him that ideological work within the trade unions, on behalf of socialist transformation, must be intensified. His political work within the trade unions was to fight strenuously against the trade union bureaucrats (whom he sarcastically called i mandarini, the mandarins) in order to educate the workers to the importance of worker control of production and distribution, and to prepare the workers to fight for better working conditions under capitalism. In other words, Gramsci’s work within the unions was both theoretical and practical: theoretical, in that he hoped to educate the workers of their responsibility to create a new order, the state of the factory councils, and practical, in the sense that workers must also be educated to fight the employers for better conditions in order to preserve their organization and strength at the workplace.

Revolutionary or reformist trade unionism The strategic consequence of Gramsci’s theoretical outlook can be contrasted with the attitude of the riformisti for whom trade union work was the political consequence of their theoretical assumptions that capitalism could be “directed” through the election of socialists to parliament, and through the collective bargaining activities of the trade unions in winning concessions from the employers. For the riformisti, trade union political work consisted overwhelmingly in the day-to-day struggles for economic victories through collective bargaining. To Gramsci the exclusive reliance of the riformisti upon collective bargaining was an obstacle to the ideological struggle necessary for the transformation of the will of the workers to socialism because it “taught” the workers to accept the capitalist relationships

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  123 of production, and because it failed to lead the ideological campaign to win the workers to socialism. However, Gramsci did not advocate that trade unions abandon collective bargaining, or the winning of economic concessions. Rather, he saw such activities as part of a strategy for social transformation, but not the exclusive strategy. The winning of economic reforms, including the right to trade union recognition which Gramsci termed “industrial legality,” represented an important first step to socialist transformation, but only a first step. The attainment of industrial legality was a great victory for the working class, but it has not been attained definitively: industrial legality has improved the conditions of material life for the working class, but it is no more than a compromise, which was necessary to accomplish, and which will be necessary to support as long as the relationship of forces remains unfavorable to the working class. If the trade unions’ functionaries considered industrial legality as a necessary compromise, but not perpetual, if they directed all the means which the trade union has at its disposal to improve the relationship of forces in favor of the working class, if they directed all their work towards the necessary spiritual and material preparation so that the working class can at a determined moment begin a victorious offensive against capital and subjugate it to its laws, then the trade union will be a revolutionary instrument, then the trade union, now turned away from wanting the workers to respect industrial legality, will be disciplined revolutionarily. (1955, 132) Gramsci recognized the important historical role that the trade unions have played under the reign of capitalism. Workers form unions to receive a better price for their special commodity, labor-power. However, the trade union undertakes this task under specific historical conditions, that is, under the reign of capitalism, where labor-power is a commodity to be bought and sold, like food, carpets, and pencils. As a Marxist, Gramsci understood terms like labor-power, necessary and surplus labor, surplus value, class, and class process. Gramsci also understood this contradictory aspect of the trade union: it strenuously seeks to achieve the best possible arrangement for the sale of labor-power, and yet, while performing this task, the trade union grants ideological hegemony to capitalist relations of production. Just as important, the trade union grants ideological hegemony to the capitalist theoretical reductionism of human beings to that of mere possessors of the commodity labor-power. In response to the riformisti, who thought that the collective bargaining activities of trade unions led to socialist transformation, Gramsci wrote: We have begun to demonstrate that it is absurd and puerile to support that the trade union possesses in itself the ability to overcome capitalism: the trade union is nothing more than a commercial society, of a type purely capitalistic, which tends to realize in the interest of the proletariat the maximum price for labor-power and to realize a monopoly of this commodity in the national and international arena. (1966, 382)

124  Frank R. Annunziato Later, in the same article Gramsci stated explicitly the nature of this “capitalistic” institution, again in keeping with his general theme that the trade unionism of his era ideologically enforces capitalist work relationships: The trade union is different from merchant capitalism only subjectively, in that being formed by workers, and only able to be formed by workers, it tends to create the consciousness among the workers that within the realm of trade unionism it is impossible to achieve industrial autonomy as producers. (1966, 382) Gramsci’s comment about the class composition of the trade union movement of his era has not been granted its rightful place as one of the great discoveries of the Marxist tradition. Not only are the trade unions theorized to be capitalist institutions, but Gramsci specifies that they are merchant capitalists, or sellers of commodities produced elsewhere. The commodity? Labor-power! Trade unions, as collective merchants, engage in selling to industrial capitalists, at the best possible price granted social conditions, the labor-power possessed by workers. Since the trade union as collective merchant capitalist can only be created by workers, the difference between it and other merchant capitalists is viewed by Gramsci as ideological. The workers learn that they cannot assume control over production, because to do so would eliminate one of the necessary conditions of existence for the merchant-capitalist trade union to continue its activities.

The trade union versus the factory council On precisely the point of industrial autonomy rests the principal difference, for Gramsci, between trade unionism and the factory council. The factory councils are theoretically different from the trade unions, because as organizations elected by the workers directly at the point of production, the councils would be able to become involved with questions of production and distribution within the new society. “Only with this type of organization,” Gramsci wrote, “will the unity of labor become aware of its capacity to produce and to exercise sovereignty (sovereignty must be a function of production) without need of the capitalist” (1955, 29). The trade unions for Gramsci were organizations for competition – by which he meant capitalism – whereas the factory councils were organizations for communism. “The nature of the trade union is competitive, not communistic,” Gramsci asserted (1955, 36). This point is particularly important: for Gramsci the trade union has limited its role merely to seeking higher economic status within the realm of capitalism; it is, in fact, a competitive organization, uninterested, because of the task it undertakes, in questions concerning production or distribution. “The existence of the factory council,” Gramsci offers as an alternative to this competitive mode of the trade union, “gives the workers the direct responsibility of production, leads them to improve their work, creates the psychology of a producer, of a creator of history” (1955, 38). The factory council changes the economistic conception of the worker from a means of production within the

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  125 capitalist and competitive relations of production to the solidaristic conception of the worker as producer and creator within a new world where the means and relations of production have been communalized. Gramsci also distinguishes between the trade union and the factory council on the basis of what he calls “voluntarism.” Trade unions and political parties are voluntary organizations because they are essentially private in nature. The factory councils, to Gramsci, are not voluntary organizations, because they are “public.” We can understand Gramsci on this point by referring once again to his theoretical perspective: the factory council, as the new proletarian state, as the point where socialist transformation will unite the economic with the political, replaces the bourgeois parliamentary system. The societal role of the worker now changes from wage-slave, his/her role under the reign of capitalism, to citizen-worker, his/ her role under the reign of socialism. This is not a voluntary role: all workers will be citizen-workers. The trade union and the political party are for Gramsci private organizations which people will join or drop out of as their role as wage-slaves changes. However, “In the Factory Council,” Gramsci writes, “the worker takes part as a producer, as a result of his universal character, of his position and his function in society, in the same manner which the citizen takes part in the democratic parliamentary state” (1955, 150). Gramsci insisted that factory councils must be comprised of, and be directly accountable to, the workers at the departmental level so that the producers would democratically make decisions concerning production and distribution. The trade union is controlled by technicians and bureaucrats who, while expert on collective bargaining questions, are not involved with production and distribution issues. “The choice of trade union leaders never occurs on account of the criterion of industrial competence,” Gramsci wrote, “but rather on account of purely legalistic, bureaucratic, and demagogic skills” (1955, 42). The trade union, theorized to be a merchant capitalist organization, requires leaders who possess those skills necessary to achieve the highest possible price for the sale of the commodity labor-power. These skills are qualitatively different than the skills necessary to run industry and, in fact, they are antithetical to them, preventing workers from assuming control over the production process. To digress briefly, Gramsci did not theoretically oppose the concept of leadership either within the factory council or within the trade union movement. He did, however, oppose a specific kind of leadership. It is correct that after the defeat of the Torino factory occupations, he bitterly and repeatedly attacked the riformisti, that is, the nonrevolutionary trade union leaders. However, Gramsci’s attitude must be understood as an attack against a particular theoretical and political incarnation of leadership. Gramsci called these reformist trade union leaders mandarini because “the trade union reformist leaders are just like the mandarins, men of a higher social caste, people from the imperial Chinese court, who disdained their subjects as ignorant, dirty, and superstitious” (1966, 207). The mandarin trade union leader assumes that workers cannot do anything for themselves, cannot make critical decisions, and must be controlled by a wiser and better-educated leadership. Of course, to adopt this attitude also means that the mandarin trade

126  Frank R. Annunziato union leader accepts the present state of affairs of capitalist relations of production because the workers would never be competent enough to seize control over production. Gramsci maintained that reformist trade union leaders seek to control the workers in the interest of capitalist relationships of production and that, therefore, they act like mandarins in assuming legislative, executive, and administrative control over workers and their trade unions. He told the workers after he became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy that communist trade union leaders would not act as mandarins, but as functionaries. “The only guarantee of freedom and security for the workers, the only guarantee that their trade union functionaries will not become mandarins is the control of the Communist Party which has demonstrated its ability to expel its own big shots [pezzi grossi, in Italian]” (1966, 209). While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to analyze Gramsci’s analysis of the political party, it is necessary to point out that in this quotation the party is seen as a means of insuring membership control over the trade union and as a deterrent to the establishment of bureaucratic dominance.

Dual unionism Even though Gramsci remained increasingly frustrated with the trade union leaders of his era, he never urged the workers to abandon their reformist unions or to create new and more radical unions. In this regard, his theoretical perspective differed from the American, Daniel DeLeon, whom Gramsci respected as one of the earliest Marxist theoreticians to advocate the establishment of the socialist state at the point of production. DeLeon, who died before the Russian Revolution, was one of the early Marxists to understand that socialist transformation meant that a new kind of workers’ political and economic state structure had to be established. DeLeon wrote in 1904, Civilized society will know no such ridiculous thing as geographic constituencies. It will only know industrial constituencies. The parliament of civilization in America will consist, not of Congressmen from geographic districts, but of representatives of trades throughout the land. (1977, 157) DeLeon was one of the first organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, an explicitly revolutionary union founded in 1905 to fight the business unionism of the well-established American Federation of Labor (AFL). DeLeon, as a leader of the Socialist Labor Party, had previously founded the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, also as a revolutionary union in opposition to the ideological reformism of the AFL. Unlike DeLeon, Gramsci urged socialist revolutionaries to continue to work within traditional unions in order to transform them into communist institutions and not to organize explicitly radical trade unions. In this regard, Gramsci’s theoretical position was much closer to Lenin’s 1920 pamphlet, “LeftWing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. In this work, the Bolshevik leader attacked the German Communist Party, which wanted to leave the “reactionary” workers’ unions. To Lenin, this tactic was “fundamentally wrong and consists of

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  127 nothing but empty phrasemongering” (1969, 40). Lenin urged that communist militants remain within the so-called reactionary unions to carry on the campaign for socialism. In support of Lenin’s position, and with the benefit of revolutionary experience throughout the world after the death of DeLeon, Gramsci echoed similar sentiments: We are as a matter of principle against the creation of new unions. In all the capitalist countries the trade union movement has developed in a determined sense, creating the site for the birth and the progressive development of a determined great organization, which has come to life with the history, the traditions, the customs, and with the modes of thought of the great majority of the proletarian masses. All attempts previously made to organize the most revolutionary trade unionists into separate organizations have failed and have only benefited the hegemonic position of the reformists in these great organizations. (1971b, 3) Marx and Engels’s thesis, from the Communist Manifesto, that trade unions arrive in history at determined moments is reconfirmed: workers have formed and will form trade unions as defensive institutions. For Marxists to propose to abandon such sites can only mean to leave them in the ideological control of economism.

Which site is more important? It would be a major theoretical error to assume that Gramsci held the factory council, the trade union, the political party, or any institution to be more or less important for socialist work. Since socialist transformation was understood to be political, economic, and ideological, all worker organizations were appropriate and necessary as sites for the work of socialist revolutionaries. The question for Gramsci was not whether to work within these organizations, but rather what kind of political work should be done. Gramsci responded based upon his understanding of a strategy for social transformation and the level of development of such transformation. For example, the workers’ political party represented for Gramsci the site where communist militants would engage in political and theoretical practice in order to help shape, mold, and coordinate the theoretical and political course of the workers’ struggle. He condemned the reformist socialist party leadership for ignoring Marxist theory, and thereby supporting, intentionally or not, capitalist ideology: “The Communist Party struggles to pull the workers away from bourgeois ideology and to carry them to the terrain of the revolutionary struggle” (1971b, 247). This ideological struggle is necessary for Gramsci within all sites of human activity because, “the will of the masses corresponds to instincts and to acquiesce to instincts is to acquiesce to bourgeois ideology, since in contemporary society the first ideology is always bourgeois ideology” (1971b, 246). Nor did Gramsci advocate the subordination of the trade union or the factory council to the political party. He accepted and respected the relative autonomy of

128  Frank R. Annunziato all three sites. In one of the few comments about trade unionism from the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci wrote: Must the unions therefore be subordinate to the party? This is not the right way to pose the question. The problem must be posed in the following terms: each member of the party, whatever his position or responsibilities, is still a member of the party, and subordinated to its leadership. There cannot be subordination between union and party: if the union has spontaneously chosen as its leader a member of the party, that means that the union freely accepts the directives of the party, hence freely accepts (indeed desires) the control by the party over its officials. (1971, 226)

Conclusions and consequences In 1925, Gramsci stated, “Theoretical activity, that is the struggle on the ideological front, has always been neglected in the Italian workers’ movement” (1971b, 71). Theoretical work for Gramsci, as with Lenin, is always political and, therefore necessary in any struggle for social transformation. All theoretical positions for Gramsci have practical political consequences, both for Marxist theory and for any theory. Similarly, all practical endeavors have theoretical underpinnings. For example, the strategic emphasis of economism upon parliamentary reforms and trade union industrial gains represented for Gramsci the practical consequences of consciously or unconsciously held theoretical assumptions concerning both the primacy of economics in human history and the separation of the site of politics (parliament) from the site of economics (the workplace/trade union). For these reasons, Gramsci concluded that one of the essential components in the struggle for socialism in the Italy of his historical moment was to reassess and reevaluate – put another way, to subject to theoretical scrutiny – the so-called common sense and instinctual notions that had penetrated the workers’ movement. Trade unionism, as a central locus of the Italian workers’ movement, became therefore a central locus for Gramsci’s theoretical reevaluation. He theorized the trade union as a human institution, born under the reign of capitalism, without a specific definition, except as imposed upon it in a historical sense by the workers who comprise it. In looking at the trade unions of his specific moment he concluded that they were merchant capitalist and competitive institutions which must be transformed, through the factory council movement, into socialist revolutionary organizations. Therefore, the strategy was clear: communist militants must be prepared to wage an unrelenting ideological struggle against the bourgeois ideology which controlled the workers’, and their leaders’, minds and hearts. Collective bargaining, or as Gramsci called it, industrial legality, was perceived as a historic victory for the Italian workers, but only a compromised victory. The goal still remains socialist transformation, not industrial legality, for the Marxist movement. Gramsci’s theorizing led him to conclude that the riformisti had made peace with capitalist relationships of production by their theoretical acceptance of industrial legality as an end in and of itself.

Gramsci’s theory of trade unionism  129 One final point must be made on the ideological consequences of Gramsci’s industrial legality, and it was suggested by Althusser (1971, n. 142). While imprisoned, Gramsci conceptualized the trade unions as part of what he termed “civil society.” In a letter dated 7 September 1931 to his sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht, Gramsci writes: The research I have done on intellectuals is very broad and in fact I don’t think that there are any books on this subject in Italy. Certainly there exists a great deal of scholarly material, but it is scattered in an infinite number of reviews and local historical archives. At any rate, I greatly amplify the idea of what intellectual is and do not confine myself to the current notion that refers only to the preeminent intellectuals. My study also leads to certain definitions of the concept of State that is usually understood as political society (or dictatorship, or coercive apparatus meant to mold the popular mass into accordance with a type of production and economy at a given moment) and not as a balance between the political Society and civil Society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society, exercised through the so-called private organizations, such as the Church, the unions, the schools, etc.). (Gramsci 1994a, 2: 66–7) Capitalist relations of production endure, not only through the repressive activities of what is commonly thought to be the State (official government, the police, the courts, the prisons, the army). Hegemony is maintained through what Gramsci calls political society (official government’s repressive and controlling activities) and civil society (the ideological and educational activities of private and quasiprivate institutions). Both of these, political and civil society, are necessary for, and indeed comprise, the modern bourgeois state. The trade union, theorized as part of civil society and part of the state, helps to establish and continue capitalist relationships! Trade union officials become Gramscian intellectuals who organize the consent of the governed. The achievement of industrial legality, this historic victory of the workers, has been transformed through the success of bourgeois ideology into a vehicle for bringing the workers to believe in the rightness, absoluteness, and appropriateness of capitalist economics, politics, and ideology. More than fifty years separate our historical moment from the death of Gramsci in 1937. More than sixty-five years have passed since the aborted Italian revolution of 1920. In all this time, the American Marxist movement has greatly neglected theoretical work in general, and most specifically, theoretical work concerning the most recent historic incarnations of organizations like the trade union. In some very real senses, our theoretical understanding has not advanced since Gramsci’s era, and, in fact, it may have regressed substantially with our alltoo-quick acceptance of common-sense notions that trade union organizing victories, the economic gains achieved through collective bargaining, and the election of friendly government officials are necessary and sufficient components within a strategy for socialist transformation. The questions about trade unions and worker organizations that Gramsci both asked and answered are as important and necessary today as they were in his time. The Marxist movement must come to terms with this theoretical necessity.

130  Frank R. Annunziato

Notes 1 The reader is referred to Marx (1984, 54) and Marx and Engels (1942, 289–90, 420–1). 2 Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? and “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder are, of course, his two most important works which extensively discuss trade unionism. 3 See Sassoon (1982) for a series of essays on Gramsci. 4 This research utilizes three primary sources for Gramsci’s writings from the period 1919–26: Gramsci 1955, 1966, 1971b. The first two of these volumes are compilations of Gramsci’s writings while editor of the Torino Socialist Party newspaper Ordine Nuovo (the New Order) and contain the bulk of Gramsci’s thoughts on the topic of trade unionism, while he was directly involved with the revolutionary activities of the Torino autoworkers to construct the socialist state of the factory councils, 1919–21. The third volume, La Costruzione del Partito Comunista, contains some of Gramsci’s writings while an activist in, and later General Secretary of, the Italian Communist Party. None of these three volumes has been published unabridged in English. Che peccato! He only refers to trade unionism sporadically and briefly in the Quaderni, the Prison Notebooks, his major work while imprisoned for 11 years by Mussolini’s brutal regime. I am the translator for all citations in this chapter from the above-cited three volumes, as well as for the citations from several secondary Italian sources. 5 Objections may be raised to an assumption which can be inferred in my statements here that economism and economic determinism are somehow the same thing. Not all “economists” are economic determinists, some would argue, and not all economic determinists are “economists.” I believe, however, that both “economists” and economic determinists manifest the same deviation from Marxism, that is, the postulation of the primacy of the economic in human history. My collaboration for this is no less than Gramsci himself. I refer the reader to an observation Gramsci made on Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet The General Strike: She in fact disregarded the “voluntary” and organizational elements which were far more extensive and important in those events than – thanks to a certain “economistic” and spontaneist prejudice – she tended to believe … This view was a form of iron economic determinism, with the aggravating factor that it was conceived of as operating with lightning speed in time and in space. (1971, 233) 6 In July 1920 Gramsci sent an analysis of the April Torino General Strike entitled, “The Torinese Movement of the Factory Councils” to the leaders of the Third International in Moscow. The Italian Socialist Party was a member of the Third International, but its leadership was controlled by the riformisti faction. Gramsci’s analysis of the General Strike was accepted and praised by Lenin, over the objections of the Italian Socialist Party leadership. All descriptions of the April 1920 General Strike in this work has been taken directly from Gramsci’s report, as it appears in Gramsci (1955, 176–86).

10 Production and its others Gramsci’s “sexual question” Nelson Moe

Over the past three decades the writings of Antonio Gramsci have come to form an integral part of the discourse of leftist cultural analysis in Great Britain and the United States. The appearance of substantial portions of his Quaderni del carcere in English in 1971 helped to inaugurate a new epoch of cultural criticism in these countries which continues to this day. Certainly the role of Louis Althusser – who followed Gramsci’s example in exploring “civil society”1 – was fundamental in directing attention to the realm of ideology. But it was Gramsci who had already raised and discussed many of the issues that became key ones for cultural studies in the 1970s and 1980s: the status of popular culture and its relation to “high” culture, the political role of the intellectual, the question of hegemony as a form of power based not on domination but consent. It was in fact Gramsci who elaborated the concept of “cultural politics,”2 destined, in its infinite variations (the politics of “theory,” of “style,” of “history,” etc.), to become the title of choice for publications in the 1980s and, in a sense, the slogan of an entire critical generation. During these same decades another critical discourse has come into being, one of no less significance for the political analysis of culture. Feminist criticism a term I use in the most general sense to indicate a vast and heterogeneous group of writings – has emphasized the gender of political subjects, investigated human sexuality as a sphere of power relations, and examined culture as the domain in which the subject is constituted in terms of a sexual difference which, in complex ways, always works as a differential of power. In this work, feminist criticism has been particularly attentive to questions of desire and pleasure and, like Gramsci’s thought, the best feminist writings have complicated the field of cultural analysis, interrogating and extending the concept of culture itself, showing it to be denser, more dynamic, and politically more significant than heretofore imagined. Why, then, has Gramsci’s thought proven so resistant to an engagement with feminist thought? Why is it that two modes of analysis, distinguished for their insights into the production of political subjects within ideology and culture, have proved so impervious to one another?3 In the following pages I will attempt to clarify this question by examining the status of sexuality, sexual difference, and “woman” in one section of Gramsci’s Americanism and Fordism (Notebook 22) titled “Some aspects of the sexual question.” This section is one of the few texts in the Quaderni that simultaneously concerns itself with sexuality and with women.

132  Nelson Moe While we have grown accustomed to this elision of sexuality and woman in texts by male authors, it is an elision that, in Gramsci, is full of theoretical implications which have yet to be carefully analyzed. My primary aim in this chapter is therefore to open discussion on the question of sexuality and woman in Gramsci, beginning where these issues converge in a few pages of the Quaderni. It seems, too, that this endeavor must necessarily be of a preliminary nature, for while the ultimate aim of this investigation is to approach an understanding of how Gramscian and feminist approaches to the politics of culture might productively feed off one another, the task at hand involves a careful reading of the Gramscian text, the “reconnaissance” that is the prerequisite for any future “war of position.”4 Even before approaching this specific text, however, one factor in the dialogue manqué between Gramsci and feminism must be mentioned, that is, psychoanalysis: Gramsci’s relationship to psychoanalysis and the crucial role of psychoanalysis in the development of contemporary feminist thought.5 Gramsci’s texts on the one hand, and a great share of feminist texts on the other are, in effect, written in different languages. Recent feminist thought is steeped in the discourse of psychoanalysis. In particular, psychoanalysis has dominated the work of those French intellectuals who have become the key reference points in contemporary feminist thought both in the United States and Great Britain: de Beauvoir, Kristeva, Irigaray, Cixous, Foucault et al. By contrast, Gramsci had read very little psychoanalysis and tended to be relatively suspicious of it. Though the present reading will not concern itself with the reasons for this attitude towards psychoanalysis, with its “causes” – the hostile reception of psychoanalysis among Italian intellectuals in the first decades of its existence, Marxism’s tendency to view psychoanalysis as a bourgeois pastime, the fact that Gramsci’s exposure to it came not so much through reading as through his wife’s treatment, which became a bone of contention between them – Gramsci’s discussions of sexuality and woman can be counted among the “effects” of his anti-psychoanalytic orientation. The absence of a theory of the unconscious, of drives, desire, and pleasure in Gramsci is intimately related to his inability to offer an organic conceptualization of sexuality and woman, not to mention of the desiring political subject in general. To put it in terms of the discussion that will follow, the discursive field in which the concept of production is constructed “is structured by its absences and repressions; it is equally a product of the territory it cannot represent” (Kipnis 1989, 152): a territory comprising sexuality, woman, desire, pleasure, and “leisure.”

1 Some aspects of the sexual question. Obsession with the sexual question and dangers of that obsession.6 Gramsci sets out upon his most elaborate discussion of the “sexual question” in the Quaderni with this incipit, one that does a good deal more than inform the reader of the subject to be discussed. This simple heading marks out the beginning and end of Gramsci’s discussion of the question. For though this passage is drafted twice by Gramsci, in notebooks 1 and 22 – thus suggesting that it was an issue that

Production and its others  133 concerned him throughout his years of prison writing – its concerns do not branch out into other areas, feed into other arguments, in the way so many of his other discussions do. The “sexual question” spills over, at most, into a few other areas of Americanism and Fordism, and is absent from all but a few of Gramsci’s other texts: of the fifteen entries indexed under “la questione sessuale” in the Einaudi critical edition, only two lie outside Americanism and Fordism. The second part of this heading, “Obsession with the sexual question and dangers of that obsession,” takes this rhetorical act of containment a step further. With this phrase Gramsci adds a connotation to the previous denotative statement. The “sexual question” is not just any question: it is an instance of obsession and danger. Just why the sexual question in Gramsci’s view of it is obsessional and dangerous is obviously bound up with what he intends by the term “sexual,” something that his exposition in “Some aspects” makes only partially clear. Turning for further elucidation to the 1917 theater review titled “In the beginning was sex,” we can surmise that for Gramsci sexuality is not, or should not be, something that invests the human subject in its entirety. It is rather regional, conceived as one “element” of the subject. Gramsci thus employs “sexual” in a restricted, non-Freudian sense to mean “sex” and the “sexual instinct.” And with this compartmentalization the sexual tends to be set up in opposition to intelligence and logic and associated, as we shall see below, with “animality” and “bestiality.”7 In the opening of “Some aspects of the sexual question” Gramsci focuses on the question of “repression,” situating his discussion in relation to psychoanalysis. While seeming generally to accept the idea that repression is inherent to industrialized society, that in industrial life the sexual instincts must be “regulated,” Gramsci criticizes the opposition of “natural” instincts and “unnatural” social regulation. He thus presents “‘psychoanalytic’ literature” as “a way of criticizing the regulation of sexual instincts in a sometimes ‘Enlightenment’ fashion, with the creation of a new myth of the ‘savage’ on the basis of sexuality.” In order to further critique “utopian” notions of innocent, unbridled passions he next turns his attention to the countryside: there, he writes, “the most numerous and barbaric sexual offenses take place” – bestiality, pederasty, incest (1975, 2148; 1971, 294–5). The first two paragraphs of “Some aspects,” then, in however desultory a fashion, and without asserting a positive position of their own, argue against a nonregulative form of sexuality, against those who base their social progressivism on “sexual liberation.” At the end of this text Gramsci will argue quite explicitly for “sexual regulation,” but before arriving at this proposition, a prescription for what he calls a future “sexual ethic which conforms to the new methods of production and work” (1975, 2150; 1971, 296), Gramsci assesses two forms of sexuality. The paragraph begins: “Sexuality as reproductive function and as ‘sport’: the ‘aesthetic’ ideal of woman oscillates between ‘brood mare’ and ‘plaything’” (1975, 2148; 1971, 295). It is here that the first significant elision occurs in his discourse, between what stands on either side of the colon in this sentence, between sexuality and woman. The punctuation, grammar, and syntax of Gramsci’s prison writings have not received the critical attention they warrant. By examining them here in some detail we can concretely observe the way issues of gender are devalued in

134  Nelson Moe Americanism and Fordism. Because the Quaderni take the form of “notes and observations,” there is a tendency in these texts towards a form of discursive parataxis, a movement of thought not via subordinating conjunctions but by juxtaposition and apposition. Between the individual sections of notebooks, each clearly separated from the others by headings, this is readily apparent. Especially in the early notebooks – some, in fact, entitled “Miscellaneous” – the sequence of topics from section to section appears quite disjunctive if not random. Later notebooks would be organized according to a topic so that material in them would have a certain thematic cohesion. And yet, even the most focused notebooks are still, notebooks, and the movement from section to section is not hierarchical and subordinate. The point I want to make here, however, is that this paratactic structure of discourse is not limited to the rhetorical cornices separating sections from one another, but that this tends to be the mode of argumentative progression between paragraphs, between sentences, and even, as we shall see below, within sentences. If we consider the paragraph quoted above – “Sexuality as reproductive function and as ‘sport’” – we can see how this incomplete, verbless construction provides no syntactic relation with the paragraph that precedes it. The textual effect of this discursive protocol is to allow for a plurality of possible connections, conjunctions, disjunctions to be formulated between concepts. It creates what a mechanic would call “play,” and a postmodern philosopher “undecidability,” between paragraphs and concepts. It also makes space for the formation of theoretically nonexplicit – and perhaps unjustified – relationships, a field of almost poetic free-association.8 Returning to the sentence quoted above, we see just such “play” between the two phrases on either side of the colon, which is to say between sexuality and the figure of woman. The colon indicates some form of correspondence between the two concepts on either side of it – it seems, in fact, a symmetrical correspondence: to the two types of sexuality correspond two “‘aesthetic’ ideals” of woman. But the nature, and terms, of this correspondence are unclear. What relationship obtains between these two types of sexuality construed as real social phenomena and this oscillating “‘aesthetic’ ideal”? And what does “‘aesthetic’ ideal” really mean? If it implies, as it seems to, the representation of some “real” thing, then what is its specific modality of representation? These are questions that themselves are clearly “oscillating” in Gramsci’s text here. But, nevertheless, one effect of this loose correspondence is quite determinate: to equate sexuality with woman, to condense it in the figure of woman. Implicit in Gramsci’s text seems to be the following equation: reproductive sexuality/“sporting” sexuality: woman as “brood mare”/woman as “plaything.” Our conceptual access to sexuality is evidently through the figure of woman. To speak of sexuality, then, is to speak of woman. We will consider some of the implications of this equation below. But let us first consider the contrast between Gramsci’s treatment of “sporting” sexuality and reproductive sexuality. Gramsci does not linger long on the question of “sporting” sexuality. His minimization of its importance is signaled not only by his brief treatment of it in the text but also by his use of a foreign, English term, set in quotation marks, to describe it. The whole status of this sporting form is clearly secondary, existing in the form of citation and reported speech. For, while

Production and its others  135 reproductive sexuality is a “function,” and analyzed, as we shall see below, in the concrete terms of economics, sporting sexuality in Gramsci’s summary treatment of it is not so much analyzed as evoked in terms of the popular conception of it. Echoing his earlier demystification of the idea of a corrupt, unnatural city and an innocent, natural countryside, Gramsci cites the two popular proverbs “man is a hunter, woman a temptress [l’uomo è cacciatore, la donna è tentatrice]” and “who’s got nothing better, goes to bed with his wife [chi non ha di meglio, va a letto con la moglie]” in order to show “how widespread the conception of sex as sport is even in the countryside and in sexual relations between members of the same class” (1975, 2148; 1971, 295). Gramsci, then, does not so much tell us what “sporting” sexuality is as how it is viewed. What primarily concerns Gramsci, then, is the “economic function of reproduction” – more than half of “Some aspects of the sexual question” is devoted to it. From the outset of his treatment of this “aspect” Gramsci emphasizes the widespread importance of reproduction and its relationship to the economic – its significance both as a “general fact which concerns the whole of society in its complexity” and as a “‘molecular’ fact, internal to the smallest economic aggregations like the family” (1975, 2146; 1971, 295). Gramsci views the economics of reproduction in terms of the balance of different age groups in society and in the family, and in terms of the way improvements of hygiene have increased life expectancy, creating, in France, a void at the economic base which must be filled by immigrant labor. He notes, moreover, the “anti-economic consequences” of a low urban birth rate in certain countries where industry must undergo great expenses to train immigrant labor from the country, a process that, Gramsci writes, “brings with it a continual mutation of the city’s socio-political composition, thus continually changing the terrain on which the problem of hegemony is to be posed” (1975, 2149; 1971, 296). We have thus come, via sexuality, to the crucial issue in Gramscian thought, the problem of hegemony. But before we can understand the relationship between sexuality and hegemony it is necessary to note one other thing about Gramsci’s conceptualization of sexuality in the reproductive-economic mode. In his division of sexuality into the reproductive and the “sporting,” Gramsci represented these two sexual modes through the two feminine aesthetic ideals of “brood mare” and “plaything.” Then, in his brief, evocative rendering of “sporting” sexuality he employed the two heterosexual popular sayings cited earlier, articulating that form of sexuality in terms of sexual difference: “man is a hunter, woman a temptress” and “whoever’s got nothing better goes to bed with his wife.” In Gramsci’s discussion of the economic function of reproduction, however, the gendered quality of the sexual disappears. Reproductive sexuality, framed in terms of demography, life expectancy, the work force, immigration, and finally hegemony, is strangely neuter. Both recreational and reproductive sexuality were initially inflected towards the feminine, but somehow that sphere so traditionally associated with woman, the sphere of reproduction, is finally stripped of its female specificity. A series of displacements has thus occurred: sexuality has been reduced to sex, and sex to woman, but Gramsci implies that this feminine sexual activity is

136  Nelson Moe restricted to sport, while reproductive sexuality is not really sex at all, does not have any status of its own, but exists solely as reproduction – as production’s supplement or, if you will, handmaiden.9 It is possible to view this discursive operation in “Some aspects of the sexual question” as a variation on the act of figurative clitoridectomy described by Gayatri Spivak. In Spivak’s view the clitoris can be figuratively seen as “a shorthand for women’s excess in all areas of production and practice, an excess which must be brought under control to keep business going as usual” (1987a, 82).10 In Americanism and Fordism it is production that is “business as usual” and that requires the excision (“regulation” and “rationalization”) of orgasmic pleasure from the reproductive orbit. It is then this “operation” in Gramsci’s argument, this cleansing of the concept of the reproductive of all traces of the sexual and feminine, that leads Gramsci to his bold conclusion at the end of this text, the statement of the necessity “to create a new sexual ethics which conforms to the new [Fordist] methods of production and work,” the assertion “that the new type of man required by the rationalization of production and work cannot develop until the sexual instinct has been suitably regulated and until it too has been rationalised” (1975, 2150; 1971, 297). This concluding statement represents an unusual moment of economism in Gramsci’s thought or, better, productionism, in which the forces of production themselves seem to have an ultimate determination. And he has reached this point by splitting off the sexual from the reproductive, the same process by which he reduces woman to sexuality and displaces sexuality (and woman) from the field of the political. And yet, has woman simply vanished from Gramsci’s discourse? It was she who defined and figured the sexual at the beginning of his discussion, falling out of sight, however, as reproduction became neutered/neutralized, became not so much a sexual question as an economic one. She does, however, reappear, rather startlingly, just after Gramsci raises the question of hegemony. The end of the paragraph concluding the discussion on reproduction and the beginning of the text’s final paragraph read as follows: The low birth-rate in the cities imposes the need for continual massive expenditure on the training of a continual flow of new arrivals in the city and brings with it a continual change in the socio-political composition of the city, thus continually changing the terrain on which the problem of hegemony is to be posed. The formation of a new feminine personality is the most important question of an ethico-civil order connected with the sexual question. Until women can attain not only a genuine independence in relation to men but also a new way of conceiving themselves and their role in sexual relations, the sexual question will remain full of unhealthy characteristics and caution must be exercised in proposals for new legislation. (1975, 2149–50; 1971, 296) It is again crucial that we examine this sequence of thoughts – the connection between these two paragraphs, the relationship, in brief, between the problem

Production and its others  137 of hegemony and the question of woman. Does “the most important question of an ethico-civil order” fall under the category of hegemony, making this next paragraph a kind of subset, an example? Or does it conceptually move in another direction? It seems actually to do both, and its duality is related to the duality of hegemony. The accent of the concept of hegemony here, as in most other cases, falls precisely on the ethico-civil domain of control exercised by a dominant class. So in some sense to speak of the most important ethico-civil question related to the sexual question is to speak of the sexual question as having the greatest bearing on the problem of hegemony. But there seems to be a discrepancy between what happens on either side of the “problem of hegemony,” between the issues that lead up to it and those that follow from it. Gramsci moves towards the problem of hegemony by way of urban demographics, the formation and mutation of the working class – a politics of the base; he moves from the problem of hegemony to the “formation of a new female personality,” to a problem of ideology – of self-image – and finally of legislation. At both ends then of a discussion of sexuality from which woman is displaced, woman appears in terms of an “‘aesthetic’ ideal” and a “way of conceiving oneself.”11 And it is hegemony, approached from the base, that ushers in the last mention of woman. But woman does not possess full enfranchisement to the concept of hegemony. If it is true that hegemony is a concept that deconstructs the traditional base–superstructure opposition, woman’s place in the hegemonic seems limited to the superstructure, up there with sexuality. The type of politics appropriate to her, the only one mentioned here, is parliamentary-legislative politics, a notably unrevolutionary form. As Gramsci suggests in another notebook, woman’s historiographical place is, if not in the home, in the world of custom: “The question of the importance of women in Roman history is similar to that of subaltern groups but only up to a certain point; ‘sexism [maschilismo]’ can only in a certain sense be compared to class dominion, it has therefore more importance for the history of social customs than for socio-political history” (1975, 2286). Another way of putting this problem is that Gramsci brings a split theoretical vision to the prospect of revolutionary social change and woman’s role in it. He continually reiterates the necessity of making the world of production and work “the point of reference for the new world in gestation” (1975, 863). But he treats the “woman’s question” as a primarily ethico-civil issue, a question of legislation, and cultural stereotypes. His program for revolution “rooted within productive life itself” is thus limited to one-half the political subjects – the male workers. And his professed support for “woman’s liberation” is, literally, unfounded, without a basis in the daily work existence of women, unrooted “within productive life itself.” In “existential” terms, Gramsci staunchly supports woman’s liberation, as his eloquent and passionate praise for Ibsen’s Nora demonstrates;12 in theoretical terms, however, he is unable to liberate woman from the conceptual ghetto of the ethico-civil, unable to grasp the full significance of women as productive political subjects.13 Gramsci, then, repeatedly marks out the terrain of the productive base versus superstructure (or the ethico-political) via the figuration of woman and, conversely, marks out masculine and feminine via the articulation of base and superstructure.

138  Nelson Moe It seems just as difficult for Gramsci to think gender outside the framework of production and its Other as it is for him to think this latter opposition outside the framework of gender. While it is not possible to cite all the instances of this discursive process in Gramsci, one passage from Americanism and Fordism sheds further light on this genderization of production and productivization of gender. In another section that concerns sexuality, titled “Animality and Industrialism,” Gramsci describes what he calls various “crises of libertinism,” when the powerful mechanisms of coercion or repression give way to some form of profligacy. “But,” he writes, “the crisis does not affect the working masses except in a superficial manner, or it can affect them indirectly, in that it depraves their women folk” (1975, 2162; 1971, 299). Here the question of sexuality, in the guise of historical periods of unbridled passions, serves as yet another occasion to distinguish between male and female (sexuality), production and its Other. Indeed this one sentence lines these terms up unequivocally, with the apodictic force of the unspoken: the “working masses” are as surely male as they are impervious to the sexual, to sexual “depravation.” Women, in fact, are the conduit of sexuality for men, their point of access to it: it is a “superficial,” “indirect” experience for them. If we compare this sentence with the way it was first drafted at the end of Quaderno 1, we find another semantic layering to this question. Here Gramsci writes: “the crisis of libertinism occurs … which, however, only affects the working masses superficially or affects them sentimentally because it depraves their women folk” (1975, 138; emphasis added). A lot is unclear in this sentence, most of all the meaning of superficially and sentimentally and the relationship between them. Both adverbs place the object, the working masses, in a relationship of exteriority and contingency to the acting subject, the crisis of libertinism (which, however, acts directly upon “their women”). The two adverbs shield the working masses from its libidinal force. And yet sentimentally gives rise to a slight ambiguity. For if superficially unequivocally keeps the working masses at one remove from the libido, on the surface, on the other side of the skin, sentimentally, however much it diminishes the force of the subject on the object, still allows it a way into the working masses, lets it under the surface, under their skin. Sentiments may rank relatively low in Gramsci’s hierarchy of political effectivity in Americanism and Fordism, and yet the sentiments are still those of the political subject.14 And thus, clearing up this point and editing out the sentiments, in the second draft Gramsci reduces the relationship between the libido and the working masses to an effect of the surface.

2 We have seen how at various points in Americanism and Fordism Gramsci defines production in terms of its female, sexual Other. Insofar as they were rendered “other,” as they represented an antagonism or “resistance” to production, the female and sexual – defined in terms of one another – took form, were given a form. But alongside this composite Other, another question arises. For it seems in the nature of others to have an abyssal structure – if the first term in

Production and its others  139 the relationship, the self-identical subject, is one, the Other is potentially infinite. The othering process, then, apparently works like a tumor, spreading everywhere, threatening the very existence of the self-identical host. In this section I will be considering the expansion of the Other of production from its figuration in sexuality and woman to other areas of the social totality. Americanism and Fordism is unique among the prison notebooks in that its self-proclaimed object of analysis is a form of economic organization. The problems to be examined in it are seen as “links of the chain marking the passage from the old economic individualism to the planned economy.” But it is not so much the form of economic organization itself that interests Gramsci as the “problems [arising] from the various forms of resistance to this evolution encountered by the process of development” (1975, 2139; 1971, 279). At the outset of Americanism and Fordism Gramsci thus inscribes the structure of production and its Other which will be explored through the rest of the notebook. That is, Fordist production is posited as the unquestioned “process of development” to which all other areas of the social can at best react, resist. In the above discussion we took Gramsci, in some sense “literally,” reading sexuality and woman as the primary others of production. Now we must seek to articulate that wider sphere of “resistance” which sexuality and woman metonymically represent. In section 11 Gramsci examines the question of “the rationalization of production and work,” which is also the title of that section. Though his reference point is the sphere of production, what concerns him most is what happens outside the factory, the “private life” of workers and its relationship to the sphere of production proper. As this outside is primarily viewed in terms of resistance to production, he singles out production’s two main “enemies”: alcohol and sex. He writes: Someone who works for a wage, with fixed hours, does not have time to dedicate himself to the pursuit of drink or to sport or evading the law. The same observation can be made about sexuality. “Womanising” demands too much “loisirs” … It seems clear that the new industrialism wants monogamy: it wants the man as worker not to squander his nervous energies in the disorderly and stimulating pursuit of occasional sexual satisfaction. The employee who goes to work after a night of “excess” is no good for his work. The exaltation of passion cannot be reconciled with the timed movements of productive motions connected with the most perfected automatism. (1975, 2167; 1971, 304) This helps to fill out Gramsci’s relegation of “sporting” sexuality to the margins of the social in “Some aspects of the sexual question.” It situates sexuality in the context of the worker’s relationship to production, his on- and off-hours, linking it to the question of “loisirs.” But let’s consider the two expressions that Gramsci employs to indicate sexuality and leisure: “la caccia alla donna [womanizing]” and “loisirs [leisure].” With the phrase “la caccia alla donna” Gramsci constructs an image of sexuality as debauchery, as “excess.” He sets up sexuality as a straw man – or woman, rather – which he may caricature and trivialize. The sexuality represented in this passage is thus “disorderly,” an act of “squandering,” “occasional,” “excessive,” “an exaltation of passion.”

140  Nelson Moe Corresponding to this “excessive” image of sexuality Gramsci posits an excessive “loisirs.” Just as Gramsci reduces sexuality to excessive debauchery, he reduces leisure to “loisirs.” Which is to say that he conceives of the sphere outside of work either as an empty reverse of work, a negativity, or as an “excessive” positivity. In this instance the Italian language itself seems to contribute to this operation. Lacking the word and concept for leisure, which is to say a concept of recreational free time with a certain popular diffusion, Gramsci resorts to the French “loisirs” with a distinctively aristocratic ring. As with the labeling of sexuality as “sport” in “Some aspects,” Gramsci thus insinuates through the use of another, foreign tongue that these activities are not native to the Italian working class, proper to them. Only the parasitic upper classes can afford leisure, can afford alcohol, can afford sexuality, can, indeed, afford an unconscious.15 And it is the figure of woman that is loaded with this function, with representing this excessive complex.16 Thus in Americanism and Fordism the conceptualization of production as factory work which “creates and accumulates new goods” empties a wide range of other domains of positivity and determinative force – sexuality and female subjectivity, and the male subject’s off-hours existence, his leisure, as well. But the list of devaluated domains extends even further. For in these same pages Gramsci denies full politico-productive status to another economic sphere which, in his discussion of “il mistero di Napoli,” he labels “intermediary functions”: activities like commerce, trade, and transport which he sees being favorably reduced in America “to the level of a genuinely subordinate activity of production” (1975, 2145; 1971, 285). Here, too, we see the type of exclusion involved in Gramsci’s attempt to specify the productive, to establish a divide between it and its other (here referred to as “semi-parasitic”). And we can readily speculate that one of the main pitfalls of this process of discrimination is that in setting restrictions on what is viewed as productive it restricts as well one’s vision of the field of hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic, politics: “Hegemony [under Fordism] is born in the factory and requires for its existence only a minute quantity of professional, political and ideological intermediaries” (1975, 2146; 1971, 285). This concludes the series of production’s primary “others” in Americanism and Fordism, those categories that figure negatively in his map of politico-economic effectivity in that text. I think it important, however, to note one category that Gramsci doesn’t treat, but that can be seen as intimately related to the questions considered thus far: that of domestic work. By restricting the full valorization of work to factory work “which produces new goods,” Gramsci also precludes the recognition of the work that primarily women perform in the domestic sphere: raising children, managing and maintaining a household, administering consumption. This nonvaluation of domestic work has numerous implications for the theorization of production in general. It excludes from the purview of production not only the production/reproduction of social subjects but also the administration of consumption over which women have traditionally presided and which makes possible the ever-increasing levels of consumption that are the necessary condition for the Fordist regime.17 And, as with his undervaluation of “intermediary functions,” by not conceiving of labor in the domestic sphere as a form of

Production and its others  141 production and by not attending to the nexus amongst domestic work, consumption, and “production,” Gramsci neglects the politics of that sphere and the possibilities for political mobilization within it.

3 I have been arguing that, in Americanism and Fordism, Gramsci articulates a heterogeneous ensemble of categories (“sexuality,” “woman,” “loisirs,” “intermediary functions,” and, implicitly, the domestic sphere) which exist in some form of resistance to the primary site of economics and politics, production within the factory. I have suggested moreover that this exclusion of the nonproductive, this rendering of production’s “others,” not only significantly affects Gramsci’s definition of production but conditions the forms of politics that can be implicitly derived from it as well. In the concluding section of this chapter I wish to shift perspective from Gramsci’s texts to the contemporary scene, from the Gramscian grid of “production and its others” to the configuration of these five categories in the present. By turning to the present I wish, first, to offer some idea of the socio-critical matrix out of which my interpretation of Gramsci in this chapter has taken form. But secondly, and more importantly, I thus hope to offer evidence of the urgent need for an encounter between Gramsci and feminism, or, more precisely, for a critical approach which, taking form out of an exchange between the discourses of Gramsci and feminism, would engage with the productivity of the categories of “sexuality,” “woman,” “loisirs,” the “intermediary,” and the domestic in the West today. In the fifty-odd years since Gramsci’s death, questions related to these five categories have assumed ever-greater significance within diverse fields of intellectual inquiry. The ascendency of these categories in critical discourse is no doubt related to the increased importance of the subjects, domains, and activities indicated by them within society itself. To cite just some of the most relevant examples, since World War II the West (or “Euramerica”) has witnessed the massive expansion of “intermediary functions” (the so-called service sector, telecommunications, the mass media, transport), the rise (and fall) of the welfare state, the massive entrance of women into the “official” (extra-domestic) work force, and the emergence of sexual politics as one of the key sites of politics in general (e.g. the issue of abortion in the United States). Given women’s particular relationship to these transformations, it is hardly surprising that feminism has had much to say about problems associated with sexuality, the female condition, leisure, “intermediary” economic activities, and the domestic sphere, often in relation to each other. Having been the figures for and subjects of those categories conceptualized as nonproductive for so long, women have had a privileged perspective from which to theorize their expansion within contemporary society. The familiar feminist dictum that “the personal is political” thus signals women’s awareness of the need to rethink a whole series of relationships (between public and private, political and subjective, productive and nonproductive) which have undergone extensive transformations in recent decades.

142  Nelson Moe This feminist awareness of nothing less than a crisis in the theoretical models used to analyze social reality has articulated itself in the most diverse forms of intellectual production. The particular critical approach I wish to outline here is that which endeavors to investigate the social processes and mechanisms through which the subject is “gendered” and desire formed, and to explore the specific sites where these processes of desire formation and subject constitution take place.18 What distinguishes such investigations from the greater part of previous work on ideology and situates them within the parameters of the contemporary moment is that they do not conceive of “ideology” and “culture” as secondary or supplemental to the “hard” world of production but rather as integral elements of the productive process itself. They take stock of the unprecedented symbiosis that has been achieved in recent decades between commodity production on the one hand and the spheres of the aesthetic, the cultural, and representation on the other. They recognize that such activities as the design, styling, marketing, advertising, and distribution of the product can no longer be viewed as posterior to the product “itself” but rather as integral stages in its production. Conversely, there is no cultural, aesthetic, or “leisure” activity that escapes the market and its commodification of human experience. “Loisirs” has been swallowed up in the market of leisure; otium assimilated to negotium. Though the etiology of this recent historical condition, seen by many as “postmodern,” is complex, surely one of its main “causes” is the revolution in the mass media and telecommunications. Of course, in narrowing down this discussion of sexuality, the female condition, leisure, “intermediary” economic activities, and the domestic sphere to the question of media I do not wish to imply that the subjects, processes, and domains indicated by these five categories have become “hyperreal” or “simulacral” à la Baudrillard, or that the media provide the only perspective from which to view them. At the same time it must be acknowledged that in recent decades these five areas have been transformed by the media in some unprecedented way, and that for too long the Left has ignored this terrain and left it to corporate market researchers to study (which they have done with the utmost diligence and profit). A key aspect of the critical approach I am outlining therefore involves the vigorous scrutiny of the effects of the media upon these five areas and upon their role in contemporary processes of production. Let us take, for example, the case of television advertising. We can begin to appreciate the crucial political interest of television advertising when we consider the television screen as an interface between the advertising corporation and the spectating subject.19 On one hand, the corporation must represent its product, staging it on a scene whose sole purpose is to engage the spectating subject. The advertiser must thus actively involve itself in the formation of consumer desire, a desire that, in complex ways, is always politically inflected and sexually differentiated. The product by no means precedes its representation; it is made for representation, and billions of dollars must be spent to ensure that subjects are produced who will purchase these products. This is what we might call pure “postmodern” economics; but it is equally “postmodern” hegemonic politics, for the screen has become a key site in the exercise of capitalist hegemony. We have come a long way indeed from Gramsci’s assertion that “hegemony is born in the factory and

Production and its others  143 requires for its existence only a minute quantity of professional political and ideological intermediaries” (1975, 2146; 1971, 285).20 But the advertising corporations and their media productions are only one part of the story. The other, essential, part is of course the telespectator, the subject who, in this emblematic case, is at home, in the domestic space of his or her physical, affective, and “ideological” reproduction. And thus if one part of the analytic task proposed here involves analyzing the productive process and the exercise of hegemony through the media from the “corporate” perspective, the other crucial part involves examining the subject’s active position in this process, which is to say the dynamics of desire and pleasure at work in the subject’s experience of the media, all viewed within the more general context of her/his daily and domestic existence. Such a critical orientation would offer little hope for leftist political strategy if its operating hypothesis weren’t that, while the subject is ideologically inscribed (or, to say it with Althusser, “interpellated”) by and materially situated within the media-saturated structures of late capitalist production, her/his desires and pleasures are not wholly reduced to an “effect” or “function” of them. The subject brings considerable capacities for choice, organization, self-expression and, potentially, “politics” to this “new” scene of production, the mechanisms and modalities of which are, more than ever before, those of sexuality and sexual differentiation, leisure, “intermediary” economic activities, and the domestic sphere. As the neoGramscian Stuart Hall puts it, “far from there being no resistance to the system there has been a proliferation of new points of antagonism, new social movements of resistance organized around them and, consequently, a generalization of ‘politics’ to spheres which hitherto the Left assumed to be apolitical” (1988b, 24). The aim of the type of analysis briefly sketched out here is, then, to open up these “other” spaces to critical examination, seeking in them moments of antagonism and resistance. Its aim, and inspiration, is no doubt Gramscian – to understand the hegemonic moment in contemporary society so that counter-hegemonic spaces and practices can be cultivated. But, at the same time that this approach fruitfully draws upon Gramsci, it requires a re-elaboration of his analytical priorities, a retrieval of the categories of “sexuality,” “woman,” “loisirs,” the “intermediary,” and the domestic from the shadows of Gramsci’s thought, and of Marxist theory generally, in order to re-examine them in light of their centrality to the processes of production and hegemony at work today. Such a critical endeavor will involve a constant shuttling between Gramsci and feminism, a mutual exchange in which each discourse interrogates and contributes to the other. From this critical exchange, still in its early stages, we surely have much to learn: about Gramsci and Marxism, about feminism, and about the possibilities for leftist politics in the 1990s.

Notes 1 See Althusser (1984, 16): “To my knowledge, Gramsci is the only one who went any distance in the road I am taking. He had the ‘remarkable’ idea that the State could not be reduced to the (Repressive) State Apparatus, but included, as he put it, a certain

144  Nelson Moe

2 3

4

5 6 7

8

9

number of institutions from ‘civil society’: the Church, the Schools, the trade unions, etc. Unfortunately, Gramsci did not systematize his intuitions, which remained in a state of acute but fragmentary notes.” See, for example, Gramsci (1975, 2193; 1985, 122). When an English translation exists for a citation of Gramsci’s I will include the date and page number of the English edition after those of the Italian edition, as in the preceding example. Anne Showstack Sassoon’s reflection on her attempt to connect feminist analysis and Gramscian thought is indicative of this lacking encounter between the two approaches: “Although it was possible to relate the work I had done on the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, to the debate which was taking place about the state and about ideology, it was far from obvious to see how one could think about women from a Gramscian perspective” (1987b, 16). She continues: “Did his approach, his categories, have anything to offer a feminist analysis? The answer was ‘yes,’ if he is understood properly” (19). My question in this chapter is somewhat different from hers. I do not so much endeavor to assess the usefulness of Gramscian categories for feminist analysis, as to examine the ways in which the questions of sexuality, sexual difference, and “woman” function within his thought. Though, in my view, we have just begun to explore the possible graftings between Gramsci and feminist thought, there have already been a few significant contributions to this line of inquiry. Besides the work of Anne Showstack Sassoon, I would mention that of Emma Fattorini, Teresa de Lauretis (who takes as her point of departure Adele Cambria’s “Nonostante Gramsci”), and Claudia Mancina. In her essay “Teoria dell’ identità e questione femminile,” Mancina convincingly argues for the potential utility of Gramsci’s reflections on “conformism” “to those today – and, among these, first of all women – who are seeking to understand and possibly govern, the processes of identity transformation” (1987a, 193). On the question of Gramsci’s relationship to psychoanalysis, see Stone (1984); see also Mancina (1987b) for a consideration of the relationship between psychoanalysis and Gramsci’s concept of “conformism.” Gramsci (1975, 2147; 1971, 294). For an annotated edition of this notebook I refer the reader to Gramsci (1978b). In this review of a performance by the actress Lyda Borelli, Gramsci inveighs against those individuals (women apparently) in whom “the sexual ‘element’ has so overwhelmed … all the other attributes, all the other possibilities, that it becomes a kind of seductive magic” (1982, 875). He concludes: “Man has worked tremendously to reduce the sexual ‘element’ to its proper limits. To let it expand again to the detriment of the intellect is proof of bestialization, certainly not of spiritual elevation.” One has the suspicion moreover that the disjunctive character of this specific text is not unrelated to the “obsessional” and “dangerous” quality of the subject matter under consideration, and that Gramsci’s remarks in “In the beginning was sex” may, in fact, describe the reader’s experience of Gramsci’s “Some aspects of the sexual question”: “Given as presupposed a certain fact, you would expect another to occur which would be the logical consequence of the first one. You see instead that this doesn’t happen, and that other, nonlogical ones occur in its place; you see that new forces come into play, elementary, instinctual forces, imponderable in the calculation of probability” (1982, 874). A striking analogue – and precedent – for this theoretical distinction between unproductive female sexuality and desexualized male reproduction can be found in nineteenthcentury French political economy as described by Joan Scott (1988, 139–63). There, Scott observes that “according to political economy, reproduction was an economic concept not a biological function”; that “reproduction was a synonym for production”; and that the two concepts, fused together, were represented as a male activity. “By locating sexuality in women’s bodies … [political economists] established a gendered contrast: between work and sex, productivity and wastefulness, discipline and indulgence, male and female” (1988, 144–6).

Production and its others  145 10 For Spivak’s discussion of clitoridectomy, see also (1987a, 150–3). 11 Gramsci’s own discourse apparently mirrors the conceptual level he is addressing: writing of the ideological and popular conceptions he uses proverbs to make his point; by the time he has reached the reproductive-economic stage of the discussion the proverbs disappear, save one concerning, again, woman: “a mother raises a hundred children and a hundred children can’t maintain a mother” (1975, 2149; 1971, 295). 12 This theater review is an essential text for considering Gramsci’s relationship to the question of sexuality and woman and merits much further critical attention. From this review it might be argued that Gramsci does ground his views of women’s liberation in productive life, writing as he does of “proletarian women, women who work, those who produce more than pieces of new humanity and voluptuous shivers of sexual pleasure” (1977, 346; 1985, 72). And yet, even in this formulation, production remains strictly inflected as factory production, production of new goods. 13 While exploring the pitfalls of Gramsci’s ethico-civil articulation of the “woman’s question,” it is also important to bear in mind the degree to which his approach to the question represents a break with the previous economistic Marxist considerations of it. As Emma Fattorini notes, in introducing the woman’s question as one of female identity “Gramsci goes far beyond the Engelsian framework of The Origin of the Family (and its Marxist derivations) insofar as there is no assimilation between sexual oppression and class oppression. In Gramsci there is not a theoretical derivation of sexual conflict from class conflict, quite in contrast to Marxist thought.” Fattorini also cites a related observation of Franca Pieroni Bortolloti: “It is curious that Gramsci discovers the ‘question’ in the manner of J. Stuart Mill (slavery as based upon juridical inequality) and not in the manner of Fourier–Engels–Lenin (slavery as based upon the existence of domestic work)” (Fattorini 1987, 2–3). The strengths of Gramsci’s ethicocivil orientation to the problem have been suggested by C. Mancina (1987a). 14 In the section that precedes “‘Animality’ and industrialism,” Gramsci also associates the “sentimental” with woman and, again, locates the politics appropriate to her in the realm of legislation: “One should also study the origins of the legislation in the AngloSaxon countries which is so favorable to women in a whole series of questions relating to ‘sentimental’ or pseudosentimental conflicts” (1975, 2160; 1971, 297–8). 15 See Gramsci’s comment “that the ‘unconscious’ begins only after an income of so many tens of thousands of lira” (1975, 1833). 16 See also Gramsci’s suggestive remarks on “idle women” and “deluxe mammals” at the end of Americanism and Fordism (1975, 2169; 1971, 306). Gramsci’s whole discussion of female sexualization and of woman’s “prevalent function” in the creation of “evergreater margins of social passivity” in this passage can be interestingly read alongside the following observation by Michel Foucault: “It is worth remembering that the first figure to be invested by the deployment of sexuality, one of the first to be ‘sexualized,’ was the ‘idle’ woman” (1980a, 121). 17 In his “Consumption and the Concept of the Household,” John Kenneth Galbraith argues that in the modern era “the conversion of women into a crypto-servant class was an economic accomplishment of the first importance … critical for the expansion of consumption in the modern economy.” That is, “if it were not for this service [the unpaid labor of women in administering consumption, which is not valued in national income or product], all forms of household consumption would be limited by the time required to manage such consumption – to select, transport, prepare, repair, maintain, clean, service, store, protect and otherwise perform the tasks that are associated with the consumption of goods” (1973, 33). In other words, without unpaid women’s work, the possibility of increasing consumption would be severely limited. Fordism, understood as a historically specific “articulation between process of production and mode of consumption” (Aglietta) would be jammed. 18 The work of critics like Laura Mulvey, Tania Modleski, and Teresa de Lauretis in the area of media studies offers an approximate idea of the kind of feminist critical perspective I am describing here. I would add, however, that the approach outlined here

146  Nelson Moe is only in part a description of work already done; it is equally a proposal for future areas of investigation. 19 Corporations know full well that the television screen is the quickest way to the hearts and minds of the consumer. According to the Nielson Ratings for 1987–8, the average American household had its television turned on for an average of seven hours per day (Television Advertising Bureau 1989, 3). Worth quoting along with this figure is the Bureau’s estimate that, in 1990, there will be two television sets for every household in America, and that 98.2 percent of households will have a television. 20 Cf. Paul Smith’s description of “a context in which capital’s claims for the legitimation of contemporary social and economic structures are made largely at the level of the consumer, who is never the consumer of just a commodity but equally of the commodity’s text and ideology … the commodity-text far exceeds the mere function of advertising the commodity and instead legitimates both it and its underlying mode of production” (1989, 139).

11 Social forces in the struggle over hegemony Neo-Gramscian perspectives in international political economy Adam David Morton Introduction Situated within a historical materialist problematic of social transformation and deploying many insights from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break with neorealist mainstream international relations approaches emerged by the 1980s in the work of Robert Cox. In contrast to mainstream problem-solving routes to hegemony in international relations – that develop a static theory of politics; an abstract, ahistorical conception of the state; and an appeal to universal validity – debate shifted toward a critical theory of hegemony, world order and historical change.1 Rather than a problem-solving preoccupation with the maintenance of social power relationships, a critical theory of hegemony directs attention to questioning the prevailing order of the world. It therefore “does not take institutions and social and power relations for granted but calls them into question by concerning itself with their origins and whether they might be in the process of changing” (Cox 1981, 129). Yet, instead of contrasting the concerns of these competing approaches, the aim here is to pursue a critical theoretical route to questions of hegemony. This move does not necessarily foreclose dialogue between problem-solving and critical theory, as they are not mutually exclusive enterprises, but it does remain wary of the assimilatory calls for synthesis that emanate from mainstream exponents.2 The critical impetus bears a less than direct affiliation to the constellation of social thought known as the Frankfurt School represented by, among others, the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno or, more recently, Jürgen Habermas (Cox 1995a, 32).3 Although overlaps may exist, it is specifically critical in the sense of asking how existing social or world orders have come into being; how norms, institutions, or social practices therefore emerge; and what forces may have the emancipatory potential to change or transform the prevailing order. As such, a critical theory develops a dialectical theory of history concerned not just with the past but with a continual process of historical change and with exploring the potential for alternative forms of development (Cox 1981, 129, 133–4). This critical theory of hegemony thus focuses on interaction between particular processes, notably springing from the dialectical possibilities of change within the sphere of production and the exploitative character of social relations – not as unchanging, ahistorical essences but as a continuing creation of new forms (132).

148  Adam David Morton The emergence of this problematic can also be situated within a reaction to the more scientific or positivistic currents within historical materialism. It is well known that Antonio Gramsci himself reacted against the crude reasoning of Nikolai Bukharin in the “Popular Manual” that sought to establish historical materialism as a positive science or sociology (Bukharin 1969; Gramsci 1971, 419–72). Similarly, for Cox, a historical mode of thought was brought to bear on the study of historical change as a reaction to the static and abstract understanding of capitalism associated with Louis Althusser. Not unlike neorealist problem-solving approaches, Althusser sought to design an ahistorical, systematic, and universalistic epistemology that amounted to a “Theological Marxism” in its endeavor to reveal the inner essence of the universe (Althusser 1969). The “scientific” character of Marxist knowledge was customarily asserted by Althusser (1970, 132) in contrast with Cox’s divergent, historical materialist insistence on considering the ideational and material basis of social practices inscribed in the transformative struggles between social forces stemming from productive processes (Cox 1981, 133; 1983, 163). The first section of this chapter therefore outlines the conceptual framework developed by Robert Cox and what has been recognized (see Morton 2001a) as similar, but diverse, neo-Gramscian perspectives in international political economy that constitute a distinct critical theory route to considering hegemony, world order, and historical change. Subsequently, attention will turn to situating the world economic crisis of the 1970s within the more recent debates about globalization and how this period of “structural change” has been conceptualized. Finally, various controversies surrounding the neo-Gramscian perspectives will be traced before elaborating in conclusion the directions along which future research might proceed.

A critical theory route to hegemony, world order, and historical change According to Cox, patterns of production relations are the starting point for analyzing the operation and mechanisms of hegemony. Yet, from the start, this should not be taken as a move that reduces everything to production in an economistic sense: “Production … is to be understood in the broadest sense. It is not confined to the production of physical goods used or consumed. It covers the production and reproduction of knowledge and of the social relations, morals and institutions that are prerequisites to the production of physical goods” (Cox 1989, 39). These patterns are referred to as modes of social relations of production, which encapsulate configurations of social forces engaged in the process of production. By discerning different modes of social relations of production, it is possible to consider how changing production relations give rise to particular social forces that become the bases of power within and across states and within a specific world order (Cox 1987, 4). The objective of outlining different modes of social relations of production is to question what promotes the emergence of particular modes and what might explain the way in which modes combine or undergo transformation (103). It is argued that the reciprocal relationship between production

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  149 and power is crucial. To examine this relationship, a framework is developed that focuses on how power in social relations of production may give rise to certain social forces, how these social forces may become the bases of power in forms of state, and how this might shape world order. This framework revolves around the social ontology of historical structures. A social ontology merely refers to the key properties that are thought to constitute the social world and thus represents claims about the nature and relationship of agents and social structures. In this case, the social ontology of historical structures refers to “persistent social practices, made by collective human activity and transformed through collective human activity” (4). An attempt is therefore made to capture “the reciprocal relationship of structures and actors” (Cox 1995a, 33; 2000b, 55–9; Bieler and Morton 2001a). Three spheres of activity thus constitute an historical structure: the social relations of production, encompassing the totality of social relations in material, institutional and discursive forms that engender particular social forces; forms of state, consisting of historically contingent state/civil society complexes; and world orders, which not only represent phases of stability and conflict, but permit scope for thinking about how alternative forms of world order might emerge (Cox 1981, 135–8). These are represented schematically in Figure 11.1 (138). If considered dialectically, in relation to each other, then it becomes possible to represent the historical process through the particular configuration of historical structures. Social forces, as the main collective actors engendered by the social relations of production, operate within and across all spheres of activity. Through the rise of contending social forces, linked to changes in production, there may occur mutually reinforcing transformations in the forms of state and world order. There is no unilinear relationship between the spheres of activity, and the point of departure to explain the historical process may vary. For example, the point of departure could equally be that of forms of state or world orders (153 n. 26). Within each of the three main spheres it is argued that three further elements reciprocally combine to constitute an historical structure: ideas, understood as intersubjective meanings as well as collective images of world order; material capabilities, referring to accumulated resources; and institutions, which are

Social relations of production

Forms of state

World orders

Figure 11.1  Dialectial relation of forces.

150  Adam David Morton amalgams of the previous two elements. These again are represented schematically in Figure 11.2 (136). The aim is to break down over time coherent historical structures – consisting of different patterns of social relations of production, forms of state, and world order – that have existed within the capitalist mode of production (Cox 1987, 396–8). In this sense the point of departure for Cox is that of world order, and it is at this stage that a discrete notion of hegemony begins to play a role in the overall conceptual framework. Within a world order, a situation of hegemony may prevail “based on a coherent conjunction or fit between a configuration of material power, the prevalent collective image of world order (including certain norms) and a set of institutions which administer the order with a certain semblance of universality” (Cox 1981, 139). Hegemony thus becomes more than simply state dominance. It appears as an expression of broadly based consent manifest in the acceptance of ideas, supported by material resources and institutions, which is initially established by social forces occupying a leading role within a state but is then projected outward on a world scale. Hegemony is therefore a form of dominance, but it refers more to a consensual order so that “dominance by a powerful state may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition of hegemony” (139). As Cox has put it, “hegemony is a form in which dominance is obscured by achieving an appearance of acquiescence … as if it were the natural order of things … [It is] an internalized coherence which has most probably arisen from an externally imposed order but has been transformed into an intersubjectively constituted reality” (1994: 366). Hence the importance of incorporating an intersubjective realm within a focus on hegemony. If hegemony is understood as an “opinion-molding activity” rather than as brute force or dominance, then consideration has to turn to how a hegemonic social or world order is based on values and understandings that permeate the nature of that order (Cox 1996b, 151), hence to how intersubjective meanings – shared notions about social relations – shape reality. “‘Reality’ is not only the physical environment of human action but also the institutional, moral and ideological context that shapes thoughts and actions” (Cox 1997, 252). The crucial point to make, then, is that hegemony filters through structures of society, economy, culture, gender, ethnicity, class, and ideology. These are dimensions that escape conventional

Ideas

Material capabilities

Institutions

Figure 11.2  Dialectical moment of hegemony.

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  151 international relations routes to hegemony that simply equate the notion with state dominance. As a result, they conflate the two forms of power. There is a failure to acknowledge that “there can be dominance without hegemony; [and that] hegemony is one possible form dominance may take” (Cox 1981, 153 n. 27). By including the intersubjective realm within a theory of hegemony, it is also possible to begin appreciating alternative conceptions and different understandings of the world. In this sense Cox refers to civilizations as different realms of intersubjectivity, although there might exist common ground or points of contact between the distinct and separate subjectivities of different, coexisting civilizations (Cox 1996a, 2000a, 2001). Rival forms of capitalism are tied up with struggles between different civilizations or ways of life so that the challenge is to articulate shared ideas that can bridge the different realms of intersubjectivity (Cox 1995b, 16). This applies as much to the maintenance of a hegemonic situation as it does to bids for counterhegemony that aim to challenge and transform a prevailing hegemony. Attention within this alternative route to hegemony therefore moves beyond simply defining hegemony in state centric terms. It does so by broadening the inquiry to include an intersubjective realm as well as encompassing a focus on the social basis of the state. The latter key development will now be discussed in a little more detail. This part of the discussion will also begin to indicate the role played by some of Antonio Gramsci’s pivotal concepts. Rather than reducing hegemony to a single dimension of dominance based on the capabilities of states, the neo-Gramscian perspective developed by Cox broadens the domain of hegemony. The conceptual framework outlined above considers how new modes of social relations of production become established within distinctive forms of state; how changes in production relations give rise to configurations of social forces upon which state power may rest; and how world order conditions may impinge upon these other spheres. Therefore, rather than taking the state as a given or preconstituted institutional category, consideration is given to the historical construction of various forms of state and the social context of political struggle. This is accomplished by drawing upon the concept of historical bloc and widening a theory of the state to include relations within civil society. A historical bloc refers to the way in which leading social forces within a specific national context establish a relationship over contending social forces. It is more than simply a political alliance between social forces represented by classes or fractions of classes. It indicates the integration of a variety of different class interests that are propagated throughout society “bringing about not only a unison of economic and political aims, but also intellectual and moral unity … on a ‘universal’ plane” (Gramsci 1971, 181–2). The very nature of a historical bloc, as Anne Showstack Sassoon (1987a, 123) has outlined, necessarily implies the existence of hegemony. Indeed, the “universal plane” that Gramsci had in mind was the creation of hegemony by a fundamental social group over subordinate groups. Hegemony would therefore be established “if the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation, between the leaders and the led, the rulers and the ruled, is provided by an organic cohesion … Only then can there take place an

152  Adam David Morton exchange of individual elements between the rulers and ruled, leaders … and led, and can the shared life be realized which alone is a social force – with the creation of the ‘historical bloc’” (Gramsci 1971, 418). These issues are encompassed within the focus on different forms of state which, as Cox notes, are principally distinguished by “the characteristics of their historic[al] blocs, i.e. the configurations of social forces upon which state power ultimately rests. A particular configuration of social forces defines in practice the limits or parameters of state purposes, and the modus operandi of state action, defines, in other words, the raison d’état for a particular state” (Cox 1987, 105). In short, by considering different forms of state, it becomes possible to analyze the social basis of the state or to conceive of the historical “content” of different states. The notion of the historical bloc aids this endeavor by directing attention to which social forces may have been crucial in the formation of a historical bloc or particular state; what contradictions may be contained within a historical bloc upon which a form of state is founded; and what potential might exist for the formation of a rival historical bloc that may transform a particular form of state (409 n. 10). A wider theory of the state therefore emerges within this framework. Instead of underrating state power and explaining it away, attention is given to social forces and processes and how these relate to the development of states (Cox 1981, 128). Considering different forms of state as the expression of particular historical blocs and thus relations across state/civil society fulfills this objective. Overall, this relationship is referred to as the state/civil society complex that, clearly, owes an intellectual debt to Gramsci. For Gramsci, the state was not simply understood as an institution limited to the “government of the functionaries” or the “top political leaders and personalities with direct governmental responsibilities.” The tendency to concentrate solely on such features of the state was pejoratively termed “statolatry”: it entailed viewing the state as a perpetual entity limited to actions within political society (Gramsci 1971, 178, 268). It could be argued that certain neorealist, state centric approaches in international relations succumb to the tendency of “statolatry.” However, according to Gramsci, the state presents itself in a second way, beyond the political society of public figures and top leaders: “the state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (244). This second aspect of the state is referred to as civil society. The realms of political and civil society within modern states were inseparable so that, taken together, they combine to produce a notion of the integral state. What we can do … is to fix two major … “levels”: the one that can be called “civil society,” that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called “private,” and that of “political society” or “the state.” These two levels correspond on the one hand to the function of “hegemony” which the dominant group exercises throughout society and on the other hand to that of “direct domination” or command exercised through the state and “juridical” government. (Gramsci 1971, 12)

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  153 The state should be understood, then, not just as the apparatus of government operating within the “public” sphere (government, political parties, military) but also as part of the “private” sphere of civil society (church, media, education) through which hegemony functions (261). It can therefore be argued that the state in this conception is understood as a social relation. The state is not unquestioningly taken as a distinct institutional category, or thing in itself, but conceived as a form of social relations through which capitalism and hegemony are expressed (Poulantzas 1978). At an analytical level, then, “the general notion of the state includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that state = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion)” (Gramsci 1971, 263). It is this combination of political and civil society that is referred to as the integral state through which ruling classes organize intellectual and moral functions as part of the political and cultural struggle for hegemony in the effort to establish an “ethical” state (258, 271). Once again, the notion of hegemony is therefore extended and more fully developed than in conventional approaches in international relations. Hegemony is understood, as Overbeek (1994) has added, as a form of class rule, not primarily as a hierarchy of states. For Cox, class is viewed as a historical category and employed in a heuristic way rather than as a static analytical category (Cox 1987, 355–7, 1996e, 57). This means that class identity emerges within and through historical processes of economic exploitation. “Bring back exploitation as the hallmark of class, and at once class struggle is in the forefront, as it should be” (Ste. Croix 1981, 57). As such, class-consciousness emerges, as E. P. Thompson (1968, 8–9; 1978) has argued, out of particular historical contexts of struggle rather than mechanically deriving from objective determinations that have an automatic place in production relations. Hence class identity is captured within the broader notion of social forces. Class identity is inscribed in social forces, but those are not reducible to class. Other forms of identity are included within the rubric of social forces – ethnic, nationalist, religious, gender, sexual – with the aim of addressing how, like class, these derive from a common material basis linked to relations of exploitation (Cox 1992, 35).The construction of hegemony, from a neo-Gramscian perspective, therefore occurs when a leading class transcends its particular economic-corporate interests and is capable of binding and cohering the diverse aspirations and general interests of various social forces. Within some neo-Gramscian perspectives, the construction of hegemony is sometimes referred to as a comprehensive concept of control. A concept of control represents a bid for hegemony: a project for the conduct of public affairs and social control that aspires to be a legitimate approximation of the general interest in the eyes of the ruling class and, at the same time, the majority of the population, for at least a specific period. It evolves through a series of compromises in which the fractional, “special” interests are arbitrated and synthesized. (Van der Pijl 1984, 7)4 Reference to the construction of hegemony, or the propagation throughout society of a comprehensive concept of control, may be interchangeable. In either

154  Adam David Morton case, to paraphrase Gramsci (1971, 181–2), the process involves the “most purely political phase” of struggle and occurs on a “‘universal’ plane” to result in the forging of a historical bloc. A historical bloc therefore implies the constitution of a radical and novel reconstruction of the relational nature and identity of different interests within a social formation (Nimni 1994, 107). It indicates an organic link between a diverse grouping of interests that merge forms of class and cultural identity. The construction of a historical bloc, Cox (1983, 168) adds, is therefore a national phenomenon and cannot exist without a hegemonic social class. Yet the hegemony of a leading class can manifest itself as an international phenomenon insofar as it represents the development of a particular form of the social relations of production. Once hegemony has been consolidated domestically, it may expand beyond a particular social order to move outward on a world scale and insert itself through the world order (171; 1987, 149–50). By doing so it can connect social forces across different countries. “A world hegemony is thus in its beginnings an outward expansion of the internal (national) hegemony established by a … social class” (Cox 1983, 171). The outward expansion of particular modes of social relations of production and the interests of a leading class on a world scale can also become supported by mechanisms of international organization. This is what Gramsci (1971, 243) referred to as the “internal and international organizational relations of the state”: that is, movements, voluntary associations, and organizations, such as the Rotary Club, or the Roman Catholic Church that had an “international” character though rooted within the state. Social forces may thus achieve hegemony within a national social order as well as through world order by ensuring the promotion and expansion of a mode of production. Hegemony can therefore operate at two levels: by constructing a historical bloc and establishing social cohesion within a form of state as well as by expanding a mode of production internationally and projecting hegemony through the level of world order. The “national” point of departure, however, remains vital. It is within a particular historical bloc and form of state that hegemony is initially constructed. Yet, beyond this initial consolidation, as hegemony begins to be asserted internationally, it is also within other different countries and particular forms of state that struggles may develop as a result of the introduction of new modes of production. For instance, in Gramsci’s time, this was born out by the expansion of Fordist assembly plant production beyond the United States which would lead to the growing world hegemony and power of “Americanism and Fordism” from the 1920s and 1930s. The way in which world hegemony may consolidate itself locally within a different national setting is illuminated by the following passage: “It is in the concept of hegemony that those exigencies which are national in character are knotted together … A class that is international in character has – in as much as it guides social strata which are narrowly national (intellectuals), and indeed frequently even less than national: particularistic and municipalistic (the peasants) – to ‘nationalize’ itself in a certain sense” (241; emphasis added). As van der Pijl (1989, 12) has noted in relation to this passage, the struggle for hegemony therefore involves “translating” particular interests, from a particular form of state into forms of expansion that have universal applicability across

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  155 a variety of different states. Hence the importance of the “national” point of departure. It is within this context that hegemony is initially constructed, prior to outward expansion on a world scale, and it is within this context that struggles unfold in contesting hegemony. “The national context remains the only place where an historic[al] bloc can be founded, although world-economy and worldpolitical conditions materially influence the prospects for such an enterprise … [T]he task of changing world order begins with the long, laborious effort to build new historic[al] blocs within national boundaries” (Cox 1983, 174). As indicated above, world hegemony can be attained when international institutions and mechanisms support a dominant mode of production and disseminate universal norms and ideas, involving the intersubjective realm, in a move to transform various state structures. In particular, international organizations can play a key role in adjusting subordinate interests while facilitating the expansion of the dominant economic and social forces (172–3). With this emphasis, three successive stages of world order are outlined by Cox within which the hegemonic relationship between ideas, institutions, and material capabilities varied, and during which different forms of state and patterns of production relations prevailed. These are the liberal international economy (1789–1873); the era of rival imperialisms (1873–1945); and the neoliberal world order (post-World War II) (Cox 1987, 109). Concentrating on the third era, known as pax Americana it is contended that a United States-led hegemonic world order prevailed that was maintained through the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions, along with the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Bank for International Settlements, have been collectively referred to as the “G-7 nexus” (Gill 1995a, 86). They have established mechanisms of surveillance to ensure the harmonization of national policies in the attempt to reconcile domestic social pressures with the requirements of a world economy (Cox 1981, 145). In the countries of advanced capitalism, the prevailing form of state was based on principles of “embedded liberalism” (Ruggie 1982). There was a compromise between certain domestic social groups (i.e. established labor seeking stability and protection from economic and political vulnerabilities) and the interests of multilateral institutions in the “G-7 nexus” with the aim of encouraging comparative advantage, tariff reductions and international free trade, and increasing the international division of labor through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Within this form of state of “embedded liberalism,” Keynesian demand management was promoted alongside Fordist techniques of mass production (Gill and Law 1988, 79–80). The role of the state was to act as a mediator between the policy priorities of the world economy and domestic groups. This was generally maintained through social relations of production known as tripartite corporatism involving government–business–labor coalitions. Such arrangements lent priority to central agencies of government that maintained links between the national and the world economy – to wit, finance ministries, foreign trade and investment agencies, and the office of presidents or prime ministers (Cox 1987, 219–30).5 This situation was eventually accentuated

156  Adam David Morton following the world economic crisis of the 1970s and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system during a period of “structural change” in the world economy. Elsewhere in the emerging global political economy, in countries of peripheral capitalism, the form of state during the post-World War II period of United States-led hegemony was generally based on principles of neo-mercantilist development. This entailed more state-directed leadership that sought autonomy over the national economy and growth through a model of import substitution industrialization. This form of state was characterized by state corporatist social relations of production. Yet, due to foreign penetration of the national economy, such production relations did not encompass the whole economy. There would therefore be overlaps between different modes, including enterprise and tripartite corporatism as well as subsistence agricultural production, organized within a hierarchical arrangement (230–4). In the “embedded liberal” and “neo-mercantilist” forms of state, however, it is argued that the forms and functions of United States-led hegemony began to alter during a phase of “structural change” in the 1970s (see Morton 2003b). This contention is based around twin propositions linked to the internationalization of the state and the internationalization of production. It is commonly argued that these developments precipitated moves toward the phenomenon that is now recognized as globalization.

Structural change, alternative forms of state, and production relations The world economic crisis of 1973–4 followed the abandonment of the US dollar/ gold standard link and signaled a move away from the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates to more flexible adjustment measures. The crisis involved oil price rises initiated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and heightened inflation and indebtedness within the countries of advanced capitalism. The post-World War II “embedded liberal” world order based on Keynesian demand management and Fordist industrialism, involving tripartite, corporatisttype relations between government–business–labor, gave way to a restructuring of the social relations of production. This involved the encouragement of social relations of production based on enterprise corporatism, leading a shift in the coalitional basis of various states away from a secure, unionized state sector toward the promotion of private business interests and the creation of favorable conditions for internationally and transnationally oriented business (Cox 1987, ch. 8). Hence a period of structural change unfolded in the 1970s during which there was a tendency to encourage, through different state/civil society relations, the consolidation of new priorities. However, the ongoing changes stemming from the context of 1970s structural change have been far from uniform. Nevertheless, the rising priorities of enterprise corporatism – among others, monetarism, supply side economics, and the logic of competitiveness – began increasingly to establish, albeit alongside prolonged social struggle, a “hegemonic aura” throughout the world order during the 1980s and 1990s often referred to as the Reagan– Thatcher model of capitalism (Cox 1991/1996, 196). As Craig Murphy has noted, “adjustment to the crisis occurred at different rates in different regions, but in

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  157 each case it resulted in a ‘neo-liberal’ shift in governmental economic policy and the increasing prominence of financial capital” (1998a, 159). During this period of structural change in the 1970s, then, the social basis across many forms of state altered as the logic of capitalist market relations created a crisis of authority in established institutions and modes of governance (see Morton 2003b). This overall crisis, both of the world economy and of social power within various forms of state, has been explained as the result of two particular tendencies: the internationalization of production and the internationalization of the state that led the thrust toward globalization. Since the erosion of pax Americana principles of world order in the 1970s, there has been an increasing internationalization of production and finance driven, at the apex of an emerging global class structure, by a “transnational managerial class” (Cox 1981, 147). Taking advantage of differences between countries, there has been an integration of production processes on a transnational scale with transnational corporations promoting the operation of different elements of a single process in different territorial locations. Besides the transnational managerial class, other elements of productive capital (involved in manufacturing and extraction), including small- and medium-sized businesses acting as contractors and suppliers and import/export businesses, as well as elements of financial capital (involved in banking insurance and finance) have been supportive of this internationalization of production. Hence there has been a rise in the structural power of internationally mobile capital supported and promoted by forms of elite interaction that have forged common perspectives among business, state officials, and representatives of international organizations favoring the logic of capitalist market relations (Gill and Law 1989, 484). While some have championed such changes as the “retreat of the state” (Strange 1996) or the emergence of a “borderless world” (Ohmae 1990, 1996), and others have decried the global proportions of such changes in production (Hirst and Thompson 1996; Weiss 1998), it is argued here that the internationalization of production has profoundly restructured – but not eroded – the role of the state. After all, “the state as an institutional and social entity … creates the possibility for the limitation of such structural power, partly because of the political goods and services which it supplies to capitalists and the institutional autonomy it possesses. The stance of the state towards freedom of enterprise … is at the heart of this issue” (Gill and Law 1989, 480). The notion of the internationalization of the state captures this dynamic by referring to the way transnational processes of consensus formation, underpinned by the internationalization of production and the thrust of globalization, have been transmitted through the policy-making channels of governments.6 The network of control that has maintained the structural power of capital has also been supported by an “axis of influence” consisting of institutions within the G-7 nexus (see above). These institutions, along with the Trilateral Commission and other forums, have ensured the ideological osmosis and dissemination of policies in favor of the perceived exigencies of the global political economy. As a result, those state agencies in close contact with the global economy – offices of presidents and prime ministers, treasuries, central banks – have gained precedence over those agencies closest to domestic public policy – ministries of labor and

158  Adam David Morton industry or planning offices (Cox 1992, 31). It has been argued that this tendency in the transformation of the state and the role of transnational elites (or a nébuleuse) in forging consensus remains to be fully deciphered and needs much more study (30–1). Indeed, the overall argument concerning the internationalization of the state was based on a series of linked hypotheses suggestive for empirical investigation (Cox 1996d, 276). Nevertheless, across the different forms of state in countries of advanced and peripheral capitalism, the general depiction is that the state became a transmission belt for neoliberalism and the logic of capitalist competition from global to local spheres (Cox 1992, 31). Although the thesis of the internationalization of the state has received much recent criticism, the work of Stephen Gill has greatly contributed to understanding this process as part of the changing character of United States-centered hegemony in the global political economy, notably in his detailed analysis of the role of the Trilateral Commission (Gill 1990). Similar to Cox, the global restructuring of production along post-Fordist lines is located within a context of structural change in the 1970s. It was in this period that there was a transition from what Gill recognizes as an international historical bloc of social forces, established in the postWorld War II period and centered in the United States but expanding on a world scale. This bloc brought together fractions of productive and financial capital and elements within state apparatuses to form a transatlantic political community. Since the 1970s, conditions have emerged for the consolidation of a transnational historical bloc, forging links and a synthesis of interests and identities not only beyond national boundaries and classes but also creating the conditions for the hegemony of transnational capital. While there is reluctance to presume that transnational hegemony has thus been attained, it is added that certain social forces have become prominent and have attempted to achieve transnational hegemony. Yet Gill departs from Gramsci to assert that a historical bloc “may at times have the potential to become hegemonic,” implying that hegemony need not prevail for a historical bloc to emerge (Gill 1993, 40). The case of the European Economic and Monetary Union is analyzed within the terms of a transnational historical bloc (Gill 2001, 54–5). Elsewhere it is added that the consolidation of neoliberalism within such a bloc is based on supremacy rather than hegemony. Again drawing in principle from Gramsci, it is argued that supremacy prevails when a situation of hegemony is not apparent and when dominance is exercised through a historical bloc over fragmented opposition. It is therefore argued that dominant forces within the contemporary transnational historical bloc of neoliberalism practice a politics of supremacy (Gill 1995b, 400, 402, 412).7 This politics of supremacy is organized through two key processes, the new constitutionalism of disciplinary neoliberalism, and the concomitant spread of market civilization. According to Gill, new constitutionalism involves the narrowing of the social basis of popular participation within the world order of disciplinary neoliberalism. It involves the hollowing out of democracy and the affirmation, in matters of political economy, of a set of macroeconomic policies such as market efficiency, discipline and confidence, policy credibility and competitiveness. It is “the move towards construction of legal or constitutional devices to remove or insulate substantially the new economic institutions from popular scrutiny or democratic

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  159 accountability” (Gill 1991; 1992, 165). It results in an attempt to make neoliberalism the sole model of development by disseminating the notion of market civilization based on an ideology of capitalist progress and exclusionary or hierarchical patterns of social relations (1995b, 399). Within the global political economy, mechanisms of surveillance have supported the market civilization of new constitutionalism in something tentatively likened to a global “panopticon” of surveillance (1995c). Overall, it is argued by Gill that these features of new constitutionalism, disciplinary neoliberalism, and market civilization are supported by the politics of supremacy rather than hegemony. The overarching concept of supremacy has also been used to develop an understanding of the construction of US foreign policy toward the “Third World” and how challenges were mounted against the US in the 1970s through the New International Economic Order (Augelli and Murphy 1988). It is argued that the ideological promotion of American liberalism, based on individualism and free trade, assured American supremacy through the 1970s and was reconstructed in the 1980s. Yet this projection of supremacy did not simply unfold through domination. Rather than simply equating supremacy with dominance, Augelli and Murphy argue that supremacy can be maintained through domination or hegemony (132). As Murphy (1994, 295 n. 8) outlines in a separate study of industrial change and international organization, supremacy defines the position of a leading class within a historical bloc and can be secured by hegemony as well as through domination. As Gramsci himself states, “the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’” (1971, 57). Where the former strain of supremacy involves subjugation by force, the latter involves leading allied groups. In sum, just as hegemony itself should not be equated with domination, neither should the notion of supremacy suffer the same fate. In addition to the neo-Gramscian perspectives discussed so far, there also exists a diverse array of similar perspectives analyzing hegemony in the global political economy. This includes, among others, an account of the historically specific way in which mass production was institutionalized in the United States and how this propelled forms of American-centered leadership and world hegemony in the post-World War II period (Rupert 1995a). Extending this analysis, there has also been consideration of struggles between social forces in the United States over the North American Free Trade Agreement and globalization (Rupert 1995b, 2000). There have also been analyses of European integration within the context of globalization and the role of transnational classes within European governance (Bieler 2000; Bieler and Morton 2001b; van Apeldoorn 2000; Holman and van der Pijl 1996; Holman, Overbeek, and Ryner 1998; Shields 2001, 2003); the internationalization and democratization of Southern Europe, particularly Spain, within the global political economy (Holman 1996); and analysis of international organizations, including the role of gender and women’s movements (Lee 1995; Stienstra 1994; Whitworth 1994). There has also been a recent return to understanding forms of US foreign policy intervention within countries of peripheral capitalism. This has included analyzing the promotion of polyarchy defined as “a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in

160  Adam David Morton decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections carefully managed by elites” (Robinson 1996, 49). Polyarchy, or low-intensity democracy, is therefore analyzed as an adjunct of US hegemony through institutions such as the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy in the particular countries of the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua, and Haiti, and tentatively extended with reference to the former Soviet bloc and South Africa. Other recent research has similarly focused on the promotion of “democracy” in Southern Africa (Taylor 2001) as well as the construction and contestation of hegemony in Mexico (Morton 2002, 2003a, 2003b). Furthermore, aspects of neoliberalism and cultural hegemony have been dealt with in a study of mass communications scholarship in Chile (Davies 1999). There are clearly a variety of neo-Gramscian perspectives dealing with a diversity of issues linked to the analysis of hegemony in the global political economy. The next section outlines some of the criticisms leveled against such perspectives and indicates in what direction current research is proceeding.

Welcome debate: Controversies surrounding neo-Gramscian perspectives Since the challenge of neo-Gramscian perspectives to mainstream problemsolving approaches in international relations, a more recent period of intellectual and political ferment has arisen. This has involved closer scrutiny of the neoGramscian perspectives themselves from a variety of viewpoints. Yet, there has been rare engagement with such criticisms. Beneath the surface impression of claims to openness, therefore, it seems that, in relation to criticisms, a politics of forgetting has persisted. Yet, as Steve Smith (1995b) has forewarned, it is incumbent upon such perspectives to remain self-reflective about possible weaknesses. This section will therefore outline a series of criticisms made against the perspectives as well as highlight issues of disagreement with such criticisms. In broad outline, neo-Gramscian perspectives have been criticized as too unfashionably Marxisant or, alternatively, as too lacking in Marxist rigor. They are seen as unfashionable because many retain an essentially historical materialist position as central to analysis – focusing on the “decisive nucleus of economic activity” (Gramsci 1971, 161) – but without succumbing to expressions of economism. Hence the accusation that analysis remains caught within modernist assumptions that take as foundational the structures of historical processes determining the realms of the possible (Ashley 1989, 275). However, rather than succumbing to this problem, the fallibility of all knowledge claims is accepted across neo-Gramscian perspectives, which leads to a degree of diffidence about the foundations for knowledge (see Neufeld 1995). A minimal foundationalism is therefore implied, based on a cautious, contingent, and transitory universalism that combines dialogue between universal values and local definitions within historically specific circumstances (Booth 1995; Cox 1995b, 14; Cox 2000b, 46; Linklater 1998, 4–5, 101, 106–7; Rengger and Hoffman 1992).8 Elsewhere, other commentators have alternatively decried the lack of historical materialist rigor within neo-Gramscian perspectives.

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  161 According to Peter Burnham (1991), the neo-Gramscian treatment of hegemony amounts to a “pluralist empiricism” that fails to recognize the central importance of the capital relation and is therefore preoccupied with the articulation of ideology. By granting equal weight to ideas and material capabilities, it is argued, the contradictions of the capital relation are blurred, resulting in “a slide towards an idealist account of the determination of economic policy” (81). Hence there is an inability to grapple with the dynamics of globalization because the categories of state and market are regarded as opposed forms of social organization that operate separately, in external relationship to one another. This leads to a supposed reification of the state as a “thing” in itself standing outside the relationship between capital and labor (Burnham 1997, 1999, 2000). Instead, it is recommended that a “totalizing” theory, rooted in central organizing principles, be developed that is attentive to the relations between labor, capital, and the state. To what extent this “totalizing” approach results in a unified view of labor and a heroic vision of the working class as an undifferentiated mass is, however, an open question. In specific response to these criticisms, it was outlined earlier in the chapter how the social relations of production are taken as the starting point for thinking about world order and the way they engender configurations of social forces. By thus asking which modes of social relations of production within capitalism have been prevalent in particular historical circumstances, the state is not treated as an unquestioned category. Indeed, rather closer to Burnham’s own position than he might admit, the state is treated as an aspect of the social relations of production so that questions about the apparent separation of politics and economics or states and markets within capitalism are promoted (see Burnham 1994). Although a fully developed theory of the state is not evident, there clearly exists a set of at least implicit assumptions about the state as a form of social relations through which capitalism and hegemony are expressed. Therefore, akin to arguments elsewhere, it is possible from within a neo-Gramscian perspective to raise questions about how different forms of state are established and how – through the contradictions of capital – the functions of the state are revised and supplemented (Holloway and Picciotto 1977). Additionally, Burnham (1991, 76) argues that the account of hegemony developed across neo-Gramscian perspectives “is barely distinguishable from a sophisticated neo-realist account.” Yet this undervalues a critical theory route to hegemony and the insistence on an ethical dimension to analysis in which “questions of justice, legitimacy and moral credibility are integrated sociologically into the whole and into many … key concepts” (Gill 1993, 24). Ideas are accepted as part of the global political economy itself, which facilitates recognition of the ideology and normative element underpinning a perspective. The production of intersubjective meanings within this theory of hegemony is therefore also undervalued. While Burnham’s critique does rightly point to the danger of overstating the role of ideas within neo-Gramscian perspectives (Bieler 1996), the function of intellectual activity across state/civil society relations and the role of consent as a necessary form of hegemony should not be overlooked. After all, “ideologies are anything but arbitrary; they are real historical facts which must be combated and their nature as instruments of domination exposed” (Gramsci 1995, 395). The point is therefore not to take the position of “Theological Marxists” who focus

162  Adam David Morton on the “law of value” and the “law of motion of capital” as absolute knowledge rather than as hypotheses (Cox 1996c, 176). Rather than upholding a fixed notion of historical materialism, the point is to follow the spirit of Raymond Williams (1977, 3–4) and remain open to a body of thinking that is active, developing, and unfinished. Therefore, though neo-Gramscian perspectives cannot be separated from historical materialism, they may be distinguished within it (Smith 1996). A different series of criticisms have separately centered on the thesis of globalization and the internationalization of the state proposed by neo-Gramscian perspectives. In particular, Leo Panitch has argued that an account unfolds which is too topdown in its expression of power relations, assuming that globalization is a process that proceeds from the global to the national or the outside-in. The point that globalization is authored by states is thus overlooked by developing the metaphor of a transmission belt from the global to the national within the thesis of the internationalization of the state (Panitch 1994, 2000). It has been added that this is a one-way view of internationalization that respectively overlooks reciprocal interaction between the global and the local; overlooks mutually reinforcing social relations within the global political economy; or ignores class conflict within national social formations (Ling 1996; Baker 1999; Moran 1998). The role of the state, following Panitch’s (1994, 74) argument, is still determined by struggles among social forces located within particular social formations, even though social forces may be implicated in transnational structures. Instead, it is argued that neo-Gramscian perspectives fail to identify and engage with these contradictions of capitalism. Yet, these issues are not necessarily beyond the scope of a neo-Gramscian conceptual framework. It will be recalled from the above discussion that the point of departure within such an approach could equally be changing social relations of production within forms of state or world order (Cox 1981, 153 n. 26). Indeed, Cox’s focus has been on historical blocs underpinning particular states and how these are connected through the mutual interests of social classes in different countries. Further, following Cox, the national context is the only place where a historical bloc can be founded and where the task of building new historical blocs, as the basis for counterhegemony to change world order, must begin. Alternatively, though Gill tends to take a different tack on the application of notions such as historical bloc and supremacy, he is still interested in analyzing attempts to constitutionalize neoliberalism at the domestic, regional, and global levels. As Gill puts it, “there is a growing contradiction between the tendency towards the globality and universality of capital in the neoliberal form and the particularity of the legitimation and enforcement of its key exploitative relations by the state. Whereas capital tends towards universality, it cannot operate outside of or beyond the political context, and involves, planning, legitimation, and the use of coercive capacities by the state” (1995b, 422). Therefore, the emphasis should not be misunderstood. Like attempts elsewhere to grapple with globalization (Radice 1998, 1999, 2000), there is a focus on transnational networks of production and how national governments have lost much autonomy in policymaking, but also how states are still an integral part of this process. The overall position adopted on the relationship between the global and the national, or between hegemony and historical bloc, may differ from one

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  163 neo-Gramscian perspective to the next, but it is usually driven by the purpose and empirical context of the research. Yet, noting the above concerns, the peculiarities of history within specific national historical and cultural contexts should not be overlooked. It is therefore perhaps important to admit the significance of taking a “national” point of departure – following Gramsci – that involves focusing on the intertwined relationship between “international” forces and “national” relations within state/civil society relations that react both passively and actively to the mediation of global and regional forces (Sassoon 2001). Further criticisms have also focused on how the hegemony of transnational capital has been overestimated and how the possibility for transformation within world order is thereby diminished by neo-Gramscian perspectives (Drainville 1995). Analysis, notes André Drainville, “must give way to more active sorties against transnational neoliberalism, and the analysis of concepts of control must beget original concepts of resistance” (1994, 125). It is therefore important, as Paul Cammack (1999) has added, to avoid overstating the coherence of neoliberalism and to identify materially grounded opportunities for counterhegemonic action. All too often, a host of questions related to counterhegemonic forms of resistance are left for future research. Hence the importance of focusing on movements of resistance and addressing strategies of structural transformation that may be seen as the formation and basis of counterhegemony (Morton 2002).9 The demonstrations during the “Carnival Against Capitalism” (London, June 1999), mobilizations against the World Trade Organization (Seattle, November 1999), protests against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank (Washington, April 2000, and Prague, September 2000), and “riots” during the European Union summit at Nice (December 2000), as well as the G-8 meeting at Genoa (July 2001), would all seemingly further expose the imperative of analyzing globalization as a set of highly contested social relations. Such demonstrations might even precipitate the realization that globalization is class struggle. The final and most recent criticisms arise from the call for a much needed engagement by neo-Gramscian perspectives with the writings of Gramsci and thus the complex methodological, ontological, epistemological, and contextual issues that embroiled the Italian thinker (Germain and Kenny 1998). This emphasis was presaged in an earlier argument warning that the incorporation of Gramscian insights into international relations and international political economy ran “the risk of denuding the borrowed concepts of the theoretical significance in which they cohere” (Smith 1994, 147). To commit the latter error could reduce scholars to “searching for gems” in the Prison Notebooks in order to “save” international political economy from pervasive economism (Gareau 1993, 301; see also Gareau 1996). To be sure, such criticisms and warnings have rightly drawn attention to the importance of remaining engaged with Gramsci’s own writings. Germain and Kenny also rightly call for greater sensitivity to the problems of meaning and understanding in the history of ideas when appropriating Gramsci for contemporary application. In such ways, then, the demand to remain (re)engaged with Gramsci’s thought and practice was a necessary one to make and well overdue. However, once such tasks are undertaken, it is clear that problems do arise with some of the key claims made by Germain and Kenny (Morton 2003c). In

164  Adam David Morton particular, they have asked whether the concept of hegemony can sustain explanatory power beyond the national context and thus withstand the way hegemony has been “internationalized” within a neo-Gramscian framework (Germain and Kenny 1998, 17). Also, they have claimed that concepts such as hegemony, civil society, and historical bloc “were used exclusively” in the grounding of national social formations by Gramsci (20). Yet, once the demand to historicize and develop a wider theoretical and practical reading of Gramsci is taken seriously, these claims are revealed to be somewhat hollow (see Morton 2007). Once again the pivotal issue is the “national” point of departure. The notion of historical bloc, as argued above, was certainly limited to “relations within society” – involving the development of productive forces, the level of coercion, or relations between political parties that constitute “hegemonic systems within the state.” Yet constant references were made by Gramsci to hegemony based on “relations between international forces” – involving the requisites of great powers, sovereignty and independence that constitute “the combinations of states in hegemonic systems” (Gramsci 1971, 176). Indeed, within Gramsci’s “national” point of departure there was a constant and dialectical juxtaposition between the national and international realms. [T]he internal relations of any nation are the result of a combination which is “original” and (in a certain sense) unique: these relations must be understood and conceived in their originality and uniqueness if one wishes to dominate them and direct them. To be sure, the line of development is towards internationalism, but the point of departure is “national” – and it is from this point of departure that one must begin. Yet the perspective is international and cannot be otherwise. (Ibid.: 240) Moreover, Gramsci himself discussed features of world hegemony and made reference to the “hegemony of the United States” and “American global hegemony” while also discussing identity movements, voluntary associations, and international public and private organizations that had an “international” character while maintaining a presence within the “national” realm (Gramsci 1977, 79–82, 89–93; 1992, 167–70, 291, 354–5; 1996, 269–71, 282, 318–20). Therefore, rather than an unduly narrow and restrictive reading of Gramsci, it is better to appreciate that the point of departure for Gramsci was “national” which involved a focus on how social forces within this realm were intertwined and shaped by the dialectic of global and local social forces (Murphy 1998b; Rupert 1998). After all, Gramsci commented on the dynamic of hegemony and treated “both the Renaissance state system and politics within the twentieth century within the same framework and with the same concepts” (Augelli and Murphy 1993, 127).

Conclusion To summarize, this argument has pursued a critical theory route to hegemony that provides a distinctive alternative to mainstream international relations theory as well as so-called structural Marxism that has little practical applicability to

Social forces in the struggle over hegemony  165 concrete problems. Notably, a case was made for a critical theory of hegemony that directs attention to relations between social interests in the struggle for consensual leadership rather than concentrating solely on state dominance, by demonstrating how various neo-Gramscian perspectives have developed a particular historical materialist focus on and critique of capitalism. As a result, it was argued that the conceptual framework developed by such neo-Gramscian perspectives rethinks prevalent ontological assumptions in international relations due to a theory of hegemony that focuses on social forces engendered by changes in the social relations of production, forms of state and world order. It was highlighted how this route to hegemony opens up questions about the social processes that create and transform different forms of state. Attention is thus drawn towards the raison d’état or the basis of state power, including the social basis of hegemony or the configuration of social forces upon which power rests across the terrain of state/civil society relations. With an appreciation of how ideas, institutions, and material capabilities interact in the construction and contestation of hegemony, it was also possible to pay attention to issues of intersubjectivity. Therefore, a critical theory of hegemony was developed that was not equated with dominance and thus went beyond a theory of the state-asforce. Finally, by recognizing the different social purpose behind a critical theory committed to historical change, this route to hegemony poses an epistemological challenge to knowledge claims associated with positivist social science. In a separate section, the thesis of the internationalization of the state and the internationalization of production was outlined within which, it was argued, the forms of world hegemony were altered in a period of structural change in the emerging global political economy of the 1970s. Subsequently, a series of criticisms was also outlined concerning the neo-Gramscian perspectives. Analysis can be pushed into further theoretical and empirical areas by addressing some of these criticisms. For example, in terms of further research directions, benefit could be gained by directly considering the role of organized labor in contesting the latest agenda of neoliberal globalization (Bieler 2003).10 It is also important to problematize the tactics and strategies of resistances to neoliberalism by giving further thought to autonomous forms of peasant mobilization in Latin America, such as the Movimento (dos Trabalhadores Rurais) Sem Terra (MST: Movement of Landless Rural Workers) in Brazil and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN: Zapatista Army of National Liberation) in Chiapas, Mexico (Morton 2002). At a more explicitly theoretical level, additional work could also be conducted in revealing Gramsci’s theory of the state and then situating this within a wider discussion of state theory (Bieler and Morton 2003). The overall theoretical and political consequences of such research can be ascertained from two angles. First, there is a rejection of objectivist or empiricist claims to value-free social enquiry dominant throughout the academy. This means that, however controversial it may be, there is an emancipatory basis to research. Second, linked to the rejection of such empiricist and positivist knowledge claims, greater emphasis is also accorded the principle of theoretical reflexivity. This entails reflection on the process of theorizing itself and includes three traits: selfawareness, as much as possible, about underlying premises; recognition of the

166  Adam David Morton inherently politico-normative dimension of analysis; and an affirmation that judgments about the merits of contending perspectives can be made in the absence of “objective” criteria (Neufeld 1995, 40–1). The advantage of theoretical reflexivity is that an opportunity is left to explain the emergence and social purpose of a particular perspective and one’s own political position. However, though theory is itself a form of political practice, it is not sufficient – hence the importance of instilling a greater degree of invigorated social engagement within and beyond the practice of theory to encompass the realm of everyday life. What ultimately matters, then, “is the way in which Gramsci’s legacy gets interpreted, transmitted and used so that it [can] remain an effective tool not only for the critical analysis of hegemony but also for the development of an alternative politics and culture” (Buttigieg 1986, 15).

Acknowledgments I would like to thank Andreas Bieler, Joseph Buttigieg, David Ruccio, and the anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting on previous versions of this chapter. The financial support of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship is also acknowledged (Ref.: T026271041).

Notes   1 While differences exist, the neorealist work of Kenneth Waltz, as well as that of Robert Keohane, can be included within mainstream, problem-solving international relations approaches to hegemony (see Waltz 1979, 1990, 1998, 1999; Keohane 1984, 1986, 1989a). The classic critique remains that by Richard Ashley (1984).   2 The call for synthesis has been an abiding concern among many advocates of mainstream international relations theory (see Baldwin 1993; Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner 1998; Keohane 1989a, 173–4, 1989b, 1998). It can be regarded as a principal tactic in allocating the terms of debate and settling competing ontological and epistemological claims (see Smith 1995a, 2000; Tickner 1997, 1998; Weber 1994).   3 For useful discussion of the contradictory strands and influences between Frankfurt School critical theory and critical international relations theory, see Wyn Jones (2000).   4 For further perspectives developing this notion of hegemonic, or comprehensive, concepts of control, see Overbeek (1990, 1993) or van der Pijl (1998).   5 It is worth noting that though the state form of “embedded liberalism” is referred to by Cox as the “neoliberal state,” this precedent is not followed. This is because confusion can result when using his term and distinguishing it from the more conventional understanding of neoliberalism related to processes in the late 1970s and 1980s, which he calls “hyperliberalism.”   6 For a similar, but competing, interpretation, see Picciotto (1991).   7 The same argument is also apparent in Gill (1998).   8 These issues are usefully surveyed in George (1994).   9 For further initial attempts to deal with issues of resistance, see Cox (1999) and Gill (2000, 2001). A version of the former is available in Spanish; see Cox (1998). 10 Many of Gramsci’s own insights on the conflict between capital and labor, arising from political action within new workers’ organizations known as Factory Councils in Turin during the biennio rosso (1919–20), can be found in Gramsci (1977, 1978, 1994b). Also see the engaging discussion in Schecter (1991).

12 From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism Richard Howson

Recent literature on post-Marxism has neglected a direct and strong engagement with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. What has happened through this disengagement is that post-Marxism has been imbued with the poststructuralism of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. That has rendered it incapable of becoming a theory that can engage the social as well as the political. This chapter attempts to reengage with Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and to bring back both the political and the social by focusing on a key aspect of the concept of hegemony – that is, the ethico-political. It argues that, far from being “just theory,” postMarxism’s engagement with Gramsci moves it toward a practical politico-social ontology. In this chapter, the nexus between hegemony, the ethico-political, and post-Marxism is developed by focusing on two of post-Marxism’s key concepts: antagonism and equivalence. At the Public Forum session of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Conference in 2003, Rick Farley, a significant voice for the Australian indigenous people who also held the position of executive director of the Australian National Farmers Federation between 1988 and 1995, spoke of the diverse problems that faced rural Australia. These included self-determination and access to land for the indigenous peoples, development of rural and regional infrastructures, and ongoing environmental exploitation and degradation. To this extent, Farley impressed upon the audience the imperative for today’s rural community to bring together the indigenous people, farmers, and environmentalists in what he referred to as a “National Strategic Alliance.” This type of alliance, he argued, would represent an important step toward building a framework for social justice that could extend beyond the rural problem and into the broader Australian community. As Farley spoke and became more impassioned about the possibilities for a “National Strategic Alliance” and, through it, a new leadership, it seemed to me that this aspiration represented precisely a shift from common sense to a “good sense” approach to addressing the problems associated with balancing diverse interests. Understood through Gramsci (1971, 348), common sense is a way of thinking about causality unconcerned with “fancy quibbles and pseudoprofound, pseudo-scientific metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.” In other words, Farley does not call upon metanarratives of class struggles and Utopias or speculative philosophy to explain the reasons for rural diversity or solutions for tension.

168  Richard Howson Instead, the reasons for diversity and tension are both social and historical and are expressed in the discussions occurring in pubs, homes, newspapers, and workplaces across rural Australia. On the other hand, a solution to this rural tension must incorporate recognition of the diversity of antagonisms by ensuring that the particularity of each antagonistic identity and its interests develops a sense of equivalence about their situation through alliance. In this way common sense becomes “good sense.” The importance of Farley’s argument to this discussion is not simply that it expresses a common sense approach to the rural problem, but that as an aspiration toward good sense, it resonates with the innovative and radical ideas presented within the broadly post-Marxist project. While the history of Marxist intellectual development has always incorporated a post-Marxist component (see Sim 2000), its more contemporary manifestation began with the seminal text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985). In this text, Laclau and Mouffe do not refer to their work as post-Marxist although they accept the label if it is used in the sense of “reappropriation” and “going beyond [Marxism].” This is because post-Marxism “cannot be conceived just as an internal history of Marxism. Many social antagonisms, many issues which are crucial to the understanding of contemporary societies, belong to fields of discursivity [and thus practices] that are external to Marxist categories – given, especially, that their very presence is what puts Marxism as a closed theoretical system into question, and leads to the postulation of new starting points for social analysis” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, ix). Further, the post-Marxist project is one that radicalizes democracy in a way that emphasizes the importance of “recognition” as well as “re-distribution” (xviii). It is the resonance a commonsensical approach to concrete sociopolitical issues has with sociopolitical theory that gives rise to the issue to be addressed by this chapter. In effect, what aspect of the post-Marxist project can challenge the critical interpretation of it as a project of speculative philosophy that is unable to exercise real social and political efficacy? Of course an explanation for the charge of speculation and disconnection from real sociopolitical change can perhaps be understood in terms of a question Paul Bowman (1999) asked Ernesto Laclau in an interview on “Politics, Polemics and Academics.” Bowman began by claiming that post-Marxism appears to be as much about “Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault as it is about Gramsci.” Further, “could post-Marxism have emerged without Gramsci”? Laclau’s reply was “no.” In fact, Laclau suggests that, without Gramsci, the whole intellectual project of postMarxism becomes impossible. Perhaps it might have developed, but the project would be different. In the context of the foregoing discussion and the issue to be addressed, this answer is of some considerable importance because whatever the Gramscian project is or gives us, it is nothing if not a way to analyze the operation of power and leadership in social relations. Most important, Gramsci offers an understanding of power as leadership that becomes the mechanism connecting the various interests within a national-popular collective will. For post-Marxism to ensure it connects with a social ontology, it needs to ensure a clear and strong grounding in Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. However, this imperative must not

From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism  169 simply emphasize hegemony as a static form of domination based on coercion over consensus. Instead, it must bring to the fore the aspirational qualities that produce consensus over coercion on the basis of moral and intellectual leadership. In this context, this chapter will further argue that a crucial aspect of the theory of hegemony for the concrete efficacy of post-Marxism is the concept of the “ethicopolitical” because it enables a social ontology that emphasizes the “primacy of the political dimension” (see Howarth, Norval, and Stavrakakis 2000) within a broader progressive “social logic.”

From dialectic to the ethico-political Consensus and coercion have become axioms of contemporary understandings of hegemony (see Sassoon 2000, 70; Laclau 2000, 48; Fontana 2002, 28–9). Yet, how these two aspects are played out to produce a hegemonic situation that is ethico-political remains difficult to pin down. However, to begin to understand this operation the concept of dialectic is crucial. As Bobbio (cited in Finocchiaro 1988, 148) argues, the dialectic represents a central theme of the whole structure of the Prison Notebooks, so much so that it unifies the collection of thoughts that form the theory of hegemony. Bobbio goes on to argue that, so far, the dialectic has not received the attention its importance demands. In the Prison Notebooks Gramsci’s articulation of the dialectic is based on its appropriation from the Hegelian thesis-antithesis-synthesis model (see Gramsci 1995, 371–2). However, while Hegel (1967, 34–5) applied it at the level of ideation, Gramsci, following Marx, emphasizes the importance of applying it to the historical reality of everyday life. In other words, the dialectic is invested with social logic. Further, Gramsci (1995, 376–7) pushes the social logic of the dialectic beyond Croce’s (see 1921, 35–60; 1946, 27–35) articulation of the “dialectic of distincts” where “distincts” can be understood as “the radical antagonists of the thesis” but whose disarticulated challenge can only ever produce a program that “tends to enervate the antithesis” and produce reformism. Thus, the logic of the Gramscian dialectic presents as a scenario where consensus and coercion will always operate together through leadership (Sassoon 2000, 70). This leadership is taken up by the “preeminent” social group that is capable of producing alliances and then assuming control and direction of civil society (Fontana 2002, 29). However, where the balance between coercion and consensus leans toward coercion, this marks the moment of a “crisis of authority” (Gramsci 1971, 276) and opens up the possibility for critique and struggle by subaltern groups to ensure that their particular interests will be addressed (Laclau 2000, 48). What becomes evident even in this simplified, syncretic scenario is that consensus and coercion do not operate in a straightforward unilinear or unilateral movement to produce synthesis. Rather, the dialectical operation in hegemony is always based on the historical and contingent nature of social groups operating within the shifting balance between consensus and coercion, superstructure and structure, content and form. Thus, the nature of hegemony emphasizes the rejection of a speculative approach because the dialectic of knowledge engages knowledge as practice to produce self-knowledge, which can then become an active element of progressive

170  Richard Howson critique (Gramsci 1973, 370–1). It also represents the synthesis of social, or moral and intellectual knowledge and practice with political and economic knowledge and practice. In this way, the dialectic produces a social logic that rejects the apriorism of speculative knowledge and the determinism of the politico-economic over the moral and intellectual. Therefore, the crucial aspiration of the hegemonic dialectic for Gramsci is to free the national-popular from an articulation based on an aprioristic speculative epistemology and a dogmatic politico-economic determinism. This becomes evident in a letter written to Tatiana Schucht on 30 May 1932 where Gramsci (1988, 219–20), having already written the great bulk of the notebooks, expresses an interest in trying to understand the influence that Ricardo’s economic theory played in the dialectic of historical materialism. Key to such an endeavor is the imperative to go beyond the specificity of Ricardo’s theory of value so as to identify its “synthetic (that is, bound up with the intuition of the world and the manner of thinking)” contribution and not merely its “analytical (in relation to a particular doctrine, however fundamental)” objective. For Gramsci, knowledge and, most important, self-knowledge are not simply about the phenomenology of “distincts” but engagement with a dialectic that produces an ethico-political epistemology the emphasis of which is hegemony in which politics is never privileged over economics and further, both are never privileged over the social, or moral and intellectual reality. This is precisely the moment when, through the dialectic, the “historical bloc” emerges (Gramsci 1971, 366) and consensus supersedes coercion to produce an ethico-political hegemonic situation (see Gramsci 1985, 106) that is representative of the highest synthesis in the political relations of force (Gramsci 1996, 179–80). Hegemonic logic then always aspires toward the achievement of an ethicopolitical or social logic which, in turn, incorporates not just the synthetic organization of the economic and political blocs with the social bloc to produce the historical bloc but, most important, one that is premised on the “dialectic between the intellectuals and mass” (Gramsci 1973, 334). In this way, the ethico-political historical bloc allows Gramsci to incorporate moral and intellectual leadership in the synergy of structural (that is, economic and political) and superstructural (that is, social or moral and intellectual) aspects of hegemony (Adamson 1980, 176). Further, this ethico-political historical bloc enables Gramsci (1985, 206–12) to set a new “popular” and “national” character-imperative to hegemony. However, the idea of “popular” is key here because through it Gramsci eschews the idea that a single dominative identity or speculative philosophy can act as the aprioristic determinant of hegemony. Instead, hegemonic logic is always social logic and thereby drawn from the culture and its people, understood in its broadest sense (Gramsci 1971, 125–33). Gramsci (1973, 448) began to articulate the importance of ethico-political for hegemony in his essay “Some Aspects of the Southern Question.” In it he argued, among other things, that the project of the Northern proletariat must incorporate recognition of the Southern peasant’s interests and, in so doing, create the “hegemony of the proletariat” rather than a dictatorship as Lenin did. This shift began a real attempt to engage the dialectic and an ethico-political historical bloc

From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism  171 within a nascent theory of hegemony. Throughout the Prison Notebooks and in particular the essay “Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force,” Gramsci (1971, 175–85) further elaborated this position by effectively displacing three foundational Marxist tenets centered on the base/superstructure model. First, Gramsci set aside the idea that the superstructure is simply determined by the base. He then argued that ideology has a broad material nature that undermines its epiphenomenalistic nature. The third and key displacement involved the setting aside of all reductionistic interpretations of ideology (Mouffe 1979, 185–95). The consequence of these radical displacements is that knowledge and self-knowledge, the group and the individual, are grounded within the social (see Gramsci 1971, 360) in a way that enables a resonance with the concept of “overdetermination” as employed by Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 97, 111) who in turn recognize its conceptual roots in psychoanalysis (see Freud 1974) and later appropriation by Althusser (1969). In other words, hegemony as representative of an ethico-political historical bloc produces a national-popular consciousness that, in the final analysis, is a synthetic construction that incorporates leadership as the symbolic representative of the mass which represents the plurality of interests played out across the social. On the other hand, where hegemony fails to achieve ethico-political unity or, in other words, where it fails to express an overdetermination, it produces the undialectic “passive revolution,” the consequence of which is “revolution-restoration” (see Gramsci 1995, 341–3). Hegemony that is ethico-political must transcend reformism produced from the revolution-restoration process. It must go beyond the simple recognition of interests already in existence while overlooking those continuously being activated from within civil society. In other words, an ethico-political hegemonic situation is always grounded in unstable equilibria. Failure to recognize this instability leads to crisis that, in the final analysis, alters the nature of hegemony by imposing regression within a restorative cycle (Gramsci 1971, 181–2). This results in the entrenching of a “dominative hegemony” (Howson 2005, 29–31) that constrains the superstructures to structure and civil society to political society. Overcoming the determinism of structure and moving to the overdeterminism of the dialectic and an ethico-political hegemonic situation occurs through “catharsis” or the moment of “the superior elaboration of the structure into superstructure in the minds of men” (Gramsci 1971, 366). The cathartic moment produces “aspirational hegemony” (Howson 2005, 31–2) as the expression of an ethico-political hegemonic situation achieved by moral and intellectual leadership directing a progressive organic revolution capable of putting into place unstable equilibria.

From ethico-political as aspirational hegemony to post-Marxism The theory of hegemony as shown in the above discussion on its dialectic and ethico-political aspects indicates the unorthodox approach Gramsci took to the concept of hegemony (see also Sassoon 2000, 45). Specifically, the theory of hegemony as it developed in prison incorporates concepts such as dialectic, ethico-political, historical bloc, and national-popular, but proceeds to actively

172  Richard Howson subvert their original meanings by challenging the conceptual boundaries of each so as to make them more relevant to what he saw as changing circumstances. The consequence is that hegemony could no longer be interpreted as a static moment but a complex process premised on a social logic, which, in turn, reflected either a dominative aspect expressed as power over, or an aspirational aspect based on consent, and provided through moral and intellectual leadership. Thus, for Gramsci hegemony could never be understood outside of a social logic that is always informed by history. In this approach, determinism and apriorism are rejected if hegemony is to reach its highest synthesis. This negation of determinism and apriorism in the theory of hegemony is taken up by the post-Marxist project. Today this project represents a well-established theoretical position (Sim 2000, 1) that extends and elaborates hegemony in a way that gives a new recognition to the current pluralism that marks Western liberal democracies. However, it is the theory and method employed by the post-Marxist project to advance contemporary politics that critics read as a wholesale rejection of the Marxist doctrine and, therefore, as achieving only the status of speculative philosophy (see Geras 1987; Frankel 1997). As Norman Geras (1987, 43–4) puts it, post-Marxism rejects standard Marxist positions such as that structural class position is the historical determiner of social and political identities, that the base has explanatory primacy, that politics is secondary and ideology epiphenomenalistic, and most important, that there are structural tendencies toward the unification of the working class and that this class has a privileged connection with the struggle for socialism. What is important about these brief points abstracted from the corpus of Geras’s critique is that while they imply the speculative, antimaterialist, and nonhistorical nature of post-Marxist ideas, the impetus to challenge such determinism and apriorism has always been an active part of Marxism (Sim 2000). Its critical moments may be summarized around Luxemburg’s (1970, 393) spontaneism through a dictatorship of class, Kautsky’s (1964) social democracy, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the significance of the ethico-political, the contradictory class positions in Wright’s analytical Marxist approach, the postMarxism of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), and more recently, the political discourse analyses of Laclau (1996, 2000) and others (see Howarth, Norval, and Stavrakakis 2000) in which equivalential logics are further explored and developed. However, as Laclau and Mouffe (1985, ix) point out, it is the theory of hegemony and the significant expansion of new concepts put forward by Gramsci that represent the starting point for their post-Marxist project. From this point, though, post-Marxism continues to develop the operation of consensus and coercion in a way that does not completely negate them, but neither does it construct them as independent or as dichotomized. This is because the ethico-political sits central to a post-Marxist social logic where the emphasis is on recognizing and analyzing the plurality of antagonisms within the social and developing them in such a way as to promote a progressive organic movement. This movement is based on the sense of equivalence that exists between antagonisms (see Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 1996, 2000). In effect, the ethico-political as hegemonic enables post-Marxism to develop a universality that goes beyond the pluralism of identity politics and thereby eschew the inevitable consequences of its corporatism

From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism  173 and reformism (Wenman 2003, 57–8). A particularly important example of an antagonism that failed to find and articulate equivalence is second-wave feminism. While it represented one of the most significant antagonisms to emerge in the postwar period, it developed into a form of identity politics that emphasized the woman question and, more specifically, emancipation for white, middle-class, heterosexual, Anglo women (see hooks 2005, 60–8; Butler 1984). As a consequence, feminism today operates as a social and political antagonism that struggles with, among others, itself, to develop a progressive organic strategy. Post-Marxism offers an important elaboration of the ethico-political aspect of hegemony. Specifically, it takes its starting point as the challenge to the oppression of democracy under neoliberalism and the concomitant negation of antagonisms. Further, post-Marxism emphasizes that it is not enough to simply recognize the existence, or even alliance, of these excluded antagonisms because what is crucial for the achievement of social justice in the contemporary situation is to articulate these antagonisms through logics capable of reconfiguring their identity so that they express a sense of equivalence. This is precisely the central aspiration in Farley’s argument for a National Strategic Alliance: to develop in each antagonism an “equivalential” status that, in turn, elaborates consensus and coercion into a new ethico-political dialectic where the various antagonisms are able to assume a collective and collaborative unity, but at the same time remain identified to their own interests, desires, and aspirations (Laclau 2000, 302). The logic through which this operates is referred to by Laclau and Mouffe (1985) as equivalential and its product as a “chain of equivalences.” This movement toward equivalence is politico-social and effectively undermines the critique of post-Marxism as speculative and nonpolitical. Further, through equivalential logic, post-Marxism ensures a rejection of the individualism and corporativism that are inherent to contemporary identity politics. Identity politics can also be understood as “pure particularism” (Laclau 1996, 26), which, in turn, makes profoundly problematic the achievement of equivalence. In fact, pure particularism has a resonance with Gramsci’s critique of Croce’s dialectic of distincts in that both lead to a politics that is ultimately selfdefeating. Laclau offers two reasons for the post-Marxist rejection of pure particularism that highlights this self-defeating impulse. First, a particular antagonism is always a contingent construction emerging from its supplemental relation to the system. Therefore, it can never be determined aprioristically. In all complex societies, this relationality is regulated by ideologically constructed principles organized into discourses that transcend any and all antagonisms – for example, the discourse that articulates the right to self-determination (see Laclau 1996, 25–7). There can be no particular antagonism (for example, in Farley’s National Strategic Alliance of farmer, environmentalist, or indigenous people) that does not make some appeal to the discourse and principles of self-determination in the construction of its identity. Thus difference as expressed in hegemony exists always already with an equivalential, universalizing social logic. Second, if it is possible to imagine a situation where, in the first instance, particular antagonisms emerge and interact agonistically, then the implication is that there is only recognition of the differential and relational aspect of each antagonism to the system, which in turn simply reproduces the status quo (26–7). What is overlooked in this

174  Richard Howson initial moment is that difference in hegemony is always based on power (qualified by the balance between coercion and consensus) so that by projecting antagonism as “mere particularity,” the nature and operation of power are ignored or, worse, taken for granted. In much the same way, power expressed as the oppressive potential of economic corporativism is overlooked in the differential relationality between Northern proletariat and Southern peasant in Gramsci’s Italian context. In order for equivalential logic to chain antagonism effectively, it must produce more than simply a system of alliances between differentially related identities. It must alter the identity of each antagonism, creating a sense of collective will while maintaining the interests of individual groups. In the relation between farmer and indigenous people, for example, this situation may well represent subordination of the latter to the former – certainly in terms of the capitalistic accumulation of wealth. However, it remains prima facie a positive differentiation because indigenous people may well understand wealth in terms of spirituality and access to land. Therefore, this situation does not produce oppression and antagonism but, in fact, acts to negate antagonism (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 153–4). The positivity of this situation will remain so long as there is not a discourse whose principles influence the identities of both the dominant and the subordinate actors, but more, these principles are systematically being ignored. The consequence is the exclusion of one group – say, the indigenous people – from access to the full realization of the principles set out in the discourse. The positive subordinate differentiation between dominant and subordinate groups is now subverted, making the dominant group’s activity, understood by the subordinate group, oppression. Discourse becomes key to the chaining of equivalences because through it a subordinate actor is able to articulate antagonism but so, too, there is created the potential for equivalence. However, discourse in the post-Marxist project is not understood simply in speculative and symbolic terms, but rather, as a mechanism that enables the dialectical construction of the symbolic with the practical into a new synthetic totality (Laclau and Mouffe 1987, 82–4) or praxis. Thus, antagonism produced through a discursive subversion does not develop simply on the basis of knowledge as an analytic mechanism, but rather, through its synthetic application to the construction of power in concrete practices (82). It is impossible for antagonism and, more important, the movement to equivalence, to acquire meaning, coherence, and legitimacy from some point outside discourse, which is always already part of a hegemonic situation.

From equivalence to the “general equivalent” A key elaboration by Laclau (2000, 301–3) of this chaining process occurs through the development of the “general equivalent,” an important consequence of which is that it develops within the post-Marxist project a sense of universality or collective will that is organized under a leadership group as the symbolic representative of the chain. Following Laclau’s logic, the general equivalent begins at the “frontier” (302) or the space that exists between the “hegemonic principles” (see Howson 2005, 23) of the dominative hegemonic system and the interests of an aspirational antisystem chain. The conceptual importance of the frontier is that, without it operating as a delineative marker between opposing demands and

From ethico-political hegemony to post-Marxism  175 interests, there is always the possibility that antisystem interests will be unevenly imbricated upon the dominative hegemonic principles. This results in the blurring of antisystem interests and leads to what Gramsci referred to as the enervation of the antithesis, which for Laclau (304–5) is expressed in the activation of a logic of difference. This logic operates in the service of a dominative hegemonic system to obfuscate the frontier and undermine the potential for movement to an equivalential logic. However, in situations where the frontier becomes more obvious, the activities of the dominant group to protect the system by protecting its own hegemonic principles are also made clearer. As a result, the number and nature of antisystem antagonisms increase and become more diverse. Crucially, though, because the internal logic of equivalence demands the expression of both the particular and the universal, the chain of equivalences cannot display its presence simply through the “incidental substitutability” of each antagonism. It must produce a “general equivalent” that can “crystallise symbolically and practically” the universality of antisystem identities and represent the chain as a whole in the face of system demands (304). Such an equivalent can only emerge from within the hegemony or chain of equivalence and its underlying equivalential logic. In this context, it cannot appear aprioristically and impose itself as the determining logos. Further, as the chain of equivalence becomes more complex, the attachment of the general equivalent to its own corporatist interests is transformed so as to enable the broad diversity of interests to become part of its own identity (304). This development brings into play a hegemonic social logic that moves beyond contemporary identity politics and highlights its inability to develop a sense that a particular antagonism shares with all other antagonisms an incomplete status. For example, farmers, indigenous people, and environmentalists share a distance between their own interests and the universalizing principles that enable self-determination. The moment that one particularity attempts to “radically invest” (Laclau 2004, 287) self-determination with its own interests, the result can only be alliance without the equivalential logic necessary to alter antagonism and produce equivalence. Thus, the general equivalent must not attempt to universalize its interests as the preexisting, transcendent determiner of the ethical to which people accede (Zerilli 1998, 15). Rather, the general equivalent assumes a position of unstable and incomplete achievement of ethico-political action within hegemony. Further, the leadership of the general equivalent is always based on the logic of equivalence, which dissolves the hierarchization of antagonism and emphasizes the potential of all particular antagonisms to be equivalent symbols of struggle (Mouffe 1993, 77). In this way, antisystem activity can never be completely subsumed into or, worse, negated by the general equivalent because this would undermine the ethico-political nature of its existence and aspiration – that is, equivalence through plurality. In this context, the post-Marxist project seeks to develop in all antagonisms recognition of their position and operation, as well as that of the other in the polity. More so, it seeks to develop recognition of the existence of all antagonisms as legitimate, thus enabling hegemony to move from the constraints of a regressive, ossifying logic of difference to a logic of equivalence that is ethico-political and aspirational.

176  Richard Howson

Conclusion This chapter has shown how Gramsci’s dialectic and conception of the ethicopolitical nature of hegemony influence the way we can understand the postMarxist project. More specifically, this understanding makes problematic the interpretation of post-Marxism as a speculative project that is ineffective in producing a politics capable of change. Beginning this chapter with a very real situation and aspiration shows that the proliferation of antagonisms does exist and does produce new tensions. Further, it is evident that the aspiration or, in other words, the theory and practice of addressing particularity and the tensions they produce is not some ill-conceived speculative adventure embarked upon by postMarxists, but a very real issue for people located very much in the concrete world. The task, of course, is not simply to describe these differences and tensions but to find strategies or wars of position that will enable these antagonisms to coexist and challenge the system in an organic movement. Thus, for the post-Marxist project the first step is to recognize antagonism because, without the enabling of antagonism in hegemony, there can be no equivalential logic and no challenge – only logics of difference, obfuscation, and ultimately, domination.

Part III

Political philosophy

13 Gramsci, Marxism, and philosophy Richard D. Wolff

The interpretation of Gramsci offered here may invite a criticism that I would like to anticipate. It may be said that I have given more precise shape and purpose to Gramsci’s work in philosophy and epistemology than “it really displays,” or that I have imposed an epistemological position on Gramsci’s rather more dispersed arguments. Gramsci’s explorations in philosophy were fragmentary, it may be argued, and largely incidental to specific criticisms of specific political tendencies in Italian and European Marxism. They comprise minor points within strategic debates in which Gramsci took contentious positions. Here they become more than Gramsci intended and more than his remarks can warrant. In a narrow, technical sense this criticism is partly valid. Gramsci’s formulations changed with the ebb and flow of rapidly altering political conditions; no finished, crafted monograph on philosophy or epistemology ever appeared (Buttigieg 1987, 3–6). Gramsci did philosophize in some sense “incidentally” to his strategic concerns as a Marxist leader. However, that does not justify taking Gramsci’s epistemological comments less seriously than anything else he wrote. Indeed, to ignore, downplay, or dismiss the philosophy and epistemology, as in Perry Anderson’s general approach, is to miss a profoundly important component of Gramsci’s contributions to Marxism: precisely the complex, mutual interaction between philosophy and epistemology, on the one hand, and politics and economics, on the other. Anderson stresses that “Western Marxism” tragically shifted its focus from concrete revolutionary politics and economics to a “revival of philosophical discourse proper, itself centred on questions of method – that is, more epistemological than substantive in character” (Anderson 1983, 16). This opposing of “epistemological versus substantive” theory demonstrates that disregard and denigration of epistemological inquiry which Gramsci opposed. He understood it to be precisely a completely political and urgently needed intervention in the class struggle. Indeed, the same applies to the philosophical and epistemological writings of other Marxists. Yet how many Marxists and non-Marxists have studied Lenin and Lukács while missing the distinctive epistemological positions argued by the former in his “Conspectus on Hegel’s Logic” (Lenin 1972b, 85–238) or by the latter in his two volumes (on Hegel and Marx) entitled The Ontology of social Being (Lukács 1978, 1–68)?1

180  Richard D. Wolff It is partly as a result of a long tradition of disinterest in or ignorance of major Marxist statements on epistemology that Gramsci’s contributions to a distinctive Marxist position in philosophy have been so widely missed. In recapitulating those contributions I admit having incorporated, largely implicitly, certain philosophical and epistemological themes running from Marx through Lenin and Lukács to Gramsci. Thus, this reading of Gramsci permits me to organize and situate his contributions within that complex web of prior Marxist philosophy which opposed the dangerous splitting off of philosophy and epistemology from social theory. Gramsci made major contributions to the cause of integrating philosophy and practical revolutionary politics, a cause that has attracted significant tendencies within Marxism for a long time. From Marx through the present, the Marxist tradition has included people deeply committed to the practice of philosophy. Some of these Marxists have been professional philosophers – schoolteachers, university professors, writers, and so on. However, most Marxist philosophers, and often the greatest such as Gramsci, have been more practically oriented in their daily lives. They turned to philosophy when concrete problems of socialist transformation also demanded philosophical rethinking for their resolution. Broadly speaking, two kinds of concrete problems have provoked philosophical position-taking by Marxists. The first problem has concerned the philosophies of the masses. Their various ways of thinking about the world, their religions, their structures of common sense have often made them impervious and/or hostile to the persuasive strategies of Marxist organizations. To alter such ways of thinking has required a theory of how and why they become established in people’s minds and how they change. In short, Marxists have had to develop theories of ideology, consciousness, and so forth. Such theories necessarily presuppose epistemological positions – notions or working definitions of perception, knowledge, science, and truth. The issue was, what epistemological position is appropriate for Marxism? The choice was between a variant of the conventional options dominant in Western society for centuries – empiricism (or positivism) and rationalism – and some alternative, specifically Marxist, epistemological standpoint. Gramsci opted for the latter by insisting that Marxist theory is an integral and original philosophy which opens up a new phase of history and a new phase in the development of world thought … [and] goes beyond both traditional idealism and traditional materialism … while retaining their vital elements. (Gramsci 1971, 435) Its originality lies not only in its transcending of previous philosophies but also and above all in that it opens up a completely new road, renewing from head to toe the whole way of conceiving philosophy itself. (Gramsci 1971, 464)2 The second problem which has provoked Marxists to undertake systematic epistemological reflections concerns the positions promoted by leading bourgeois

Gramsci, Marxism and philosophy  181 philosophers. Not only has it been necessary to counterpose Marxist arguments to the arguments of those bourgeois philosophers in the realms of social theory, ethics, aesthetics, and so on. It has become necessary to respond to their epistemological positions too. The reason for this has been the prevalent commitment of bourgeois epistemologists to concepts of knowledge and truth which logically consigned Marxist arguments, among others, into the discard bin of falsehoods. Gramsci aimed to undercut the hegemony of bourgeois social institutions and the theoretical conceptions which both sustained and were sustained by them. He thus understood that the Marxist tradition required a counter-hegemonic philosophy of knowledge and truth – an epistemological position – as urgently as any of the other components of a successful strategy for social revolution (Annunziato 1988, 162). He also believed that Marxists had largely failed – with some important but neglected exceptions – to construct such an epistemological position.3 Instead they had relied on the prevalent bourgeois epistemologies absorbed more or less uncritically into the Marxist tradition. This had risked the success of its revolutionary projects every bit as much as the uncritical acceptance of bourgeois concepts of, for example, the state, the individual, and equality would have done (Gramsci 1971, 170–1). One epistemological position has been prevalent not only in bourgeois society but also within Marxism (Rorty 1979; Hindess 1977; Lecourt 1975; Gramsci 1971, 435–45; Diskin 1988). It holds that there exists an objective reality, a singular world “out there.” This reality presents itself to all human brains as a complexity of which the essential structure and dynamic, its truth, are accessible if certain protocols (“scientific methods”) of knowing are strictly followed. To progress toward this one truth, which is as singular as the objective reality of which it is the truth, is presumed to be the goal of all reasonable people. Marxists comfortable with this epistemological position disagree only on which precise scientific protocols will produce progress toward this truth and which other protocols will deflect us into error. Some Marxists are enthusiasts of the particular protocols of empiricism and positivism. For them, the truth is found through the sifting of empirical data which will reveal the regularities and relationships comprising the underlying structure and dynamic of the world. Other Marxists embrace instead rationalist epistemology and its protocols. For them, the truth is found in deducing logically the relationships implied necessarily by the fundamental, axiomatic structure of the world. This underlying structure of the world is accessible to human beings through the most rigorous application of reason to ascertaining the presumed logic of life.

Gramsci and Marxism’s prevalent epistemologies Gramsci is among those Marxists who rejected these epistemological positions as incompatible with their understanding of Marxism.4 His grounds for this rejection were several. He saw empiricism, positivism, and rationalism as epistemologies that provided important conditions of existence for capitalism by dismissing the claims of Marxism. Those epistemological positions were thus theoretical

182  Richard D. Wolff obstacles to the hegemonic project of Marxism. Their presence within Marxist thinking also undermined its chances of political success by substituting “objective” and statistical laws of society for the power of active mass political initiatives (Gramsci 1971, 171 and 428–9). Gramsci argued for a radically different epistemological position because it implied a new conception and appreciation of culture and ideologies (worldviews) among Marxists.5 He saw this as vital to the success of Marxism’s hegemonic project: “the theoretical-practical principle of hegemony has also epistemological significance” (1971, 365). Gramsci was explicitly concerned to rescue dialectics, understood as a particular epistemological position, from what most Marxists had reduced it to – a kind of formalistic logic. His aim to reassert dialectics as a unique and specifically Marxist epistemology motivated his critique of Bukharin’s definition of dialectics: But if the question is framed in this way, one can no longer understand the importance and significance of the dialectic, which is relegated from its position as a doctrine of knowledge and the very marrow of historiography and the science of politics, to the level of a sub-species of formal logic and elementary scholastics. (Gramsci 1971, 435) As is well known, Gramsci concentrated much attention on the difficult issues of ideology. What is far less well known is the epistemological dimension of his concern. He understood ideologies as synonymous with the philosophies in and through which people make sense of their environments and themselves. One might say “ideology” here, but on condition that the word is used in its highest sense of a conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life. (Gramsci 1971, 328) Whether elaborated in the formal systems of professionals or articulated in the common sense, daily formulations of citizens, ideologies comprise worldviews. For Gramsci, they are a means of actively coping with life. More to the point, different ideologies cope with life in different ways. Ideologies differ in the support they provide for alternative forms of social organization. This is the issue for Gramsci. He is not much interested in “scholastic disputations on the truth or accuracy” of this or that ideology. What concerns him is which ideology holds sway or reigns hegemonic and with what precise political and, more broadly, social consequences. His interest in epistemologies – which are always components of ideologies – resulted from his recognition of their different consequences in and for the capitalist society his Marxism sought to transform. The prevalent epistemological positions among Marxists were virtually identical to those prevalent among non-Marxists: empiricism, positivism, and rationalism. Despite their differences, all shared the features against which Gramsci focused his theoretical resources. All hold that the truth is singular, one concept

Gramsci, Marxism and philosophy  183 or set of concepts which is most in conformity with how the singular world out there “really is,” “objectively.” Their varying protocols are all justified in the same manner, as the means to arrive at the truth, the “scientific” approach. Gramsci rejected these affirmations of the external world’s objectivity as secular residues of an old religious viewpoint: In fact the belief is of religious origin, even if the man who shares it is indifferent to religion. (Gramsci 1971, 441) It can indeed be maintained that here we are dealing with a hangover of the concept of God, precisely in its mystic form of a conception of an unknown God. (Gramsci 1971, 445) An implication of the view of truth as singular is the corresponding designation of alternative worldviews as false. Given the availability of truth – or a closest possible approximation to it – through the particular epistemological protocol preferred, it becomes a kind of pathology for any person to affirm any of the alternatives. Revelation or its modernized form, science, has found that this is the truth. Hence holding alternative views is proof of ulterior motives extraneous and hostile to the community of those committed to science, reason, and the truth. Epistemological positions which share this view of truth’s singularity serve nicely to elevate one – the true one – of the several worldviews in any society to an exalted status. This truth is then no longer merely one among alternative modes of coping with life. Instead the true worldview is counterposed to the others which are correspondingly designated as false. The latter are then either disdained as superstitions of the ignorant or persecuted as the perversities of the evil-intentioned. Speaking of the “sterilization of Marx’s doctrines by the positivist socialists” (Buttigieg 1987, 21–2), Gramsci understood clearly that in modern capitalist societies, the prevalent anti-Marxist ideologies would find an important support in such epistemologies. The combination of empiricism, positivism, and/or rationalism with individualist social theories enabled the elevation of the latter to the status of “the truth” while denigrating Marxism to the status of falsehood and perversity. In short, those epistemological positions could provide conditions for the social prevalence – hegemony – of bourgeois individualism as against Marxism. That prevalence was in turn a condition of existence for the hegemony of the capitalist class structure within the social formation. Hence Gramsci concluded that the active critique of those epistemological positions was a necessary task for Marxists, especially since he found that most of them had uncritically adopted forms of empiricism, positivism, and/or rationalism as Marxist or at least compatible with Marxism. For Gramsci this represented the theoretical fifth column inside Marxism, a major obstacle to achieving that development of Marxist social theory which he saw as a condition of existence for social revolution.

184  Richard D. Wolff

Epistemology and dogmatism In addition to attacking the epistemological positions that were prevalent inside and outside the Marxist tradition as a strategic urgency in the class struggle, Gramsci also did so because of his deep antagonism toward dogmatism.6 Gramsci connected his critique of bourgeois epistemologies to his attack on dogmatism. The connecting link was his own specific formulation of a distinctly Marxist epistemological position. Gramsci’s attack on the notion that there is “one real world” led him to recognize the many ways in which “the world” is seen and apprehended; “the world” exists in the irreducible multiplicity of its apprehensions. Gramsci recognized his own as one such apprehension, “his” world (1971, 446). It follows for Gramsci that the search for the true worldview makes no sense. Each worldview includes its own standards for the acceptance or rejection of propositions and claims about the world: its criteria of truth. The multiplicity of worldviews implies the multiplicity of truths. Truths are plural, not singular as in the epistemological positions Gramsci opposes. No overarching, singular, universally accepted standard of truth reigns over all worldviews. Their differences include the irreducibly different truth standards they erect and honor. This comprises a distinctively Marxist epistemological standpoint. It follows for Gramsci that the drive to make the truth standard of one worldview governs all other and opposed worldviews is a dogmatic aggression against them. It aims to sweep them into the category of error and falsehood by subjecting their substantive propositions to a truth standard erected by a different and opposing worldview. Dogmatism is supported and encouraged by any epistemological position with such absolute claims for the standing of its particular propositions. Such a position influences Marxism “to become an ideology in the worst sense of the word, that is to say a dogmatic system of eternal and absolute truths” (Gramsci 1971, 406–7). Within Marxism, Gramsci argues, dogmatism is sustained by the prevalence of empiricist, positivist, and/or rationalist epistemological positions. The debates about alternative theories within the Marxist tradition are shut off as theorists declaim against each other in terms of truth versus falsity, right versus wrong, accuracy versus error. Whichever theory has the extra-theoretical resources and supports to gain the upper hand in these debates seeks to vanquish and eliminate the others through denunciation of their supporters’ perversity or ulterior motivations in hewing to “proven error.” Instead of the ebb and flow of contestation among the ever-changing theoretical formulations juxtaposing their conceptualizations of their worlds, Marxism degenerates into the flat uniformity of intoning one position. This degeneration into dogmatism represents a great danger to Marxism’s vitality in Gramsci’s view. He seeks to contribute to the internal renewal of Marxism by exposing the epistemological roots of dogmatism and by proposing an alternative Marxist epistemological position which would undercut dogmatisms of all kinds. Gramsci’s epistemology requires not only the recognition of alternative viewpoints but the constant examination of them. They represent active social forces within the world as Gramsci sees it. His commitment to Marxism imposes on him the investigation of the ever-changing alternative worldviews in the societies he seeks to understand and change.

Gramsci, Marxism and philosophy  185 Gramsci’s Marxist theory is itself partial and relative; its truths can and need to be asserted against those theories that would deny or dismiss them. However, they also need to be supplemented by the partial insights gained in and through alternative theories. The need for debate among worldviews lies in Marxism’s need to confront critically all other theories to identify whether and how it can appropriate and reconceptualize certain of their truths while rejecting and opposing others. Dogmatism risks losing for Marxism the insights obtainable from some alternative theories and thereby weakening Marxism. Dogmatism and its epistemological supports within the Marxist tradition also play disastrously into the hands of dogmatism among the anti-Marxists. At least in the capitalist countries, the resources available to anti-Marxists to purvey their dogmatism far exceed the resources of Marxists to purvey theirs. Thus, when Marxists join anti-Marxists in espousing epistemological views which divide theories between the true and false, they inadvertently buttress an either/or mentality which is far more likely to view them as the false than to view bourgeois theories that way. The chances for Marxist theories to be given a serious hearing and to exercise desirable social effects would be far greater if a Gramscian epistemological position could be advanced rather than the absolutist and dogmatic epistemological positions against which he polemicized. It is in that sense that he advanced his epistemological arguments as a way to defend against dogmatism and defeat within Marxist ranks.

Causality, reciprocity, and the ensemble of relations The general approach of most non-Marxists as well as Marxist thinkers to causality excited Gramsci’s intense criticism as much as the prevalent epistemologies did. The separation of events in time and place into causes and their effects struck him as unacceptably one-sided, narrow, and contrary to what he read and approved of in Marx, Engels, and Lenin. He insisted on a many-sided approach to what he presumed to be the complex, multifaceted relations between persons and events in history. He viewed as a distortion the reduction of these relations into sets of cause and effect dichotomies, a tendency he repeatedly linked to European religious traditions. The historical dialectic is replaced by the law of causality and the search for regularity, normality and uniformity. But how can one derive from this way of seeing things the overcoming, the “overthrow” of praxis? In mechanical terms, the effect can never transcend the cause or the system of causes, and therefore can have no development other than the flat vulgar development of evolutionism. One could reconstruct the history of the problem of the single ultimate cause and demonstrate that it is one manifestation of the “search for God.” (Gramsci 1971, 437)7 The key terms for conveying his alternative to cause and effect logics were “reciprocity” and “ensemble of relations” (Gramsci 1971, 366 and 352). In

186  Richard D. Wolff Gramsci’s version of a Marxist worldview, all events occur simultaneously and are universally linked as causes and effects of an infinity of other events. To understand any event means to grasp how it occurs as the effect of all the other events in its environment and how it is simultaneously a contributing cause of all of them. Marxist analysis must be, for Gramsci, the specification of the complex, infinitely-sided reciprocity linking and ceaselessly changing all events. “It is not enough to know the ensemble of relations as they exist at any given time as a given system. They must be known genetically, in the movement of their formation” (Gramsci 1971, 353). Marxist analysis is a process of locating any event within the complex ensemble of relations which give it its existence, its qualities, and its meanings. From this standpoint, Gramsci had to reject the designation of events as causes or effects as a logical reduction that was fundamentally unacceptable in principle. Gramsci’s chief example of the sort of cause and effect analysis he opposed was economic determinism or what he often referred to as economism. He attacked those theories within the Marxist tradition that held the economy as a whole or some economic aspect such as class to be the cause or determinant of the rest of society.8 Gramsci’s critique of cause and effect logic applies not only in the field of social theory; it applies as well to epistemological matters. Knowledge and truth can no longer be conceived as caused by empirical factuality acting on brain processes, as in empiricism. They are not the effects caused by a singular real world out there having its impact upon us through passive sensory receivers. Our various conceptualizations of life cannot be reduced, in the manner of empiricism, to mere effects of sensory stimuli. Nor can matters be reversed, in the manner of rationalism, without incurring Gramsci’s criticism again: truth cannot be understood as the effect uniquely of processes of reasoning. Knowledge is not the effect of an ultimate cause: neither reason nor factuality. Rather, Gramsci’s arguments about reciprocity and the ensemble of relations approach the notion of a distinctive Marxist epistemology different than and opposed to both empiricism (and positivism) and rationalism. In such a notion – developed by other Marxists before and after Gramsci – formulations of propositions in knowledge are events functioning simultaneously as causes and effects in a reciprocal ensemble of relations with all the other events in their environment. In simplest terms, knowledge is caused by all the stimuli in the environment, in various ways by all the data pouring into all the senses: both those which the analyst can recognize and measure and those which are ignored. Knowledge is likewise caused by all the processes of the mind: logical reflections, flights of fancy, utopian yearnings, emotional conflicts, unconscious meaning systems, and so on. Considering knowledge as an effect, it follows that broadly different subsets of events within an environment – different subsets of sensory stimuli and modes of reasoning – can and do engender different knowledges and truths. Considering knowledge as a cause, it likewise follows that different knowledges contribute to correspondingly different sensory and reasoning events, to different paths of social development. Through this kind of logic, focused on reciprocity and the ensemble of relations, Gramsci articulated elements of an epistemological position which affirmed

Gramsci, Marxism and philosophy  187 multiple knowledges and their truths reflecting the different ways in which human beings sensed and reasoned in the world. To his way of thinking, to posit some singular, over-arching knowledge or truth denied the infinite play of difference in the world as Gramsci understood it. Such a positing reduced the difference and multiplicity of human thought to the flat, mechanical singularity of the truth achieved through the scientific method: knowledge as the effect uniquely of empiricist or rationalist processes. The result, for Gramsci, was an unacceptable and politically dangerous blindness to the ways in which all other processes contributed to knowledges and the ways in which knowledges simultaneously shaped all processes, including sensory reception (the facts) and modes of reasoning.

A Marxist position in philosophy Gramsci undertook his intense studies of philosophy for the same reasons that had motivated Lenin earlier. He had discovered that his disagreements with other Marxists over strategies and tactics had roots in basic and often unacknowledged philosophical differences. In seeking to specify the philosophical differences and their relation to matters of Marxist political strategies and tactics, Gramsci arrived at two broad conclusions. The first concerned the extent to which Marxists were still committed to pre-Marxist and anti-Marxist philosophical principles, especially in the theory of knowledge. The second concerned the way in which those commitments undermined the Marxist project for socialist revolution (in part because most Marxists seemed unaware or uncritical of those commitments). Gramsci problematized philosophical principles of knowledge (i.e. epistemological positions), that his Marxist contemporaries took as somehow “natural” and thus “necessary” and “above matters of political difference.” He criticized those positions by offering his alternative epistemological position. He showed how the prevalent epistemological positions – empiricism, positivism, and rationalism – involved reductions of complex relations into simple and simplistic cause and effect dichotomies. He argued that such reductions were neither necessary nor desirable from a philosophical/epistemological standpoint. He challenged his fellow Marxists to worry about the fact that their uncritically absorbed epistemologies were identical to those of their adversaries in the bourgeois camp, and that this situation cried out for discussion, debate, and criticism. The epistemological positions Gramsci attacked had deftly removed theoretical struggle from center stage. Social life was not viewed as the scene of diverse, contradictory worldviews confronting, enriching, and changing one another. Instead, all reasonable people were presumed to be striving in harmony – except for the ulteriorly motivated and perverse – to move along the path of science toward the truth. In Gramsci’s view, the Marxists had failed to recognize this epistemological ploy as the secularization of the old religious impulse to teleological order and harmony. They had likewise failed to see how such an epistemological position prepared the way for the “scientific” exclusion of fundamentally dissenting worldviews such as the Marxist worldview. Instead, they had been taken in and had endorsed and reproduced a hostile epistemological position as if it fit unproblematically into Marxism. This fit Gramsci aimed to explode.

188  Richard D. Wolff Gramsci’s complex critiques of and borrowings from the idealism of Benedetto Croce, his serious interest in Hegel, and his critical loyalty to the Marxist tradition produced many hybrid formulations, theoretical zigs and zags. These have been discussed in many works on Gramsci (Buttigieg 1987; Mouffe 1979; Cammett 1967). My purpose here has been different: to extract one particular line of thought from Gramsci’s complex work. Moreover, this extraction has been premised on the work of a later Marxist philosopher. Louis Althusser elaborated the logic of Lenin’s, Lukács’s, Mao’s, and Gramsci’s critiques of prevalent philosophies and epistemologies within Marxism into an explicit formulation of Marxist causality, dialectics, and epistemology (Althusser 1969, 87–128; 1972, 161–86; Amariglio 1987; Resnick and Wolff 1987, 62–106). By making matters explicit around his particular concepts of “overdetermination” and contradiction, Althusser conserved, even as he went another step beyond, the work of Gramsci and those from whom Gramsci drew his inspiration.9 The broad Marxist tradition has yet to come to terms with Althusser’s developments (including critical departures) of Gramsci’s quest for a specifically Marxist philosophical and epistemological position. Yet, Althusser’s contribution has begun to focus our attention upon the dissenting philosophical voices within Marxism, including Gramsci’s. We can appropriate their “incidental” philosophic remarks because Althusser’s work compels our recognition that they were not incidental at all. Rather they bear a central importance for those aiming to refashion Marxism to meet its tasks in the current historical conjuncture. To appreciate Gramsci’s contributions to the development of a contemporary Marxist position in philosophy, it seemed appropriate to integrate something of the ensemble of the other contributions in relation to which Gramsci’s work takes on its powerful meaning. Neither Lenin nor Lukács, Gramsci nor Althusser were altogether successful in constructing a unique Marxist philosophy and epistemology. They took the difficult first steps to break Marxism out of economic determinism and the old epistemologies of empiricism, positivism, and rationalism. They provided the concepts needed to make that break for Marxism, but they could not quite make it themselves. Perhaps this generation of Marxists can take the next step: to articulate and use strategically a distinctively Marxist philosophy and epistemology freed from the bourgeois theory out of which it grew and whose hegemony it challenges.

Acknowledgments I wish to acknowledge useful criticisms of earlier drafts offered to me by J. Amariglio, J. Buttigieg, A. Callari, and D. Ruccio.

Notes 1 A comparable denigration of Mao’s philosophical/epistemological contributions mars Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985, 64), while Louis Althusser demonstrates the kind of critical appreciation of Mao which is needed in “On the Materialist Dialectic” (Althusser 1969, 161–218). 2 See also Gramsci’s affirmation of the “epistemological value” of Marx’s famous

Gramsci, Marxism and philosophy  189 3 4

5 6

7 8 9

“Preface” to the Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy (Gramsci 1971, 465). The epistemological positions implicit in Marx and Engels and their relation to those which became dominant among Marxists in the twentieth century are explored in Resnick and Wolff (1987, 1–108). See, for example, Gramsci’s immediate responses to the 1917 revolution in Russia where he attacks the aspect of Marxism that was “contaminated by positivist and naturalistic encrustations,” and he celebrates Lenin and the Bolsheviks for converting their thought “into a meaningful historic force” (Buttigieg 1987, 18–19). See also Gramsci’s criticism of Nikolai Bukharin’s epistemological position as “vulgar materialist” and as “idealism upside down … speculative categories are replaced by empirical concepts and classifications which are no less abstract and anti-historical” (Gramsci 1971, 407 and 437). See Gramsci’s approval of Antonio Labriola’s insistence that Marxism is an “independent and original philosophy” (Gramsci 1971, 390). In this he was influenced by the similar linkage of epistemological arguments to an attack on dogmatism present in the work of Lenin (1927, 107–8); see also Leonardo Paggi’s “Gramsci’s General Theory of Marxism” in Mouffe (1979, 133–7). Gramsci is even careful not to be dogmatic about dogmatism when he notes how in certain historical moments dogmatic faith can sustain social movements (1971, 336). Thus dogmatism too contains its dialectical moments. Gramsci’s critique of statistical analysis and prediction develops these ideas further (Gramsci 1971, 428–9 and 170–1); see also Mouffe (1979, 168–204). See the debates over Gramsci and last instance determinism in the essays by Norberto Bobbio, Jacques Texier, and Chantal Mouffe (Mouffe 1979). Mouffe’s “Hegemony and Ideology in Gramsci” (1979) also emphasized the insights to be obtained through a rereading of Gramsci using Althusserian categories and theoretical sensibilities. Her concern was not, however, with epistemological issues and positions.

14 General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci Carlos Nelson Coutinho Translated by Antonio Callari

This chapter discusses Gramsci’s relationship to the concept of democracy. Gramsci’s contribution to the theory of democracy is best captured by his concept of hegemony, which is indeed a central concept for his whole theoretical system. This much has been frequently noted. Less noted, however, has been the fact that this concept also functions as a point of connection between the author of the Prison Notebooks and two of the most significant paradigms of modern political philosophy: those of a “general will” and of a “social contract.” In this chapter, therefore, I do not approach the matter in the usual manner – that is, by discussing the specifically Marxist roots of the concept of hegemony.1 Rather, I undertake the different task of showing that, in his inquiry into democracy and construction of the theory of hegemony, Gramsci was in dialogue not only with Marx and Lenin, or Machiavelli (which is unequivocal), but also, if at times implicitly, with other great names of modern political philosophy – Rousseau and Hegel in particular. In my opinion, Gramsci set out to explore a fundamental dimension of the historical materialist conception of political praxis that Marx and Engels had not always made evident: the character of political praxis as a privileged sphere of intersubjective and consensual interaction. As we know, this dimension has attracted the attention of others, such as Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas, who try to address it by means of their respective concepts of “action” and “communicative action” (Arendt 1958; Habermas 1987). In the work of Gramsci, however, this dimension – precisely because it was formulated from a historical materialist perspective – received a more concrete (or less utopian) treatment than in the work of Arendt and Habermas. Gramsci’s more concrete vision in this respect was made possible by his dialogue with not only Marx but also with Rousseau and Hegel.

The priority of the public A basic thrust of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is captured by the idea that in a hegemonic relation, there is always a profession of the priority of a general will over particular wills, of public over private interest. Gramsci defines politics as “catharsis,” or “the passage from a merely economic (or egoistic-passional) moment to an ethical-political moment” (1975, 1244), a passage, that is, to the sphere where universal (or universalizing) interest is given a clear priority over

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  191 merely singular or corporative interest – where, that is, relations of hegemony effectively take place. In the history of political philosophy, this priority has functioned as a criterion for the analysis of the political sphere for over two thousand years. Aristotle, for instance, distinguished between good and bad forms of government based on whether the ruler was guided by the public interest (the interest of the collectivity) or by his private interests. In the modern world the question reappears with, among others, Montesquieu, who considers the priority of the public over the private (“virtue”) the “principle of government” upon which the republican regime rests – even if for him, as is known, this regime belonged to the past and could not possibly exist in the modern world, whose adequate form of government is instead a constitutional, “moderate” monarchy. But it is with Jean-Jacques Rousseau that the question becomes a focal point of contemporary interest and yields the ultimate criterion for the legitimacy of any sociopolitical order. One can notice in Rousseau’s work the presence of a fundamental concept, precisely that of a “general will” (volonté générale), which is not to be found in the liberal tradition before or after him; only a concept of the “will of all” can be found in the liberal tradition. Rousseau defines general will as something distinct from this “will of all,” the former expressing the public interest and the latter a mere sum of different private interests (1964b, 371). I believe that the concept of general will – meaning, again, a precedence of the public over the private – occupies a central position as well in the political philosophy of Hegel, whose thinking, too, is alien to the liberal tradition. Although Rousseau is seldom mentioned in the Notebooks, it does not seem arbitrary to me to propose a relationship between him and Gramsci. In Gramsci’s work, in addition to other themes also present in Rousseau, we can notice the presence of something akin to the concept of a “general will” – precisely, the concept of “collective will.”2 Even less arbitrary is to propose a link between Gramsci and Hegel, whose thought is often discussed in the Notebooks: we can see clear, sometimes unequivocal, evidence of Hegel’s influence in the concepts of a “civil society” and of an “ethical state,” frequently used by Gramsci. One concrete example among others is the note entitled “Hegel and Associationism,” in which Gramsci (1975, 56–7) expresses, for the first time, even if in a still rudimentary way, his specific concept of “civil society.” Certainly his concept is different from Hegel’s (to an even greater degree than he himself seems to believe in this note); and both their concepts are, in turn, different from that frequently used by Marx. In Hegel, civil society includes what Marx calls “structure” (that is, economic relations) but, in contrast to Marx, it also includes other spheres, among which are those to which Gramsci refers as “associationism.” This is particularly the case with institutions which, although called “corporations” by Hegel (using terminology of ancien régime derivation), depict social structures that are in fact closer to modern trade unions than to medieval institutions. It is precisely this “associationist” moment of Hegelian thought that Gramsci recaptures in his definition of “civil society.” Gramsci, in turn, places realms that in Hegel are part of burgerliche Gesellschaft, in different spheres of social being: the “system of needs” in what he calls “economic society,” and the “administration of justice” and the “police” in “political society” (or the state strictu sensu). Gramsci’s selective return to

192  Carlos Nelson Coutinho Hegel thus focuses substantially on the “private apparatuses of hegemony” and constitutes them as the fundamental bases of his specific notion of “civil society.”

Rousseau and the general will Starting from a nonliberal position, Rousseau was the first modern thinker to insist on the idea that society, whatever its form of government, can be legitimate only when grounded on a general will, the public interest, or popular sovereignty (three practically synonymous terms for him). The Genevan thinker is a harsh critic of liberalism. In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Jean-Jacques caustically attacks society based on private property, which he calls “société civile,” and in which traces of the emerging mercantile bourgeois order are clearly recognizable. Rousseau tries to demonstrate that the roots of inequality are the division of labor, the ensuing regime of private property, and the conflicts of interest and egoism that the market inevitably produces (1964a, 109–237). In the Second Discourse, Rousseau severely denounces the mythology of liberal political economy, particularly Adam Smith’s rendition of it which professes that the pursuit of private interest leads, through the spontaneous action of the market, to collective welfare. For Rousseau, by contrast, the “invisible hand” in the world of the market leads not to collective welfare but to the unrestrained Hobbesian war of all against all, to alienation, and to inequality. Not satisfied with this critique of the economic mythology of liberalism, Rousseau goes on to criticize the political illusions of liberal contract theory. In the Second Discourse, describing the vicissitudes of the process of socialization, Rousseau shows that at a certain moment in their evolution toward civilization, humans make a contract. This contract, as described by John Locke in the Second Treatise of Government, has the ultimate purpose of guaranteeing private property, but in contrast to the liberal English philosopher who defends this kind of contract, Rousseau mercilessly underlines its lack of legitimacy: in truth, precisely because it only intends to protect interests that are merely private, the liberal contract favors owners of property, thus strengthening social inequality and generating the political oppression of the “poor” by the “rich.” Here, although he does not have a precise concept of social class (he writes of “rich” and “poor”), Rousseau clearly anticipates Marx in revealing the class nature of the state, including the state founded by (and based on) a liberal kind of contract. In this sense, the Second Discourse offers a devastating critique not only of bourgeois political economy, but also of the whole liberal tradition of contract theory that begins with Locke. It is obvious, however, that while he criticizes liberal contractualism, Rousseau does not abandon contract theory. In fact, a few years after the Discourses he writes his masterpiece On the Social Contract (1964b), dedicated to the study of a legitimate pact. It seems to me that this new text establishes the “pars construens” of Rousseau’s system that had had in the two Discourses its “pars destruens.” After severely criticizing the “civil society” of his time in these Discourses, highlighting its cruel contradictions and the stalemates that inevitably drive it to growing inequality and finally to despotism, Rousseau proposes another kind of society in the Contract, a legitimate society, suitable to the potentialities of social

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  193 man – and it must be emphasized that unlike the liberals, Jean-Jacques speaks of a legitimate society, not only of a legitimate government. This legitimate order also is based on a contract, but of a kind entirely different from that proposed by Locke and other liberals – different from the one that Rousseau, in the Second Discourse, had already described as responsible for a clearly iniquitous outcome. The pact of On the Social Contract does not aim to secure private property under the guise of protecting so-called “natural rights.” Rousseau’s legitimate social contract calls for the creation of a general will based on the collective interest and representing the subjective postulate of popular sovereignty. This contract establishes a “people” as such, which thus emerges as a collective subject, and what moves this subject is precisely the general will – not the sum of individual or private interests, but the common interest of the collectivity. What distinguishes Rousseau’s democratic standpoint is precisely this: the assertion that society can be legitimate only if founded on popular sovereignty, on the construction of a collective subject that, based on general will, acts according to public interest – which, as we will see, for him means that it acts in opposition to private interests. I would therefore like to retain from Rousseau’s work the idea that democracy is organically linked with the concept of contract. Now, whoever says contract also says consensus, expressing the idea that individuals can organize themselves into collective subjects based on consensus, on free will. And here already it is possible to point out a first approximation between Rousseau’s legitimate contract and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony: as we know, Gramsci conceives hegemony as a relation built on consensus, not coercion. But it is also fundamental to retain from Rousseau’s work the idea that there are different types of contract: the contract on which democracy is based is not (using Gramsci’s expression) one supported by, and that in turn legitimates, “economic-corporative” or “egoisticpassional” interests, but is instead one that creates a space for a public sphere centered on the “ethico-political,” universality, collective interest. Moreover, the contract proposed by Rousseau, based on general will and popular sovereignty, ultimately carries within itself the idea of self-government; Gramsci’s position is no different when, defining communism as a “regulated society,” he says that in it the coercive apparatus of the state will be gradually assimilated by the consensual (or contractual) mechanisms of civil society. Both thinkers consider capitalism incompatible with the radical democratization of society: while Rousseau states that in the legitimate order he proposes, nobody can be so poor as to be forced to sell himself (namely, to become a wage worker [1964b, 391–2]), Gramsci is convinced that the “regulated society” can emerge only after the eradication of social classes. Nonetheless, in spite of Rousseau’s extraordinary lucidity and farsightedness, his thought is not without limitations and ambiguities, which result primarily from his specific historical conditions. The principal limitation (which had in fact been pointed out by Marx in The Jewish Question [1974, 45–88], in which there takes place a tacit polemic against Rousseau and his Jacobin disciples) is the fact that the author of On the Social Contract presupposes that the general will is radically opposed to individual wills, which it must ultimately repress (men must be “forced to be free,” says Rousseau – that is, to act according to the general will).

194  Carlos Nelson Coutinho In other words, for Rousseau, the general will is not a strengthening or deepening of individual wills, but just the opposite: individuals must put aside (or repress) their individual wills if they want to act effectively in agreement with the general will. Making a metaphorical use of a well-known Freudian concept, I would say that in Rousseau’s work, it is as if the relation between general will, understood as a “superego,” and individual will, understood as a rebel “unconscious,” is one of a repression of the latter by the former. But as Freud also says, the “repressed” returns and, when it does, it emerges by means of a neurosis, a fragmentation of personality. Speaking less metaphorically we could say, now with terms familiar to the young Marx, that Rousseau’s system – although it decidedly places the citoyen above the bourgeois – reaffirms the laceration of men between these two roles as poles of an insurmountable dichotomy. That dichotomy is reproduced in Rousseau because, while he condemns capitalism and the inequality of property, he does not transcend the horizon of private property: Rousseau’s point of view in attacking capitalism is not the same as that of the modern working class, the proletariat, but is the point of view of the independent peasants and artisans who, in Rousseau’s time, were seeing their ways of life being gradually destroyed by the impetuous development of the capitalist mode of production. The socioeconomic base of the democratic order proposed by Rousseau thus does not include the socialization of property, but rather only its equal division (though it is true that, for him, this is only a necessary and not sufficient condition for the emergence of a general will): no one should own property excessively or, at the other extreme, be deprived of it. But the fact remains that the legitimate society proposed by Rousseau still has its socioeconomic base in individual property, hence in a mercantile economy – that which, with Marx, could be called a “simple mercantile economy,” still precapitalist. The utopian features of the romantic anticapitalistic moment present in Rousseau do not undermine the greatness or modernity of his democratic proposal, but they do introduce in his system the limitations and ambiguities we have mentioned: a mercantile society such as he proposes, even if not capitalist, leads to the maintenance and ultimately the strengthening of private interest.3 In other words, it forces members of the society, in the reproduction of their material life, to act according to interests contrary to those they have the duty to uphold as citizens in the public sphere. Nor should it be forgotten that after a certain expansion of market processes, it is impossible to prevent the transformation of a simple mercantile mode of production into a capitalist mode. Even as regards the citoyen “superego” in Rousseau’s legitimate order, who has the mission to repress the “unconscious” bourgeois moment of private interest, the fact is that this “repressed” sooner or later tends to return, thus blocking the effective manifestation of the general will or, to return to our Freudian metaphor, of the sound collective “ego” of citizenship. Therefore, Rousseau’s democratic proposition is open to the same criticism that can be made of the Kantian ethics of “categorical imperatives,” which radically counterposes reason (universal) and interest (individual). (It does not seem accidental, therefore, that Kant was an admirer of Rousseau, even if it was a Rousseau deprived of his specifically democratic dimension.)4 It

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  195 is precisely in this sense that Marx, in The Jewish Question, criticizes the utopia of the Jacobins, Rousseau’s faithful disciples, and demonstrates that attempting to place the citoyen above the bourgeois while at the same time preserving the conditions that reproduce the latter in real life leads to a deadlock, and ultimately to the triumph of bourgeois society and the resulting collapse of citizenship: a path that, after all, was clearly demonstrated in the course of the French Revolution, after the triumph of the Thermidor reaction to the Jacobins. Moreover, this radical contrast between individual and general will leads Rousseau to pay insufficient attention, to put it mildly, to the conditions of pluralism in modern society. Jean-Jacques, as we know, categorically criticizes the presence of private associations within legitimate society: he supposes that such associations, while creating their own “general” will (or, to be precise, their corporative group wills), obstruct the possibility of emergence of an effective, “ethico-political” general will. Forced to accept that such associations may be inevitable, Rousseau issues a warning that they should, at least, exist in great numbers. This, however, represents no solution since he does not discuss the means by which this multiplicity of group wills could be articulated into a general will, which is reason enough to suppose that among them the same “Freudian” problems previously indicated in the relation between individual and general will would arise. The implication remains throughout the Contract that pluralism and diversity are ultimately inconsistent with the general will. Despite these limitations, however, it is important to retain Rousseau’s fundamental insight that democracy is based on a contract, or consensus, whose premise and whose results are a general or collective will or, in other words, the precedence of the public over the private.

Hegel and the determinations of will One proposal to overcome the limitations in Rousseau’s thought (even if, as we shall see, it was accompanied by the loss of some of his major theoretical achievements) appears in Hegel’s work. In his youth, the German philosopher was quite close to Rousseau’s problematic: in his writings of the Bern period, for instance, Hegel proposed the restoration of a democratic community, akin to that of the Greek model, as a remedy for the dissensions and alienations he observed in the modern world; as we know, that was also the paradigm adopted by Rousseau. However, already in the writings of the Frankfurt period and even more in those of the Jena period, Hegel realized that the modern world differed from that of classical Greece, being marked by a centrality of the particularity or, more precisely, by the emergence of a social sphere unknown in classical times. Under the influence of the renowned work of Adam Ferguson, Hegel called this new sphere “civil society” (burgerliche Gesellschaft), for him the actual reign of particularity. Hegel observed that while the irruption of particularity had brought about the destruction of the “beautiful communal ethical life” of the Greek world (as Plato had foreseen and lamented), the ethical life of modern times carried the full expression of this particularity at its very moment of inception and thus could not be dissociated from it. In fact, this greater range of action of particularity is one of the conditions

196  Carlos Nelson Coutinho of that subjective universal freedom that, for Hegel, represents the attribute of the modern, “Christian–Germanic” era. However, unlike liberal thinkers, Hegel does not treat the positive role of particularity in the modern era as an end in itself. On the contrary, in his political philosophy he attempts to reconcile the freedom of the particular with a priority of the public over the private or, in other words, to reconcile (synthesize dialectically) the modern expansion of particularity with the communitarian ideal of the Greek polis. In opposition to Rousseau, and in the vein of liberalism, Hegel realized that the repression of particularity had become unsuited to modernity’s Zeitgeist.5 The maintenance of a sphere of individual freedom – be it at the objective level of abstract right or at the subjective level of morality, be it in the realm of “civil society” – appears to him a necessary condition for the full development of the potentialities of modernity. Nevertheless, for him, although it is a necessary condition, this particularity is not sufficient: going beyond liberalism – and, in that way, converging effectively with Rousseau – Hegel proposes the creation of universalizing instances that dialectically overcome (eliminate at one level, but preserve at a higher level) the sphere of particularity, mainly the instance of “civil society.”6 While in contrast to liberalism Hegel speaks of the structural contradictions of “civil society,” those contradictions can, if not be resolved, at least be attenuated through the subordination of civil society to the state. For Hegel, this subordination does not constitute a type of Freudian repression, but a transcendence (Aufhebung) of individual will (“civil society”) into universal will (the “state”). To give this transcendence a conceptual expression and, at the same time, to legitimate the priority of the public (universal) over the private (particular), Hegel produces a concept fundamental to the development of modern political philosophy, the concept of Sittlichkeit, which can be translated as “ethical life” (1952a, 55 ff.). Because they live in community, human beings produce values and rules of behavior that regulate and organize their interactions, thus imparting a concrete meaning to individual choices which, were they to remain in the sphere of morality, would have only formal status. Revealing itself only and still in a natural way in the family, and in an unconscious and merely embryonic way in civil society, ethical life finds in the state – understood not only as one particular sphere among others, or as “government,” but as the organic totality of the plural spheres of social life, as the concrete manifestation of the “objective Spirit” – its effectively adequate figure. With the concept of ethical life, Hegel wants to establish (give concrete dimension to) the notion of general will that in Rousseau had remained abstract and formal precisely insofar as it had excluded, as antinomic, the moment of particular will and individual interest. In fact, because it finds its presupposition exclusively in a subjective determination to put the public interest above the private – a condition that On the Social Contract, following Montesquieu, calls “virtue” – Rousseau’s general will is subject to the same criticism that Hegel addresses to the abstract formalism of Kantian ethics. With the concept of ethical life and with the assertion that values and rules arise objectively from interactive social life, Hegel tries to demonstrate that the general (universal) will is not the result of the action of single “virtuous” wills but, on the contrary, the reality that precedes and defines individual wills. Therefore, for Hegel, general will is not the outcome

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  197 of a contract among individual wills, but an objective socio-ontological reality, a product of the development of “Spirit” – that is, of history. This is why, in The Philosophy of Right, Hegel does not hesitate to write: “Confronted with the claims for the individual will, we must remember the fundamental conception that the objective will is rationality implicit or in conception, whether it be recognized or not by individuals, whether their whims be deliberately for it or not” (1952a, 81). What Hegel means is that universal will is concretely, objectively determined and that its determinations are largely settled at the level of “civil society.” For Hegel, civil society is the “atomistic system”: although, in it, each individual is in search of his own private interest, the ensuing division of labor creates a “system” in which the satisfaction of each individual’s needs depends on the work of others. In addition, since production is divided into branches, each branch develops its own particular interests, which is then what leads to the establishment of corporations that try to defend the common interest of their members. This corporative system is an important moment of Hegelian “civil society,” so important in fact that he argued that it is through the corporation – a collective subject – that ethical life first penetrates civil society. Therefore, the corporation is one of the main mediations through which Hegel attempts to determine the internal relation between the singular wills of the “atoms” of civil society and the universal will whose realization is the state; in other words, the particular (but already held in common) will personified by a corporation appears as a conscious mediation between the two other levels of will (singular and universal). Thus, far from being an obstacle to the emergence of a general will, as they had been in Rousseau, the “private associations” – corporations – are, for Hegel, a fundamental moment of the process of universalization of will. For the author of The Philosophy of Right, therefore, there is not an antinomic relation between singular and universal will, in which the second represses the first; there is, on the contrary, a dialectical relation in which the singular will of individuals is, through the particular will of the corporations, transcended (Aufheben) – eliminated at one level but preserved nonetheless as it is lifted to a higher level – into the general will of the collectivity of the state. In becoming a member of a corporation, the individual can become a citizen of the state, without having to abdicate his individual interest but nonetheless acknowledging that the satisfaction of his individual interests requires their articulation with the particular interests (of the corporation) and the universal interest (of the state). In Hegel, differently than in Rousseau, there is not a movement toward a repression of singular will by the universal (general) will, but a dialectical potentiation, an immanent mediation within the field of will. Moreover, by conceiving a universal will which preserves (by transcending) singular and particular wills, Hegel can imagine a state that, though oriented by a totality, is anything but totalitarian: insofar as it is a concrete totality (that is, formed by various particular spheres that, though they are articulated to each other, are nonetheless relatively autonomous) the Hegelian state is necessarily a pluralistic state.7 Extending this farther, but hopefully still remaining true to the spirit of Hegelian thought, we could venture to think that we are facing for the first time a state where hegemony (the preponderance of universality or of the public) is organically linked with pluralism (the preservation and development of particularities and differences).

198  Carlos Nelson Coutinho This Hegelian attempt to determine concretely the universal will is a step beyond Rousseau and a decisive contribution to the modern theory of democracy and the democratic state.8 There are nonetheless significant points at which Hegel falls short of Rousseau regarding the question of democracy. I do not intend to linger on the several points on which Hegel deviates explicitly from a democratic position (denial of popular sovereignty, pseudo-dialectic deduction of the necessity of a hereditary monarchy, bicameral legislative chamber composed by the nobles and the corporations, etc.).9 It is more important for us to concentrate on one major question: in his important effort to overcome the level of abstraction and moralism present in Rousseau’s concept of general will and to give a concrete and objective density to universal will, Hegel is led to discard the contractualist dimension that lies at the center of Rousseau’s democratic proposal. It is as if, in order to overcome the subjectivism that arises in the thought of Jean-Jacques, Hegel falls into an equally unilateral objectivism, omitting the intersubjective dimension of human praxis. Hegel is well known as a harsh critic of contract theories of the state; for him, it is a gross error to use an instrument of private law – something subjective like a contract – to explain a public reality – objective and universal – such as the state.10 Such a method would imply that individuals could cancel the contract and abolish the state, which seems absurd to Hegel – all the more so when we remember that for him, individuals exist only in and through the state. For Hegel, whose reference at this point is the Greek polis and not modern liberalism, the state, as a totality, precedes and is superior to the individuals who compose it. Moreover, the dismissal of the contract as an explanation of the genesis of the state leads the German philosopher to be categorically opposed to the idea of popular sovereignty and universal suffrage: although the citizens of a state can deliberate, they should do so only about particular questions directly related to them, and not about the general interest. It is for this reason that he proposes that the citizens be politically represented not by one legislative assembly, elected by universal and equal suffrage of individual citizens (though that principle had already been affirmed by the French Revolution), but by two chambers, formed of nobles and corporations.11 Now, it seems to me that Hegel would have remained in the right if he had limited himself to stating that it is a mistake to consider society as a whole the product of a contract among individuals. Although it results from the multiple teleological positions of its members, society as a whole is not the product of a conscious collective action; this Hegel knew all too well, even if he ascribed the role(s) of subject and telos of the global historical process to a mythical “Spirit” that used the actions of individuals “cunningly” to serve its own ends (1952b, 153 ff.). But this does not mean that no sphere of social life could be regulated through consensus, through the conscious interaction of men. Since he equates state and society – the state is not a moment of social life, but the organic totality that integrates all its moments – Hegel denies the possibility that the specific sphere of politics could be contractually (or consensually) founded. With him, thus, the otherwise justifiable rejection of a unilateral individualist subjectivism turns into an equally unilateral objectivism in which freedom is nothing but “the conscience

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  199 of necessity,” something ultimately post factum. And this entails the denial of the sphere of the intersubjective in which subjects, even if within the limits imposed by their natural and social objective determinations, could consensually “invent” the contents of their ethical life. Certainly, Hegel’s critical stance toward contract theory is the product of his categorical assertion of the priority of the public over the private, and this is what allows us to place him, in a certain sense, in the democratic, though not liberal, stream of modern political philosophy. But at the same time, this critical stance leads him to abandon the idea, so splendidly expressed by Rousseau, that as the foundation of a democratic political order, the public space must be the product of a consensus emerging from the free and equal participation of all citizens. For Hegel, freedom is ultimately limited to a recognition and acceptance of necessity as if a singular will became effectively (not arbitrarily) free only when it recognized and accepted a universal will in the creation of which it did not itself take part, at least not consciously.12 Thus, notwithstanding all its undeniable merits, Hegel’s political philosophy seems to me in the end to contain an invitation to resignation and conformism.

Gramsci and hegemony as contract In the preceding schematic outline of the question of general will in Rousseau and Hegel, I have been suggesting that Gramsci, on the one hand, absorbs the more valid and lucid parts of the reflections of these two classic figures of modern political philosophy and, on the other hand, develops fertile leads on ways to overcome the limits and aporias present in their work. These leads are contained mostly in the Gramscian concept of hegemony. Before discussing this concept, however, it might be useful to remember that the question of “will” occupies a central place in Gramsci’s political philosophical reflections (as well as in Rousseau’s and Hegel’s) being present in the evolution of his thinking from his youth to the Prison Notebooks, Early in his intellectual itinerary, Gramsci’s concept of “will” contained visible idealistic traces, as he radically counterposed “will” to “objective determination,” privileging the former. In 1917, for example, in his wellknown defense of the Bolshevik Revolution from a presumed “positivism” of Marx himself, Gramsci formulated the question of “will” in the following way: The dominant factor in history [is] not raw economic facts but man, men in society, men in relation to one another, reaching agreements with one another, developing through these contacts (civilization) a collective, social will; men coming to understand economic facts, judging them and adapting them to their will until this becomes the driving force of the economy and molds objective reality, which lives and moves and comes to resemble a current of volcanic lava that can be channeled wherever and in whatever way men’s will determines. (1958, 150; English translation from Gramsci 1977, 34–5) Although this might be pushing it a bit, we could say that at this stage of his evolution Gramsci was very close to the justly criticized subjectivist voluntarism

200  Carlos Nelson Coutinho of Rousseau: the “collective or social will” still appears to him capable of being a “driving force of the economy” and of “molding objective reality.” However, in the mature reflections of the Notebooks, without denying the importance of will as a constitutive moment of what he had come to call the “philosophy of praxis,” Gramsci adopted a much more mediated position. One example, among others, is the following statement: To escape simultaneously from solipsism and from mechanistic conceptions … it is necessary to put the question in an “historicist” fashion, and at the same time to put the “will” (which in the last analysis equals practical or political activity) at the base of philosophy. But it must be a rational, not an arbitrary, will, which is realized in so far as it corresponds to objectivity historical necessities, or in so far as it is universal history itself in the moment of its progressive actualization. (1971, 345) In another passage, clarifying his project, Gramsci wrote: “The Modern Prince must have a part devoted to Jacobinism … as an exemplification of the concrete formation and operation of a collective will which at least in some aspects was an original, ex novo creation. And a definition must be given of collective will, and of political will in general, in the modern sense: will as operative awareness of historical necessity, as protagonist of a real and effective historical drama” (130). As we can see, Gramsci achieved here a movement of dialectical transcendence, not only with respect to the formulations of his early period but also in relation to the positions on “will” taken by Rousseau and Hegel. In the Notebooks, he tells us clearly that will, particularly the collective will, although it is historically determined (as in Hegel) and “conforms to objective historical necessity,” is nonetheless also an “original, ex novo creation” (as in Rousseau) – even if this is so only “in some aspects.” We can now return to the concept of “hegemony” and discuss briefly what Gramsci intended to express with it. The author of the Notebooks realized that in the more recent form of capitalism, a new sphere of social being, which he called “civil society,” had arisen. In contrast to what it had meant to Marx, for Gramsci civil society does not denote the realm of social relations of production – the economic structure, that is. Nor does Gramsci identify civil society with the state strictu sensu. Gramscian civil society is produced by the intersection of “private hegemony apparatuses” and has its genesis in the processes of socialization of politics;13 civil society is at the same time cause and effect of a growing complexity of the mechanisms of representation of interests and values (a complexity that ultimately results in an intensification of social stratification). It does not seem accidental that Gramsci first mentions what he would later call “civil society” in a reference, as I noted above, to Hegel and “associationism.” If Hegel realized that the “atomistic system” creates particular collective interests which express themselves in “corporations,” Gramsci in turn realized that groups and social classes, in the process of organizing themselves and struggling for their own interests, create “private” hegemony apparatuses. These apparatuses are private because they presuppose a voluntary, contractual adherence on the part

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  201 of their members, who are thus not taking part in what Gramsci called the “coercive state,” “state in the strict sense,” or “political society”; they are hegemonic because, by their actions, they play an undeniable role in power relations, defining the way through which the public sphere of society establishes itself. So we can say that Gramsci, on the one hand, takes from Hegel the idea that wills are concretely determined already at the level of material or economic interests;14 such wills, after all, undergo a process of universalization – ”associationism” – that leads to the creation of collective subjects (“corporations” in Hegel, “hegemony apparatuses” in Gramsci), moved by a will that tends to universalize itself, tending to go beyond merely “economic-corporative” interests and directing itself toward an “ethico-political” conscience. But we can also say that Gramsci, on the other hand, viewing participation in these hegemony apparatuses as consensual and defining the apparatuses as moments of an “enlarged” state, introduces a clearly contractual dimension in the core of the public sphere, consequently recapturing the basic idea of Rousseau that, as we have seen, had been rejected by Hegel. By marking the presence of this new sphere of social being with his concept of “civil society,” Gramsci made possible an enlargement of the Marxist concept of the state: while for Marx and Engels, at least in the Communist Manifesto, and for Lenin and the Bolsheviks, in the body of their theoretical production, the state is basically coercive – monopoly of violence at the service of the dominant economic class – for Gramsci it appears endowed also with a new and important dimension, that of consensus or legitimacy. With the socialization of political participation, the “Westernization” of societies, it is no longer possible for rulers to continue to rule without the consent of the ruled. Engels himself, in 1895, had already realized that the modern state was fruit of a contract between rulers and ruled: “The German Empire, as all little states and, in general, as all modern states, is the product of a contract; first of a contract between the princes among themselves and, afterward, between the princes and the people” (Engels 1956, 121–2).15 Therefore, already with Engels, the question of the contract had appeared at the core of the Marxist reflection. The contractualist dimension of politics finds in Gramsci its most explicit conceptual expression precisely in the concept of hegemony. Without a doubt, hegemony is for him the moment of consensus. Although there is a different reading of Gramsci, inspired above all by Perry Anderson (1976),16 that speaks of hegemony as a synthesis of coercion and consensus, to me the distinction Gramsci made between, on the one hand, hegemony, direction and consensus and, on the other hand, domination, dictatorship, and coercion seems clear: the first three terms have their material bases in civil society, in “private” hegemony apparatuses, while the latter three have their material bases in the state strictu sensu – that is, bureaucratic and repressive apparatuses. Now insofar as for Gramsci, in “Western” capitalist formations, civil society (the material basis of consensus) plays a decisive role in the determination of the actions of the state (and beyond that, in communism – ”regulated society” – it assimilates the state into itself and eliminates its coercive mechanisms), it is possible to say that the author of the Notebooks introduced the question of contract, of intersubjectivity, at the center of his Marxist theory of the state and of politics. The Gramscian concept of

202  Carlos Nelson Coutinho hegemony implies a contract that takes place at the level of civil society, therefore generating collective subjects (trade unions, parties, social movements, etc.) that have a very public, “state” dimension. But it also implies the need for forms of contract between rulers and ruled (between state and civil society) on the grounds that in these “Western” societies, political obligation is rooted in a consensual acceptance, by rulers and ruled, of a minimum of procedural rules and ethicopolitical values. In this last case, we are certainly not neglecting the fact that contracts frequently coexist (even if in a conflictual way) with the endurance of coercive forms;17 and it should not be forgotten that such contracts are liable to permanent changes and revisions, according to the variations of what Gramsci himself called “relations of force.” In this sense, therefore, Gramsci’s approach to the idea of the contract or, in his terms, to society based on consensus, is a regulative idea in the Kantian sense – that is, a goal towards which we should always proceed, by means of the “war of position,” in the direction of a “regulated” or communist society. Analogous to Freud’s suggestion that, for the unconscious, we must always try to substitute the “I,” Gramsci seems to be saying that, in opposition to coercion, we should always try to enlarge the sphere of contract – that is, to try progressively to build a consensual society. Now, as was the case with Rousseau, where a sound link between contract and general will is found, in Gramsci as well there takes place a close articulation between hegemony and what he calls “national-popular collective will.” Gramsci’s hegemony emerges precisely in the creation of this collective will, driving force of a “historical bloc” that combines into a whole of different social groups – each of which is capable of effecting, to varying degrees, the “cathartic” moment of surpassing its merely “economic-corporative” interests – leading to the creation of a universalizing, “ethico-political” conscience. This “cathartic” passage from particular to universal, however, in contrast with Rousseau, for Gramsci does not mean a repression of singular wills but, as was the case with Hegel, a dialectical Aufhebung, in which the “ethico-political” collective will preserves and at the same time lifts to a higher level the singular and particular interests of the various components of the “historical bloc.” For Gramsci, therefore, both politics strictu sensu (the relation between rulers and ruled) and ethical life (the axiological sphere that confers concrete substance on the general or collective will) are the result of a contract, an intersubjective interaction increasingly free of coercion. For the Italian thinker, in contrast to Hegel, “ethical life” (the “ethico-political”) is not the result of the fatalistic and impersonal movement of an “objective Spirit”; neither is it, as it is in “vulgar Marxism,” the mere “reflection” of “historical laws” based on economics and formulated in an ironlike and fetishistic way. If Gramsci certainly takes from Hegel the notion of ethical life (which he names “hegemony” or the “ethico-political”), he at the same time takes from Rousseau the conception of politics as a contract, as an intersubjective formation of a volonté générale, which he names “national-popular collective will.” Because he takes from Hegel (and Marx) the notion that will is historically and economically determined and is thus permeated by social contradictions, Gramsci is fully conscious that in social life considered as a whole, not everything is the result of a contract. On the bases of the social ontology of Hegel and

General will and democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci  203 Marx, Gramsci knows that society is a specific and unique synthesis of causality and teleology, of determinism and freedom (Lukács 1976–81). For him, following Marx, men certainly make their own history, but not in conditions of their own choosing: in addition to free teleological action there is also historical determination, an objective causality that, although created by human praxis, frequently goes beyond the consciousness and will of individuals and social actors. But Gramsci also knows, again following Marx, that the more social being “socializes” itself the greater is the “retreat of the natural boundary” (Lukács, 1978, 45–6) or, in other words, the greater the range of freedom and autonomy of “social individuals” (Marx 1973, passim). Gramsci certainly takes his distances from Rousseau, for whom the social contract founds a people as such and society as a whole; but for him, if not everything in society derives from a contract, there are wide social spheres (the political sphere in particular) that can increasingly result from a contract – that is, from the intersubjective action of free and conscious social individuals; precisely this possibility is at the root of Gramsci’s proposal for a “regulated society” (communism) in which the suppression of class antagonisms would finally make possible the development of a public space founded on dialogue among and the consensus of “social individuals.” Therefore, in Gramsci as in Rousseau, the legitimate social order presupposes a contract that, unhindered by the need to conserve economic-corporative interests, is able to build an ethico-political general will, preserving the republican ideal of prioritizing the public over the private. Moreover, both thinkers believe that the full construction of a public democratic space is possible only within a social order beyond the framework of capitalism. Nevertheless, if Gramsci could surmount the antinomies of Rousseau, “putting on its feet” (transforming in a materialist sense) the still idealist and abstract vision with which the author of On the Social Contract approaches the question of general will and democracy, his ability to do so was to a great extent the result of his taking (through the mediation of Marx, most importantly) what was positive in the Hegelian critique of contract theory. Thus Gramsci aligned his reflection with the best traditions of modernity and became one of the foremost interlocutors of the democratic and socialistic culture of our times.

Notes 1 This does not mean, obviously, that I disagree with the notion that Gramsci is a Marxist. Not only did he consider himself a Marxist, but the majority of his interpreters also consider him as such; it is not possible appropriately to understand his thought if his link with the organic tradition initiated by Marx is denied. 2 See, in “Indice per Argomenti” (1975, 3629), the passages where Gramsci refers to “collective will.” 3 The concept of “romantic anticapitalism” is used here in the sense given to it by Lukács (1981). 4 Certainly, there is a significant difference between Rousseau and Kant: the author of On the Social Contract insists that the general will is not opposed to interest in itself, but only to individual interest, and is rooted rather in the public interest. 5 Hegel, placing himself on the horizon of the bourgeoisie and seeing in the

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  9 10

11 12

post-Napoleonic capitalist society the “end of history,” was excessively induced to identify the sphere of particularity and the expansion of individuality with the reign of capitalistic markets. At this point Hegel, attentive reader of Adam Smith (who provided the basis for his own specific understanding of “civil society”), certainly surrendered to liberal ideology, something which, as we have seen, did not occur with Rousseau. It should be mentioned that for Hegel, “civil society,” the sphere of developed particularity, is not yet the state – namely, the true dimension of universality. He reproaches “many modern constitutional lawyers” (the liberals) for fostering confusion (1952a, 135). A competent critique of the positions that impute to Hegel a totalitarian conception of the state can be found in Marcuse (1954); but see, too, among others, Weil (1950), Avineri (1972), and Losurdo (1992, 1997). It is a contribution as well to a socialist theory of democracy and the state. Let us remember, for example, the words of the Gramscian Pietro Ingrao: “Today we speak of hegemony and pluralism. More precisely: hegemony of the working class within pluralism. The battle for a working-class hegemony evolves within pluralism. This is a formula that does not restrict itself to indicating a direction for the working class based on consensus: it is a formula that already alludes to a precise state and political form of consensus” (1977, 240). The young Marx (1963a, 13–142) noted several of these antidemocratic aspects in Hegel. “It is equally far from the truth to ground the nature of the State on the contractual relation, whether the state is supposed to be a contract of all with all, or of all with the monarch and the government … The intrusion of this contractual relation, and relationships concerning private property generally, into the relations between the individual and the State has been productive of the greatest confusion in both constitutional law and public life” (Hegel 1952a, 32). But one should not forget that Hegel defended the principle of representation, even if in anachronistic ways, in an absolutist Prussia that emphatically denied it (see Bedeschi 1997, 192). The young Marx had already correctly criticized this “fatalistic” aspect of Hegel’s political philosophy: Is it the fact, then, that in the State – which, according to Hegel, is the highest existence of freedom, the existence of self-conscious reason – not law, the existence of freedom, but rather blind natural necessity governs? … Hegel wants always to present the State as the actualization of free mind; however, re vera he resolves all difficult conflicts through a natural necessity which is the antithesis of freedom. Thus, the transition of particular interest into universal interest is not a conscious law of the State, but is mediated through chance and ratified contrary to consciousness. (1963a, 68–9; English translation from Marx 1970, 56–7)

13 For the concept of “socialization of politics,” so important for Italian Marxism, see Cerroni (1976, 49 ff.). 14 It might not be necessary to recall that Gramsci takes this idea not only from Hegel, but also and particularly from Marx who, in turn, transcends the Hegelian notion of burgerliche Gesellschaft. 15 It is interesting to note that this statement by the late Engels poses a marked contrast with Hegel’s position (stated in the quotation from The Philosophy of Right in note 10). 16 For a convincing refutation of Anderson’s positions, see Francioni (1984, 147 ff.). 17 Gramsci, one should not forget, also mentions the “state apparatus of coercion that ‘legally’ provides the discipline of these groups that do not ‘consent,’ either actively nor passively, but that is meant for the whole society in anticipation of the moments of crisis in command and direction, in which consensus disappears” (1975, 1519).

15 From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx Historical materialism and the philosophy of praxis Wolfgang Fritz Haug Was Gramsci’s term “philosophy of praxis” a camouflage, a de-nomination in the sense that it un-named historical materialism? Or was speaking of camouflage itself an act of camouflage, designed to protect Gramsci from being condemned as an idealist deviant?1 It took some effort toward “liberating Gramsci” (Baratta 1987) to cut through this cacophony of voices and to understand the legitimacy of his term “philosophy of praxis,” which condenses precisely into a thesis the Archimedean point of Marxian thinking. The concept itself is derived from those notes of Karl Marx, hidden during his lifetime even from his friend Friedrich Engels and now known as the Theses on Feuerbach. It was Antonio Labriola (1907, 60) who first spoke of a “philosophy of praxis” as the “nucleus of Historical Materialism”: Insofar, finally, as the historical materialism, or the philosophy of praxis, taking account of the integral social and historical human being, puts an end to every form of idealism which regards the empirically existing things as reflex, reproduction, imitation, example, consequence (or whatever one may say) of a presupposed thought … in the same moment it is the end of naturalistic materialism … The intellectual revolution, which has led toward regarding the processes of human history as absolutely objective ones, is simultaneously accompanied by that other intellectual revolution which succeeded in historicizing physical nature. The latter is no longer, for any thinking human being, a fact which was never in fieri [in the process of becoming]. (1976, 702f.)2 While in prison, Gramsci immersed himself in this thought and reflected on it from every possible angle. In doing so, he had to struggle on two fronts: already under Kautsky, Marxism had ossified as an “evolutionary doctrine.” It was precisely this term that Lenin adopted to describe the dialectical method. Taking the example of Nikolai Bukharin’s Theory of Historical Materialism: A Popular Manual of Marxist Sociology, Gramsci undertook the systematic critique of an ideological formation which was only then emerging, but which was later to be canonized as Marxism–Leninism under Stalin. Gramsci’s not always fair polemic against Bukharin indicates that he saw this formation as representing a broader tendency. From this Marxism, which understood itself as an exact science

206  Wolfgang Fritz Haug of history, the Marxian spirit had disappeared. This ideology inevitably repelled (especially the more intelligent), and posed a political–epistemological as well as political–ethical obstacle to the unfolding of Marxist theory and practice. In its philosophical essence, it represented a divergence from the project of the Theses on Feuerbach and a return to the metaphysical and philosophical materialism Marx had rejected. Thus far, the opponents and dangers that Gramsci’s project had to face came from his own side. On the side of bourgeois theory reigned the powerful Neoidealism of Benedetto Croce; at its side was its exalted offshoot, the Attualismo of Giovanni Gentile, chief ideologue of Italy’s fascism. Both came from Labriola (Croce more, Gentile less) and had taken his still genuine Marxist inheritance of a philosophy of praxis with them to the right – in much the same way that Martin Heidegger3 (and other philosophical bearers of Nazism, such as Baeumler) did in Germany.4 As Gramsci wrote, “The laceration which happened to Hegelianism has reoccurred with the philosophy of praxis. That is to say, from dialectical unity there has been a regress to philosophical materialism on the one hand, while on the other hand modern idealist high culture has tried to incorporate that part of the philosophy of praxis which was needed in order for it to find a new elixir” (1971, 396; Notebook 16, §9).5 In short, what Gramsci realized was that the vital source of Marxian thinking was forgotten or pushed aside by Marxism itself, while liberal and fascist branches of bourgeois philosophizing rejuvenated and redynamized themselves with it. With the term “philosophy of praxis” Gramsci not only expressed exactly what he actually did as a theorist, but also brought back into Marxism what Labriola had grasped as the “nucleus of Historical Materialism.” Moreover, through using this term he began to reclaim the field that Croce had occupied with his Filosofia della pratica and Gentile with his Filosofia del atto as original Marxist territory.6 While with some recipients of Gramsci the philosophy of praxis evaporates into post-Marxism (one has only to think of Ernesto Laclau) for Gramsci himself this line of thinking did not lead away from Marx but, on the contrary, led him to start anew from Marx’s own point of departure.

1 And yet, at least in terminology, Gramsci’s move was also a move away from Marx: in Marx and Engels’s own terms, a “philosophy” was precisely what their theory had ceased to be (see Haug 1999b). Underlying what seems at first glance to be a merely terminological difference, however, is one of Marx’s three great theoretical critiques (Haug 1999c): that of ideology. Marx, who had introduced this term, casually at first, into the modern language of theory (see Marx and Engels 1982, 53, 218, 332) and then elaborated it together with Engels, does not yet, like today’s mainstream, take it to mean all conceptual stances or systems of political thought, or even to mean class consciousness. Nor does he, like the later Engels, take it to mean false consciousness. Rather, concept and theory of the ideological are inscribed in the categorical center of historical materialism in that work which carries the term ideology in its title: the so-called German Ideology. For Marx, the connection of the elements “division of labor” and “class rule,”

From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx  207 together with the state-based reproduction of these conditions, leads to the institution of specialized normative and regulative practices, of which the juridical apparatus becomes Marx’s paradigmatic example.7 These practices are located, if you like, within the sphere of the state but outside the administrative and in the last instance repressively functioning state in its narrower sense. Judges, priests, philosophers, and similar figures (summarized as “ideological estates” in Marx’s Theories of Surplus Value)8 are seen as intervening in society in their respectively specific modes, which are formally independent of this narrowly defined state apparatus. At any rate, philosophy is for Marx one of the ideological forms and it would not have occurred to him to classify his own thinking in this way. Antonio Labriola, this remarkable figure among the first generation of Italian Marxists, expressed the position of Marx and Engels when he explained: “Our philosophy has once and for all overcome the perspective of ideology as such” (1908, 106). Marx’s critique of philosophy (in the context of his theory of ideology) is therefore no verdict on reflection – far from it. It is rather a rejection of unreflected thinking in its framework of domination (Herrschaftsdenken). Self-reflective Marxist theorists, especially philosophers, will never avoid Marx’s critique of philosophy but accept it, as it were, as a propaedeutics: it is through this filter that Marxist thought must pass in order not to fall back behind Marx himself. It is precisely here, in the way that he applies Marx’s theory of philosophy, that Gramsci’s great innovation lies. He does not simply enter the tradition of all previous philosophy but rather reconstructs philosophy from outside its philosophical institutions, thereby gaining a vantage point from which he is able to productively approach what he calls the “philosophy of the philosophers.” This is, as one can say schematically (and with all the danger attendant upon such abbreviation), philosophy from below. In a very similar way, indeed in almost exactly the same words, Brecht reflects upon what the people mean when they attribute a philosophical attitude to someone. And, like Gramsci, Brecht does not stop there but commits himself to expanding and modifying this popular notion of philosophy.9 But why a philosophy of praxis and not just simply critical theory – as Max Horkheimer, also writing in the 1930s, entitled his Marxist thought? For Gramsci, the question did not arise in this way. The Second International, whose political stance and theory he had come to know as a young socialist, already used the term “ideology” as self-evidently affirmative. The German Ideology was still confined to the party archive and the tradition of the critical theory of ideology was lost. However, in the context of the Communist International, particularly under the influence of Lenin, who was in turn influenced by Plekhanov, what had reemerged was philosophy – albeit, as Gramsci sensed, in its pre-Marxist understanding as first philosophy: metaphysics. In Gramsci’s view, rather than being “historical methodology,” the Soviet textbook practiced a metaphysics, “though a naïve one” (1971, 436; Notebook 11, §14). He saw that historical materialism had become “the ‘sociology’ of metaphysical materialism” (437). Bukharin would have protested against such a critique, assuring us that he in fact radically criticized metaphysics. But Gramsci demonstrates that the Popular

208  Wolfgang Fritz Haug Manual, written along Leninist lines, mistakenly identifies metaphysics only with idealism10 and that Bukharin did not realize that with materialist metaphysics or metaphysical materialism, he had come from the frying pan into the fire. As Gramsci wrote, “Separated from the theory of history and politics philosophy cannot be other than metaphysics, whereas the great conquest in the history of modern thought, represented by the philosophy of praxis, is precisely the concrete historicisation of philosophy and its identification with history” (1971, 436; Notebook 11, §14). The extrahistorical, supposedly eternal truth was the then canonized, so-called “dialectical materialism.” According to official ideology, its application to history and society would give rise to historical materialism. Yet Gramsci, who in this respect thought exactly in the line of Marx, understood that the presumption of a first, absolute knowledge is absolute antihistoricism. Gramsci replies to this self-renunciation of Marxism11 with the thesis of absolute historicism: “it has been forgotten, that in the case of a very common expression [historical materialism] one should put the accent on the first term – ‘historical’ – and not on the second, which is of metaphysical origin. The philosophy of praxis is absolute ‘historicism,’ the absolute secularization and this-sidedness of thought, an absolute humanism of history” (1971, 465; Notebook 11, §27, n. 1). Because of the attacks leveled against it,12 this thesis has often generated uneasiness, even among those seeking to continue the “line Luxemburg-Gramsci” (Weiss 1981, 608) . Its meaning however, is simply that of a purely inner-worldly, in Marx’s terms, “thissided” (diesseitig) thinking (see, for instance, the second thesis on Feuerbach).

2 Lucien Sève (1980) has tried partly to reconcile Gramsci with Engels and especially with Lenin, and partly to criticize him from their position – not, however, without conceding some points to Gramsci. Sève’s discussion of Gramsci, which is not without traces of a strategic embracing, at times comes close to a “passive revolution” in theory and is possibly the most solid achievement in this regard on the side of Marxism-Leninism.13 In retrospect, this piece reads like a final attempt (at least in Europe)14 to reach a modernization of Marxism-Leninism: its aggiornamento. But it is still the notorious “fundamental question of philosophy” that primarily haunts Sève’s Introduction, and what he demands of Gramsci is a direct recognition of the ontological primacy of matter. In this regard, Sève learns enough from Gramsci to understand that answering this question cannot be an extrahistorical act.15 Gramsci, however, would hardly have been content with this concession, the implications of which, anyway, remain indiscernible. In contrast, Gramsci seems to sense that the “materialist resolution of philosophy’s fundamental question” is, in fact, a decision which, ipso facto, puts a consciousness or a subject in a decisive position in the double sense. In the end, Sève’s “ferme affirmation” of the primacy of matter is, for all its apparent decisiveness and firmness, a subjective act. The nonprimary acknowledges the primary, yet the primacy of this act rests with the position of the renouncer because it renounces itself – and it does this but knows not what it does. This is the decisionism of the ontological reflection theory.

From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx  209 The self-declaration of philosophical materialism is thus plagued by the ironic dialectic of its carrying with it an aspect of both subjectivism and idealism. Gramsci shifts this question to a different terrain where it loses its catechetical (indeed, nearly clerical) character. In so doing he follows Marx who, in the first thesis on Feuerbach, discards and leaves behind the inner world/external world scheme of what he, in the eighth thesis, calls “contemplative materialism,” favoring, despite all critique, even idealism over this stance. He does this because idealism conceives of the subject as active, albeit only cognitively and not materially. The new terrain Marx opens up is that of a practical materialism which sets out to think the materiality of praxis and the praxis-mediatedness of our reality. Bertolt Brecht formulates this principle – in astonishing congeniality with Gramsci, whom he did not even know by name (nor Gramsci him) – in his philosophical notes, which were kept secret in his lifetime and partly, for another thirty years, by his heirs: in the end we can know only what we can change.16 When Sève establishes that “the category of reflection is the great Absent in Gramsci’s epistemology” (1980, 381), he is quite right, but the absence he criticizes is theoretically motivated and leads into the very center of Gramsci’s conception. More than a reflection of the process of knowing-through-changing, a consciousness is “consciousness of existing practice” as Marx and Engels already had argued in the German Ideology (1976a, 45) – bewusst tätiges Sein, consciously acting being. In their argument, they utilize the fact that in German the term for consciousness (Bewusstsein) contains the term for being (Sein) [being conscious]. Sève argues that reflection is “inseparably subjective and objective” (1980, 381). The example he gives is sensualistic: a perception of color reflects at the same time objective wavelengths and the construction of our visual organ. With this he claims physiological – that is, scientific – objectivity. The specifically human which makes this, before everything else, a human perception (according to Marx, the “forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present”)17 is not grasped from this perspective. Sève (1980) admits that the category praxis contains the unity between human beings and nature as well as the “practicité du savoir et du projet. Elle affaiblit l’autre aspect, celui de l’objectivité de la connaissance, de l’extériorité de la nature.” And with Lukács’s (1968) self-critique of 1967, Sève explains, it is the materialistic concept of nature that radically separates the bourgeois from the socialist worldview (384f.) – a position that, as the guarantee of historical materialism’s distinctiveness, is more than a little curious, given the widespread existence of such secular materialism in the bourgeoisie. For Gramsci, in contrast, nature is exactly not a beyond for the practical–historical reality of human beings. Philosophy of praxis signifies for him a “unitary process of reality”: a thinking of the “dialectical mediation between human beings and nature” (1971, 446; slightly corrected). The mediation of this unity, however, can only become real through praxis. Gramsci does not take the natural sciences as the paradigm for reliable knowledge; rather, he takes the experimental scientist to be the paradigmatic actor and the experiment the paradigmatic praxis-form which has work-form and from which experience stems. What at first sight is only a slight shift nevertheless turns out to make a categorical difference: although using

210  Wolfgang Fritz Haug the “hardest” form of knowledge, Gramsci’s figure at the same time avoids the bad metaphysicism which normally accompanies the orientation toward natural scientific objectivism. Through the figure of the experimental scientist, reflecting on his experiments theoretically, the active element comes into play as the “historical” arranger and interpreter. Gramsci articulates this starting point in the terms of epistemological reflection used by Marx in his Critique of Political Economy. In the preface to volume 1 of Capital, where he announces the analysis of the value-form, Marx famously says: “in bourgeois society the commodity-form of the product of labour – or the value-form of the commodity – is the economic cellform” (1977, 90; 1995, 8). And in the first sentence of chapter 1, the commodity is conceived of as the “elementary form” of bourgeois wealth. With these two key terms of Marxian reflection on research, cell- and elementary form, Gramsci articulates the status of the experimental practice of research. It is “the elementary historical cell through which man, while putting himself by means of technology into relation with nature, knows it and dominates it”; it is “the first paradigm” of a theoretically reflected mediation between man and nature, which separates “two historical worlds, two epochs” and “initiates the process of dissolution of theology and metaphysics and the process of development of modern thought whose consummation is the philosophy of praxis” (1971, 446; Notebook 11, §34; translation slightly corrected).

3 Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis is not fully carried through as a philosophy. What is philosophical is first of all that Gramsci postulates the existence of such a philosophy, a philosophy that must be understood as the implicit philosophical dynamic, as theory producing thinking in the strongest sense. Much of Gramsci’s work remains a sketch, yet he elaborated crucial points of orientation: •

•

• • • •

The development of a philosophical conception from below, grounded in the necessity of individuals working themselves out of a state that, parallel to the term “passive revolution,” could be called passive socialization (Vergesellschaftung). The critique of objectivism through the principle of a “Marxist uncertainty relation,” inspired by quantum physics, or, formulated with less uncertainty: through the principle of the practical implication of the subject in every constituted objectivity. A view of the scientific experiment as the cell form of modern rationality, which culminates in Marxism with its mediation of society and nature.18 The constitution of the term hegemony as a “philosophical fact” (Notebook 10.II, §12). The political-ethical dimension of all hegemony. The materialistic historicization of language.

The question is now how this first complex, the narrowly defined philosophy of praxis, relates to the specific fields and projects of Gramsci’s research. There is,

From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx  211 second, the complex project of theorizing the vast “continent” of politics, particularly its dimension of civil society with all its forms, stakes, forces, and actors, prepared and grounded through the differentiation and pluralization of what Marx addresses in the singular as “the superstructure” (der Überbau)19 (hegemony, intellectuals, governing/governed, the political-ethical momentum, the popularnational, wars of position and of movement, active and passive revolution, position and history of the subaltern, etc.). This is primarily the place of Gramsci’s studies on Machiavelli and on the Italian Risorgimento, and his research into the history of the intellectuals with its satirical supplement describing “Lorianism.”20 A third field is Gramsci’s extensive research into the politics of culture (see Haug 1989) which, closely related to his political studies, circles largely around questions of a popular-national literature. Fourth, the quantitatively modest but actually, particularly important complex of Gramsci’s analysis of Americanism and Fordism has to be mentioned, in which the concept “mode of production” gains life and contemporary relevance through analysis of the relationship between its then newly powerful “Fordist” formation and the political and cultural spheres (analyses of the changing mode of production and its consequence for everyday life, psychology, sexuality, political ideology, religion and literature; economic considerations on the current relevance of Marx’s law of the tendential fall of the average profit rate as well as the Fordist answer to this fall on the side of the innovative industrialists; the relationship between finance and industrial capital; the Fordist state interventionism; fascism and bolshevism as diametrical projects of catching up to Fordism in the shadow of American competition). These four main fields are located at different levels and differ in their concreteness. In other words, they do not lie next to one another, demarcated like academic disciplines. The first field develops Gramsci’s theoretical thinking as such in fluid form in critical debate with neo-idealism and mechanist Marxism. The second field deals with historical and systematic studies of politics and its cultural foundations. The third deals above all with the role of literature in the formation or prevention of a new culture and mode of life and of what Gramsci calls the “popular-national.”21 The fourth field describes the concrete examination of the second and third theory level with regard to the case of the Fordist mode of production, whose crisis-ridden ascent constituted the structural gravitation center at that time. The first field, concerned with the philosophy of praxis in its narrow sense, attempts in abstracto to reintroduce a dialectical approach to Marxist thinking, as it must prove itself in the three concrete fields. If one were to subtract the idea of the philosophy of praxis from what Gramsci has to say in these areas, his findings would collapse. Conversely, without these three concrete investigations, the philosophy of praxis would become an empty promise. Is the philosophy of praxis therefore yet again a “first philosophy” in the sense in which dialectical Marxism à la Lenin was meant to be? No, precisely not. Rather, it is akin to a “last philosophy” in the sense which Adorno (1956, 49) once associated with the concept of an ultima philosophia (see Haug 1994). It is the rejection of the myth of origin and of the ahistorical which, for a philosophy of praxis, is a twin word for the supernatural – although not so easily recognized as such by modern reason (Sève 1980, 82). From the vantage point of such philosophy, our

212  Wolfgang Fritz Haug thinking and doing are socially articulated, mediated through praxis, and situated in history. History knows no beginning and no end. The philosophy of praxis is therefore in its own terms the self-enlightenment of human reality which arises as a break with all ideology in order to look with sober eyes at the active positions of humans toward each other and toward nature. In a society characterized by class domination that relies predominantly on power over minds, the philosophy of praxis comes to life in the class struggle, always in favor of that side which has, to speak with Marx (1998, 47), no interest in “drawing the veil” over reality – an openness, however, which is of course not achieved through inactivity or through one’s class position alone and which, in happier moments, can be found fragmented across all classes as well as sprinkled throughout the ideologies as what Bloch terms their “surplus” (see Habermas 1963, 204). The reinterpretation of historical materialism in the light of Gramsci’s outline of a philosophy of praxis wipes out its fatalistic evolutionisms, objectivisms, and the false guarantees of a philosophy of history, which have residually afflicted Marxian thinking and which grew like mildew on the official Marxisms. In this respect, Lenin’s revolutionary voluntarism – the complementary opposite of his philosophical materialism – only constituted an interruption. To go back to Marx from Gramsci, or rather, to again turn toward Marx, does not mean to turn away from Gramsci. Rather, the point is to re-read Marx with an altered perspective. With the help of criteria made sharper by Gramsci, we try to lay out Marx’s theoretical tools in readiness for the analysis of today’s world. The “pessimism of reason” helps to overcome the naive beliefs of a philosophy of history,22 but the “optimism of will” helps to reconnoiter the world with the eyes of “intervening thought” (eingreifenden Denkens) (Brecht, cf. Ruoff Kramer 1997). Gramsci helps in distinguishing the dying Marxism from that which remains unexhausted in Marx and in the various Marxist traditions. In Europe and many other parts of the world, more decisively than in earlier crises of Marxism, the postcommunist situation is characterized by the withering away of what until now was widely believed to be Marxism. This is a deserved death insofar as, in its official forms, it was a Marxism with an anti-Marxist – because not historicalmaterialist – self-understanding, which disregarded the self-application rule. In our situation, where we have to say goodbye to that which is dead in order to free that which continues to live, it is salutary to go, with Gramsci in hand, to Marx whose theory provided no concepts with which to grasp his own role as an intellectual.23 To begin anew with Marx is, then, not yet another return to an “original truth,” as happened periodically in the history of Marxism. We go back with criteria stemming from historical experience; those criteria make a difference already in Marx. Just as Gramsci’s steps beyond Marx were not a distancing from Marx (any more than any act of preserving the living ever is), so is the Gramscian re-beginning with Marx out of and in the name of a new epoch of capitalism a necessary task if Gramsci’s thought is to remain alive. Just as little as we can rest on the laurels of Marx’s critique of Hegel, can we rest on those of Gramsci’s critique of Croce. And however great the historical merits of Marx’s analysis of the capitalist, large-scale use of steam power and “tool machines” (Marx 1977, 494) are, they long ago

From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx  213 ceased to cope with the actual mode of production. Similarly, the Fordist mode of production that Gramsci analyzed becomes – by the day – part of a history that consumes its protagonists as Kronos did his children. “Historical” means here: no longer historically actual and relevant. Therefore, Gramscians must today, in a new way, become historical materialists in that they must endeavor to analyze the new materialities of the historical. The starting point must once again be the Critique of Political Economy – in a nonreductionist reading, however, that must not be left to the economists. Gramsci is wrong when he describes it as “critical economy.” It is – in this profound, Kant- and Hegel-transcending (and preservingfurther developing) sense – critique of the economy, even a critique of that “critical economy” which existed in Marx’s time (as it does again in ours) in the form of the “left Ricardians.”24 It is the comprehensive theory of the forms, dynamisms, and tendencies of the capitalist mode of production; that is, it grasps, socioanalytically, the forms in which capitalist economy and its theorizing, through the economists, unfolds. While the recurring denial that Gramsci dealt with the economy is false (see Frosini 1999), it is nevertheless true that he did so only partially. Particularly if one recognizes that Gramsci’s analysis of Fordism realized the historical-materialist concretization of Marxism, one has to grant Lucien Sève’s claim that Gramsci disregards the productive forces25 – to name only one aspect which necessitates a renewed and renewing recourse to Marx. Indeed, what kind of analysis of Fordism is this which does not even address the assembly line and the conveyor belt as its basic equipment, or in which the electric motor and the automobile are not investigated in their consequences? In Notebook 22, Gramsci only mentions the “new methods of production and work.” Concerning Taylorism he is only interested in the intensification of labor force expenditure, not in the Copernican turn which lets the worker stand still and the products in fieri turn around him. In contrast, one only has to think of the sentence the fascinated Walter Benjamin (1964, 129) picked up from Léon Daudet: L’automobile, c’est la guerre. The assembly line means the never-ending multiplication of the automobile. It is from the assembly line that Fordism’s war of masses and matériel was launched. It is also around the assembly line that the Soviet Union rescued and reorganized itself in the struggle for survival against Nazi Germany’s war of conquest and annihilation. Finally, the assembly line demanded Stalin’s “patriotic”- political counterrevolution which, at the same time, revolutionized the material forms of production and life in the Soviet Union. Or, we can compare Gramsci’s view with that of Brecht26 and, slightly differing, of Benjamin.27 Both understood war as one of the “forms of motion” (Marx 1977, 103) of the economy. Under given relations of production, they argued, a certain wealth of productive forces leads to a crisis, and certain productive forces can only be applied through war. Gramsci, in contrast, extends Klausewitz and sees war “or also every other form of armed struggle” as “the most decisive and effective form” of politics (Notebook 26, §5).28 Of Karl Marx’s three critiques – the critique of ideology, the critique of objectivism in the Theses on Feuerbach, and the critique of the value forms and the double character of labor in Capital – Gramsci elaborated the second like no

214  Wolfgang Fritz Haug other. Reconstructing the conception of philosophy from below, he responded to the first one. The third he hardly took into account; it is as if, following his friend Piero Sraffa, he remained a left Ricardian (see Pala 1998). The current crisis, however, puts a far more radical dialectic on the agenda. It requires transcending, in the steps of Marx, the limits of a left Ricardianism with its inability to think the structural origins of crisis. In the possible Renaissance of an integral Marxist theory, Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis may come to play a leading part. For this Gramsci’s thought is destined, because it precludes the danger of “immediatism” – unlike in the case of Marx and, even more so, the various Marxisms that have succumbed occasionally to the danger of “immediatist” politics, with its suggestive idea of unmediated community. “Immediatism” in this sense, means the tendency to abolish mediating structures (market, parliament, law) and civil society. Nevertheless, Gramsci’s contribution will be able to play this part and remain a historically potent force only so long as it does not close in upon itself but instead – rearticulating itself in the Marxian multiverse, at present more accessible than ever,29 of the three critiques – approaches the changing world of today.

Acknowledgments For Giuseppe Petronio, Grandseigneur and Comrade. This chapter was first presented at the conference “Marx and Gramsci” of the Instituto Gramsci del Friuli-Venezia Giulia, in cooperation with the International Gramsci Society and the Instituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici, held in Trieste on 20–21 March 1999. It was translated by Heiko Henkel and Tina Lupton, and revised by the author, who wants to thank the translators and Karen Ruoff Kramer for their help.

Notes 1 This controversy is revisited in Haug (1995, 2000). See also Haug (1999a). 2 Untermann’s translation, which is misleading, has been corrected by us (cf. Labriola 1907, 60). 3 For Lucien Goldmann, there is “no fundamental difference between Heidegger’s theses and the Theses on Feuerbach” (1975, 125). 4 Ernst Nolte (1988), from his own rightist perspective, has discussed such Marxist inoculation of fascist philosophy. 5 Since the great American edition of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks by Joseph A. Buttigieg (Columbia University Press, 1996) was still at a beginning, in this chapter we mostly quote from Gramsci (1971). In addition to the page numbers, we give the number of the Notebook and the paragraph (§), neither of which is noted in this edition. 6 Giovanni Gentile (1899), in his Filosofia di Marx of 1899, which was recommended by Lenin, offers his own translation of the Theses on Feuerbach. The second part of the book, which contains the translation, is entitled La filosofia della prassi (see the new edition: 1955, 68ff.). Gentile sees in the Theses on Feuerbach the foundation “di tutto un nuovo sitema speculativo” (1955, 71). 7 See my “Outlines for a theory of the ideological” and “Ideological powers and the antagonistic reclamation of community” (Haug 1987, 59–99). 8 Marx wrote, “[T]hat at the contradictions in material production make necessary a

From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx  215

  9 10

11 12

13 14

15 16

17

18

19

20

21

superstructure of ideological estates, whose activity – whether good or bad – is good, because it is necessary” (1989, 184). The Collected Works translate “ideologische Stände” misleadingly as “ideological strata” (1968, 259). I have elaborated on this point elsewhere and will not repeat it here (see Haug 1996). Gramsci commented, “Metaphysics means for it [i.e. Plekhanov’s manual] only a specific philosophical formulation, that of speculative idealism, rather than any systematic formulation that is put forward as an extra-historical truth, as an abstract universal outside of time and space” (1971, 437; Notebook 11, §14). See Gramsci’s polemics against “vulgar materialism with its metaphysics of ‘matter’ which is necessarily eternal and absolute” (1971, 407; Notebook 11, §62). See Sève: “The hyper-historicising, the super-politicization of Marxism appears to be one of its childhood diseases,” in which it fights at the same time against bourgeois infection and its own bureaucratic ossification (1980, 386). For Althusser, Marxism is “en toute rigeur … un a-humanisme et un a-historicisme” (1967, 73). On “passive revolution” or “revolution-restoration,” one of Gramsci’s key concepts, see Notebook 15, §11, §17 (also 1971, 58ff. 106–20). See Rehmann (1998). Still, in 1998 a Chinese author could declare that through Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis – despite the justified critique of mechanistic materialism – “Marx’s philosophical thought [would be] distorted into practicism” (Chongwen 1998, 133). That this assessment was controversial can be seen in the following issue of the same journal: “It is now accepted that practice is the most fundamental and important concept in Marxist philosophy, not only in terms of the previously accepted Marxist epistemology, but also in relation to the entirety of Marxist philosophy … Dialectical and historical materialism … can thus be regarded as ‘practical materialism’” (Yuanliang 1998, 7). This was opposed in the same issue by He Zuorong: “It is not scientific to reduce Marxism to ‘practical-isms’” (1998, 19). In Sève’s words, “Mais ce qui lui fait défaut, c’est la ferme affirmation du primat de la matière au du rapport historique lui-même” (1980, 382). In Brecht’s thought, truth “is not ‘there in itself’ to be first discovered; rather it develops out of the proof of the alterability of the situation or person; this means not merely out of the alterability which is in itself given, but rather out of that to which truth can – from the perspective of the viewer-as-the-masses – be subjugated. Truth, therefore, is a question of praxis” (1992, 360; our translation). The practice of the senses is, according to Marx, not reducible to mere physiological processes but is first of all “appropriation of human reality”: “seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving – in short, all the organs of his individual being … are … in their orientation to the object, the appropriation of the object” (1975, 299). See Gramsci’s note to Notebook 11, §34, in which he criticizes Engels’s theory of the Dialectics of Nature “which is meant to prove that the dialectics is a cosmic law” and where Gramsci warns against assuming an “identity of the thought” of Marx and Engels (see also Gramsci 1975, 1449). This “revision” is in fact more a clarification of Marxian thinking where the plurality – indeed, the complementarity – of ideological forms is already sketched. Taking into account Marx’s analysis of the Commune, one could even ask whether Gramsci’s main strategic distinction between società civile and società politica helps to elaborate the not very developed, communalistic aspect of Marx’s political thought. See Notebook 28: “under the comprehensive title of ‘Lorianism’” Gramsci describes “some deteriorated and bizarre aspects of the mentality of a group of Italian intellectuals and henceforth of the national culture (nonorganic character, absence of systematic critical spirit, negligence in the practice of scientific activity … not adequately fought and rigorously hit: therefore, irresponsibility toward the formation of the national culture).” Like Smith and Hoare before him, in their translated Selections (see Gramsci 1971), Buttigieg suggests “national-popular” (see Gramsci 1996, 124). As I have argued in the

216  Wolfgang Fritz Haug

22

23

24 25 26

27 28

29

introduction to volume 6 of the German edition of the Prison Notebooks (Haug 1995, 1216ff.), the order of double adjectives must be inverted in translations from Romanic to Germanic languages (and vice versa): “aspetto nazionale-popolare” should be translated as “popular-national aspect” (see Notebook 3, §154). The popular articulation of the national can mean the left alternative to the national articulation of the popular. Although the German edition at first followed the same pattern as the English, it then changed it. The “pessimism of reason,” misunderstood by Franck Bardacke (1995) as a kind of cowardice in the face of the enemy, demands a sober reading precisely because it discloses new possibilities of action. This point also was made by Stuart Hall (1983) when he sketched a “Marxism without guarantees.” Gramsci introduced to Marxism the theory (and thus the legitimacy) of the intellectual. Marx only seems to know (negatively assessed) ideologues and (positively assessed) scientists. He lacks a concept for his own form of agency. Gramsci introduces for this the term “organic intellectual.” Marx called those critics of the economy who operated “on the basis of Ricardian theory” the “Gegensätzler” (contradictors) (1968, 234ff., 307). Strangely enough, Sève (1980, 379) deduces this from the fact that Gramsci would not duly recognize matter, as if it were an economic and not an epistemological category. As Brecht wrote, “The Weimar Republic collapsed on the contradiction between the erection of a large, rationalized industry – which, under the world-dominating conditions of capitalism, could only be fully used and kept alive through activities of war – and the dismantling of the means of war” (1993, 22, 70; 1989, 181; our translation). “Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources” (Benjamin 1968a, 241). That this sentence in its general form is at least misleading, is proved by more than one contemporary war. Experience has shown most forms of armed struggle to be an unintended antipolitics. This can be seen for example in the case of the Red Army Faction in Germany; its armed struggle served to legitimize the police state of the nuclear security state, and even internally eroded and consumed its original political character until the struggle became a mere end in itself, struggle for the struggle’s sake, a skewed analogue of “producing for production’s sake” (Marx 1977, 739). What Gramsci, who was largely dependent on the French edition (Costes), could know of Marx was only a fraction of what by now is available in the Marx-Engels-Werke (Collected works) and the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (the not-yet-finished complete works are until now unavailable in English). Gramsci’s boldest wishes concerning a critical edition have today come true to a large extent.

16 Gramsci and the dialectic Resisting “enCrocement” Steven R. Mansfield

In his Quaderni del carcere, Antonio Gramsci writes that he wants to reconstruct “authentic” Marxism (1971, 385–6; 1975, 1843–4).1 To accomplish this he engages in a dual critique of positivist and idealist interpretations of Marxism, especially as advanced by Nikolai Bukharin and Benedetto Croce, respectively.2 Both Bukharin’s “mechanistic materialism” and Croce’s “speculative idealism,” Gramsci argues, suppress the integral character of the relation between the socioeconomic and ethico-political spheres. While Gramsci is consistent about the fundamental explanatory significance of the economic class structure, he also recognizes that all historical phenomena, especially expressions of power, are a concurrence of a number of different factors, each having its own specific dynamism and “materiality,” and therefore a certain degree of reciprocity is always present. Just how to understand Gramsci’s theorization of this complex and fluid interrelationship is perhaps the overriding problem of Gramscian scholarship. In a recent book Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe suggest that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony involves a logic that deconstructs the classical base-superstructure model of Marxism. Although they lament the ultimate limitation of a “productivist essentialism” in Gramsci’s analysis, Laclau and Mouffe argue that the concept of hegemony rests on a logic of articulation and contingency that introduces particularity and difference (1985, 69, 85). For them, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony opens up the possibility of constructing a general theory of the radical indeterminacy in which cultural and political identities are constituted or articulated by hegemonic “discourses” rather than assumed a priori to be determined by the economic structure. In addition to the class struggle, in which class identities have been articulated around a single and dichotomously divided political space (the relations of production), they recognize a democratic struggle that occurs or can occur in various political spaces. The political scene is thus not dichotomous but open to “differential articulations” (1985, 137–8). These differential articulations produce a basic “unfixity” in which there is a “regularity in dispersion” (a phrase that they borrow from Foucault). This principle of unfixity provides the basis for denying any underlying principle of subject position (1985, 85–8, 106). They recognize, however, that the logic of unfixity carries with it certain dangers that are symmetrically opposite to the dangers of the unifying and totalitarian threat. The opposite danger is taking deconstruction and dispersion so far that they lead to the unraveling of the social fabric and ultimately to social implosion.

218  Steven R. Mansfield Laclau and Mouffe suggest that between the logics of complete identity and pure difference there needs to be some balance (1985, 188). While no one would disagree, I think, on the need to find some balance, it seems to me that Laclau and Mouffe exaggerate the extent of the essentialist logic and under-analyze the logic of difference in both Marx and Gramsci.3 I will therefore examine the dialectic of identity and difference as it is employed in both Gramsci’s analytic methodology and in his substantive theory. I will do so primarily by analyzing Gramsci’s critique of the methodology and philosophy of Benedetto Croce. Because Gramsci’s critique examines the relevance of Croce’s “dialectic of distincts” for Marxism, such a contrast will enable us to establish Gramsci’s dialectic of identity and difference in its full configuration. Gramsci’s dialogue with Crocean philosophy is one of the most prominent features of the Quaderni. And because this dialogue helps to orient Gramsci’s critique of positivist versions of Marxism, it has sometimes been argued that Gramsci’s philosophy is basically Crocean.4 Indeed, after reading Gramsci’s Letter dal carcere, Benedetto Croce himself declared Gramsci to be “one of us.”5 There is no doubt that Gramsci is strongly influenced by Croce and likewise no doubt that he regards some aspects of Croce’s philosophy as worthy of incorporation into Marxism. This would include, for example, Croce’s ethical-political approach to history, his antipositivism, and his antitranscendentalism. Yet Gramsci is also openly critical of the philosophical foundations of Croceanism. He raises fundamental objections to Croce’s idealistic view that universal predicates are the subject of history. Whereas Croce conceives of history as the development of universal concepts, Gramsci seeks to understand the “absolute secularization and earthliness of thought” (1971, 465; 1975, 1437). That is to say, concepts and other abstractions must be understood as having historical origins and functions. A comparison of Gramsci’s and Croce’s methodological principles as they relate to the process of abstraction will raise some highly significant questions. For example, what relation to history do Croce and Gramsci think concepts have? Moreover, is it possible to develop methodological principles that are consistent with an effort to understand the “absolute secularization and earthliness of thought,” all the while relating particular concepts back to the larger and ongoing whole of history? We will, in juxtaposition to Croce’s view, see how Gramsci thinks that it is possible. Gramsci even examines the vantage point and function of Croce’s general philosophy within its historical setting, notwithstanding Croce’s claims of disinterested neutrality. More than once Gramsci maintains that Croce is a “sort of lay Pope” whose philosophy provided the fascist regime with “an extremely efficient instrument of hegemony,” even if this was indirect and unintended (1971, 119–20; 1975, 1228; 1973, 204). Gramsci argues that Croce’s thought had this result precisely because of its abstractness and its acceptance of the Hegelian identification of the actions that establish the “real” with “rational” developments of the Idea. Although Croce’s post-1924 work tempered this analysis with an emphasis on the role of human will or human freedom in history, as in the work of many liberals there is a definite aporia when it comes to analyzing fascism.6

Gramsci and the dialectic  219 A significant portion of Gramsci’s prison project is to develop a critique of Croceanism that will expose its limitations, while at the same time absorbing certain of its positive aspects that can help revitalize the revolutionary character of Marxism. Gramsci proposes to write “an Anti-Croce which in the modern cultural atmosphere would have the meaning and importance that Anti-Dühring had for the generation preceding the world war” (1975, 1234). Inasmuch as this would be a gargantuan project, he suggests that such an endeavor would be worthy of dedicating ten years of activity by an entire group of people. Although Gramsci was unable to undertake this project himself, since he was working alone and under prison conditions, his notes do provide us with outlines and sketches for his Anti-Croce. One of the most important passages describing the basic thrust of the Anti-Croce also contains an important autobiographical comment. Reflecting back on the influence Croce had on his own intellectual development, Gramsci notes that In February 1917 … I wrote that just as Hegelianism had been the premise of the philosophy of praxis [Marxism] in the nineteenth century, and one of the origins of contemporary civilization, so the Crocean philosophy could be the premise of a revival of the philosophy of praxis in our time, for our generation. The question was then only hinted at, in a primitive and certainly quite inadequate form, because at that time the concept of a unity of theory and practice, of philosophy and politics, was not clear to me, and I was tendentially rather Crocean. But now … I can rephrase my position and present it in a critically more developed way. That is to say: it is necessary to perform on Croce’s philosophical conception the same reduction that the first theorists of the philosophy of praxis performed on the Hegelian conception. (1975, 1233; emphasis added) For Marx and Engels, Hegel’s dialectic was “standing on its head” and the problem was to turn it right side up. With this in mind, Gramsci titles one of his notes on Crocean philosophy: “The man who walks on his head” (1975, 1240).7 In this note he asks, “how can we … make him walk with his legs and not with his head?” Gramsci believes that his own method transcends Croce much in the same way that Marx and Engels’s method transcended Hegel. A recent book by Maurice Finocchiaro compares the methodologies of Gramsci and Croce. Finocchiaro argues that Gramsci’s methodology suffers from several difficulties. Among these is Gramsci’s failure to recognize his reliance on Crocean methodology: “Gramsci, although aware that he is specifically indebted to Croce, does not seem to be aware of his methodological dependence” (1988, 234). Despite Gramsci’s claims to the contrary, he fails to transcend Croce’s method. He has “the self-image and pretension of an anti-Croce, accompanied by very real Crocean commitments” (1988, 239). Among these commitments is a Croce-inspired dialectic of concepts, sometimes referred to as a “dialectic of distincts.” The essence of the case made by Finocchiaro is this: there are two different conceptions or forms of the dialectic in Gramsci’s analysis: one cognitive, the other historical. The former, Finocchiaro argues, is primary; the latter is merely paid lip service. The cognitive dialectic, even though Gramsci lacks full

220  Steven R. Mansfield self-consciousness of its derivation from Croce, is a “judicious” mental process that seeks to avoid one-sidedness by “searching for differences underlying uniformities and for uniformities underlying differences” (1988, 242). Finocchiaro discusses Gramsci’s views on the distinctness and relatedness of politics to philosophy, art, sociology, morality, and economics (1988, 133–41). In each case, Finocchiaro finds that Gramsci believes that politics is both related to and distinct from each of the other activities. Each maintains its own integrity as a distinct activity while also being related to the others. The whole system of relations is conceived abstractly, as being a system of the relations of cognitive expressions rather than as relations between concrete facts. A unity of these activities, as cognitive activities, is possible through a cognitive method that “requires that various sides be distinguished and that they be united into a combination” (Finocchiaro 1988, 180). Since this dialectic is cognitive rather than real and historical, Finocchiaro reaches the conclusion that Gramsci employs a Crocean dialectic of distincts. The other approach, Finocchiaro suggests, regards dialectics as a historically real process of social development that involves a law-governed process of contradiction, that is, a law of the inevitable and destructive clash of thesis and antithesis. This is an “extremist” and “mechanistic” version of the dialectic that “is best treated as an erroneous addition [by Gramsci] and best discarded” (1988, 175). In the wake of Finocchiaro’s argument, what is clearly at stake, both substantively and methodologically, is Gramsci’s claim to transcend the philosophy of Croce. The long-standing view of most Gramsci scholars has been that Gramsci’s methodological transcendence of Croce is based on a theory of the unity of theory and practice, of philosophy and politics. Yet Finocchiaro argues that Gramsci fails to develop a coherent unity of theory and practice and thus does not really move beyond Croce. Instead of a dialectic of the theoretical and the historical, there is a dialectic of the theory and practice of cognitive activities. Because Gramsci’s method remains committed in this way to a Crocean position, Finocchiaro is led to claim that Gramsci seems to be saying that the dialectic is useful only in theory but not in practice, or that the dialectical way of thinking … can be used only in the context of understanding and interpreting the world, not to criticize it or change it. (1988, 175) I will seek to defend Gramsci against both of Finocchiaro’s charges: (1) that Gramsci lacks full self-awareness concerning the relation of his methodology to that of Croce; and (2) that there are two inconsistent forms of the dialectic present in Gramsci’s thought. It is my contention that Gramsci actually accomplishes a reduction (or transformation) and transcendence of Crocean methodology. We will see that Gramsci’s methodology, contrary to Finocchiaro, does not entail a reductive identity of cognitive and concrete activity, where dialectics is limited to exploring tensions within cognitive activity. Indeed, Gramsci argues that Croce’s methodology is symmetrically opposite to the reductivism and one-sidedness of positivist Marxism. We will examine how Gramsci contrasts Marxist and

Gramsci and the dialectic  221 Crocean dialectics. We will see why Gramsci regards Croce’s speculative identity of theory and practice as ultimately tautological. Finally, we will see precisely what Finocchiaro denies: Gramsci’s methodology consistently functions both as a means of analyzing the interrelation of the various parts or aspects of human existence and also as a means of interpreting history. Moreover, this methodology supports a strategic analysis that can justify radical political action. But before turning to an analysis of Gramsci’s theory of dialectics, we must briefly consider Croce’s contribution to dialectical theory and Gramsci’s evaluation of it.

Croce’s dialectic of distincts Like Hegel, Croce sees history as a universal that unfolds itself through individuals. As Croce puts it: History is thought, and as such, thought of the universal, of the universal in its concreteness, and therefore always determined in a particular manner … the subject of social and political history [is not] Greece or Rome, France or Germany, or even all of these and others combined, but culture, civilization, progress, liberty, or any other similar word – that is to say, a universal. (1960, 60–1) Croce retains, even in his post-1924 writings, the Hegelian thesis of the immanent rationality of historical development. History, which Croce defines as “the story of liberty,” is the self-consciousness of one’s connection to the universal. History is thus philosophy. Croce defines philosophy as the methodology of history, which develops and expresses itself as “free” action, that is, self-conscious action. As philosophy, the historical act is a definitional act. Such acts, as definitional judgments, are philosophy par excellence. History occurs in the realm of the pure concept (Croce 1966, 62–71). Philosophy is thus history. The subject of history is not the specific actors or parties involved in the event but the universal concept itself. The significance of actual events is the extent to which they incarnate the universal concept. In his Logic (1917), Croce builds on the Kantian notion that history is a dialectic of distinct activities. History can be subdivided into theoretical and practical activity. Each activity is further subdivided according to the specificity or universality of the object of the activity, thus yielding a “two-fold relation of degree.” Within theoretical activity are expressive cognition (associated with intuition, especially in art) and ratiocinative cognition (formal philosophy). Within practical activity are moral acts (motivated by universal ends) and utilitarian acts (associated with individual economic behavior). These four distinct activities correspond to the pursuit of the beautiful, the true, the good, and the useful. History is the pursuit of the ideal in each form, a process of evolutionary refinement. Each form is a distinct aspect of the whole; and while related to the others, each is autonomous and unique. As Croce conceives them, each form is a complete and concrete universal. That is, each activity expresses the whole of reality under one of its aspects. The four forms of theoretical and practical activity constitute a “circle of

222  Steven R. Mansfield the spirit” that includes the whole of the mind or, for Croce the same thing, the whole of reality (Carr 1927, 136–52, 189–209). For Gramsci, Croce’s historicism and his “dialectic of distincts” remain metaphysical and apriorist. He argues that despite the efforts to avoid metaphysics by focusing on human activity, Croce’s philosophy is still “all transcendence and theology, scarcely free from the grossest mythological exterior” (1975, 1225). Gramsci claims that the application of Croce’s system of conceptual categories yields an “anti-historicism”: “‘speculative idealism’ is the science of categories and of the a priori synthesis of the spirit, i.e. a form of anti-historicist abstraction” (1971, 437; 1975, 1403, 1462–3). Croce’s system cannot be truly dialectical since it reduces historical reality to the evolution of consciousness toward greater abstractness and universality of the four conceptual forms, and assumes a priori the unity of these concepts. Gramsci concludes that the assumption of a speculative essence exalts “classical serenity,” and really amounts to nothing more than a smug elitism that one-sidedly and ideologically excludes or covers over the moment of social conflict (1971, 119; 1975, 1228). Hence Gramsci argues that Croce’s reduction of reality to conceptual categories produces merely verbal solutions to real problems: Since it is necessary, in the perennial flow of events, to establish some concepts without which reality could not be understood, it is also necessary and even indispensable to establish and to keep in mind that reality in movement and the concept of reality, if logically they can be distincts, historically need to be thought of as an inseparable unity. Otherwise, what happens to Croce would happen to us, that is, history would become a formal history, a history of concepts, and in the final analysis a history of intellectuals, even an autobiographic history of Croce’s thought, that is, a history of gadflies. Croce has fallen into a new and strange form of “idealistic” sociologism, no less ludicrous and inconclusive than positivistic sociologism. (1975, 1241) Croce’s transformation of the Hegelian dialectic is quite similar to the reform attempted by Proudhon. Gramsci claims that both Croce and Proudhon develop a “degenerate and mutilated Hegelianism” (1975, 1220). The source of their theoretical error lies in the fact that they “‘mechanically’ presuppose that the thesis must be ‘conserved’ by the antithesis in order not to destroy the historical process” (1975, 1220–1). The view that the “good side” of every historical movement is preserved in the antithesis, Gramsci says, is typical of the intellectuals, who view themselves as the arbitrators and the mediators of real political conflicts, those who personify the “catharsis” from the economic moment to the ethico-political moment, that is, the synthesis of the dialectical process itself, synthesis which they “manipulate” speculatively in their minds. (1975, 1222) The dialectic of distincts, which presupposes an abstract universal as the subject of history, is an ideological denial of negativity and difference. “In real history,”

Gramsci and the dialectic  223 Gramsci argues, “the antithesis tends to destroy the thesis, the synthesis will be a transcendence, but no one can establish a priori what element of the thesis will be ‘conserved’ in the synthesis” (1975, 1221). Gramsci rejects the view of history as an unfolding totality in which mind seeks self-consciousness. Because of the speculative character of Croce’s analytic distinctions, and his failure to take into account historical change that takes place through the resolution of conflict, Gramsci tells us that “the so-called dialectic of distincts … is a contradiction in terms since we have dialectic only of opposites” (1975, 1316).8 Gramsci’s historicism echoes Marx’s sixth Thesis on Feuerbach by defining human nature as the “ensemble of social relations in which real men move and work” (Gramsci, 1975, 1226). For Gramsci, these relations involve the identity of contraries in the concrete historical act, that is in human activity (history-spirit) in the concrete, indissolubly connected with a certain organized (historicized) “matter” and with the transformed nature of man. Philosophy of the act (praxis, development), but not of the “pure” act, but rather of the real “impure” act, in the most profane and worldly sense of the word. (1971, 372; 1975, 1492) The reference here to the “impure” act means the situated act, the act that can only be understood within the context of its relation to other social and historical factors.9 Like Hegel and Marx, Gramsci incorporates into his view of human nature and “organized matter” the capacity for interaction and change. Because of concrete interaction and the self-generation of human nature, when one factor within the historical and material context changes in a fundamental way the nature of related acts and things also changes. Thus the appearance and function of things may change sufficiently as to require them to be understood in quite different terms from before. The relations of action and matter give rise to concepts and language that “organize” matter and action. For Gramsci, the social processes involved in linguistic development (in both popular and specialized language) cannot be analyzed through a mechanical base/superstructure model that would reduce language to a passive reflection of class struggle or economics. Linguistic innovations are created and take root because they suit historically laid realities and possibilities. Drawing on an example produced by Bertrand Russell in defense of realism, Gramsci argues that terms like “East” and “West” are conventional and thus historical-cultural products. The very real relations associated with the two terms cannot exist outside of human history and cognition: “Outside of real history every point on the earth is East and West at the same time.” Yet the terms are not purely conventional projections; rather, “these references are real; they correspond to real facts.” Such concepts enable action insofar as they allow us “to objectivize reality, to understand the objectivity of the external world” (1971, 448; 1975, 1420). In order to understand reality and at the same time avoid Croce’s “idealistic sociologism,” it is essential to develop more appropriate concepts. In a note that raises some objections to positivist empiricism, Gramsci specifies

224  Steven R. Mansfield that “an enquiry into a series of facts to discover the relations between them presupposes a ‘concept’ that permits one to distinguish that series from other possible series of facts” (1971, 461; 1975, 1926). Gramsci goes on in this note to state that a theoretical concept, as a criterion of distinction, has by necessity a complex cultural history. Insofar as his theoretical concepts are historical in nature, these points have an obvious significance in our examination of Gramsci’s analytical method. Theoretical concepts are established and last so long as they are regarded as appropriate and adequate to their task of solving problems posed by the subject matter. The fact that theoretical concepts themselves have a temporal dimension does not prevent Gramsci from theorizing about historical reality. It is, however, an important recognition that reality, especially social reality, changes rapidly and that adequate theoretical concepts emerge out of a complex history in which abstraction is based on evidence provided by both long- and short-term historical experience (see Morera 1990, 111–12).

The dialectics of internal relations Gramsci’s historicism has a character that is quite similar to what Bertell Ollman has called the “philosophy of internal relations” (1971).10 Ollman argues that change entails mutual dependence and an interactive system. Change and interaction are not external to things; rather, they are part of their nature. Like Ollman, Gramsci denounces historical accounts that are only “externally descriptive, without bringing into relief the necessary and causal connections” (1975, 1236). In general, the philosophy of internal relations holds that the elements and factors that make up the condition of human life are not independent but integral to a whole or totality. These individual elements and factors must be grasped as real historical relations rather than as “things” that have historical relations. As Ollman puts it, the elements and factors of life contain “in themselves, as integral elements of what they are, those parts with which we tend to see them externally tied” (1971, 15). As we have already seen, Gramsci describes human nature itself as a historical relation of subjective and material elements. Gramsci calls this relation a historical bloc. In the most general sense of the term, the historical bloc is a real, organic relation as opposed to a merely speculative relation. Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and subjective elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which the individual is in an active relationship. To transform the external world, the general system of relations, is to potentiate oneself and to develop oneself. (1971, 360; 1975, 1338)11 In the Quaderni Gramsci raises the question of human nature not to discover the essential attributes of the individual qua individual. The question of human nature should instead focus on the capacity of being a historical agent. The proper question should be:

Gramsci and the dialectic  225 What can man become? That is, can man dominate his own destiny, can he “make himself,” can he create his own life? We maintain therefore that man is a process, and more exactly, the process of his actions. (1971, 351; 1975, 1344) In this comment Gramsci tells us that in addition to being an ensemble of social relations, human nature is also a process. In other words, human nature has both a historical and a systemic character. Gramsci believes that the historical project of the human being is to become the fully “centered” subject. In Gramsci’s view, history is not philosophy or even “differential articulations”; it is “impure” practice. Even though practice is always specific and differentiating, the subject is present and self-constituting through its actions. Because identity is established through practice, the subject is not precluded from being centered in its “discourse.” Indeed, the fact that the human being is active in creating his or her own life opens the possibility of attaining knowledge of reality. While human nature is ontologically in a process of becoming, until social unity is achieved, human existence takes place in a “concordia discors.” For Gramsci “man in general” does not serve as an analytical point of departure, as it does for Croce, but rather constitutes a historical point of arrival. Within history are contained the immanent “reasons for a possible [but not inevitable] unity” (1971, 356; 1975, 885). The concordia discors of present human existence is rooted in real historical-social distinctions and differences embodied in various different social groupings. Given these historical differences (many of which may be accurately described as systemic oppositions or contradictions) the unity of spirit presupposed by Croce is a historical point of arrival for humanity, not a point of departure: “One cannot talk of the ‘spirit’ when society is divided into groups without necessarily concluding that this ‘spirit’ is just ‘esprit de corps’” (1971, 407; 1975, 1490). Because he fails to establish any causal connections or mediating links between the material socioeconomic and the spiritual ethical-political realms, Croce’s historiography is ironically like positivist versions of Marxism. Without such mediations, which would provide a sense of the historically specific forms of institutions, structures, relations, and practices, Croce is unable to trace the origins of key moments in historical development; he therefore retreats to a formalistic historicism that ideologically covers over conflict. The case for the incompatibility of Gramsci’s analytic and historical dialectics, presented by Finocchiaro, is based to a very large extent on the contrast between two types of comments on the nature of dialectics. The first type of thinking about the dialectic sees it as a law-governed clash of thesis and antithesis. An example of the second type is seen in a passage taken from a note dealing with journalism and various types of periodicals: Finding the real identity beneath the apparent contradiction and differentiation, and finding the substantial diversity beneath the apparent identity, is the most delicate, misunderstood and yet essential endowment of the critic of ideas and the historian of historical developments. (1975, 2268; 1985, 417)12

226  Steven R. Mansfield On the basis of this second and apparently different understanding of dialectics, Finocchiaro argues that the analysis of identity and distinction amounts to a dialectic that is basically Crocean as opposed to Marxist. But to the contrary, rather than being unaware of employing a dialectic of interrelatedness, Gramsci quite consciously develops it as a means of analytically grasping the complexity and totality of political-economic and cultural-ideological relations. The key issues are thus whether a dialectic that stresses interrelations is per se Crocean, and whether Gramsci’s analytic dialectic is incompatible with his historical dialectic. The organic unity of internal relations In a fundamental statement of his dialectic of “internal relations,” Gramsci provides a broad suggestion of how to conceive of the nature of the unity of the entire ensemble of social relations, as well as the unity of the specific activities of economics, philosophy, and politics: Unity in the Constituent Elements of Marxism. Unity is given by the dialectical development of the contradictions between man and matter (nature – material forces of production). In economics the unitary center is value, alias the relationship between the worker and the industrial productive forces (those who deny the theory fall into crass vulgar materialism by posing machines in themselves – as constant and technical capital – as producers of value independent of the man who runs them). In philosophy it is praxis, that is, the relationship between human will (superstructure) and economic structure. In politics it is the relationship between the State and civil society, that is, the intervention of the State (centralized will) to educate the educator, the social environment in general. (1971, 402–3; 1975, 868) In this note, Gramsci asserts the unity of opposites within each element and a unity of the constituent elements. The interrelatedness of the various forms of human activity is the subject of the philosophy of praxis proper, which Gramsci defines as “the science of dialectics or the theory of knowledge, within which the general concepts of history, politics and economics are interwoven in an organic unity” (1971, 431; 1975, 1448). In order to comprehend the real nature of an object or an activity we must try to see it as a complex set of relations and interconnections that develop historically through mutual determination. In this process, the effects of the economic structure, although they are also reciprocally “determined,” are at least easier to detect if not also greater in their effect on the overall direction of the whole social structure and on the other parts than they on it. Gramsci frequently uses a metaphor of skeleton and skin to describe the relationship of structure and superstructure. The skeleton and anatomy (structure) are not the only reality and the skin (superstructure) a mere appearance or illusion, but the function of the skeleton (structure) should be given a greater value in analyzing the nature of the whole (1971, 466; 1975, 1321, 1443). As a determinate system of social labor, the structure not only sets limits to historical

Gramsci and the dialectic  227 change but it also becomes the “instrument” and the motive force to create a new superstructure. The structure, therefore, remains fundamental in the relationship insofar as it is “the least variable element in historical development,” and thus sets parameters for the superstructure. It is not only the basis of the existing structure of “conformism,” but the contradictions within it are also a “point of reference for the new world in gestation” (1971, 242, n. 42; 1975, 863). It should be emphasized, however, that Gramsci conceives of this as a reciprocal organic relation, not one of linear determination (1971, 366, 167–8; 1975, 1051–2, 1611–12). Gramsci elaborates this notion of the organic relation of base and superstructure in his thesis of “reciprocal translatability” (1975, 1468–73; 1984, 136–40). Translatability is not limited to formal or theoretical languages but is based upon the interrelationship of the practices out of which languages develop: Philosophy – Politic – Economics. If these three activities are the necessary constituent elements of the same conception of the world, there must necessarily be, in their theoretical principles, a convertibility from one to the others and a reciprocal translation into the specific language proper to each constituent element. Any one is implicit in the others, and the three form a homogeneous circle. From these propositions (still in need of elaboration) there derive for the historian of culture and of ideas a number of research criteria and critical canons of great significance. (1971,403; 1975, 1492, emphasis added)13 The principle of reciprocal translatability is fundamental to theorizing the organic unity of the constituent parts of the philosophy of praxis. It should therefore be regarded as a key statement among the methodological principles underlying Gramsci’s theory of praxis. Indeed, the notion of translatability is essential, Gramsci says, to understanding the historical genesis of the philosophy of praxis. Gramsci credits Marx with the original development of a principle of reciprocal translatability; but it was also present in Hegel and constitutes one of the “sources” of Marxism: Hegel’s passage [on the relationship between French political practice and German philosophy] seems much more important as a “source” of the thought expressed in the Theses on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only explained the world and the point now is to change it.” That is, philosophy must become political to become true and continue as philosophy. The “tranquil theory” must be “carried out practically” and made “effectual reality.” It also is a source of the statement by Engels that classical German philosophy has the German people as its legitimate heir and ultimately as an element for the theory of the unity of theory and practice. (1975, 1472; 1984, 139)14 Translatability is possible only within a materialist philosophy of internal relations. Because historical materialism views language as inseparable from other aspects of social reality, and is itself consciously “adherent to reality,” it is capable of actually producing translations among different cultures, and among

228  Steven R. Mansfield the philosophical, political, and economic practices of a particular culture. While no translation will ever be perfect in all its particulars, Gramsci claims that translations among civilizations are possible in their essential “foundations” (1975, 1470; 1984, 138). The principle of translatability is fundamental to grasping Gramsci’s view of his methodological relation to Croce. Translatability is not comparable to the “circle of the spirit,” to Hegel’s notion of an episteme, or to Leibniz’s notion of an “expressive totality,” in which the whole is simply reflected in each part. The methodology of the philosophy of praxis can produce “organic and profound” translations among the cultural expressions of determinate aspects of a particular society or even among determinate “phases of civilization” (1975, 1468–73; 1984, 136–40). There is a definite contrast between the notion of translatability and the dialectic of distincts. We are now beginning to get a very clear sense of what Gramsci means by his claim that Croce’s dialectic of distincts remains metaphysical and speculative. Gramsci even goes so far as to suggest that Croce’s theory of distinct concepts is derived through Marx from Ricardo’s “determined abstractions” (1975, 1354–5). In order to develop an even clearer sense of the claim being made against Croce, let us examine for a moment Gramsci’s comments on the notion of determined abstractions. Gramsci discusses a particular application of determined abstractions via the concept of a “determined market.” Classical political economy (or what Gramsci designates as “pure” economy, represented by Smith, Ricardo, and others) defines a determined market as a “determinate relation of social forces in a determinate structure of the productive apparatus.” These relations are guaranteed by a “determinate political, moral, and juridical superstructure.” On the basis of such methodological constructions, classical economists developed their hypotheses about economic activity. Gramsci agrees that the concept of a determined market presents a certain automatism in society and therefore allows a measure of predictability, but “pure” economy’s analysis of the determined market is arbitrary and ahistorical insofar as these elements are considered “eternal” and “natural.” While in “critical” economics (i.e. Marxism) the concept of a determined market is also abstract, it remains historically determinate and is therefore transitory. Critical economics analyzes the relation of the forces that form a determined market, and the tendencies of its modification. The accurate description and conceptualization of these forces and tendencies is crucial to the success of political activity that seeks to develop a counterhegemonic force. As Gramsci explains, The “critique” of political economy starts from the concept of the historical character of the “determined market” and of its “automatism,” … the critique analyses in a realistic way the relations of force determining the market, it analyses in depth their contradictions, evaluates the possibilities of modification connected with the appearance and strengthening of new elements and puts forward the “transitory” and “replaceable” nature of the science being criticized; it studies it as life but also as death and finds at its heart the elements that will dissolve it and supersede it without fail, and it puts forward

Gramsci and the dialectic  229 the “inheritor,” the heir presumptive who must yet give manifest proof of his vitality. (1971, 411; 1975, 1478) In this nonreductive analysis of the relationship of base and superstructure, Gramsci advances a thesis of the materiality and efficacy of superstructures. However, Gramsci argues that while superstructures have a material existence, their formation depends on the class struggle. This struggle is based on the class’s functional position within the relations of production. There are superstructures that have a material structure, but their character remains superstructural. Their development cannot be explained by the immanent development of their particular material structure, but only by the material structure of society. A class is formed on the basis of its position in the world of production: the development and the struggle for power and for the preservation of power create the superstructures that determine the formation of a “special material structure” for their own diffusion, etc. … Logically and also chronologically there is: social structure – superstructure – material structure of the superstructure. (1975, 433–4) In this discussion we see that there is no “law-governed” clash of thesis and antithesis in which superstructures are reduced to epiphenomena. We see also that Gramsci does not merely pay “lip service” to the historical dialectic while really relying on the cognitive dialectic of abstractions. The principle of translatability is not a cognitive “science of the dialectic,” which detects abstract distinction and identification. Rather, translatability involves a political dimension in which “tranquil” theories are “carried out practically.” Not only do theories find practical expression, but different activities are convertible via their theoretical expression. For Gramsci, translatability means the unification of theory and practice. In making the argument that Gramsci’s analytic method amounts to a Crocean dialectic of distincts, Finocchiaro also relies on a passage in which Gramsci discusses the relationship among political science, political activity, and other forms of activity. Because this is such an important point, it is necessary to quote the passage at length: Croce based himself on his distinction of the moments of the spirit, and on his affirmation of a moment of practice, of a practical spirit, autonomous and independent though linked in a circle to all reality by the dialectic of distincts. In a philosophy of praxis, the distinction will certainly not be between the moments of the absolute Spirit, but between the levels of the superstructure. The problem will therefore be that of establishing the dialectical position of political activity (and of the corresponding science) as a particular level of the superstructure. One might say, as a first schematic approximation, that political activity is precisely the first moment or first level; the moment in which the superstructure is still in the unmediated phase of mere wishful affirmation, confused and still at an elementary stage.

230  Steven R. Mansfield In what sense can one identify politics with history, and hence all of life with politics: How then could the whole system of superstructures be understood as distinctions within politics, and the introduction of the concept of distinction into a philosophy of praxis hence be justified? But can one really speak of a dialectic of distincts, and how is the concept of a circle joining the levels of the superstructure to be understood? Concept of “historical bloc,” i.e. unity between nature and spirit (structure and superstructure), unity of opposites and of distincts. Can one introduce the criterion of distinction into the structure too? How is structure to be understood? How, in the system of social relations, will one be able to distinguish the element “technique,” “work,” “class,” etc., understood in an historical and not in a metaphysical sense? (1971, 137; 1975, 1568–9; emphasis added) As this passage makes plain, Gramsci’s concept of the historical bloc is the ground or precondition on which the “dialectic of distincts” can be incorporated into an analysis of the moments of the superstructure. Just how does Gramsci view the nature of the relationship of the various elements within a historical bloc? In the above quotation, the references to distincts within the structure suggest that Gramsci employs the criterion of distinction as an analytical tool alongside that of opposition. One does not, however, get the sense that Gramsci accepts the dialectic of distincts as a separate, competing version of the dialectic. Indeed, Gramsci uses the criterion of distinction among elements of the structure in much the same vein as Marx’s comment, made in the context of a discussion concerning the relations among various aspects of the economic process, that: “The conclusion we reach is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity” (1973, 99; emphasis added). Just as Marx argued for the priority of production within the organic whole of economic activity, Gramsci describes politics as implicit in each of the other superstructural activities and as having primacy within the superstructure; it is the first moment of the superstructure. Gramsci asserts both the primacy and identity of the political moment in relation to the other activities: “art, morality, philosophy ‘serve’ politics, that is, are implicated in politics, may be reduced to a moment of it, but not vice versa” (1975, 503). In a revised draft of this note, Gramsci tells us that when economic-political passion is “exterior” to these other activities, that is, when it is “imposed by force, in accordance with a preestablished plan,” it “destroys art, morality, and philosophy.” Yet, politics can also become “implicit in art, etc. when the process is normal, non-violent, when between structure and superstructure there is homogeneity and the State has overcome its economic-corporative phase” (1975, 1316). Clearly, for Gramsci the elements of the superstructure do not possess the same degree of distinctness and autonomy as in Croce’s formulation of a dialectic of distincts. Gramsci recognizes that one cannot speculatively determine the character of the relations among the different moments. Rather, their character is determined and mediated by their mutual interaction and in a fundamental sense by economic and political events.

Gramsci and the dialectic  231 Praxis and dialectics From the writings of Gramsci that we have been discussing, it is clear that his methodology is designed to analyze the interaction of the different levels of activity within the superstructure as such. As we have seen, Gramsci accepts the distinctness of the different superstructural activities. But such distinctions exist only as analytic moments or levels of the superstructure. The viability of these distinctions depends not on their qualities as speculative entities but on their explanatory and problem-solving capabilities in a determinate social and structural context. For example, the problem that Gramsci is addressing in the note on journalism, cited above, in which he discusses the significance of seeking diversity and identity through one’s reasoning, is the problem of structuring a mass political movement. Gramsci argues that in the attempt to develop a historically critical consciousness in the ordinary and nonspecialized reader, intellectuals must spell out the nature of their reasoning processes as well as make explicit the concrete premises for their reasoning. This reasoning, Gramsci says, requires a combination of deduction and induction, formal logic and dialectic, identification and distinction, positive demonstration and the destruction of the old. And not in the abstract but in the concrete, on the basis of real and of actual experience. (1975, 2268; 1985, 418) This passage and the one on journalism are both admonitions to forge organic links between the intellectual strata and the popular masses, and hence between theory and practice. Identification and distinction, as well as the other forms of reasoning mentioned, must have as their frame of reference real historical experience. This experience determines the nature and character of the relations that exist, and that reasoning seeks to grasp analytically. Moreover, Gramsci seeks to establish similarities and differences because of the substantive possibilities that are opened up by doing so. It is in this vein that Gramsci adopts certain elements of Croceanism as a corrective to economistic versions of Marxism. Gramsci makes an important proviso, however, that Croce’s philosophy can be assimilated only because of its own instrumental relation to Marxist thought. Gramsci claims that his own methodology is neither dependent upon nor a development of Crocean principles. Rather, he borrows some tools from Croce – tools that Croce was able to employ successfully because he had borrowed their essential elements from Marxism. As Gramsci explains: It also appears from this point how Croce was able to profit a good deal from his study of the philosophy of praxis. What actually is the Crocean thesis of the identity of philosophy and history if not a way, the Crocean way, to present the same problem posed by the theses on Feuerbach and confirmed by Engels in his pamphlet on Feuerbach? For Engels “history” is practice (experiment, industry), for Croce History is still a speculative concept, that

232  Steven R. Mansfield is, Croce has travelled backward – from speculative philosophy he arrived at a “concrete and historical” philosophy, the philosophy of praxis; Croce has retranslated in speculative language the progressive acquisitions of the philosophy of praxis and this retranslation is the best of his thought. (1975, 1271) Gramsci’s corrective measure to economistic Marxism involves, among other things, a transformative critique and assimilation of Croceanism. For example, Croce’s ethical-political approach to history must serve as an investigative tool to enhance the philosophy of praxis: Croce’s thought must therefore, at the very least be appreciated as an instrumental value … For the philosophy of praxis, the conception of ethical-political history in as much as it is independent of any realistic conception, can be accepted as an “empirical canon” of historical research, to be kept continually in mind while studying and analysing historical development, if it is desired to arrive at an integral history and not one that is partial and extrinsic (history of economic forces as such, etc.). (1971, 55–6, n. 5; 1975, 1235)15 This assimilation of Croceanism is essential to counter positivist versions of Marxism. But because of its presumption of a speculative unity of spirit, two crucial limitations of Croceanism are (1) its inability to develop a theory of the unity of theory and concrete practice, and (2) its inability to appreciate the historical significance of social contradictions. Croce’s speculative unity of spirit is based on a tautological identity of theory and practice. The clearest expression of this argument comes up in the context of the analysis of Vico’s verum ipsum factum principle (“truth is what is done”). Gramsci argues that Croce’s view of the unity of theory and practice is developed in the idealistic sense that knowledge is a form of doing and that one knows that which one does. “To do” here has a particular meaning, so particular in fact that it finally means nothing more than “to know” and the phrase resolves itself into a tautology. (1971, 364; 1975, 1482)16 By being able to grasp the concordia discors of current practice, the philosophy of praxis is the most complete and most conscious expression of social and historical contradictions, and thus makes possible a nontautological unity of theory and practice. It is a philosophy that has been liberated (or is attempting to liberate itself) from any unilateral and fanatical ideological elements; it is consciousness full of contradictions, in which the philosopher himself, understood both individually and as an entire social group, not only grasps the contradictions, but posits himself as an element of the contradiction and elevates this element to a principle of knowledge and therefore of action. (1971, 404–5; 1975, 1487; emphasis added)

Gramsci and the dialectic  233 This new philosopher suggested here is a “democratic philosopher,” who must, in order to make “politics-history,” unify theoretical consciousness with the passionate and practical consciousness of the masses (1971, 418; 1975, 1505). A concomitant problem is to purge common sense of its folklore and superstitions. In order to do this it is necessary to raise common sense to “good sense” by means of philology and criticism (1971, 325–43; 1975, 1378–96). This admonition to raise the level of common sense finds a parallel, if seemingly less sympathetic, expression in the language of Marx: It is characteristic of the entire crudeness of “common sense,” which takes its rise from the “full life” and does not cripple its natural features by philosophy or other studies, that where it succeeds in seeing a distinction it fails to see a unity, and where it sees a unity it fails to see a distinction. If “common sense” establishes distinction determinations, they immediately petrify surreptitiously and it is considered the most reprehensible sophistry to rub together these conceptual blocks in such a way that they catch fire. (Marx and Engels, 1961, 339)17 Here, Marx clearly accepts an analytic dialectic of unity and diversity as essential to his method of inquiry.18 It is also plain that he regards “rubbing” conceptual blocks as essential to undermine or destroy petrified conceptions in common sense. With such an analytic method already developed and articulated by Marx, Gramsci surely does not have to be methodologically dependent on Croce in order to employ a dialectic of unity and diversity within internal relations. Finocchiaro’s claim that Gramsci’s analytic dialectic is Crocean is therefore at best trivial. It is also apparent that Finocchiaro’s imputation of inconsistency between Gramsci’s analytical and historical dialectics rests on a grossly caricatured rendering of the historical dialectic. By employing a theory of internal relations in which analytic translatability is possible, Gramsci, like Marx, is rubbing conceptual blocks to make fire. This conceptual rubbing is based on the actual friction that exists in what Gramsci describes (in a passage already cited above) as the “unitary centers” among (1) workers and productive forces, (2) structure and superstructure, and (3) state and civil society. In this context, Gramsci discusses the hegemonic dominance that exists over subordinate social groups. During “normal times” a subordinate group verbally affirms the philosophy of dominant groups, as Gramsci specifies, “when its conduct is not independent and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate” (1971, 327; 1975, 1379). There exists in the practical activity of subordinate groups, however, an implicit and alternative world view. In order to establish a new intellectual and cultural order based on this alternative world view, thought and action must be unified into a philosophy of praxis. Gramsci argues that philosophy must become an instrument of intervention. That is, philosophy must become concrete and capable of accounting for the practical and subjective questions continually emerging from the interaction of human beings with nature and with each other. Gramsci expresses this in a plainly anti-Crocean way: “philosophy must become political, practical, if it is to continue to be philosophy: the source of the unity of theory and practice” (1975, 1066).

234  Steven R. Mansfield Gramsci’s dialectic of identity and difference does not abstract from situations and functions. The identities and distinctions of politics, philosophy, economics, morality, art, sociology, and so on are established historically. For Gramsci, like Wittgenstein, the normativity of identity and difference is not an arbitrary matter but rather constitutes a “form of life.” Norms are, of course, not permanently fixed; they are characterized by “unfixity” and can become dislocated, as Laclau and Mouffe put it. But they can be studied. Certainly the philosophy of praxis is realized through the concrete study of past history and through present activity to construct new history. But a theory of history and politics can be made, for even if the facts are always unique and changeable in the flux of movement of history, the concepts can be theorized. Otherwise one would not even be able to tell what movement is, or the dialectic, and one would fall back into a new form of nominalism. (1971, 427; 1975, 1433) Because of the flux of history, Gramsci tells us, experience cannot be schematized. Experience is not contemplation; rather, it is history in its infinite variety and multiplicity, the study of which can give rise to “philology” as a method of scholarship for ascertaining particular facts and to philosophy understood as a general methodology of history. (1971, 428; 1975, 1428–9)19 As this statement makes clear, Gramsci is careful to relate the specific and the general, and we must always understand that his general concepts and theories require an attention to detail to keep the meaning of those concepts and theories from becoming arbitrary and metaphysical. Continuing the comment on philology, Gramsci recognizes that While philology is the methodological expression of the importance of ascertaining and specifying particular facts in their unique “individuality,” we cannot exclude the practical utility of identifying certain more general “laws of tendency.” (1971, 428; 1975, 1429) What is the purpose of studying such historical tendencies? In the context of a discussion of linguistics, Gramsci suggests that the purpose of studying the historical fixity of norms is not merely “to record the history of an aspect of the civilization” but (contra Finocchiaro) “to modify it.” (1975, 2342; 1984, 145; 1985, 180)

Conclusion The foregoing discussion has focused on the Crocean side of Gramsci’s “dual critique” of revisionist interpretations of Marxist theory. It ought to be clear by now that the argument for a basic continuity of Crocean and Gramscian dialectics unfairly divests from Gramsci the force of his Anti-Croce. Although there are

Gramsci and the dialectic  235 certainly some similarities and linkages between Gramsci and Croce, Gramsci’s dialectics is fundamentally different from Croce’s. At the heart of their differences is Croce’s presupposition of an eternal and spiritual unity of “man,” whereas Gramsci sees real unity as a potential result of the will to overcome the existing, historically produced, antagonistic social unity. For Croce, philosophy is altogether abstract and mental. For Gramsci, as we have seen, philosophy is fundamentally practical and political. Without a will to express “the unity of the human spirit,” people “would not act, they would not create new history, philosophies would not become ideologies and would not in practice assume the fanatical granite compactness of the ‘popular beliefs’” (1971, 404; 1975, 1487). Dialectical unity is not a categorical or analytical point of departure. Gramsci employs the concept of dialectical unity in a historical-political sense, as a historical solution that is always in the process of becoming (1971, 355–6; 1975, 885). This quality of dialectical unity is realized in the concept of the historical bloc. Although Gramsci develops criteria of distinction, he does so within a Marxist dialectic that views historical development as a process of the resolution of oppositions. As seen in the concept of the historical bloc, and aided by the methodological principle of translatability, Gramsci theorizes the existence of both social unity and disunity, that is, the “complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble” of the existing relations in the structure and the superstructure. Within the present disunity there exist “the reasons for a possible unity.” The role of the theorist is not merely to criticize but also to disclose potentiality, “making ‘critical’ an already existing activity” (1971, 331; 1975, 1383). Translatability among the constituent elements of the philosophy of praxis enables the discovery of such potential. Translatability is itself possible only because of the concrete interrelations that exist within the historic totality. This certainly involves searching for “differences underlying uniformities and for uniformities underlying differences” (i.e. “rubbing conceptual blocs”), in order, as Gramsci puts it, to “accelerate the historical process that is going on, rendering practice more homogeneous, more coherent, more efficient in all its elements, and thus, in other words, developing its potential to the maximum” (1971, 365; 1975, 1780). In concrete struggles, to develop the potential to the maximum, the theorist needs to analyze how any particular reform may contribute to or detract from the revolutionary movement. As Gramsci writes: “knowing how to find each time the point of progressive equilibrium (in the sense of one’s own programme) is the art of the politician, not of the golden mean, but really of the politician who has a very precise line with a wide perspective of the future” (1975, 1825). Gramsci’s dialectic is clearly not just a cognitive method. For him the dialectic is both an analytical method for deriving theoretical principles and concepts of historical reality and a living, real process of human action. Gramsci’s dialectic, therefore, seems to strike a balance between unity and dispersion much like that sought by Laclau and Mouffe. But as Laclau and Mouffe note, it is clear that Gramsci theorizes an asymmetry in this dialectic. In capitalist society the class structure of the historical bloc, along with the class struggle that determines it, plays a fundamental role in determining the direction of history. Yet the dichotomous character of the class struggle does not

236  Steven R. Mansfield deny the existence and significance of interests that are articulated in the democratic struggle. While Gramsci may not go as far in developing a radical democratic theory as Laclau and Mouffe would like, he does recognize the political importance of plurality and difference. He also recognizes that a stable hegemonic system relies on both force and consent to preserve contradictory unity, and to keep plurality in check. A stable hegemony must prevent the formation of a collective, popular, counterhegemonic will. It is required to maintain the passivity of all marginal and subordinate groups in ways that at least partially satisfy their interests while at the same time preserving dominant interests. This suggests that the class system of domination and alliance within the framework of the historical bloc is very significant in understanding the nature of the existing hegemonic system.20 For Gramsci, the dialectical analysis of identity and difference is essential in determining the framework and limits of the historical bloc, as well as the possibility of alternatives. To put it another way, this dialectic is the essential methodological element for developing a system of what Gramsci calls a “living philology,” which results from the “active and conscious co-participation” between subordinate groups and the “democratic philosopher.” According to Gramsci, once such a system has been formed, “the whole complex, thus articulated, can move together as ‘collective man’” (1971, 429; 1975, 1430). Alongside Gramsci’s most famous concepts like hegemony and the historical bloc, his recognition that the multiplicity of interests articulated through democratic struggle opens up the “front of cultural struggle” is certainly one of his most significant contributions. The dialectic of identity and difference on which this depends, and which emerges from Gramsci’s Anti-Croce, thus redefines philosophy, philosophic method, and its historical role.

Acknowledgments I wish to express my thanks to Joseph Buttigieg, Donna Childers, Maurice Finocchiaro, Bertell Ollman, and David Ruccio for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

Notes 1 Where quoted passages are available in both Italian and English, citations to both will be provided. At the date of this writing only volume 1 of Joseph A. Buttigieg’s translation of the Gerratana edition has been published. 2 See Gramsci’s comment (1971, 389; 1975, 1854–5) that the philosophy of praxis has undergone in reality a double revision by, on one hand, idealist currents and, on the other, positivist approaches. 3 For such a critique of Laclau and Mouffe and a summary of a number of other critical responses, see Best and Kellner (1991, 200–4). 4 For a brief history of the interpretation of Gramsci, see Davidson (1972). 5 Quoted in Davidson (1972, 453). 6 For more detail on this point, see Bellamy (1990). I do not, however, share other judgments of Bellamy’s. 7 Gramsci later scratched out that title.

Gramsci and the dialectic  237   8 Cf. Gramsci’s comment that “historical unification takes place through the disappearance of the internal contradictions which tear apart human society” (1971, 445; 1975, 1416).   9 See Walter Adamson’s elaboration of this point in the section of his book (1980, 130–9) titled “The Pragmatalogical Dialectic.” 10 Ollman traces the philosophy of internal relations back to Parmenides. Modern adherents include Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel, and Marx. 11 We have also seen that Gramsci refers to “matter” as “historically organized” and hence also involving a relation. See his comment that “Matter as such therefore is not our subject but how it is socially and historically organized for production, and natural science should be seen correspondingly as essentially an historical category, a human relation” (1971, 465–6; 1975, 1442). 12 A similar formulation can be found in a note dealing with problems of bureaucracy and organizational principles of the political party (1971, 189; 1975, 1635). 13 Cf. the earlier formulation of this idea (1975, 465). See also Gramsci’s discussion of the “unitary moment of synthesis” (1971, 399–402; 1975, 1246–8). Also of interest is a passage on the unity of the economic, political, and ideological struggles, written one and one-half years before Gramsci’s imprisonment (1978, 287). 14 See Marx, The Holy Family, ch. 4, critical comment no. 3: “If Herr Edgar compares French equality with German ‘self-consciousness’ for an instant, he will see that the latter principle expresses in German, i.e. in abstract thought, what the former says in French, that is, in the language of politics and of thoughtful observation.” See Gramsci’s discussion of the history of this notion (1975, 1468–73; 1984, 137–40); see also Buci-Glucksmann (1980, 365–71) and Mansfield (1984, 125–6). 15 For an elaboration of Gramsci’s “use” of Croce, see Watkins (1986) and Kahn (1985). 16 See also the earlier draft of this point (1975, 1060). For discussions of the significance of Vico’s principle for Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, see Golding (1988, 543–63) and Mansfield (1983, 3447). 17 As cited by Ollman (1990, 44). Other translations of this passage can be found in Marx and Engels (1976b, 320) and in Marx (1926, 138). 18 See Marx (1967, 19). Cf. Marx’s comment that “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse” (1973, 101). 19 A number of commentators have discussed the significance of Gramsci’s comments on philological method. One of the best discussions is the just published introduction by Joseph Buttigieg to Gramsci (1992). 20 See Ellen Meiksins Wood (1986, ch. 4) for an incisive critique of Laclau and Mouffe on this point.

17 Gramsci’s critical modernity Esteve Morera

Given the central importance of the term “hegemony” in much social and political theory today, it might be supposed that Gramsci was the first postmodernist thinker in the Marxist tradition. A good number of arguments can undoubtedly be developed in support of that thesis. The Quaderni offer ample evidence that Gramsci was grappling with some of the same questions of cultural politics, language and meaning, science and objectivity, power and truth, the critique of the Enlightenment, social diversity, and so forth, that have become the focus of debate in social and political thought. In assessing Gramsci’s intellectual legacy, I want first to advance the thesis that Gramsci did indeed prefigure many current arguments and that he entertained thoughts that may be characterized as either explicitly or implicitly postmodern. Toward that end, I will make arguments purporting to prove that for Gramsci, myth and metanarratives ground what we mistakenly have thought to be objective knowledge, the great thinkers of the Enlightenment were wrong in believing in the power of reason and managed only to further new myths in place of the old ones, and truth is power, or a form of disciplining. However, having proven that these fundamentally postmodern theses can be found in Gramsci, I then will seek to show that a more comprehensive reading of the Quaderni fails to corroborate the interpretation of his work as prefiguring postmodernism. Instead, we come to understand a Gramsci who was cautiously and critically modern, though not a rationalist (in the narrow sense) or a positivist.

The postmodernist Gramsci In a passage critical of Bukharin’s arguments regarding the independent existence of the external world, Gramsci writes: The public “believes” that the external world is objectively real. But it is precisely here that the question arises: what is the origin of this “belief” and what critical value does it have “objectively”? In fact, this belief is of religious origin, even if those who accept it are religiously indifferent. Since all religions have taught that the world, nature, the universe has been created by God before the creation of man and hence man has found it all ready and done, catalogued and defined once and for all, this belief has become an iron

Gramsci’s critical modernity  239 fact of “common sense” and is alive with the same solidity even if religious sentiment is extinct and asleep. (1975, Q11§17,1411–12)1 This passage is of great interest for many reasons. It may serve as proof that Gramsci rejected a materialist realist epistemology and adopted an idealist one, perhaps through the influence of Benedetto Croce (Finocchiaro 1979, 26) or some version of a phenomenological theory of the construction in thought of the real of Husserlian origins (Nemeth 1980, 13). However, one can take the argument further and claim that this passage is indisputably a symptom of a postmodernist epistemology that was slowly emerging deep in Gramsci’s thought, one that he did not clearly recognize or develop and that, in consequence, remained embedded in modern forms of thought. Indeed, it could be argued that he was developing, perhaps from a sociological perspective, a theory that was in some respects very close to Nietzsche’s views on truth and religion. Compare, for instance, Gramsci’s statements to some writings of the German philosopher. Nietzsche (1990, 32) wrote, for instance, that Platonism, which stood “truth on her head,” is the “denying of all perspective” and that “Christianity is Platonism for the masses”; or, further, note his concerns about Socratic rationality and the Christian appropriation of the philosophy that links rationality, virtue, and happiness (1968, 33–4). The origin of beliefs, the argument runs, is to be found in a general discourse – in this case, in religious narratives about the origins of things. That is, it is not any general philosophical argument, any empirical or transcendental (such as Roy Bhaskar’s [1979], perhaps) arguments for the existence of an independent world, or any perceptual experience of those who entertain such beliefs that counts as their origin. The origin of particular beliefs about the world is to be found in general narratives that are diffused among the population and become second nature, an indispensable but unconscious form of existing and believing. The merit of Gramsci’s writings is that they precisely uncover the narrative behind the belief in the reality of the external world and, in so doing, they do much more in that they uncover the discursive (or perhaps intradiscursive) nature of all belief, of our approach to the so-called world. In claiming that the belief in the independent existence of the external world had its origins in religion, Gramsci, one can argue, was moving away from the narrow realism of Marxism (and from its critique of religion as an ideological, unscientific prejudice) toward a postmodern reevaluation of knowledge, a reevaluation that could not but lead toward the current “incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard 1984, xxiv). That his language is often that of Croce is not so much evidence of his accepting the metanarrative of Hegelian idealism as it is an indication that he had not yet developed a new language for the new concepts just beginning to surface (and, given his death, never was able to do). The Crocean language was merely a convenient device to explore some deep issues in epistemology. Although this was merely a germ, the bare beginnings of a new attitude toward the world, its implications are far-reaching: they involve no less than deep skepticism toward the possibility of objectivity. Since the independent reality of the natural world cannot be taken as a foundation for knowledge in general or for natural science in particular, for it is itself

240  Esteve Morera founded on a prior metanarrative, the objectivity of science is founded upon a subjective element – namely, the metanarrative of theological thought, a discursive construction of what counts as the object of knowledge. Theology is a narrative constructed out of the interpretation of texts, which are the discursive elements in a discursive practice of long standing with important practical consequences. Hence it is discursive practice that first gives us a world that constitutes an object of knowledge: not just any amorphous world, but a Catholic world, an animistic world, and so on. Knowledge production is wholly dependent on the original metanarrative: it can only discover, or recover, the world constructed by the metanarrative. Our knowledge production is, after this discourse-given world, wholly dependent on the initial metanarrative. Consequently, there is no room for a correspondence theory of truth for truth cannot but be a form of coherence within a metanarrative or within the discursive practice in which one thinks, speaks, and acts. As Laclau put it some years ago, “the object of knowledge is produced by theoretical practice itself … A theory is only false to the extent that it is internally inconsistent” (1977, 60). In a similar vein, in her critique of classical epistemology Nelson writes that she is “not endorsing a theory/world, or language/ world dichotomy here. The relationship at issue is one between experience of the world … and systems of connected theories, methodologies, practices” (1993, 139). This is the basis for the view of the constitutive function of language – that is, that history, nature, and so forth are language constructs. There is much evidence that in the Quaderni, Gramsci was grappling with the notion of objectivity, a concept for which he distinguished several senses (Morera 1990, 44–5). However, he did not always succeed in keeping them within their contexts; his hesitations exhibit considerable confusion on his part, although perhaps not so much as one might suppose. He argued that objective could only mean “universal subjective,” a concept that leaves many questions unanswered. We did not know, for instance, what conditions would be necessary for taking such a universal consensus, or in what sense such a consensus could be called objective. However, his otherwise difficult argument does settle one very important question: Gramsci obviously did not think of abandoning universality despite practical and theoretical difficulties in securing it. In a sense, he did not go as far as Nietzsche for he did not kill God. His notion of humanity in the making, his consideration of some version of Kantian teleology as a useful device for political theory (as we shall see later) militates against the radical individualism of the superman. Some, however, might be inclined to argue that Gramsci’s universal consensus is nothing more than an illusion, if not worse. In a revealing note, he contended that although other cultures have had some importance in the process of the unification of world civilization, “they have had a universal value in so far as they have become constitutive elements of European culture, the only one that is historically or concretely universal” (1975, Q15§61, 1825). This, many would argue, clearly shows that the universal humanity in the making is nothing more than code for the dominance of European culture or, as Gramsci himself puts it, the “hegemony of Western culture over the entire world culture” (1825). A critical reading of Gramsci ought to reject these aspects of his thought but, while I concede that that

Gramsci’s critical modernity  241 may lead to rethinking Gramsci’s theory as a whole, I do not think it follows that universality must be rejected. Rather, because the content of universal humanity is to be the result of a long historical process rather than its presumptive point of departure, Gramsci’s theory itself offers critical elements for rejecting the closure of discourse implied by Eurocentrism. In short, Gramsci seemed to favor the universal subjectivity of a common humanity, one that was in process rather than already given from the start of history. In this, he of course rejected any fictions of the state of nature, or of a lost paradise, that could serve as explanatory devices of a fundamental human nature or as an account of what had gone wrong. Thus, Hobbes as much as Locke, Rousseau as much as Genesis, would fail Gramsci’s notion of the method for defining humanity. Postmodernists may claim that the present historical conjuncture does not offer any evidence that such universal humanity is at all likely and, moreover, that any attempt to construct one is a dangerous game that, like all such games in the past, can only lead to totalitarian, oppressive social formations. Thus, Gramsci would have had to move toward either totalitarianism or postmodern attitude toward objectivity and discursive practice. Given his conception of hegemony, the latter seems far more likely. The Reformation introduced the discourse of relativity as conscience and the rejection of the objectivist discourse of Catholic narrative. But conscience is notoriously fragmented whereas the objectivist, universalist discourse enforces a form of uniformity. One can see that much of Gramsci’s critique of Catholicism can be understood as an application of these principles, of which he might have been barely conscious. In this reading of the Quaderni, we begin to see the origins of a radical pluralism that results when the Catholic objectivity of vulgar materialism is confronted by a different, fragmenting view of the subjective nature of the given real. In the absence of such objectivity, a multiplicity of narratives, of language games, becomes possible. This account of the importance of religion in particular, and of metanarratives in general, might provide the grounds for a reevaluation of the influence of Sorel on Gramsci. If the function of narratives is to produce a world and make its experience possible, then political theory and action must take this fact into consideration. It was Georges Sorel’s theory of the myth, one could argue, that made Gramsci aware of the importance of this issue and, although he was to reject some fundamental aspects of Sorel’s thought, his theorization of politics and political action owes much to the French syndicalist’s writings on politics. In his assessment of Croce’s critique of Sorel, Gramsci writes that “the myth is for Sorel the scientific principle of political science, it is Croce’s ‘passion’ studied in a more concrete manner; it is that which Croce calls ‘religion,’ that is, a conception of the world with a corresponding ethics” (1975, Q10II§41v, 1308). In his notes on the modern prince, he argues that Machiavelli’s Prince can be understood as a Sorelian myth for it is political ideology not as mere rational discourse, but embodied in a “fantasy” whose function is to create a collective will and arouse a people to action. The prince is the anthropomorphic representation of such a collective will (1975, Q13§1:1555). Thus, one may conclude, the party is the modern prince for it equally must create a collective will and arouse a

242  Esteve Morera people. Unlike Machiavelli’s era, however, the prince now must be an organization that represents or embodies the new forms of cooperative activity created by the factory system; hence the modern prince is necessarily an organization (such as the party) rather than a virtuous individual. One can trace this way of thinking to Gramsci’s early writings. Already in 1916, Gramsci had written: “socialism is precisely the religion that must eliminate Christianity. Religion in the sense that it too is a faith which has its mystics and its practices; religion because it has substituted the faith in man and in his best energies as the only spiritual reality for the consciousness of the transcendental God of the Catholics” (1960, 148). The Gramsci of the prison years seems to retain this important element from his earlier days, an element that he would develop by using Sorel’s concept of the myth. One could argue that in the same way that Croce saw European history as the struggle between different religions, Gramsci understood it as the process of myth formation and change. Laclau and Mouffe see this new theory embedded within the old “naturalist prejudice” (1985, 69) but pointing to the political or discursive, rather than economic, nature of class identities. Many of the important elements of such readings of Gramsci are certainly present in both his earlier writings and the Quaderni. Writing of the myth as a “fantasy” that embodies an ideology and political will, and referring to socialism as a religion, seem to reinforce the previous arguments about metanarratives and the discursive nature of the real. In isolation, these arguments may not carry great weight. However, they add strength to other arguments that can be derived from the concept of hegemony, a concept that can now be seen as the culmination of a theory that was merely latent in, or implied by, the arguments so far reviewed. When considered together, these arguments do seem to point to the postmodernism of Gramsci. In seeming to emphasize the primacy of discourse over the real object of knowledge, Gramsci seems to deny the existence of the pregiven object of theory (or the objectivist stance that has been given philosophical sanction by epistemological and ontological realism). Further, in presenting the Sorelian myth as a social force not entirely accounted for by rational discourse, Gramsci also seems to deny the primacy of rationality in human affairs. Our starting point is found in a note on the relation between ideology and philosophy in which Gramsci discusses the epistemological value of the principle of hegemony. There are two versions of this note. The first was written between 1930 and 1932. The second appears in notebook 10, “The Philosophy of Benedetto Croce,” written between 1932 and 1935; it repeats some statements from the first version, but adds an important thought. In both notes, he contends that Marx’s view that “men become conscious of structural conflicts in the terrain of ideology has an epistemological value and not only a psychological or moral one” (1975, Q10II§12, 1249–50, Q4§38, 464–5). From this it follows, he writes, that the principle of hegemony also has an epistemological importance, for “the realization of a new hegemonic apparatus, to the extent that it creates a new ideological terrain, determines a reform of consciousness and of the methods of knowing: it is a fact of knowledge, a philosophical fact” (Q10II§12, 1249–50). The note ends with the assertion that, in the language of Croce, the successful introduction of a new

Gramsci’s critical modernity  243 hegemonic apparatus is in fact the introduction of a new view of the world with its corresponding ethics – in short, a new religion. It might seem that Gramsci is simply redefining, or generalizing, the conception of religion – giving it a new, perhaps the more apt name of hegemony. But at the same time he is revising the notion of ideology, a notion he would revise further in other notes. Thus, he writes that the Marxist conception of hegemony has a mainly negative sense, a pejorative one that he finds unhelpful: it does not permit us to distinguish between ideologies as arbitrary individual thinking (which may be of little importance) and ideologies as historically grounded, thus rational belief systems. The latter “have a validity that is ‘psychological’; they organize human masses and form the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc.” (Q7§19, 868–9). With this theoretical move, as Fontana argues, Gramsci “identifies history with politics and therefore ideology with philosophy” (Fontana 1993, 22). The point seems to be well confirmed by Gramsci: “ideologies … are the ‘true’ philosophy” (Gramsci 1975, Q10II§2, 1242, quoted by Fontana 1993, 21). To the extent that ideologies form the terrain where human beings move, one could conclude that Gramsci is making his general point about metanarratives more specific by relating general philosophical traditions, ways of knowing, and so forth to hegemony and therefore to political discourse. His statement that “everything is politics, even philosophy or philosophies” (1975, Q7§35, 886) takes on new meaning. It is not merely an expression of a latent Aristotelianism according to which the science of politics, as the science of the good life, takes precedence over all the other arts and sciences. Rather, Gramsci is questioning any distinction between the private and public realms of human endeavor as well as the view that any epistemologies, methods, sciences, and so forth can be considered nonpolitical. The origins of postmodern Marxism may have to be traced to a number of different revisions of the Marxian canon. There is, however, one such revision that seems to find in Gramsci its necessary evolutionary moment. This moment concerns the nature of ideology. It would seem that for Marx, as well as for Althusser, there is a clear distinction between ideology and science or, perhaps less scientistically, between ideology and knowledge. We may not always succeed in distinguishing the two, and we may have considerable trouble in identifying with clarity the line of demarcation between them, but for Marx and Althusser, that distinction is important: it makes sense, and it is necessary. Above all, it is precisely this distinction that is the foundation of critique, for how else could one engage in social critique if one did not assume that it is possible to produce a theory that better expresses the reality of the world and a practice that is more just, more justifiable? That both what is just and what is true are difficult questions does not exempt the social critic, the philosopher, or the activist from attempting to discern (tentatively, cautiously, but courageously) the truths and virtues that one can justify and defend. In developing the concept of hegemony, which may be believed to be a reworking of the concept of ideology, Gramsci was concerned with rejecting the pejorative connotations of the latter (illusion, epiphenomenon, distortion of

244  Esteve Morera reality, perpetuation of ruling-class power). In trying to distinguish a positive sense of “ideology,” Gramsci opened the door to the complete revaluation and ultimate obliteration of the distinction between science or knowledge, on the one hand, and ideology on the other. Indeed, much contemporary work on what has become the central issue in the sociology of knowledge – the political significance of epistemology – seems to favor arguments in support of the thesis that ideology and knowledge are indistinguishable as all knowledge is ultimately based on some subjective standpoint, some limiting subjective condition that is shot through with ideology. Study of the history of science has unearthed much evidence to support this view and has greatly contributed to dispelling the illusion of objectivity; in so doing, it has helped make the thesis of the ideological character of science credible. In this brief sketch, Gramsci plays a pivotal role. He clearly seems to reject the pejorative connotations of “ideology,” clearly links hegemony and knowledge, and clearly questions the notion of objectivity so central to classical or normative epistemology and to the distinction between science and ideology. Moreover, one can begin to see a certain consistency in the rather chaotic Quaderni: earlier it was argued that his views on the independent nature of the external world pointed to the postmodernist conception of the dependence of knowledge on language games, narratives, and the like. Now, the same conclusion can be reached by looking at what is perhaps the central concept of Gramsci’s political theory: hegemony. Perhaps the most significant statement to be found in the Quaderni is that “the philosophy of praxis conceives the reality of human relations of knowing as an element of political ‘hegemony’” (Gramsci 1975, Q10II§6, 1245). The importance of this text lies in the explicit recognition of the political significance of what may be called the relations of knowledge production, which vary from those obtaining within specialized scientific communities to those obtaining within and between larger social groupings. Thus, for various epistemic communities whose social relations make them aware of problems largely invisible to or ignored by others, ideas have a significance that is at once epistemological and political. They are political because the general conditions of knowledge production, which are dependent upon general cultural and political forms linked to structures of domination, tend to obscure important aspects of social life or distort our appreciation of others, which helps those in power to avoid some challenges to their position (by silencing the voices of others, disciplining through ridicule, etc.). Such conditions result in what Lyotard calls the “inability to prove” (1988, 10) or the “unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be” (13). Hegemony is thus the power to determine that which can be said, thought, or proved. If so, hegemony exercises power through the constitution of a world, through making experience of that world possible and thus creating some language games and silencing others. The relation between the narratives that constitute our world and power is well established, or so it seems, in the depths of Gramsci’s thought. That insight is now part of much of the debate about science, epistemology, and so forth. Through what Lyotard (1984, 66) calls “local determination” or the multiplicity of language games, it has given rise to the conception of epistemological

Gramsci’s critical modernity  245 communities. In her illuminating essay on this notion, Nelson goes so far as to argue that since the facts are rarely if ever sufficient to determine or prove a theory, one must take the background ideas of the time, some of them embedded in the relations among knowers, as evidence for the theory. Thus organizing principles (such as androcentrism and gynocentrism) are and should be taken as evidence for relevant scientific theories (Nelson 1993, 144). To the extent that the epistemological subject is a community, its organization, its assumptions about the world, the kind of world it experiences, and the hegemonic relations among its members will count as evidence. Gramsci, admittedly, did not develop his ideas to this conclusion, but there are, one can see, symptoms, indices, clues dispersed throughout this work, that such ideas were emerging and beginning to produce a break with modernism and Marxism. These arguments inevitably lead to the question of the relationship between Gramsci and Foucault. The central issue in those arguments is that of power. Gramsci in many ways anticipates the now generally accepted view that the private is political; his conception of the “integral state” as power diffused in the sphere of private organizations points to such a view. In Foucault’s version, power is diffused through all social institutions to the extent that it invades individual identities themselves: it disciplines, it controls, it is to be found everywhere. Thus, it seems possible to relate Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to Foucault’s notion of the truth regime: their views of society and history may have more in common than has been suspected. As Barry Smart points out, the transformation of “the terms of the debate from a preoccupation with the ambiguous concept of ideology and its effects to a consideration of the relations of ‘truth’ and ‘power’ which are constitutive of hegemony” (1986, 161) is perhaps the key link between the two thinkers. The view that structures of power penetrate the very identity of persons is perhaps best illustrated by what Foucault has to say about the body. This is an interesting issue, not only because of what it reveals about his thought and his understanding of society, but also because it seems to offer one more bit of evidence of the convergence between his thought and Gramsci’s. Foucault writes, “We believe … that the body obeys the exclusive laws of physiology and that it escapes the influence of history, but this too is false. The body is molded by a great many distinct regimes” (1984, 87–8). He further asserts that “nothing in man – not even his body – is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men.” This seems to leave no doubt about the historical character of the body, which is indeed consistent with the view that it is narratives – regimes of truth – that give us a world, including a natural one. In a similar vein, Gramsci writes of the physical and psychological attitudes that the individual must acquire to be able to receive an education (1975, Q4§55, 500, Q12§2, 1544), particularly those necessary for the creation of a type of worker, the tame gorilla, who will be well adapted to the very demanding, Taylorized industrial system (Q4§52, 490–1, Q22§11, 2165–6). As he puts it, “The history of industrialism has always been (and today it becomes so in a stronger and more rigorous form) a continual struggle against the element of ‘animality’ in man” (Q22§10, 2160, Q1§158, 138). In this respect, the function of the state is to create

246  Esteve Morera the new human being, to “elaborate even physically a new type of humanity” (Q13§7, 1565–6). Perhaps equally telling are his remarks regarding the relationships among sexuality, reproduction, and economics (Q1§62, 73, Q22§3, 2148). Gramsci’s often repeated idea that human nature is the ensemble of social relations and his historicist approach to most issues imply that the human body itself is pliable – that it can be subjected to social pressures and has a historical dimension. In a particularly apposite passage found in a letter to his wife, he writes that she is wrong – too metaphysical – in thinking that children will naturally develop their latent potential without any need for coercion. Instead, Gramsci thinks that “man is entirely a historical formation” (1965, 313–14). In this passage a clear link is made by Gramsci between power, in the form of coercion, and the identity of the person, thus reinforcing the view that his thought was in many ways close to that of Foucault. The last sentence, however, points to an important question: What is the nature of the “historical formation” of human identity? In particular, it raises the question of the roles of structure and contingency, power, conflict, change, and so forth in the historical process. Again, Gramsci’s theory of history can be related to Foucault’s in a number of respects. It is, however, in their understanding of history that some important differences between them, and certainly between the Gramsci of the Quaderni and the generally postmodernist attitude toward history, begin to appear. Let us look first at the points of convergence. In the first place, there seems to be some commonality of interests in how both Gramsci and Foucault approach the writing of history. Foucault, as much as Lyotard, characterizes current theoretical concerns as the emergence of local knowledges in opposition to grand narratives or “globalizing discourses” (Foucault 1980b, 83). For him, local knowledges or “subjugated knowledges” (which are popular) may be characterized as antisciences and contrasted with “genealogy,” defined as “the union of erudite knowledge and local memories” (83). Given this characterization, it could be said that Gramsci himself took the first steps toward the development of genealogy. In a short but significant passage, Gramsci claims that the people understand and feel but often do not know whereas intellectuals know but fail to understand and in particular to feel. Organic intellectuals or a progressive party are necessary to fuse together the experiences felt and understood by the masses, on the one hand, and the laws of history on the other (Gramsci 1975, Q4§24, 452–3, Q11§67, 1505). In other words, Gramsci suggests that history should be written not simply from the point of view of some intellectual scheme but should express the experiences of the masses or, one could say, it should integrate popular memories and erudition. This fusion of experience and the laws of history, of local memory and erudition, is indeed genealogy. For Gramsci, the globalizing theory that must integrate the materials provided by local experiences is, of course, historical materialism – itself a discourse that confronts established regimes of truth, but one that is nevertheless a globalizing discourse, hence of dubious value for Foucault. In his “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” Foucault develops a general theory of what he calls “effective history.” Two things seem to be of particular interest in that theory. First, its effectiveness is linked to what he views as the function of

Gramsci’s critical modernity  247 knowledge, which is to cut, not to understand (1984, 88). By cutting, he means uprooting traditional foundations. Gramsci, insofar as he linked his thought to a revolutionary program designed to uproot the traditional foundations of his society, could not entirely disagree. Indeed, he seems to see the function of knowledge, and with it the function of intellectuals who produce it, as an important element in the political process of creating a new historical bloc. Hence for Gramsci, effective history would be a history told from the point of view of a possible future, told by a progressive group that is in the process of developing a new hegemony. Second, Foucault (1984, 88) rejects the “rationalistic or theological” tradition that views events as parts of a “teleological movement or a natural process.” Instead, he contends that effective history “deals with events in terms of their most unique characteristics, their most acute manifestations.” This view of history may have some antecedents in the German historismus of the nineteenth century, often translated as historicism. Its main thesis was precisely that historical events are unique and, therefore, no laws of history are possible. Whereas the German historical school reached this view on the basis of a Kantian understanding of history as moral drama or as the realm of freedom, Foucault seems to link it to the view that the kind of knowledge that would offer generalizations, or general historical laws, would constitute a regime of truth and, like all such regimes, would limit the possible experiences of individuals (i.e. it would discipline or control individuality). Thus, he would reject many theses of the German historical school for he sees in events not the decisions made by historical agents, the values that led to them, and so forth but the ruptures of the flow of language games – ruptures that most often come from the margins of history. In the end, however, both models of historical understanding seem to have much in common: both emphasize the particularity or uniqueness of events, and both are concerned with freedom – the historicists on the grounds that history is about the decisions of free moral agents, Foucault on the grounds that metanarratives or generalizations about history threaten freedom for they make rupture much more difficult. Their difference lies in the fact that for the German historicists, the nature of the historical process itself demanded their views on uniqueness and freedom – that is, the historicists advanced a truth-claim. For Foucault it is the primacy of freedom, understood as a rupture in the flow of events, that requires a certain way of writing history. No doubt, as I mentioned earlier, there is much to be admired in his views for his insistence on writing about the history of marginalized groups (the silent voices of the past) is of considerable interests to Marxists and to many others. In short, the German historicists drew some conclusions about the writing of history from an ontology – from what they believed to be the real historical process. Foucault, by contrast, derives his historical method from what he believes to be the requirements of freedom, not from an ontology. This reflects the general postmodern skepticism about metanarratives, but it leaves open the question what is history – whether what it really is demands some methodology as well as some necessary ways of doing things. To answer these questions is, for Foucault, disciplining. Foucault radicalizes the principle of the uniqueness of historical events by not only affirming that “[t]he forces operating in history are not controlled by destiny

248  Esteve Morera or regulative mechanisms, but respond to haphazard conflicts” (1984, 88), but also by affirming, with a famous statement of Nietzsche’s, that the “world of effective history knows only one kingdom, without providence or final cause, where there is only ‘the iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance’” (89). This may appear merely as a denial of final causes in the universe and, it follows, in history; it may be interpreted as merely a materialist, atheist view of the universe. However, by not distinguishing between fate or providence on the one hand and regulative mechanisms on the other, Foucault seems to be making no distinction between religion and science, or between philosophy as a critical thought and ideology (a stance that also has been attributed to Gramsci). Science and religion, philosophy and ideology are merely metanarratives that discipline and constrain the haphazard uniqueness of individual experience. It is not easy to understand fully these texts for their author seems to deny the existence of “regulative mechanisms” in history at the same time that he admits of the existence of the “iron hand of necessity” – a necessity, he contends, historians should confirm (Foucault 1984, 89). Nevertheless, it is clear that Foucault privileges the “haphazard conflicts,” the transgressions, the confrontations with necessity, the uniqueness of events – actions that disrupt the metanarratives, the continuities, and the established language games. His is a theory of minirevolutions, not of the great revolutions as, for instance, one finds in Gramsci’s reflections on the Risorgimento. Gramsci, of course, is quite interested in conflicts. He does not, however, see them as haphazard. Rather, they are constitutive of history: they are either part of the regulative mechanisms of history or are necessitated by such mechanisms. It would seem that Foucault emphasizes the unique purely because it is contingent – that is, it is not a structural effect of necessity. Necessity crushes uniqueness; its power lies in its becoming the truth: the yoke that subjects uniqueness and contingency to necessity. Hence Foucault’s quest for freedom, which seems at times equivalent to contingency, is also a denial of the link between truth and liberation, a denial also espoused by Lyotard (1984, 51), who thought of it as one of the major metanarratives constituting modernity. Understanding history, for Foucault, must be a function of liberation or transgression, not a matter of truth or necessity. It is, as I mentioned, on this understanding of history that Gramsci’s thought departs from Foucault’s. We must now turn to the arguments that can be made to counter the postmodern interpretation of Gramsci so far suggested.

The modernist Gramsci To recap, there seem to be two main grounds for arguing that Gramsci was implicitly or latently a postmodernist thinker, and that the development of his theory would inevitably have led to a fusion with postmodernist interests and approaches. These two grounds are the metanarrative foundation of all knowledge, and the intrinsic relationship between truth and power. There are many other ideas that suggest a rather extensive similarity between the writing in the Quaderni and various postmodern thinkers, but these seem to be mostly confirmations of the two main grounds. On the whole, this approach seems to generate a rather coherent

Gramsci’s critical modernity  249 view of Gramsci’s writings, though there are of course many passages that resist this interpretation – passages that could be ignored as evidence of the undeveloped character of Gramsci’s ideas or as residues of old prejudices. As I mentioned above, it is in their thought about history that some important differences between Foucault or, more generally, postmodernism and Gramsci appear. By attempting to focus briefly on these differences, we may be able indirectly to assess the force and significance of what appear to be the two major grounds for the interpretation of Gramsci’s thought as postmodern – namely, his views on the relation between religion and realism, and his possible linking of knowledge and power. The analysis of Gramsci’s views on history will raise the question whether they constitute merely evidence of old prejudices or residues of past thinking or, rather, whether they are evidence of a fundamentally different theoretical and philosophical approach to problems. If the latter, it will be necessary to see what Gramsci was trying to accomplish with his views about the relationship between religion and belief in the independent existence of the world, on the one hand, and the relations between ideology and knowledge, truth and power, on the other. The views about the historicity of the body and of humanity led us to consider the nature of the historical process that so shapes body and humanity. Gramsci’s historiography is best read as a response to several theories prevalent in his time, from Croce’s absolute historicism through the historicism of the German historical school to the economism of many contemporary Marxists. In general terms, his historiography attempted to avoid both the scientism of positivist sociology and the historicist emphasis on the uniqueness of historical events as well as the narrow materialism of economism and Croce’s idealist conception of the religion of liberty. For Gramsci that meant developing a theory of history that would preserve the concept of historical patterns, which he sometimes called laws, thus eschewing both Wilhelm Dilthey’s emphasis on the unique internal, or cultural/ mental, elements of the historical process and the simple, positivist conceptions of law as a conjunction of similar events and history as the linear progression of fixed forms. From this one could conclude that Gramsci’s approach to history differs also from Foucault’s, especially since, as we have seen, the latter was preoccupied with recording the “singularity of events” and their recurrence without attempting “to trace their gradual curve of evolution” (Foucault 1984, 76). In contrast, Gramsci writes that a theory of history and politics is possible for “although the facts are always individual and changeable in the flux of historical movement, the concepts can be theorized” (1975, Q4§13, 435, Q11§26, 1433). The theoretical concepts of history and politics are the product of what he calls “determined abstractions” (Q10II§37, 1287) – that is, abstractions that are derived not from an ahistorical conception of human beings in general but from historically specific types of society (Q10II§32, 1276–7). One could argue that these abstractions are what Marx called concrete concepts, concrete because they are “the concentration of many determinations” and are the result of a “process of concentration” (Marx 1973, 101). If this were not possible, Gramsci contends, “one could not even know what movement or dialectics is, and one would fall back into a new form

250  Esteve Morera of nominalism” (1975, Q11§26, 1433). To bring these various concerns together, Gramsci elaborates a conception of historiography that he sometimes called “integral history” whose most important component is the concept of the “historical bloc.” The historical bloc is understood as a complex in which the “material forces are the content and ideologies the form,” though this is a distinction of merely didactic value since one cannot conceive of one without the other (Gramsci 1975, Q7§21, 869). At times Gramsci uses the classical formulation of the unity of structure and superstructure in defining the bloc, adding that “the complex and conflicting ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of social relations of production” (Q8§182, 1051). The fundamental historical problem is seen as the study of how the complex ensemble of the superstructures originates in the structure (Q4§38, 455,Q7§21, 869, Q13§16, 1579). Thus, for Gramsci the notion of the historical bloc serves as a methodological or guiding principle, not as a definite empirical finding. The study of the formation, evolution, and transformation of historical blocs led Gramsci to propose the basic principles of integral history. These are elaborated over much of the Quaderni but can be said to find their clearest statement in two texts: that on the analysis of situations (Q4§38, 455–65, Q13§17, 1578– 89), and the methodological notes on the history of subaltern groups (Q3§14, 299–300, Q3§90, 372–3, Q25§2, 2283–94). Two types of philosophical consideration are the primary grounds of Gramsci’s historiography: first, he is concerned with the synchronic aspects of history, leading to a conception of the structure of society and the function of particular elements of that structure; and second, he is concerned with the diachronic aspects of history, for which he develops the rudiments of a theory of historical time. The two types of conception are closely connected, and at times it is difficult to see whether some of the historical processes he discusses are to be taken as temporal processes or as structural relations obtaining simultaneously. In a theory reminiscent of Fernand Braudel’s thought, Gramsci distinguishes between organic or structural movements and conjunctural or occasional ones (Q4§38, 45, Q7§24, 873, Q13§17, 1579). For him, it is intellectually important not to confuse these types of movement as their duration is evidence of their causal weight; it is above all politically important as confusing them may lead to unnecessary sacrifices and costly mistakes (Q4§38, 455–6, Q13§17, 1580–1). Although he does not fully develop these insights, his overall approach to history is sensitive to the importance of historical elements that prove their vitality by their duration and long-lasting effects on historical development. These considerations lead to two general principles. First, Gramsci advances the suggestion that the material forces of production are the most stable element in history, and that they can be precisely measured (Q4§25, 444, Q11§30, 1443). Second, he points out that the present “is in a sense the best document of the past,” and that it can be of help in explaining the past (Q6§78, 748, Q3§33, 310, Q7§15, 865, Q9§106, 1169, Q19§5, 1980). The other important element in Gramsci’s historiography is the concept of “situation,” which can be generally understood as the confluence of movements

Gramsci’s critical modernity  251 of different duration or as the balance of the various social forces that have developed up to that point. Gramsci offers a synoptic account of what he believes to be the crucial moments or steps in the development of social groupings, from their objective emergence in the economic process through their formation as unified groups (which is an essentially political moment) to their final attempt to gain unity in a new state (Q4§38, 457–9, Q13§17, 1583–6). This is an indication of his attempt to deal with the problem outlined above – namely, the emergence of the superstructure from the structure. This emergence is indeed a political and cultural process, one that is anchored on the “objective fact” of its origin in economic relations (Q4§38, 457, Q13§17, 1583) but that takes on a life of its own as the political process of the formation of unified groups. In contrast to Foucault’s concept of genealogy, Gramsci’s integral history is not concerned with unique or merely individual characteristics, but only with those elements that shed light on the structure of historical blocs – that is, those elements that help to explain their origin, evolution, and eventual transformation. This contrast is clearly shown by their respective guiding principles. For Foucault, the search for origins is equivalent to the search for essences, thus a deviation from the principal task of genealogy which is, as we have seen, the recovery of the “most unique characteristics” of events (1984, 88). For Gramsci, a guiding principle to which he often refers in the Quaderni is Marx’s dictum that no society disappears before it has developed all the forms of life implicit in it (1975, Q4§38, 455, Q7§4, 855, Q13§17, 1579, Q15§17, 1774).Thus, although both Gramsci and Foucault are interested in the small dramas – the “capillary” (Foucault) or “molecular” (Gramsci) processes of power – each deals with them within a concept of history that, for all its similarities, is fundamentally different. It was in applying this method to those groups who did not leave any traces in history that Gramsci began to look at the margins of history – at what he called the subaltern social groups. Integral history is not only the study of the historical movement as it originates in the structure and of the manifold relations that exist, not only nationally but also in the international hegemonic system. Above all, for Gramsci, it must involve the study of all social groupings. To the extent that the historiography of dominant groups does not very often deal with the history of subaltern groups, it can be said to have a clear subject identification: it is the history of the dominant subject. Gramsci’s integral history, however, neither eliminates the subject nor concerns diverse subjects as such (i.e. a multiplicity of decentered subjectivities). Rather, the subject of the historian is that of a possibility – the possibility of a unified culture, a universal subjectivity that is presented both as a possibility and, because it is attainable, also as an ethical obligation for human beings who must strive to achieve that form of social organization. Hence the subject, although always under construction, is one clearly anticipated. Gramsci recognizes that the study of history is motivated often by sectional interests (such as the geopolitical importance of a country or region of the world), but he argues that for the philosophy of praxis a much wider set of interests prevails. A whole historical process must be understood, for only then can the present be clearly understood and concrete political plans elaborated (1975, Q14§63, 1722–3). Subaltern groups present special problems for historiography because they

252  Esteve Morera leave few documentary traces of their lives (Q3§48, 328, Q14§39, 1696). Their history is “necessarily fragmented and episodic” (Q3§14, 299, Q25§2, 2283) and they encounter great difficulties in organizing effectively and leaving their imprint on history. It is interesting to note that in writing about the subaltern social groups, Gramsci mentioned two important ones: races that are marginalized as inferior, and women (Q3§18, 302, Q25§4, 2286). Though he did not consider women a subaltern group (mainly because he did not view their social condition as having originated in the relations of production), he nevertheless saw similarities between women’s social position and that of subaltern groups (Q3§18, 302, Q25§4, 2286). (One may dispute Gramsci’s view in this regard; contemporary developments in feminist theory have done much to bring to light both the economic and political importance of women’s subalternity.) Gramsci’s methodological criteria for the study of subaltern groups are quite consistent with, and in many respects similar to, his analysis of the situation of forces. He proposes to look at them as having a tendency toward unification in a new state (Q3§14, 299, Q25§2, 2283); thus, a crucial problem is the political process of overcoming the fragmentation that defines them. The first step in tracing the history of social groups at the margins is to ascertain their “objective formation … in the developments and upheavals that take place in the world of economic production, their quantitative diffusion and their origin in pre-existing social groups whose mentality, ideology, and aims they preserve for some time” (Q25§5, 2288). Once this is done, the study of such groups is understood as the study of attempts at unification and impediments to achieving it. Again, the problem is posed in terms of the emergence of a superstructure from the structure, a fundamentally political development. Because of the scarcity of documentary evidence about subaltern social groups, Gramsci notes that any such traces would be helpful. In this regard he consults literary works, particularly historical novels such as Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, as indirect sources of possible traces (Q14§39, 1696, Q25§7, 2290). Manzoni’s work provides much interesting material that can help in forming an idea of the life conditions of the Italian peasantry. Further indications can be obtained by using the method of analogy – that is, by extrapolating conclusions from known cases to new ones or to cases for which there is little evidence; this method, however, can be used only with the greatest caution (Q25§4, 2286–7). It would seem, then, that for Gramsci the greatest difficulty in the study of subaltern social groups is the scarcity of documentary evidence, itself an effect of their subordination. Gramsci’s historiography (and in particular his notes on subaltern social groups) has been a major source of inspiration to the Subaltern Studies Project, which has produced a number of papers and books on Indian history and society and that has been echoed by Latin American historians as well. However, often they have looked at subaltern groups within theoretical models influenced by Foucault and Derrida, among others, which raises the question whether the new approaches are consistent with the original Gramscian project. It is not possible to give a full account and evaluation of the work of so diverse and prolific a group as Subaltern Studies, but it will suffice to indicate whether their tendencies

Gramsci’s critical modernity  253 toward postmodern themes and approaches signify a broadening of a fundamentally Gramscian approach or a deeper change in approach and attitude toward knowledge involving a radical shift in general philosophical assumptions. According to Currie, the members of Subaltern Studies have worked under the influence of a variety of intellectual currents, among which the thought of Gramsci and Foucault are “the two most consistently significant and recurring ones” (1995, 221). She argues that the first issues of Subaltern Studies were clearly Gramscian whereas later volumes clearly evidence the influence of Foucault and Derrida (223). It will therefore be prudent to look at the transition from one approach to the other in order to see how deep the transformation was. There seem to be two possibilities. First, the existence of more evidence, a different culture from that studied by Gramsci, or a new set of issues may result in empirical findings or even theoretical developments that Gramsci did not anticipate but that are elaborated within the general theoretical framework he established. This, in itself, would be of little importance in gauging the degree of departure from Gramsci’s approach; changes in empirical finding are not sufficient to claim that a new general approach to knowledge and reality has developed. Second, it may be that the manner in which history itself is approached, the attitude toward knowing – in other words, the epistemological and ontological assumptions at work – have been transformed to such an extent that we are indeed faced with a new theory, one that may even be incompatible with the first. Currie singles out the 1983 essays by Chakrabarty (1983) and Chatterjee (1983) as the turning point from a Gramscian approach to the clear influence of Derrida and Foucault (1995, 223). Although in Chakrabarty’s essay there is indeed evidence of a shift of emphasis toward postmodern themes as key terms such as discipline, silence, and so forth begin to have a decisive appearance in his essay, much of the essay remains focused on what the events and the subjects involved in them might have been, rather than on the construction of events and subjectivities by the colonial employers’ narrative. The shift is indeed not very great, for much of what is said there regarding the interest of employers in the private lives and behavior of workers was anticipated by Gramsci in his notes on Fordism (Q4§52, 490–1, Q22§11, 2166). Although Chakrabarty begins to develop what on the surface looks like a Foucauldian analysis, his approach does not yet seem to make some of the fundamental shifts that are characteristic of Foucault. For instance, although he refers to a body of knowledge about jute workers in Calcutta, he does not venture into the notion of subjectivity that is so characteristic of postmodern approaches. He does not, for instance, write on the construction of subject positions or the power of a body of knowledge to assign subject positions. Chatterjee’s article may seem to be more of a departure from Gramsci’s approach, perhaps because of a choice of issues that blends easily with Foucault’s discussions of power. However, there also is much continuity with Gramsci, who certainly was interested in modes of power and devoted much of his work to understanding power. The signs of a shift in the program so far identified may indeed signify more than it would appear. There is evidence in later issues of Subaltern Studies that at least some members of the group moved much closer to an approach at odds with

254  Esteve Morera Gramsci’s general philosophical assumptions. It will suffice to look at a single entry: Spivak’s “A Literary Representation of the Subaltern: Mahasweta Devi’s ‘Stanadayini’” (1987b). This essay is important in many ways, but mostly because it looks at a form of subalternity that had not been central to the group – namely, the subordination of women – and had not been dealt with very well by Gramsci. Hence a new set of problems – an expansion of horizons – might very well result in a novel approach. In her article, Spivak begins by making a philosophical claim that seems to be central to postmodern culture. She quotes from Laclau and Mouffe to support her contention that “it is no longer too avant-garde to suspect or admit that ‘events’ are never not discursively constituted and that the language of historiography is also a language” (Spivak 1987b, 92). Spivak may indeed signal the important turning point, not only because she focuses on women as a subaltern group but also because of the linguistic approach she adopts; it is this linguistic turn that seems most incompatible with Gramsci’s approach. This is a crucial issue that divides most modern positions from postmodern culture in general. Some of the best statements of the linguistic turn are perhaps found in those theorists who claim to be following Derrida’s dictum that there is nothing beyond text. Regardless what the author may have intended, it has been applied by many to the study of society and history. A few examples will suffice. Lyotard, for instance, writes about the linguistic constitution of subjects and objects, contending that “addressor [sic] and addressee are instances … presented by phrases … They are situated in the universe the phrase presents, as are its referent and its sense” (1988, 11). Berkhofer challenges histories that attempt to give an account of what really happened by claiming that that is part of a Western way of ordering “the past for the sake of authority and therefore power over its audience” (1988, 449). For Ermarth, who is interested in challenging the hegemony of history, “postmodernism supplants … the discourse of representation characteristic of the long and productive era that produced historical thinking” (1992, 5). Nandy, writing from the perspective of Indian culture, seems to deny the very possibility of history as “the present and the future also shape the past” (1995, 66). In short, all is text: “The signified (the past) is naught but the signifier (history); no referent exists outside the history texts themselves” (Berkhofer 1988, 447). The above quotations come mostly from authors who are not Marxists. However, their approach to understanding reality is shared by some Marxists, some of them authorities on Gramsci. Spivak’s quotation from Laclau and Mouffe is telling, for their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy bears the influence of postmodern approaches, claiming “that every object is constituted as an object of discourse” (1985, 107). Although this statement is somewhat ambiguous, its force hangs on what is meant by “constitute.” One possible interpretation is that discursive practice itself produces particular arrangements of otherwise unknown and unknowable things. Their criticism of Foucault’s distinction between discursive and nondiscursive practices (107), and their insistence that this view has nothing to do with whether there is an external world (108), seem to favor this interpretation. One could also interpret Laclau and Mouffe as meaning that reality behaves in the same way as discourse; hence the principles of discursive reality would apply

Gramsci’s critical modernity  255 to social and even perhaps to natural reality. This would be a bold claim for, even if one were able to establish similarities, it does not follow that in all important respects the two systems – a systems of signs and a social system – behave similarly. If that is what the concept of “discursive practices” is about, Gramsci would question this theory on the same methodological ground on which he questioned the simplistic naturalism of positivist sociologists. Spivak’s statement, then, that the language of historiography is also a language, is obviously true. An axiomaticdeductive system is also a language, as are traffic signs. That does not mean that whatever is true of one language is also true of the others. However, the first point made by Spivak and similar to Laclau and Mouffe’s would no doubt draw some response from Gramsci. Whether that belief is avantgarde would have little significance. The very notion of vanguardism would not sit well with Gramsci who, after all, preferred the serious, patient and often not too glamorous work of historical and philological methods to the sweeping and often baffling assertions of avant-garde positions.2 Of course, one could define the word “event” such that it meant something like “facts as reported.” On this definition, Spivak’s contention would of course be true. Before their being reported – that is, before their being constituted as events in a discursive field – the facts of the real world would not be events. However, whatever is, is not constituted by its insertion in a discursive system of signs. As Gramsci noted, the discursive system that is called “natural science” has changed considerably over time, but we do not take this to mean that nature has changed (1975, Q10II§40, 1290, Q11§30, 1445). If the reporting is to have any relevance, it must report the facts as they are, though we also know that this is hardly ever the case and that the act of reporting often also involves the production of a certain view of the world and an evaluation of what is being reported. Gramsci was clearly aware of the reality that language is not an entirely neutral instrument (Q11§12, 1375). However, his theory of language suggests that conceptual frameworks, particularly the language of historiography, are not constitutive. Thus he criticizes the sociology of Michels for, among other things, failing to develop “any methodology intrinsic to the facts”; his work is flawed by “the pure descriptive character and external classification of the old positivist sociology” (Q2§75, 238). Gramsci’s charge that sociology produces abstract schemata that do not correspond to concrete facts can be restated as the failure of sociology to meet the criterion of adequate description of social facts. Finally, he contends that it is the facts that produce ideology, not the other way around (Q4§15, 436). If we put these texts together with his programmatic statement that the philosophy of praxis retains the philosophical realism of French materialism (Q10II§13, 1250), we can conclude that he would certainly reject any theory that posits language as the element that constitutes social, or any other, reality. This may be said to be merely a side philosophical issue of little consequence. However, the possibility of critical thought depends on rejecting Laclau and Mouffe’s theory for, if our theories cannot be brought into confrontation with language-independent facts and can only be compared with other language games, then the whole intellectual enterprise is no more than a war of words. The danger of this, both intellectual and practical, is that if we focus on the system of signs, on the events as constituted

256  Esteve Morera by language, then we may easily forget those elements that, whether reported or not (that is, whether constituted by language or not), are really effective in history. The study of texts, whether historical or fictional, is certainly an important task. Nevertheless, it must not be confused with the study of the subaltern: it is the study of the language and of the attitudes, modes of understanding, and so forth present in that language, of those who produced the text under scrutiny. As such it is a propaedeutic to the study of history, not unlike the critique of documents that Leopold von Ranke and the German historical school developed but having reached a deeper understanding of the forms of power embedded in texts. To understand this, however, it is necessary to accept that events are indeed not constituted by language and that subject positions are not a discursive phenomenon. It is quite interesting to observe that Gramsci himself proposed to study narratives such as Manzoni’s The Betrothed in order to find in them traces of the lives of subaltern groups. If we compare Gramsci’s approach to Manzoni’s work with Spivak’s study of Devi’s narrative, it becomes readily apparent how different their assumptions are about texts, knowledge, and reality. Both seek to learn something about the subaltern groups of interest to them by analyzing narrative texts about subaltern lives, or in which such lives are described. However, whereas Spivak holds to the narrative constitution of subject positions, Gramsci’s rather critical notes on Manzoni take the narrative as evidence of events and subjects that are independent of any narrative. As he puts it, Manzoni did not determine the subaltern characters; he was merely responsible for his rather paternalistic, condescending attitude, an attitude whose historical reference is Catholicism (1975, Q8§9, 943). Of course, Gramsci did not produce a sustained analysis of The Betrothed, but his hints are extremely interesting for they come to confirm other texts regarding the theory of the language of historiography, the nature of the relations among thinking, language, and reality, and so on. With Spivak’s essay, the Subaltern Studies Project seems to have been clearly divided into two different approaches: one in which Gramsci’s influence, although not consistent, is evident; and a postmodern one that appears to be incompatible with Gramsci’s approach. Later work by Spivak confirms this. In particular, her “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography” (1985b) represents a clear effort to emphasize the antihumanist, postmodernist aspects of the project. The focus on textuality, the discard of the subject, and the discursive theory of events and subjects may ultimately eliminate the critical edge that Gramsci brought to what is surely a limited program for the study of subaltern groups, but one that can be expanded without abandoning the healthy realism that characterizes his writings on history and politics. Gramsci is above all concerned with mass politics and with the masses, for theirs is the life of necessity. Their conflict is profound, structural; it is their iron hand of necessity. This is why Gramsci is concerned with hegemony as a form of conformism, and with the reaction of a new hegemony as the process of the creation of a new conformism. Society is always a kind of conformism, a collective human being; a hegemonic struggle, insofar as it is a struggle between two forms of civilization, is also a struggle between two kinds of conformism (1975, Q7§12,

Gramsci’s critical modernity  257 862–3). In short, Gramsci views history as a process of structural change where necessity is engendered by the form society takes. Gramsci’s stress on the structural, the general, and his dismissal of the merely individual do not mean that he was unaware of the negative impact that conformism can have on the individual. Indeed, he saw the rise of psychoanalysis as a response to the stress produced by the new rationalization of life under modern industrial societies. He clearly understood that “any construction of a ‘collective man,’ of any ‘social conformism,’ of any level of civilization, especially in those classes that ‘fanatically’ make a ‘religion,’ a mystique, of the new type of man to attain” can have morbid consequences. For this reason, he sees as an important problem for progressive movements the creation of a new conformism, a new type of humanity, without unleashing any sort of fanaticism, without taboos, in a critical manner, as “consciousness of freely accepted necessity” (Q15§74, 1833–4). Gramsci’s argument seems to be directed against those European intellectuals, such as Ortega y Gasset, who witnessed the new conformism with fear. They failed to see the conformism that was present in the conditions of life of the masses in the world that was coming to an end with the new mass parties and a broader franchise. They saw the threat to the “multitude of European modes” posed by the triumph over the whole continent of “a form of homogeneity that threatens to consume” European pluralism (Ortega y Gasset 1964, 17). In his notes on conformism, Gramsci (1975, Q10II§12, 1376) attempts to provide some classification of forms of conformism and to provide a general sense of the conditions under which it would be acceptable. In general, a conformism that is proposed by, rather than imposed on, the masses (Q8§119, 1110–11) – that is, a conformism based on the understanding of necessity, on the rational adequacy of means and ends in solving the problems of a given society – is an acceptable conformism. It would seem that Gramsci was endeavoring to develop a general outline (of which he provided few details) of a theory of freedom as self-discipline (Q7§12, 863) or as consciousness of necessity in the solution of social problems (Q10II§8, 1246). In this sense, he asserts, conformism is not contrary to individual liberty (Q7§12, 863). Full explanation of this theory would require a lengthy and difficult exploration of Gramsci’s writings, and is best left for another occasion. It is important, however, to stress the point that conformism might be taken to be, in Foucault’s terms, the power of the social – a power that, to be acceptable Gramsci, must involve the democratic resolution of the fundamental problems of communal life. Gramsci’s views on ideology discussed earlier point to another difference between his thought and that of Foucault. He dismisses the merely individual, arbitrary forms of ideology because they have little or no historical significance: they produce no historical effects. It is in the relationship between single events and the historical movement (the dialectic as he sometimes calls it) that the nature and significance of events are found. Hence an event or idea that is purely individual, which breaks with necessity but which is itself unconnected to a new conformism, a new social structure, is of little or no significance. In sum, there seems to be a great gap between Foucault and Gramsci for, whereas the former is interested in the uniqueness of events, in their transgressive qualities, Gramsci focuses on structural determinants and sees the merely unique traits of events,

258  Esteve Morera the pattern-breaking events, as insignificant unless they are part of the historical movement. In history one needs to explain both the molecular process, as he calls it (Q8§195, 1058, Q10II§8, 1246), of the formation of structures and the largescale, long-term process of social transformation. Although in general he seems to emphasize the macroanalysis of society and history, he is also interested in microanalysis and in the relation between the two forms of historical inquiry. On the body and human nature, Gramsci’s rather bold statement that the whole development of the individual is social, and further statements regarding the physical elaboration of new human beings, are somewhat limited by statements that would lead us to believe he would have rejected Foucault’s assertion that “nothing in man – not even his body – is sufficiently stable to serve as the basis for selfrecognition or for understanding other men” (1984, 87–8). I will not belabor the point but will simply point to the discussion on individuality in the Quaderni where Gramsci distinguishes three elements of personality: nature, society, and purely individual traits (1975, Q10II§54, 1345). Given that he does not believe that nature changes with our changing philosophical and scientific views about it (Q10II§40, 1290–1), which suggests that nature is instead characterized by processes of very long duration, it would seem that the body, as a natural organism, is somewhat independent of history. Further, Gramsci seems to subscribe to the view that biology does have a certain political importance. The popular saying “we are all born naked,” which for him finds its counterpart in metaphysical materialism, does express a democratic sentiment that views the sameness of bodies as a source of moral equality (Q10II§35, 1280–1). Regarding human nature, doubt has been cast on whether Gramsci really espoused a theory of human nature as the ensemble of social relations (Moss 1990). Although the arguments in defense of such an interpretation may not be fully convincing, they do show the need for a far more cautious approach to the study of Gramsci’s philosophical anthropology. Although Gramsci was concerned about naturalism, which led him to make rather boldly historicist statements regarding human nature, he did not entirely deny the role of nature in the human constitution. Thus he wrote that “[a]ll that is elemental and survives in modern man irresistibly resurfaces: these pulverized molecules regroup according to principles that correspond to that which existed and which still exists in the most sunken popular strata” (1965, 21). To the extent that societies can create the conditions where needs are adequately met, natural impulse will not come to disturb communal relations. However, in depressed circumstances (of which his youth in Sardinia and sojourn in Italian prisons gave him a clear idea), the natural impulses that have always been there become active again. These passages stand in need of careful analysis. Suffice it to say that for Gramsci, biology (or the body) is not so easily buried under the view that all in human nature is historical. There is one final point, whose importance cannot be exaggerated, concerning the gulf between Gramsci and Foucault that by now seems obvious. It concerns the rejection of teleology by Foucault and its guarded acceptance by Gramsci. Teleology is itself a complex concept, ambiguous to the extent that it concerns several views on the relationship between past, present, and future states of the world. Some may argue, for instance, that the end state of the world makes all of

Gramsci’s critical modernity  259 history a necessary process, that the end in some way causes all that happened prior to its own realization. Nardone seems to interpret Gramsci as an exponent of this type of teleological historical theory; he writes that the relation between the structure and the superstructure can best be understood as a dialectic relation between quantity and quality in which the moment of quality, the superstructure, is the “condition for the appearance of the structure at the same time that it indicates its final destination” (1971, 332). It is doubtful that Gramsci would have accepted this view of teleology or, for that matter, the view that teleology is immanent in the historical process itself. He suggests that Croce’s critique of Marxism may be based on the existence of “many so-called theoreticians of historical materialism [who] have fallen into a philosophical position that is similar to that of medieval teleological thinking” (1965, 384). He rejects what he sees as mystical forms of teleology, such as are sometimes found in the concept of a “historical mission.” However, he argues that understood in a Kantian manner, this concept can be justified by the philosophy of praxis (1975, Q7§46, 894, Q11§23, 1426). Furthermore, in a letter to his sisterin-law, Gramsci poses the rhetorical question, “Is there not a general historical process which tends continually to unify the whole human genre?” (1965, 501). As we have seen, this is the same principle that guides Gramsci’s understanding of the dynamics of fragmentation and unification of subaltern groups. It will suffice to point out what seem to be two important features of Gramsci’s Kantian view of teleology. First, there is considerable evidence that, taken as a whole, links between human groups have grown both in quantity and in quality (not that this has been an easy process, for many of these links have involved domination, abuse, etc.). Second, we can, as Kant did, take this evidence as an indication that the unity of the human species is possible, a unity that may emerge only at the end of a long and difficult process. This is the telos of history – one, however, that need not involve a belief that that end is inevitable or immanent in the human essence or that it produces the march of history. The import of that view is not explanatory but ethical. It signifies a commitment to strive for a humanity with a “human face” (Sekyi-Otu 1996, 240). The foregoing reflections cast some doubt on the position that finds important similarities between Gramsci’s and Foucault’s views on society. Those doubts raise further questions: in particular, one may want to elucidate the question whether Gramsci’s views on hegemony, ideology, and knowledge, or his views regarding the relationship between religion and objectivity, should be interpreted as harbingers of postmodernism. To find out, one must begin by posing the problems that Gramsci was dealing with; we need to know what led Gramsci to the views that we have encountered, and precisely what their intent and scope amounted to. First, Gramsci (1975, Q11§13, 1397, Q11§37, 1456) was as much concerned about empiricism as religious transcendence, but he thought that religion and empiricism were not incompatible. Far from it: the simplicity of the givenness of the former made the latter so much more credible. Second, the question that Gramsci asks about the relation between materialism and religion is not about the truth or lightness of realism but about its origins. A postmodern reading of that passage would have to assume that there is in fact no difference between the

260  Esteve Morera historical origin of theories and their truth-value, a view that may be suggested by Gramsci’s insistence on historicism or, as he sometimes puts it, absolute historicism. But this is not the case. Gramsci, to begin with, does not adhere to the thesis of the identity of history and nature, or the thesis that nature is socially constructed. He makes it perfectly clear that there are two different kinds of questions one could ask, and that one should not confuse the historical with the physical or metaphysical senses in which objects are “active.” Thus, a distinction can be made between the existence and natural properties of objects, on the one hand, and their becoming objects for human beings, or historically active, and the social relations within which objects are embedded, on the other. In a very telling passage on the concept of matter, he argues that for historical materialism, electricity is important only to the extent that it has social effects or becomes “historically active,” particularly as it affects systems of production; before that point, electricity is of no concern to the historical materialist, although it certainly existed as a natural force (Q11§30, 1443–4). Gramsci denies that theories, or narratives, construct the world, suggesting that the world remains the same even though our understanding of it changes with the great revolutions in thinking that occur from time to time (Q10II§40, 1290–1). It would seem, then, that Gramsci rejects some aspects of the social construction of reality, a view the linguistic turn has transformed into the discursive construction of the real. It is true, perhaps even trivially true, that societies, states, and so forth are socially constructed. It is, however, another thing to make that construction discursive – that is, narrative-dependent, as seems to follow from Laclau and Mouffe’s epistemology. Gramsci also rejects the view that the historical conditions of theory are identical with its truth conditions. Several reasons can be given for this claim, not the least of which is his whole approach to history, which is always critical of those Marxists who make reality fit the theory. Suffice it to say, however, that in claiming that a theory that suggests that the observed reality does not exist independently of the observer is not science but witchcraft (Q11§36, 1454), and by contending that knowledge must fit reality rather than the other way around (Q3§48, 332), Gramsci in reality rejected the view that it is a metanarrative that gives us a word or that the truth conditions of any theory are either the historical conditions of its production or the general features of the metanarrative. As he put it, the judgment that past philosophical systems deserved to fall is not a judgment about their moral value or their truth “but a historico-dialectic one” (Q8§219, 1079, Q11§18, 1417). Whatever else one may make of this passage, it is clear that he does not confuse the historical assessment of theories with their objectivity or lightness. The above considerations have important implications for Gramsci’s views on science, some of which have already been noted. We can now reach some general conclusions in this regard. Two intersecting characteristics of postmodernism are that of the problem of the legitimation of science and the crisis of representation. As Jameson puts it, postmodern culture involves the view, on the one hand, that the legitimation of science is part “of the vaster political problem of the legitimation of the whole social order” and, on the other, the so-called “crisis of representation,” that is, the crisis of the “realist epistemology which conceives

Gramsci’s critical modernity  261 of representation as the reproduction, for subjectivity, of an objectivity that lies outside it” (1984, viii). Together these two ideas link the sciences, both natural and social, to particular forms of power – that is, to the general framework of regimes of truth. Gramsci (1975, Q11§17, 1416) was certainly aware of the political and ideological characteristics of scientific practice. Indeed, he made the objectivity of science dependent on the cultural unification of humanity as a whole. However, he did not reduce science to power, ideology, or narrative. Above all, he did not lose sight of the crucial distinction between the social function of science, which stands in need of legitimation, and the truth-value of scientific theories, which is independent of legitimation. Although his writings on epistemology are contradictory and full of fallacies, the overall character of his writing (as well as many particular notes) clearly puts him in the modernist camp – that is, in the camp of epistemological realism. For him, science may change over the centuries, but it always attempts to reflect an unchanging reality (Q11§30, 1445). It is the implicit acceptance of representation that is the basis for a distinction between society and nature, on the one hand, and what any particular community (be it a class, historians, or physicists) may think, on the other. In this respect, Gramsci’s views seem to be in contrast with those of some postmodern Marxists such as Resnick and Wolff, who hold that Marxism in general is based on a new epistemology that rejects what they call “traditional epistemology” (1987, 29). According to this new epistemology, “Knowledge cannot be conceived in the traditional epistemological terms of independent subjects seeking knowledge of independent objects” (56). The implication of this new epistemology is that “[t]he objects conceived in traditional epistemology are impossible for Marx since he conceives all objects as overdetermined by the totality of social processes” (56). It would seem that the basis for this new epistemology is to be found in the idea of a problématique, as developed by Althusser and Balibar in Reading Capital (1970). A problématique is characterized not only by the concepts that are made possible by it but also by those that are made invisible, by absence as much as by presence. This would imply, it seems, that the objects of thought change with the conceptual frameworks within which one operates. However, that is an ambiguous statement. If by objects of thought one means the objects as conceived by the thinkers involved, then of course it is true. But if it means the real objects – those that for Gramsci are, in the case of nature or the past, constant and independent of the observer – then the statement is false, or thought to be false by Gramsci. Apart from the fact that the questions the two sorts of epistemology raise are different and perhaps not directly comparable,3 the new epistemology, so easily connected to postmodern culture, makes objects impossible for thought when we adopt a different language game. This seems hardly to be the case as both Marx and Gramsci could engage in acute critical discussions of what, to them, should have been impossible objects of thought. After all, Gramsci subscribed to a theory of the translatability of languages (1975, Q4§42, 467–9, Q10II§6, 1245, Q10II§20, 1258–9) as well as the translatability of national cultures (Q10II§208, 1066). His critique of positivism was a critique of the simplistic and often bizarre uses of scientific-sounding hypotheses used for interpreting social reality as, for

262  Esteve Morera instance, his criticism of Lorianism shows (Q1§25, 22, Q28§1, 2325–6). In a nutshell, his critique is based on the principle that the study of society should not look for models outside its own materials – that is, it should not base its research on extraneous methods (Q4§13, 434, Q6§180, 826, Q11§26, 1432), be they those of natural science or, for that matter, linguistics. Furthermore, his critique of positivism was not a critique of realism as such or of objectivity, but a rejection of simplistic views that have important practical implications. What prompted Gramsci to wonder about the origin of objectivity? Throughout the Quaderni, he showed a great interest in understanding the function, modes of organization, and culture of the Catholic Church. Indeed, the very first note of the Quaderni is about the Church and the Christian duty of charity – a duty that implied the permanence of poverty, precisely one of the issues that most concerned him (Q1§1, 6). The general philosophical position of the Church, and perhaps of other religions as well, seems to be based on a particular understanding of objectivity, or a narrative that contains two key elements. First, the world is created by a being with great power; it is this power that establishes the nature of all material and social entities and their mutual relations, including their status in a hierarchical order. One may see in this narrative the power of an institution with the power of some social group. Hence belief in the fixity of the natural world, or the narrative of the vulgar materialism of religion, is the product of social relations or of the power of social elements. The second element in this narrative is the conception of divine will: the will that creates the objective world of natural and social relations also wills their permanence. Hence attempts to change the world are not only foolish but sinful. The practical side of such a world view is a social conservatism, a morality that expresses the power of the social. This morality does not deny the existence of inequalities; it does not even deny that one should attempt to alleviate the suffering and poverty of those at the bottom of the social ladder, for charity is a duty. It maintains, however, that this must be done without changing the established order. Gramsci in fact argues that Bukharin, by raising the question of the independent existence of the external world in the manner in which he did so, only succeeded in reinforcing the conservative culture that religion (in particular, Catholicism) so well promoted. A rejection of the manner in which the question was posed is not the same as a rejection of the notion of the independence of the world from the knower, whether the knower is an individual or a community. The real problem, then, is not that of the independence of the real world, but that of questionable naturalism. This interpretation of Gramsci’s thought seems to shed some light on what appear to be inconsistent statements in the Quaderni. On the one hand, he seems to argue that reality, including nature, is produced by history; on the other, he claims that the philosophy of praxis retains the philosophical realism of vulgar materialism (1975, Q10II§13, 1250). This may be thought to be an inconsistency produced by his attempt to counter forms of naturalism that would have made it impossible even to think of human-led social change, while adhering to a materialist realism according to which the real world is independent of the knowing subject. It seems clear, however, that he rejects

Gramsci’s critical modernity  263 reductive naturalism, including that of religions that failed adequately to distinguish between the natural and the social world. If the metanarrative origin of realism is disputed as not being in any way Gramsci’s theory, it seems that the notion of the identity of truth and power is equally to be rejected for the metanarrative theory is a necessary component of the unity of science or philosophy, on the one hand, and ideology on the other. If this component is denied, then it is much harder to argue a simple relationship between truth and power. This is for two reasons. The first is the view that truth is an independent criterion for the soundness of theories. That is, to the extent that truth consists in more than internal consistency or coherence within a metanarrative but is viewed as in some ways fitting an independently given reality, the relation between truth and power is severed. The second reason is that to the extent that ideology and knowledge are not identical, one can begin to think of theories as genuine acquisitions regardless of their origins in class or some standpoint. This is indeed what Gramsci (Q6§180, 826) thought of some fundamental methodological concepts, such as the rules of logic; they are scientific tools refined through the history of philosophy and culture. It is beyond doubt that Gramsci links the conservative ideology of the Church, together with its simplistic empiricist materialism, to power; it is also true that his concept of hegemony is an attempt to theorize the relationship between conceptions of the world, ethics, and power. Does this imply the truth is power? It does not, but it implies that ideas, and perhaps even truth, can be used as instruments of power; it does not show that Gramsci saw an identity of truth and power. Furthermore, he did not argue that hegemony is merely domination, for he saw also a positive or civilizing function of hegemony. That is, for him hegemony is also creative, ethical, and progressive even if it involves power for, in a world where relations of domination are so deeply embedded, it would be illusory to pretend that truth would simply shine forth and persuade all people at once. To expect “that the old Homo oeconomicus disappear without being buried with all the honours it deserves is a form of economic rhetoric, a new form of vacuous and inconclusive economic moralism” (Q10II§15, 1254). The armor of coercion – the state – is necessary so long as the conditions for the dissolution of political society into civil society are not present. Thinking of the possibility of such conditions, as we saw in the analysis of Gramsci’s conception of teleology, is part of a commitment to work to bring them about. The fusion of ideology and truth, which is the hallmark of postmodern epistemology, is not fully accepted by Gramsci. As we saw earlier, he is committed to philosophical realism and, although not always successfully or forcefully enough, he draws a distinction between the historicity of ideas and their truth – between their function, which may indeed be linked to power, and their capacity to represent a world as it exists and point to other possible forms of organizing social life. Historicity accounts for the efficacy of ideas. Truth, however, is a matter for critical consciousness, thus not always the same as efficiency or efficient ideology. For this reason, he distinguishes common sense from good sense, or the force of received ideas from critical consciousness. This distinction, crucial to both his theory and his practice, necessitates the clear separation of truth and ideology or,

264  Esteve Morera as he puts it in his criticism of some historicist tendencies, ideology and science. It also necessitates the negation of the principle that science is a form of ideology or that the latter can be the foundation for the former, both clearly stated by Gramsci as well as implied by some of his notes (Q8§27, 958, Q10II§41xiv, 1325–6). Granted, he is not clear in dealing with any of these issues; hence it is possible to interpret him in many different ways. That he saw ideologies as having an epistemological significance only adds to the confusion. One may need to ask: What problem led Gramsci to distinguish between ideologies with no significance and positive ideologies with an epistemological import? It would seem that he was concerned with the dismissal of the prevalent ideas of an epoch as false emanations from the structure, thus dismissing their function in bringing to consciousness or elaborating in thought the experiences of a historical period. In other words, Gramsci is attempting to develop a critique of the view that ideology is merely an epiphenomenon of no great consequence, for he knew that in fact ideology mediates action and that it often expresses, perhaps not coherently or critically, the structure of an age. This implies that ideologies are to be taken seriously, but they must be critically approached, for it is better to think critically than merely to accept the philosophy inherited by the use of language, by the general taste of a society, “mechanically ‘imposed’ by the external environment” (Q8§204, 1063, Q11§12, 1375–6). The epistemological significance of ideologies must therefore be seen within the limited context in which Gramsci saw the positive elements in ideology. Ideologies express historical experiences: they are the first, immediate intellectual elaboration of those experiences. As such, and to the extent that they are rational – that is, rooted in the movement of history – they bring experience into consciousness, establishing the first elements of knowledge. Their epistemological import is limited to that of filters of our experience. Their elaboration into philosophy, or into good sense, requires a process of critique, a process of refining and historically testing the first ideological steps (Q8§213, 1071, Q8§220, 1080). Here, Gramsci’s understanding of local and popular memories, their function, and their connection to science – while at one level pointing to a need for revitalizing them – also differs from Foucault’s. For Gramsci, neither local nor scientific knowledge is autonomous. Both depend on a reality that is extradiscursive: the natural world and historical reality. Their validation as knowledge and the legitimation of their function are separate issues, though in ideal conditions they might coincide. Furthermore, local and global knowledges complement one another, for ultimately they must come to be the expressions of one historical experience. Hence Gramsci sees common sense as a loose and contradictory collection of ideas and philosophy, or good sense, as a coherent one. Coherence is the result of critique. Local memory and experience may give us the materials for reconstructing that experience, but without the globalizing discourse – that is, without the attempt to understand that experience in the larger context of historical development – local knowledge is both intellectually one-sided and politically ineffective in the long run. This means that the globalizing discourses matter, both intellectually – as a matter of truth, not power – and politically. Discourses can be and often are, as Foucault has shown, a form of power presented as truth, but

Gramsci’s critical modernity  265 the difference needs to be maintained. It is a difference both about epistemology in general and about the nature and function of intellectuals. In this regard, the attempt to liberate suppressed voices, while certainly supported by Gramsci’s own interest in subaltern history, is not to be undertaken without the critical warning he offers in his writings on folklore: it is necessary to study folklore not as a picturesque element but as a conception of life and the world; however, the ensemble of subaltern groups, because of their historical conditions, “cannot have an elaborate, systematic and politically organized and centralized conception of their own” (Q27§1, 2312–13; see also Q1§89, 89). Nevertheless, conceptions of life that are present in common sense, in folklore, and so on are important in that they express a historical experience; as such, they must be the starting point for the critical elaboration of a coherent world view (Q3§48, 331). In short, the absence of a globalizing discourse may itself be the most insidious form of power. The foregoing reflections force upon us the reevaluation of Smart’s point that Gramsci changed the terms of debate from a preoccupation with the ambiguous concept of ideology and its effects to a consideration of the relations of “truth” and “power” that are central to the concept of hegemony. Gramsci certainly focused on the relation between moral and intellectual leadership and power, but he did not speak of it as a relation between truth and power. His is a crucially different approach for it avoids, as I have attempted to show, the fusion of ideology and knowledge, science and religion or magic, and other fundamentally postmodern positions. If one takes as the philosophical positions central to the postmodern project the identification of truth and power, on the one hand, and the metanarrative origin of the objects of knowledge, on the other, together with the various epistemological claims such as the coherentist theory of truth, it is clear that Gramsci was not moving toward that model of social and political thought or toward that epistemology. Those texts that suggest such a move, when considered in the light of the problems Gramsci was facing and in the context of the Quaderni as a whole, fail to show that he abandoned the old realist epistemology or that he accepted postmodern positions. However, they do show that he was aware of many of the problems of culture, philosophy, and politics that have led to the development of postmodernism. For this reason he explored such theories as that of the Sorelian myth, not so much to break with reason, Enlightenment, and Marxism, but rather to develop a cautious and critical approach to the reality of human existence – one that seeks to find what is there but which is also aware of the distortions introduced in thought by metanarratives based on power. Gramsci remained a modern thinker. Hence he reasoned that even if the Enlightenment created a series of popular myths linked to millenarian aspirations, and even if such aspirations were tied to Christianity, they nevertheless were rooted in sentiments of the masses (Q13§37, 1643). In short, the roots of the aspirations and the form they take because of historical conditions are not necessarily identical. Critical thought must be capable of separating the two. It is this critical and cautious modernity that makes Gramsci such an intriguing thinker, a thinker who was in the middle of a process of self-clarification and intellectual growth. If irony is the central intellectual virtue of postmodernity, he did

266  Esteve Morera not embrace it. Rather, he dismissed irony as an approach of the individual intellectual whom he characterized as a disillusioned, tired, and skeptical dilettante, perhaps one too fond of the illusions of the superman. Instead, Gramsci (Q26§5, 2299–2300) favored passionate sarcasm, which is the form of distance and understanding characteristic of historico-political action.

Notes 1 All translations of Gramsci are my own, as are those of Nardone and Ortega y Gasset. 2 The theory that events are constituted by language may have been avant-garde not too long ago, but it is hardly new. Some of the ideas behind the new linguistic approach to events go at least as far back as the second century ad In his report on knowledge, Sextus Empiricus tells of a Gorgias of Leontini who, in his skeptical arguments, maintained that “we do not indicate to our neighbours the existing things but speech” (Empiricus 1967, 45). The dilemma of the difference between what we know or think we know, on the one hand, and what is out there, on the other, has worried many philosophers, especially in the modern age. It was Berkeley who confronted this dilemma by developing an argument that is, in essence, the same one advanced by Laclau and Mouffe and repeated by Spivak. In Berkeley, however, vision takes the place of language. Thus, we could translate “to be is to be perceived” into “to be an event is to be named.” The essential idealism and confusion is the same in both arguments, old and new. 3 A problem with the implied comparison of the two epistemologies, traditional and Althusserian, is that the French equivalent of the word “epistemology,” liberally used in the English translation, is not found anywhere in Lire le Capital. The word épistémologie used in the French original, as most French dictionaries of philosophy warn, is not the same as the English “epistemology.” This may not be a major problem; however, comparing the two forms of epistemology is not a very simple matter for they are theories that address different questions. The correct translation of épistémologie is “philosophy of science.” The exact equivalent of epistemology is “gnoséologie.”

Part IV

On Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks

18 Unfinished business Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks David F. Ruccio

Reading Joseph Buttigieg’s edition of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks represents for me and, I imagine, for others, the discovery of a new Gramsci – at each turn of the page, either stumbling upon themes and concerns of which we had been largely unaware or encountering familiar concepts in an entirely different context. Gramsci pushes Marxian theory forward, and the text of the Notebooks allows us to do the same with Gramsci’s work. But for all their richness concerning the issues of culture, politics, and intellectuals, one of the traditional areas of Marxism – political economy – appears to be largely overlooked in the Notebooks. In thinking about the significance of the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, especially his Prison Notebooks, I often think of my grandfather. Not because my ancestor was a socialist or communist. Far from it. Like many in his immigrant generation of the first quarter of the twentieth century, particularly those from the south of Italy, he voted Democratic in the United States (the result of being victimized by nativist prejudice and “schooled” in factory life) and, at the same time, expressed sympathies for monarchism, Mussolini, and the fascist-era colonial adventures of his country of origin. The connections I am drawn to make between my grandfather and Gramsci are of a different order. My first encounter with Gramsci’s unfinished notes “On Some Aspects of the Southern Question” helped me to understand the conditions that, in addition to the immigrant experience itself, produced the contours and horizons of my Italian family’s world view. Even before I arrived in the village that my maternal grandparents were forced to have the freedom to abandon, I was struck by Gramsci’s “sympathy” for the south (he was born and raised in Sardinia, before leaving for the continent) and his decidedly unsentimental analysis – of “the great amorphous, disintegrated mass of the peasantry,” the “politicking, corrupt, and faithless” layer of Southern intellectuals, their role in mediating the relations between big landowners and the peasantry, the three groups forming a “monstrous agrarian bloc” whose “single aim is to the preserve the status quo,” the coexistence in the South of “great accumulations of culture and intelligence” and a lack of “any organization of middle culture.” While Gramsci made these observations in 1926 (just before being sentenced to incarceration by the fascist regime), my own series of visits to the ancestral village beginning in the 1970s have confirmed their continued validity. And I consider myself fortunate to have had my grandfather around for as long as I did (he died at the age of 101), having had the opportunity to learn about

270  David F. Ruccio both the “old country” and immigrant life in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. As it turns out, my grandfather was born one year before Gramsci, that mythical historical figure! This natal coincidence just shows that the lives of many of us (of a certain age) could have overlapped with that of Gramsci. Our generation could have conversed with him directly. But, due to his own ill health and the punishing conditions of fascist prisons, Gramsci died in 1937. What we are left with, now that the political party he founded has been summarily undone, is a distant memory and a set of remarkable writings. None is more powerful than the Prison Notebooks. Until recently, all those of us in the English-speaking world had access to were the Hoare and Smith Selections. Now, Joseph Buttigieg – whose insightful commentaries on various aspects of Gramsci’s work have already raised the standard for Gramscian scholarship (especially, in English, Buttigieg 1983, 1987, 1990, 1994, and 1995), and who, as secretary for the International Gramsci Society, has worked with a close-knit group of international Gramscian intellectuals, many of whom have published essays in Rethinking Marxism,1 to expand access to both Gramsci’s texts and the interpretive work that has been carried out – has embarked on an ambitious and carefully rendered project of making the entire set of notebooks available in English for the first time. The first two volumes of a projected six have already been published, while the third should appear soon. What is the significance of this enterprise – of making available to an international readership (to the extent that English has become the world language) the text of all twenty-nine notebooks (along with the critical apparatus originally supplied by the late Italian editor Valentino Gerratana, corrected and supplemented by Buttigieg’s own meticulous notes)? As Buttigieg makes clear in his introductory essay to the first volume (comprising notebooks 1 and 2), it is unlikely that readers of the complete Prison Notebooks will approach them without some prior acquaintance with or knowledge of Gramsci’s contributions to Marxist theory. That is, those who are approaching Gramsci for the first time will probably start elsewhere (perhaps, for the English-speaking world, with the Selections, Letters, or Reader, one or another recent synthesis of Gramsci’s work, in article or book form, or even with one of the growing list of websites that focus on Gramsci).2 In my case (since you already know the intimate details of my family), I opened the first volume of the Prison Notebooks with limited exposure, which included the combination of praise and critique aimed at Gramsci’s contributions to Marxian philosophy in Althusser’s essay “Marxism Is Not a Historicism” (1970a), various selective readings of the Selections, and a familiarity with certain basic concepts closely associated with Gramsci (such as hegemony, passive revolution, and subaltern groups) that one generally picks up in Western Marxist intellectual circles. For me, reading Buttigieg’s edition of the Notebooks therefore represented the discovery of a new Gramsci – at each turn of the page, either stumbling upon themes and concerns of which I had been largely unaware or encountering familiar concepts in an entirely different context. A good example of what I’m referring to is a pair of notes in the first volume: notes 43 and 44 to Notebook 1.3 Note 43 starts out in a relatively innocuous fashion, with the continuation (from notes 35 and 38) of Gramsci’s ruminations on

Unfinished business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks  271 “different types of periodicals” and then opens up a discussion of the relationship between different cultural movements and the North/South divide in Italy, finally focusing his attention on the roles of the main political parties in the Risorgimento. These are not topics that, per se, attract the nonspecialist. However, along the way, Gramsci is drawn to make thought-provoking comments concerning the relationship between language and politics (“In reality, every political movement creates a language of its own” [126]) and the existence of different kinds of cultures (“A very common error is that of thinking that every social stratum elaborates its consciousness and culture in the same way, with the same methods, that is, with the methods of professional intellectuals” [128]), and to produce the first version of his distinctive treatment of intellectuals. To wit, “By intellectuals, one must understand not [only] those ranks commonly referred to by this term, but generally the whole social mass that exercises an organizational function in the broad sense, whether it be in the field of production, or culture, or political administration” (133). Gramsci’s analysis of the different political currents in the Risorgimento spills over into note 44, where readers will now be on more familiar terrain. As is almost always the case in the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci begins with a concrete case (in history or the current conjuncture, from memory or an item he picked up in one of the books or journals he managed to procure while in prison) and then produces the appropriate concepts. In this case, he notes that “historically, the Action Party was led by the Moderates,” which leads him to make a distinction between the role of a class in “leading” and being “dominant” and to create for the first time his notion of hegemony. He writes, “There can and there must be a ‘political hegemony’ even before assuming government power, and in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony one must not count solely on the power and material force that is given by government” (137). Here, in condensed form, one can find all the major elements of what Gramsci will continue to elaborate in the remainder of the Notebooks, which will be codified by later scholars as his theory of hegemony. Hegemony represents a combination of leadership (of allied forces) and dominance (over opposing forces). It is created – it can and, for Gramsci, must be created – before assuming power, through “passive revolution,” an important term that he simply adds at a later date in the margin. And, once a group is in power, its hegemony is maintained not solely by “material force” but, presumably (as he alludes to in the previous note), through culture and the work of intellectuals. Even in this embryonic form, various aspects of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony can be utilized to illuminate contemporary issues and problems. Given the limitations of time, I would like to mention only two. The first concerns what I consider to be a disturbing tendency within the current antiglobalization or “global justice” movement to focus on the coercive exercise of power, while downplaying the other dimensions of hegemony. This can be seen in the coverage of many events, including the documentary produced and disseminated by the video team of the Independent Media Center in the wake of the anti-FTAA protests in Quebec City in April 2001, Trading Freedom: The Secret Life of the FTAA.4 I agree that it is important to record instances of police brutality and limitations placed on

272  David F. Ruccio free speech and freedom of assembly – what the videographers refer to as the “state repression of dissent.” However, an exaggerated interest in the creation and maintenance of hegemony through coercion has two negative consequences: one tactical, the other strategic. In terms of tactics, it romanticizes violent confrontation, thereby leading to one-sided conceptions of and preparations for antiglobalization activities and, perhaps even more significant, the alienation of potential allies. Strategically, the tendency to forget about the other dimensions of hegemony overlooks, on one hand, the roles played by the broad group of intellectuals and cultures distinct from that of the intellectuals (what Gramsci will later, in Notebook 1, note 64, refer to as common sense) in creating the conditions whereby the current hegemony of neoliberalism is produced and reproduced over time and, on the other hand, the cracks and fissures in that hegemony (along with the existence of alternative notions of global justice) that can be marshaled for the “passive revolution” whereby neoliberalism (both at home and abroad) can be successfully opposed. The second example is the sequence of events that brought Bush and the rest of his administration to power in the United States. While much of the liberal media has centered attention on the machinations that took place during the 2000 voting (especially in Florida) or the role of neoconservative figures within the administration after the election (especially after 9/11) or the role of “values” in the 2004 campaign and ultimate reelection of Bush, the Left is in the position to conduct a great deal more analysis of the right wing’s creation of “political hegemony” even before it assumed government power. In the remainder of note 44, Gramsci provides an example of the kind of concrete investigation that might be carried out in order to understand the ways in which, through a long and patient preparation, a neoconservative hegemony was established such that, in the aftermath of the 2000 election and the events of 9/11, the right wing was in the position to assume and maintain power. What we can retrieve from Gramsci is less an overarching theory that, in its application, would yield the “correct results” than an orientation and set of research criteria offered by the method of concretely determining the conditions within which one movement is successful in “establishing the apparatus of their political leadership” (137). In the case of the United States, one would have to analyze the changes that have taken place over the course of the past twenty years in economic thought and policy (from which the likes of Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz have now chosen to defect), national defense planning (culminating in the formation of the Project for the New American Century in 1997), political theory (especially around the figure of Leo Strauss), and much more. We might then conduct research on specific intellectuals as well as larger intellectual movements, on sources of financing and influential organizations (from obscure think tanks to radio talk shows), on the failures of liberal and radical thought as well as the ability of right-wing intellectuals to create “such a power of attraction” for others (137).5 Of course, that would only be the start. But it does offer an indication of the wealth of contributions to Marxian theory that can be found in working one’s way through the Prison Notebooks. The benefits consist, partly, in capturing and utilizing the results (the suggestive observations, the powerful concepts); but what

Unfinished business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks  273 one also has the opportunity to see is a method of working, a process of intellectual production, the step-by-step generation of new insights and theoretical categories. And that is precisely because the Notebooks remain unfinished. Etienne Balibar’s remarks concerning Marx’s “incomplete work” would thus seem to apply equally to Gramsci’s: We have the right then to interpret the implications of what Marx wrote. Not to consider the fragments of his discourse as cards to be infinitely reshuffled at will but, nonetheless, to take a foothold in his “problematics” and “axiomatics” – in other words, in his “philosophies” – and push these to their conclusions (to find the contradictions, limits, and openings to which they lead). (Balibar 1995, 117–18) Gramsci pushes Marxian theory forward – and the text of the Notebooks allows us to do the same with Gramsci’s work. But for all their richness concerning the issues of culture, politics, and intellectuals, one of the traditional areas of Marxism, political economy, appears to be largely overlooked. It’s not that Gramsci was uninterested in economics. Various passages (e.g. the sequence of notes on Americanism, beginning with Notebook 1, note 61, his observations on the “problemi finanziari” of the Italian state in Notebook 2, note 6, and so on), not to mention his relationship with the famous Cambridge University economist Piero Sraffa, indicate that he had more than a passing interest in and knowledge of economic matters. But it appears that, by virtue of a specific combination of his intellectual training and political sensibilities, Gramsci was drawn to the concerns raised in some Marxist texts and not others.6 The fact that he focused his attention on questions of ideology, hegemony, and the state and not on other questions, such as those suggested by commodity fetishism, the appropriation of surplus-value, and the accumulation of capital, forces us to recognize that, while Gramsci opens up and adds to one wing of the Marxian tradition, much work remains to be done to integrate his insights into other wings of that tradition. One of the topics that cut across these various lines of thought is class. Indeed, in my remarks above, I glossed over the fact that, in the note in which he introduces the concept of hegemony, Gramsci refers not just to political or social forces but also to dominant and leading classes. However, in much of contemporary leftist thought, references to class have virtually disappeared, at least when conducting more conjunctural analyses of political events and projects. We seem to be more inclined to name and to focus our more on such phenomena as the neoconservative shift within the Bush administration or neoliberal policies or imperialist wars and occupations than on “allied classes,” “opposing classes,” or a “historically progressive class” (Notebook 1, note 44). While we now have a rich tradition of deconstructing the Marxian class categories that have been handed down to us, and elaborating the concrete modalities of fundamental and subsumed class processes (stemming from the work of Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff), what appears to be missing in the Prison Notebooks, as in contemporary Marxian thought, is a set of concepts and conceptual strategies that allows us to draw the connections between, on one hand, changing class structures and class groupings

274  David F. Ruccio and, on the other hand, the kinds of cultural and political events and movements to which Gramsci devoted so much of his work. This is only to say that our work is as unfinished as Gramsci’s. Fortunately, however, in order to pursue the projects that fall to us, we have Gramsci’s legacy and, now, Buttigieg’s magnificent edition of the Prison Notebooks.

Notes 1 See the list of texts in the Appendix and the insightful review essay by Jonathan Diskin (1993). 2 The International Gramsci Society (www.internationalgramscisociety.org/) maintains an updated list of publications on Gramsci. It also has links to other online Gramsci bibliographies. 3 As is easy to determine from Buttigieg’s notation at the end of each note, number 43 reappears, in modified form, in Notebooks 20, 24, and 19 while a version of number 44 can be found in Notebook 19. According to Marcus E. Green’s concordance tables, available online at www.internationalgramscisociety.org/resources/concordance_table/ (accessed 18 October 2003), neither of these notes is reprinted in any of the three major anthologies. Their later versions, from Notebook 19, are included in the Selections from the Prison Notebooks, although in a different context and order. 4 The video was available for downloading at http://tacticalmedia.mine.nu/index.html (accessed 18 October 2003), a website that also contains details about the making of the video and the growth of the Independent Media Center project. 5 A good example is the pro-war stance of liberal intellectuals such as Michael Walzer, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ignatieff, and Paul Berman. 6 It would be a fascinating study, if one does not yet exist, to determine which texts of Marx and Engels that Gramsci had an interest in and access to and which he did not.

19 Of Prison Notebooks and the restoration of an archive Joseph W. Childers

As I comment on Joseph Buttigieg’s contribution to Gramsci studies, I must confess myself something of an impostor. Unlike my colleague David Ruccio, whose facility with the Romance languages is impressive – even when he is not swearing – my own knowledge of Italian is no better than several years of now largely forgotten undergraduate Latin. For me Gramsci’s work, and especially his intimate connections to the Italian cultural turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s, has remained a foreign country, beckoning and exotic, always a bit mysterious, welcoming my explorations and wanderings yet steadfastly refusing my attempts to become completely comfortable and familiar there. It did not help that, as a literary critic and theorist, my exposure to Gramsci’s thought came to me second hand, filtered through the work of others from whom I imbibed much of my own early notions of what it means to do cultural criticism and what shape such critique can take. Unlike many Marxist theorists, who have come to terms with insistent forms of poststructuralist thought via a thorough grounding in leftist materialist philosophies, it was only after several breathless tours of works by thinkers like Derrida, Heidegger, and Gadamer that I began to realize my abiding interest in Marx and his interlocutors. Already thinking of the fluidity of the subject, of the continual play of signification, and ready to acknowledge the radical break between my own historicity and that of the objects of my study, I had my first brush with Gramsci. Whatever understanding I may have of Gramsci, his central concepts, and his importance to the development of Western Marxism, I owe to the influence of two exemplary critics. The first is Raymond Williams, whom I never met but came to know through my engagement with his prolific and committed writings, and the second is Edward Said, who was my teacher and my friend. Although the connections between the two thinkers were always clear to me (especially Williams’s influence on Said), I also perceived them to be far apart, dwelling, as it were, in separate but equally important intellectual spheres. Williams’s work, though heavily influenced by a Marxist analytic, seemed always to stop just short of Marxism and remain a well-intentioned and valuable socialist-humanist critique. Conversely, Said thrived in the midst of the poststructuralist moment, insisting that Foucault, Derrida, et alia not forget the political implications of their theories while, at the same time, he helped to formulate conceptions of oppositional criticism that had a place in the world as much as in the academy. As

276  Joseph W. Childers time went by, I came to realize that what bound these two thinkers to each other, and to Gramsci, was a concern with both the larger structural role of what Said would call orthodox habits of mind as well as with the possibility of resistance and change through culture itself. This is what Gramsci has bequeathed to us. As Buttigieg points out, “Gramsci considered cultural transformation an indispensable part of any revolution aimed not only at liberating the masses from the dominance of the ruling classes, but also at establishing a new hegemony which does not have to rely on physical coercion for its perpetuation” (1982–3, 23). In Williams’s work, hegemony seems nearly Althusserian; like the lived imaginary relation to the real it is a coalescence of beliefs, understandings, practices “deeply saturating the consciousness of a society,” comprising “a sense of reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of society to move in most areas of their lives” (1980, 37) even to the extent that it “constitutes the substance and limit of common sense for most people under its sway” (38). For Said, it prefigures the conception of power that characterizes what has come to be known as the “carceral” Foucault. And, as Said contends, the force of hegemony is inseparable from the notion of a fluid, ubiquitous, and, inevitably, a productive culture. “Well before Foucault,” writes Said, Gramsci had grasped the idea that culture serves authority, and ultimately the national State, not because it represses and coerces but because it is affirmative, positive, and persuasive. Culture is productive, Gramsci says, and this – much more than the monopoly of coercion held by the State – is what makes a national Western society strong, difficult for the revolutionary to conquer … We must be able to see culture as historical force possessing its own configurations, ones that intertwine with those in the socioeconomic sphere and that finally bear on the State as a State. (1983, 171) A number of issues emerge from such characterizations of hegemony – and the culture in which it functions. First, and most important as we return to Gramsci’s own work, is the way in which Said and Williams recognize the force, the insistence, of hegemony, but also ultimately refuse it the kind of strong determinism that is often associated with Althusser’s use of “ideology” or Foucault’s “power.” At bottom, for these critics, is the desire both to explain and to instigate change, and in order to do that some aspect of agency must be retained. It does not matter here whether Said or Williams would claim it for the sovereign self (my instinct is that, finally, each would); much more important is the way in which each reaches back to Gramsci in search of an explanation of practices, utterances, beliefs, that do indeed hold us in thrall, but not in perpetuity. For all these critics, the activity of criticism opens up the possibilities of gaining a foothold against a dominant hegemonic class, creating alternatives to the habits of thinking, knowing, speaking, indeed of being, that hold sway and reproduce themselves in our daily lives. Of course this is not “culture” in the strict anthropological sense of the term, nor is it “culture” in the liberal Arnoldian sense of the “best that has been thought and known.” Nevertheless, in its more ordinary, everyday connotations, this is precisely the “culture” that Gramsci, Said, Williams, and others allude to in their

Of Prison Notebooks and the restoration of an archive  277 work: those practices and habits of mind that exist epiphenomenally, yet which structure our ways of being in the world. Further, as Buttigieg states in his introduction to the first volume of the Prison Notebooks, for Gramsci “culture … is not something a socialist may choose to acquire or to ignore; it is not a mere appendage to economic and industrial struggles.” It is not “knowing a little something about everything”; instead, it is “good thinking, whatever one thinks about, and therefore it is to perform well, whatever one does” (1992, 19). Culture thus is proactive, something in which one participates; a dynamic and intellectual relationship to the world, it is a means of engagement. Gramsci emphasizes this when he writes about universities as sites where the formation of culture takes place. As is often typical, he uses contrast, a negation if you will, to underscore a moment of positive possibility. He begins by pointing out the distinction between the “philanthropy” of the bourgeoisie who have “come up with the idea of providing popular universities for the proletariat” and the “solidarity and organization” of the socialist agenda. Highlighting activity against passive acceptance of the bourgeoisie’s “help,” Gramsci writes that it is socialist organization and solidarity that supply “the means which good will requires if it is not to remain sterile and fruitless.” Furthermore, these activities generate a possibility of culture that is not exclusive or bound to elitist – and thereby nonhistorical – standards: a culture in which all take part, and all are in some way both responsible for and to. He makes the case in an early statement about the training of the intellectual, when he writes, “One should not attach importance to lectures but rather to the detailed work of discussion and the investigation of problems in which everybody participates, everybody contributes, and in which everybody is simultaneously teacher and student.”1 One of the most fascinating aspects of the Prison Notebooks is how completely this concept of a conversation in which all participate structures Gramsci’s own studies. As Buttigieg points out in his magisterial introduction to the first volume, Gramsci’s method was not systematic (1992, 27), at least in the way one might ordinarily understand a system, but his intellectual curiosity was immense and his determination to join in as many of the important cultural and political conversations of his time as he possibly could means that the Notebooks themselves take on more of the nuances and rhythms of Gramsci’s mind than they might if they were ordered in some more conventionally systematic way. What we have, and this I think is where the elegance of Buttigieg’s editing is most evident, is a document, or more accurately an archive, that preserves the solidity of Gramsci’s work. By solidity, I mean that unlike the other Gramsci readers that are available in English, Joseph Buttigieg’s undertaking allows us to see how intimately connected Gramsci’s notes are – how his ideas develop and change over time, and in the face of enormously oppressive material circumstances. We also get to see the cul-de-sacs, the ideas that fall by the wayside, the positions that are oppugned and then simply forgotten or put by to make room for more compelling issues. We get to see the archive taking shape, and we get an intimate picture of the quality of the mind that is producing it. For me to go on at length about Gramsci is to preach to the choir, and indeed it is neither my task nor my intention to attempt to teach so many who are experts.

278  Joseph W. Childers Rather, I want to draw attention to the mission of translating and making accessible the work of this formative thinker. Like so many non-Italian readers, before sitting down to read the first two volumes of Prison Notebooks, my direct contact with Gramsci had come primarily through my somewhat idiosyncratic sampling of the Hoare and Smith collection (Gramsci 1971), and, more recently, David Forgacs’s Gramsci Reader (Gramsci 1988). I do not want to take away from the importance of either of these works. Hoare and Smith provided the “essential” Prison Notebooks pieces, and Forgacs’s reader pulls together under topic headings many of the key passages from Gramsci’s writing. But when I delve into the critical apparatus that surrounds the Columbia University Press edition of the English translation of the Prison Notebooks, I am amazed. In this undertaking, Buttigieg has entered into the conversations that defined Gramsci’s participation in culture. But these, of course, are discussions that are now sixty- or seventyfive years old, and many of the statements to which Gramsci felt compelled to respond, have now either fallen into the dustbin of history or have been so often rearticulated by commentators that it is unclear whether we are familiar with the texts and the arguments themselves or the midrash that surrounds them. Buttigieg has fearlessly waded into this morass of context, revivifying these engagements to bring the readers of the Prison Notebooks a sense of the topicality and the intellectual urgency that underpin Gramsci’s project. In order to do this, he not only had to become intimately familiar with Gramsci’s thought, his idiosyncrasies, his predilections, but he also had to become a part of that milieu, tracing out Gramsci’s references with a quality of dedication and a thoroughness that is seldom encountered. Without the back matter, the informational notes, not to mention the pointers to other notes in other notebooks (some of which are yet to come), most readers, and I count myself among that majority, would be absolutely adrift in this unfamiliar context. The effect of this gargantuan task is twofold. First, it follows a strategy that Gramsci himself would have approved: that of placing the object under scrutiny within its ensemble of social relations. As I have insisted from the very beginning of these remarks, the importance of the cultural – as Said, and Buttigieg, might say, the “worldliness” of any text – is absolutely vital if part of the project at hand is also to engage it politically. This leads us to the second effect of Buttigieg’s strategy of re-presenting the Notebooks. In bringing Gramsci to an English-speaking and -reading audience that was otherwise reduced to relying on fragments of a collection of texts that is itself ultimately fragmentary, Buttigieg performs the intellectual – both as the figure around whom group social awareness can coalesce, and as the mental work itself that leads to precisely those broader discussions, in which we are all teacher and student – that Gramsci saw as fundamental for the process of democratization and the inhibition of a specialized elite of intellectuals. Indeed, Buttigieg’s work is an important move toward making Gramsci’s most significant writings available to all, thus opening up discussion and debate in ways that might otherwise be repressed. In a sense, Buttigieg’s Prison Notebooks project is every bit as liberating as those actions taken after Gramsci’s death when Tatiana Schucht moved quickly to secure the notebooks and, with the advice of Piero Sraffa, arranged to have them

Of Prison Notebooks and the restoration of an archive  279 hidden from the fascists and sent to Moscow. As Valentino Gerratana writes, “if these manuscripts had not been saved, Gramsci would have been remembered largely as a legend.”2 Similarly, if Buttigieg does not pursue this project, then Gramsci remains a much more shadowy and liminal figure, lurking at the edge of Marxist discourses, available primarily as “selected” by others or to those who devote themselves to gaining proficiency in the language and the historical moment of his work. Instead, we have the opportunity to engage fully with the most important of Gramsci’s work, those notes where concepts such as “passive revolutions,” “historical blocs,” and “hegemony” get a much more thorough treatment as concepts in and of themselves, and, more significantly, perhaps, we get to see how these ideas become part of the way in which Gramsci thought and wrote about the world, so that their fine distinctions are played out in his own critiques. We also have access to those moments of worldliness and prescience that might otherwise be lost to most, moments such as note 90 in the second notebook. The note itself has no title, but begins with the title of an article Gramsci had read in Nuova antologia of 1 October 1928: “The New Evolution of Islam.” The piece, which he refers to as a “mediocre” article, authored by an anglophile Afghan diplomat, is introduced by the Italian scholar, Michelangelo Guidi, who poses but does not answer the question: Is Islam as a religion compatible with modern progress, and thus capable of evolution? Gramsci’s insight here is quite remarkable and bears quoting. If one were to accept the fact that modern civilization in its industrial-economic-political form will, in the end, triumph in the Orient (and everything proves that this is taking place and that, moreover these discussions on Islam are the result of a crisis caused precisely, by this diffusion of modern phenomena), why should one deny that Islam will necessarily evolve? Can it remain as it is? No; already it is no longer what it was before the war [i.e. World War I]. Can it collapse suddenly? Absurd. Can it be replaced by a Christian religion? Absurd when one thinks of the masses … In reality, the most tragic problem of Islam arises from the fact that a society numbed by centuries of isolation and by a corrupt feudal regime (naturally, the feudal lords are not materialists!!) is brought into contact much too abruptly with a frenzied civilization which has already entered its phase of decomposition. Christianity has taken nine centuries to evolve and to adapt, and it has done so in small steps, etc.: Islam is forced into a headlong rush. But in fact, it reacts just like Christianity: the great heresy from which the real heresies will arise is the “national sentiment” against theocratic cosmopolitanism. Then the theme of a return to “origins” will arise in exactly the same way as in Christianity, a return to the “purity of the earliest religious texts as opposed to the corruption of the official hierarchy.” (1992, 333–4) In the space of this quotation, my mind moves back across nearly six decades of American foreign policy in the Middle East, its interactions with Islam and the speed of modernization in many pockets of Islam with which the West, under the irresistible insistence of capitalism, has been preoccupied. Now, just as

280  Joseph W. Childers Gramsci foresaw, the return to fundamentalism has gained considerable purchase throughout the Muslim world, and the effect that the West hoped for – of drawing the nations of Islam into modernity in subaltern relation to Western political/ economic interests – is hampered by the return to prominence of the very residual cultures it had wished to repress. As Gramsci so astutely suggests, the question is not, “will Islam evolve,” but rather, “will it in fact be allowed to?” Such moments in the Prison Notebooks remind us of the validity of Gramsci’s project and the importance of his insights. Without the meticulous work and commitment of Joseph Buttigieg, the experience of that insight and the magnitude of Gramsci’s work would be lost to many of us. As David Ruccio so rightly notes, our own work, like Gramsci’s, remains unfinished, but through his example and through the efforts of scholars like Joseph Buttigieg, we can continue to join in conversations where we are both teachers and students, and that would otherwise be closed to us. And in those conversations, we can effect the material and epistemic change that defines our intellectual lives and which makes what we do so necessary.

Notes 1 La Città futura: 1917–1918, ed. S. Capriogili (Turin: Einaudi, 1982), 519; quoted in Buttigieg (1992, 19). 2 “Introduction” to Quaderni del carcere; quoted in Buttigieg (1992, 4).

20 The mammoth task of translating Gramsci Peter Ives

But reality is teeming with the most bizarre coincidences, and it is the theoretician’s task to find in this bizarreness new evidence for his theory, to “translate” the elements of historical life into theoretical language, but not vice versa, making reality to conform to an abstract scheme. Reality will never conform to an abstract theme, and therefore this conception is nothing but an expression of passivity. Antonio Gramsci (1996, 52) Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information – hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. Walter Benjamin (1968b, 69)

The image of Antonio Gramsci sitting in a fascist prison writing furiously is a powerful one. Isolated and cut off from his family, comrades, and friends, he is attempting to keep his mind active, to struggle against his prosecutor’s declaration, “We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years.” In addition to the letters that he wrote while in prison, his Prison Notebooks were an essential vehicle for his sheer effort and determination to continue his life’s struggle against subordination and oppression, including the fascist prison conditions that tortured him physically, emotionally, and mentally, ultimately leading to his death. Gramsci repeatedly comments on the tentative nature of his writings and the necessity to check his work rigorously when he has better access to research resources. He must have held some hope, however faint, that one day his efforts would have an impact on the world outside his cell – that he was writing for more than just himself. In some ways, this hope has been fulfilled tenfold, even if the revolution he envisaged against capitalism seems as far off as ever. His writings on hegemony and civil society have been very influential and inspirational throughout the world and in a wide array of fields from postcolonial and cultural studies to international relations, history, politics, and literature. Gramsci provides a vocabulary and framework that enriches Marxist analyses of power relationships within mass democratic societies where the organization of consent is fundamental but intricately intertwined with coercion, domination, and violence. His insights into what was a relatively new phenomenon, Fordism, and its need

282  Peter Ives for moral and social regulation of “Americanism,” the role of intellectuals and culture within politics, and his reading of Italian history, especially concerning the “South,” have all created a lasting legacy. We are often reminded that his writings about what may seem to be, at least superficially, less “political topics” (Dante’s Divine Comedy, folklore, popular “serial” novels, more arcane aspects of Italian philosophy) are actually of great political import. Some of Gramsci’s most insightful contributions are made through his insistence that human consciousness and political actions are formed in everyday cultural and social life. All the diverse topics that Gramsci wrote about in prison were in some manner related in the vast, weblike research project that constitutes his Prison Notebooks. His need to attempt to understand the failures of his own political activity and that of his comrades as well as the strength of fascism and capitalism guided all his writings and led him to investigate many mundane and seemingly nonpolitical topics. While we often speak of Gramsci’s twenty-nine prison notebooks, he actually began a total of thirty-three notebooks, although he only partially filled many and others he had barely begun. The four notebooks that are rarely given much attention are those that Gramsci devoted to translation exercises. Just as one might initially want to separate Gramsci’s writings on literature or popular culture from his political analysis, it also seems clear enough why these four notebooks are deemed to be of a totally different ilk than the twenty-nine “substantive” ones. But Gramsci’s interest in and practice of translation should not be separated from the rest of his research project. As with his other writings, the immediate aim was to exercise his mind, to provide purpose to his prison life. His higher goal, however, was to contribute to the struggle against fascism and capitalism. So, too, with his translations and writings on translation. He argued that translation is an important activity that necessarily involves cultural analysis and can have serious political implications. He also used “translation” as a central metaphor for political and cultural analysis, for reading Marx, and for revolution itself. It is in this light that I want to reflect on the broad significance and potential of Joseph Buttigieg’s momentous project of translating Gramsci’s twentynine Prison Notebooks into English. Buttigieg’s meticulous effort is based on the Italian critical edition of Valentino Gerratana published in 1975 and includes copious explanatory notes. Buttigieg’s insightful preface and introduction provide excellent background on Gramsci and the notebooks themselves, their publication and translations. It also contains a crucial argument about Gramsci’s own method and the importance of not attempting to overcome the fragmentary and weblike nature of the Notebooks. Buttigieg urges us to utilize these unique attributes that are essential qualities of the Notebooks, the conditions of their production and their history. The first two (of six) volumes have already illustrated their paramount importance. Until now, Gramsci’s impact in the English-speaking world has relied almost exclusively on anthologies of selections, reorganized and edited for specific reasons from various points of view. The fact that the contents of the actual notebooks, including sections that Gramsci crossed out and rewrote, have not been available to those who do not read Italian has been a serious impediment. There

The mammoth task of translating Gramsci  283 have been French, German, and Spanish translations of the complete Notebooks. But before Buttigieg’s volumes, anglophone scholars have been very much at the mercy of partial and filtered versions of Gramsci’s ideas. This has contributed to the many superficial, partial, or erroneous understandings of Gramsci and his main concepts. As Marcus Green (2002) has illustrated, it is important to place Gramsci’s individual concepts or arguments within the larger structure of the Notebooks. Green shows how in the absence of access to the complete version of the Notebooks, the concept of the “subaltern” has been misunderstood or its specificity (that is, Gramsci’s actual insight) has been lost. In order to grasp the significance of Gramsci’s use of “subalternity,” one must see how he used it initially in a conventional sense of military terminology, then developed it into a theoretical concept intricately related to his entire thought, including his notions of hegemony, civil society, and common sense. Similarly, Adam David Morton has noted that neo-Gramscian debates in international relations require a closer look at and (re)engagement with Gramsci’s actual writings (2003d, 170–2). I could provide many more such examples from a wide variety of contexts. Instead, I will turn to what I see as the wider implications of Buttigieg’s translation of Gramsci’s writings because, ultimately, to translate Gramsci’s Notebooks into English requires more than making them accessible to an anglophone audience (as if that were not important and difficult enough). Rather, as Gramsci understood “translation,” the goal is to alter the very vocabulary and language, the very way of thinking, of those who speak both the target (the language of the translation) and the source (or original) language. Indeed, the very prevalence of the term, hegemony, used in more than just the traditional way of meaning “influence or authority especially of one nation over another,” shows a degree of how translations of Gramsci (although only partial) have changed the English language. However, “hegemony” is used very often now in vague and sometimes meaningless ways. To this extent, Gramsci’s work has been insufficiently translated, altering a part of the English vocabulary but without successfully encouraging more critical modes of thinking and acting. Gramsci held a higher ambition for translation. Buttigieg’s work is an undeniably central element to this more adequate translation. Yet it still requires a collective effort for the translation to meet Gramsci’s criteria of producing change in both the languages involved (English and Italian) and encouraging critical thinking and acting. On 5 September 1932, Gramsci wrote a letter to Julia, his wife, suggesting that she become an Italian–Russian translator. In this context, he noted that “a qualified translator should be able not only to translate literally but also to translate conceptual terms of a specific national culture into the terms of another national culture, that is, such a translator should have a critical knowledge of two civilizations and be able to acquaint one with the other by using the historically determined language of the civilization to which he supplies the informative material” (Gramsci 1994a, 207). Thus, for Gramsci translation is more than just a technical process of rendering a text originally written in one language into a different language. A translator must also be able to perform cultural analysis and comparison. Buttigieg’s considerate translation along with his preface, introduction, and explanatory notes illustrate this.

284  Peter Ives Gramsci takes this notion in the other direction as well, finding that translation performs an important cultural, social, and political function of allowing the coming together of diverse cultures and societies. He argues that the entire structure of both the source language and the target language must be taken into account by translation. The language exercises that one does in the grammar school make it apparent after a time that in Latin–Italian and Greek–Italian translations there is never identity between the terms of the languages placed side by side, or at least that what identity there seemed to be at the beginning of the exercise (Italian “rosa” = Latin “rosa”) becomes increasingly complicated as the “apprenticeship” progresses, moves increasingly away from the mathematical scheme and arrives at a historical judgement. (1985, 384–5; Q16§21) The task of translation requires an analysis of both languages and societies involved, culminating in historical judgment (see Boothman 1988). Translation requires normative judgment that makes the translation a historical act. As Walter Benjamin notes, the time lapse and change in historical context between the writing of the original and the translation itself render impossible the mere presentation of the original in a different language (1968b, 73). The very meaning of Gramsci’s work in our world, in the form of English translation, is shaped by Buttigieg and Columbia University Press’s commitment to such a formidable project after the collapse of the Italian Communist Party, the fall of the Soviet Union and, as the capitalist world heralds it, the end of Marxism. This translation is not just an English version of an original text written between 1929 and 1935 or the edition published in Italian in 1975. Such a position would neglect the contexts of translation and the reasons guiding it. It would deny both the institutions and individuals who make it possible and its potentially productive capacity and political effect. Gramsci understood this aspect of translation. Indeed, his development of “translation” goes even further. In Notebook 11, he extends his use of “translation” to address Marx’s comparison in The Holy Family between Proudhon’s French political language (especially “equality”) and the language of classical German philosophy (especially “self-consciousness”). Gramsci relates Marx’s comparison (translation) to Luigi Einaudi’s discussion of translating geometrical into algebraic language and hedonism into Kantian ethics and economics. Gramsci describes how such “translations” are never perfect and always require an assessment of the ideas involved. This leads him to a rich and provocative description of translation: “the real progress of civilization comes about through the collaboration of all peoples, through national ‘thrusts,’ but such thrusts are almost always in respect to given cultural activities or groups of problems” (1995, 309; Q11§48). In the next paragraph, he returns to Marx’s comparison between Proudhon and Hegel, describing this “translation” between politics and philosophy as the fundamental point behind Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach: “philosophers have explained the world and the point is now to change it” (Gramsci 1995, 311; Q11§49). This explains why Gramsci introduces this whole discussion

The mammoth task of translating Gramsci  285 of “translation” and “translatability” with a (mis)translation of Lenin. “In 1921 Vilich [Lenin], in dealing with organizational questions, wrote and said (more or less) this: we have not been able to ‘translate’ our language into those of Europe” (Gramsci 1995, 306; Q11§46; see also the A-text, Q7§2). Lenin did not actually write about translation to describe his dissatisfaction with the resolution passed by the Third Congress of the International in 1921 to which Gramsci alludes. Lenin actually wrote what is translated as “we have not learnt how to present our experience to foreigners” (1966, 430–2). Gramsci introduces the concept of translation in order to explain how the “presentation” of “our experience” – that of revolution – requires “translation” and not the mere transmission or re-presentation, from one context to another. Using translation as the link, he relates these various parts of his research project to the political project of revolution. The notion that the Russian Revolution was to be a model for an Italian revolution was commonplace, especially during the Biennio Rosso when the slogan “We must do the same as in Russia” spread through the factories (Buci-Glucksmann 1980, 123; Ravera 1973, 18). But Gramsci was highly aware of the complexity and ambiguity of “the same as in Russia,” especially as events unfolded. He addressed and rethought this question through the concept of translation. Gramsci was not thinking that the October Revolution itself should reoccur in Italy or anywhere else. The project of the Communist party and the International was not the repetition of an event, of that revolution. Such a reenactment would be just a theatrical event, or a “farce” (as Marx writes in the famous opening to Eighteenth Brumaire) and not a revolution that could completely alter the power structure of Italian society. “Revolution,” then, does not signify for Gramsci a content that can be transmitted into a different context, a different society. It is itself a relational concept. Its referent is not a static object, state, idea, blueprint, or theory, but rather, a dynamic relation among elements within a society. His expansion and exploration of translation and his use of it to relate disparate parts of his research project resemble his development of concepts that we have come to know as “Gramscian” such as hegemony, organic intellectual, and civil society. Buttigieg alludes to some of these discussions in his preface. He notes Gramsci’s interest in “various linguistic, cultural, ideological and hermeneutical aspects of translation.” He explains that while he kept this in mind, the “guiding principle of this translation, however, has been to remain as close as possible to the original” (Buttigieg 1992, xvii). He also tells us that the main purpose of his translations is to “make available to anglophone readers as fully as possible and in accessible form the contents of the notebooks” (xix). This is very useful practical information. Many translations are based on other principles, for different reasons. Fiction, for example, has different parameters, as do editions of scholarly texts meant primarily for students. This should not, however, lead us to presume that these translations will be effective if all they do is transmit the Italian original, the content or data, as it were, of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Elsewhere I have detailed the substantial agreement between Gramsci and Walter Benjamin on translation, including Benjamin’s famous statement, “any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information – hence, something inessential”

286  Peter Ives (1968b, 69; see Ives 2004a, 97–133). Benjamin insists, with Gramsci, that translation must be productive of something new. It must enable meaning, thought, and action that the original text was unable to inspire. Just as Buttigieg asks us not to try to overcome the fragmentary nature of the Notebooks themselves, Benjamin and Gramsci insist that we maximize the effects of the differences between the languages involved and their historical contexts. As David Ruccio has already noted, Buttigieg does not expect these volumes of the Notebooks to be the ones that will introduce new readers to Gramsci. These volumes will thus serve as “translations” in the Gramscian sense in their central role within a community of intellectuals, including those who introduce Gramsci to the uninitiated or “nonexperts.” Such work is necessary if Gramsci is truly to be “translated” in his sense of the term. Buttigieg is also the series editor of one such endeavor by Pluto Press called Reading Gramsci. Kate Crehan’s provocative and enlightening book Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (2002) was the first of this series, which also includes my own introduction to Gramsci through the lens of language and linguistics, Language and Hegemony in Gramsci (Ives 2004b). Benedetto Fontana and Adam David Morton are working on volumes on Gramsci and the state and international relations, respectively. Such work would be much more difficult and perhaps impossible to sustain in the absence of Buttigieg’s translations of the full Prison Notebooks. David Ruccio signals another possible element of this wider notion of translating Gramsci. He suggests an absence in Gramsci’s writings concerning conceptual strategies for relating changing class structures to cultural or political events and analysis. He notes that Gramsci does not employ precisely the set of Marx’s concepts that is central to the project initiated by Resnick and Wolff and central to Rethinking Marxism – notably, the concepts of commodity fetishism, surplus value, and the accumulation of capital. One could respond in defense of Gramsci by highlighting how and where he does address concrete connections between class structure and groupings (including the material conditions of class consciousness) and cultural and political movements. Alas, that would not provide us with answers or even a comprehensive theory of such connections in our day and age. A more appropriate response, I would argue, is to ask about the possibility of translating the conceptual language of Resnick, Wolff, and many others associated with Rethinking Marxism into Gramscian language and vice versa, allowing a critical assessment of both. Gramsci’s understanding of “translation” may also help in the essential political task of engaging liberalism. As is well known, while maintaining a staunch critique of liberalism, Gramsci respected and worked with liberals such as Piero Gobetti, for whom he did not hold the scorn that he did for many socialists and communists. Much of the current dialogue between Gramscian perspectives and liberalism comes in the form of liberals who have been influenced by Gramsci like Richard Bellamy or post-Marxists like Sue Golding and others inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe who adopt many of the tenets of liberal traditions (see Bellamy 2000; Bellamy and Schecter 1993; Golding 1992). This engagement is one-sided in that it provides a liberal critique of Gramsci yet takes his ideas seriously and borrows from him. But it has not been met by an effective

The mammoth task of translating Gramsci  287 Gramscian response. What is needed is a Gramscian analysis of liberalism and its attraction (and hegemony) through translating it into Gramscian Marxism. I make such admittedly vague proposals in order to emphasize that Buttigieg’s achievement is highly commendable (and will be even more so with the future volumes), but requires collective efforts for such a translation to have its desired, Gramscian effect.

21 Cuvier’s little bone Joseph Buttigieg’s English edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks William V. Spanos [I]t is not exaggeration to say that liberation as an intellectual mission, born in the resistance and opposition to the confinements and ravages of imperialism, has now shifted from the settled, established, and domesticated dynamics of culture to its unhoused, decentered, and exilic energies, energies whose incarnation today is the migrant, and whose consciousness is that of the intellectual and artist in exile, the political figure between domains, between forms, between homes and between languages. From this perspective then all things are indeed counter, original, spare, strange. From this perspective also, one can see the complete consort together contrapuntally. Said, Culture and Imperialism

Joseph Buttigieg’s Columbia University Press edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is not simply a very much welcomed scholarly contribution to the Anglo-American archive; it is also and, to me, above all a very important – indeed, major – contribution to Gramsci scholarship and criticism.1 Thanks to his careful translation of Gramsci’s Italian text into English and judicious arrangement of Gramsci’s fragmentary writing and, not least, his meticulous scholarly commentary and historical notes, we now, for the first time, have a Gramsci who is tethered to the violent historical world in which he lived, acted, thought, and wrote. Prior to Buttigieg’s edition, the Gramsci that was made available to the Anglophone world by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1971), however useful, was a more or less abstracted Gramsci, by which I do not simply mean an essential Gramsci selected from the Protean body of his work, but also a free-floating Gramsci who could all too easily be appropriated by what the late Edward W. Said called “traveling theory.” Buttigieg’s edition – his translation, his commentary, his chronology, and, not least his voluminous and carefully articulated historical notes – brings Gramsci down into the geographical/cultural/political space that precipitated his engaged thinking: capitalist/fascist Italy and its Stalinist “opposite.” It renders Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, again in Said’s phrase, a “worldly text” or, more precisely, as I will suggest, a “secular text.” But it is not this more or less obvious virtue of Buttigieg’s editing that I want to focus on. It is, rather, the structural principle, all too easily overlooked by those critics and scholars in the Anglophone world (and, so far as I can tell, even in Europe) who have been influenced by

Cuvier’s little bone  289 Gramsci: a principle Buttigieg has inferred from his close sympathetic reading of Gramsci’s fragmentary Prison Notebooks, and which determines his own scholarly/critical project. I mean the very principle of inquiry that was as important to Gramsci as the actual knowledge about the world he produced. One of the most often expressed or implied regrets of Gramscian scholars and of social-political and cultural critics has to do with the fragmentary character of the Notebooks. In sum, these regrets amount to a wish that Gramsci could have had the opportunity (the time, place, and occasion) to complete the intellectual/ political task that the brutally constraining circumstances of his incarceration by the Fascist government denied him. And the consequence of this wish has been either a Stoic acknowledgment of the fragmentariness of the Prison Notebooks or an obsessive will to fill and close the abyssal gaps between the “multiplicity” and “contradictions” of the fragments that constitute the Notebooks. The first option has produced disciplinary interpretations of Gramsci writing – on the intellectual, the historical, the cultural, and the political – that are various and often incommensurable with one another, as if there were no substantive connection between them. More important, the second, the effort to systematize Gramsci’s “fragmentary” legacy on the unexamined assumption that he had a telos in mind or would have discovered one had he world enough and time to work out his differential and scattered jottings, has produced a “Gramsci” that, in a fundamental and disabling way, runs counter to the paradoxical “essence” of his fragmentary discourse – that, in other words, imposes a principle of presence on a thinking that is fundamentally decentered. I will return to this crucial problem of Gramscian scholarship later, after I have established a context that will explain the nature of this paradoxical “essence.”

1 It has been too easily forgotten in the wake of the emergence to institutional authority of “cultural criticism” that one of the most significant contributions Gramsci made to the discourse of modernity and, more specifically, to the Marxist (not necessarily Marx’s) representation of modernity was his recognition that the base/superstructure model that Marxism universalized was a construction and, by his time, a historical anachronism. Proleptically attuned to the emergence at the beginning of the twentieth century to an enabling prominence of cultural production, he realized or intuited, I suggest, that the Marxist (and capitalist) privileging of the economic site of the indissoluble continuum of being was a serious and disabling misreading and distortion of history. More specifically, he realized that this interpretation was one that represented the historical overdetermination of the economics of the industrial revolution in the middle of the nineteenth century (the triumph of the bourgeoisie and the rise of the factory system, of capital, of the proletarian class, etc.) as the universal precipitate of History, a base, a ground, a principle of presence, a center elsewhere, that determined the “shape” (I emphasize the spatialization or reification of lived processes) of other indissolubly related sites on the continuum of being, thus rendering them superstructural and epiphenomenal. As Raymond Williams, one of the most responsible Anglophone

290  William V. Spanos readers of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, puts this reductive Marxist construction of being: In the transition from Marx to Marxism, and then in the development of expository and didactic formulations, the words used in the original arguments were projected, first, as if they were precise concepts, and second, as if they were descriptive term for observable “areas” of social life. The main sense of the words in the original arguments had been relational, but the popularity of the terms tended to indicate either (a) relatively enclosed categories or (b) relatively enclosed areas of activity. These were then correlated either temporally (first material production, then consciousness, then politics and culture) or in effect, forcing the metaphor, spatially invisible and distinguishable “levels” or “layers” – politics and culture, then forms of consciousness, and so on down to “the base.” The serious practical problems of method, which the original words had indicated, were then usually in effect bypassed by methods derived from a confidence, rooted in the popularity of the terms, in the relative enclosure of categories or areas expressed as the “base,” “the superstructure.” (1977, 77–8; my emphasis) What is crucially significant about this orthodox Marxist construction, which even Williams does not mark, is that it is a metaphysical interpretation of being: the perception of the relationality of the various “sites” of being meta ta physica (from after or above the differential dynamics of temporality) and, as such, not only reductive but also deterministic. As poststructuralists would put it, this Marxist (and capitalist) base/superstructure model is informed by the imperial will to power over the be-ing of being that ends in the reification or the spatialization – the reduction to narrative – of its temporal errancy. It was, I submit, Gramsci’s historical insight, manifest everywhere in the Prison Notebooks, especially in the revolutionary emphasis he gave to intellectual and cultural production, into the anachronicity and thus the illegitimacy of the Marxist base/superstructure as a model for the interpretation of lived social relations, that enabled him not only to collapse its hierarchized structure and to retrieve the indissoluble relationality of the “fields” of knowledge production – being, the subject, culture, economics, politics – that had been hitherto compartmentalized and hierarchized as epiphenomenal disciplines by this metaphysical base/superstructure model that privileged the economy. It also – and this, I think, constitutes Joseph Buttigieg’s major contribution to Gramsci studies – enabled him, on the one hand, to perceive modern capitalism as an indissoluble relay, however uneven at any historically specific conjuncture, of representations that ranged from the ontological through the cultural to the economic and the political rather than as a representation restricted to the disciplinary site of economics, and, on the other, to think the be-ing of being in all its manifestations from a decentered perspective. This, I suggest, is ultimately what Gramsci means by his much abused concept of hegemony: the concept that in so many fundamental ways was picked up and utilized in the critiques of bourgeois, liberal democratic capitalist modernity by so diverse a group of poststructuralist thinkers as Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault,

Cuvier’s little bone  291 Raymond Williams, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, and Edward Said. Again I will rely on Raymond Williams, whose “definition” of hegemony is, I think, the most true to Gramsci’s essential contribution to the diagnosis of the postmodern age, the age that has overdetermined information (i.e. cultural production), and to the urgent task of rethinking Marx in the postmodern age – if, that is, we understand, as I think he does not quite, Williams’s analysis of the indissoluble relay of “lived forces” to include the site of ontology. The concept of hegemony often, in practice, resembles these definitions [of ideology] but it is distinct in its refusal to equate consciousness with the articulate formal system which can be and ordinarily is abstracted as “ideology.” It of course does not exclude the articulate and formal meanings, values and beliefs which a dominant class develops and propagates. But it does not equate these with consciousness, or rather it does not reduce consciousness to them. Instead it sees the relations of domination and subordination, in their forms as practical consciousness, as in effect a saturation of the whole process of living – not only of political and economic activity, nor only of manifest social activity, but of the whole substance of lived identities and relationships, to such a depth that the pressure and limits of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political, and cultural system seem to most of us the pressures and limits of simple experience and common sense. Hegemony is then not only the articulate upper level of “ideology,” nor are the forms of control only those ordinarily seen as “manipulation” or “indoctrination.” It is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of living: our senses and assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world. It is a lived system of meanings and values – constitutive and constituting – which as they are experienced as practices appear as reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas of their lives. It is, that is to say, in the strongest sense a “culture,” but a culture which has also to be seen as the lived dominance and subordination of particular classes. (1977, 109–10)2 Liberal democratic capitalism, in other words, is not only a relay of practices. It is also a way of thinking/representation; or, rather, as Williams’s Gramscian emphasis on its “constitutive and constituting” essence makes clear, a way of thinking/representation that is itself a practice indissolubly related to the more obvious relay of practices that metaphysical thinking in its modern empiricist mode has privileged. To be more specific, it is a positivist and instrumentalist or, in Heidegger’s terms, a “calculative” way of thinking that, in beginning with an (unexamined) end in mind, coerces the historicity of the differential phenomena of being into a quantified identical Totality. It is a way of thinking/representation that privileges the One over the many, the Transcendental over the Immanent, History over historicity, and thus Certainty over doubt, Closure over openness, the Answer over the question: in short, the (meta)Narrative over the episodic, the Book over

292  William V. Spanos the fragment. It was, I submit, this ontological insight into modern capitalism, the result of attending to what Said (1983) calls “secular history” – and the blindness of Italian and Soviet Marxists to its implications for critique and positive practice – that compelled Gramsci in the Notebooks to focus on, indeed, pay inordinate attention to, the practice of intellectuals (thinkers), to the inexorable historicity of history, and to the question of cultural production at a time when History determined the thinking of Italian and European Marxists. What specifically distinguished Gramsci’s Marxist effort to think the sociopolitical power relations of capitalist modernity from that of the Marxism of his day was this: Whereas the latter used the metaphysically grounded base/superstructure model that demanded a foundational and disciplinary mode of inquiry into sociopolitical power relations, Gramsci addressed these power relations from an ungrounded or decentered perspective that understood being as an indissoluble, however uneven continuum and demanded a transdisciplinary mode of inquiry. In short, whereas the dominant Marxism privileged the site of economics, an internalized transcendental Logos in its critique of capitalist power relations, Gramsci privileged a concept of secular or immanent culture that he understood, not in terms of ideology, but in terms of the discourse and practice of hegemony: “the truth.”

2 It is, I suggest, primarily Joseph Buttigieg’s overdetermination of Gramsci’s ontological insight into and critique of the complicity of Italian and Soviet Marxist thinking with Western liberal democratic capitalism and fascism that distinguishes both his commentary on the Prison Notebooks and his editorial perspective on their “fragmentary” nature from earlier interpretations of the content and structure of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. This is borne witness to by his brilliant elaboration of Gramsci’s otherwise easily passed over and enigmatic references to “Cuvier’s little bone,” the first of which appears almost casually in Notebook 1, 26: “Cuvier’s little bone. An observation links to the preceding note. The Lombroso case. From the little bone of a mouse sometimes a sea serpent was reconstructed.” (116). Far from being an irrelevant and easily marginalizable detail in Gramsci’s notebooks, the repeated reference to the French scientific naturalist (1769–1832), or, rather, to the relation between Cuvier and a certain “progressive” (and/or Marxist) strain of Italian intellectuals such as Cesare Lombroso, whose “scientific research in criminology” contributed to the “improvement” of the convict’s lot (47),3 Buttigieg shows, is a synecdoche of Gramsci’s errant project: not simply his negative critique of the dominant Italian intellectual discourse, but also, if implicitly, his affirmation of a way of thinking that was commensurate with the concrete historical conditions of Italian and, as always, European bourgeois capitalist modernity. I cannot here do justice to Buttigieg’s brilliant argument (and the raison d’être of his editorial decisions), but a brief summary that reconstellates the Italian occasion of Gramsci’s references to Cuvier’s scientific method into the post-Enlightenment context, when, as Foucault has shown, the ocularcentric and microcosmic classificatory tables of Linnaeus, Buffon, Cuvier, and other naturalists of the

Cuvier’s little bone  293 period, enabled by the triumph of positivist science, was harnessed by bourgeois social reformers to the production of the “regime of truth” and the disciplinary society, may suggest its rich and compelling force. What interests Gramsci about Cuvier, as his synecdochical reference to the necessary relationship between a small anatomical detail and the unknown but predictable whole clearly suggests, is the naturalist scientist’s mode of inquiry. It is, he implies, the modern instrumentalist allotrope of metaphysical inquiry, an ocularcentric truth discourse, a problematic (in Althusser’s sense),4 that begins inquiry from the end (or above: meta). To put it alternatively, it assumes that the answer informs the original question that is asked about uncertain differential phenomena. This positivist problematic of modernity, as Gramsci’s carnivalization of the result of Cuvier’s paleontological narrative – “From the little bone of the mouse sometimes a sea serpent was reconstructed” – makes clear, must of necessity reify, differentiate (classify) the living phenomenon, and, at the same time, fit them into their proper place in the homogeneous whole; it must, that is, willfully reduce the radically different – any evidence that contradicts the preconceived and desired end – to the same. That this is precisely Gramsci’s point about Cuvier’s ocularcentric methodology is made clear in Notebook 14, 29, which Buttigieg quotes, where he expresses doubts about the truth of “Cuvier’s principle” and about its applicability to sociology, to which I will return. Cuvier’s principle of the correlation of the individual organic parts of a body, according to which one can reconstruct the whole body from one of its particles (provided that it is complete in itself) – still, one should carefully re-examine Cuvier’s doctrine in order to expound his thought accurately – should certainly be included within the tradition of French thought, within French “logic” and should be linked to the animal-machine principle. It is not necessary to check whether in biology the principle can be said to be completely valid, this does not seem possible (for example, one should recall the duckbilled platypus, the structure of which has no “logic,” etc.). One should examine whether, metaphor aside, the principle of correlation is useful, correct and fruitful in sociology. (14, 29)5 But, of course, it is not Cuvier’s paleontological method per se that is the target of Gramsci’s corrosive criticism. Like that of Michel Foucault’s genealogy of the disciplinary society, it is, as the last sentence of the above quotation suggests, the modern Italian intellectuals (“progressives” and Marxist sympathizers) and, moreover, orthodox Marxists like Bukharin, who appropriated the positivist mode of inquiry that Cuvier’s naturalist problematic represents for their “reformist” social projects: what Gramsci metonymically calls “Lorianism” after the prominent Italian economist, Achille Loria. As Buttigieg, quoting Gramsci, discusses the complicity of Lorianism with Cuvier’s method, The note [25] concludes with the observation that Loria should not be considered a unique, aberrant phenomenon and that the analysis of his idiosyncrasies could be fruitfully extended to include many other intellectuals:

294  William V. Spanos “Loria is not a terratological individual case: he is the most complete and perfect exemplar of a series of representatives of a certain stratum of intellectuals from a certain period; in general, of those positivist intellectuals who deal with the questions of workers and who believe, more or less, that they are deepening, correcting, or surpassing Marxism … In general terms, then, Lorianism is characteristic of a certain type of literary and scientific production in our country (it is amply documented in Croce’s Critica, Prezzolini’s Voce, in Salvemini’s Unitra) and is related to the poor organization of culture and, hence, to the absence of restraint and criticism.” (44) In other words, like Foucault’s identification of the discourse of the bourgeois penal, educational, and social reformers of the Enlightenment with the positivist methodology of natural scientists like Linneaus, Buffon, and Cuvier and nosologists like Boisier de Sauvages, Gramsci’s identification of “Lorianism” with Cuvier’s methodology is intended to demonstrate that, far from being progressive and emancipatory, the latter is, in fact, a disciplinary discursive practice, a metaphysically grounded sociology which is informed by the will to power over being and whose panoptic gaze structures and differentiates in order to better dedifferentiate – make docile and useful – the differential force of the “practical life” of living human beings. The effect of this calculative thinking is the production of a damaging monstrosity. That this is precisely Gramsci’s point, Buttigieg make resonantly clear when he invokes Gramsci’s next reference to “Cuvier’s little bone,” to relate it once again, but now unequivocally, to “sociology”: “Cuvier’s little bone. Exposition of Cuvier’s principle. But not everyone is Cuvier, and ‘sociology,’ in particular, cannot be compared to the natural sciences. In it, arbitrary and ‘bizarre’ generalizations are much more possible (and more harmful to practical life)” (28.3, 52–3). Then, in a provocative extended elaboration of the connection between Cuvier and Lorianism, which draws the base/superstructure model of orthodox Marxism into its philological net, Buttigieg writes of this note: In one respect this version of the note makes explicit what was already hinted, albeit cryptically, in its earliest formulation; namely, that pseudo-scientific Lorianism leads to conclusions as bizarre as those produced by the misapplication of scientific methods. However, there is also another point being made here which does not appear (at least not explicitly) in the earlier evocation of Cuvier’s principle but which is expressed repeatedly in numerous variations throughout the notebook – that is, one of the most fundamental errors of “sociology” consists in its wholesale and uncritical adoption of a methodology borrowed directly from the natural sciences. The overwhelming importance of this point would be evident to the reader who has attended seriously to the extensive, detailed and scathing critique of Bukharin’s Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. Invoking Gramsci’s numerous indictments in the Notebooks of Bukharin’s positivist problematic, Buttigieg goes on to show that it is precisely the latter’s privileging of a “sociology” based on the ontological determinism of the base/

Cuvier’s little bone  295 superstructure model – this hierarchized reification or spatialization of the temporality of being – over the contingent errancy of the historical process (i.e. the lived experience of human beings) that constitutes the essence of Gramsci’s “scathing critique” of orthodox Marxism – and of “Lorianism.” Attuned to the ontological register of this system of interpretation/representation, Buttigieg quotes a decisive passage from Notebook 11 (section 26) that underscores the reductive metaphysics (the perception of things-as-they-are from the end) of this panoptic mode of inquiry. Sociology has been an attempt to create a method of historical-political science dependent upon an already elaborated philosophical system, evolutionist positivism, against which sociology has reacted, but only partially. Sociology has therefore become a tendency on its own, it has therefore become the philosophy of non-philosophers, an attempt to describe and classify schematically historical and political facts according to criteria constructed on the model of the natural sciences. Sociology, therefore, is an attempt to extract “experimentally” the laws of evolution of human society in such a way as to “predict” the future with the same certainty with which one predicts that an oak tree will develop out of an acorn. Vulgar evolutionism is at the foundation of sociology which cannot know the dialectical principle with its passage from quantity to quality. (55–6) After a commentary that once again identifies this disabling “vulgar” Marxist problematic with Lorianism (“Bukharin’s error resembles the error of the Lorians: he falls under the thrall of the natural sciences” [56]), Buttigieg returns to the relationship between this kind of deterministic sociology and Cuvier, but this time in a way that suggests the remarkable degree to which Gramsci’s discourse is proleptic of Foucault’s genealogy of the disciplinary society. In other words, the “sociologists” approach history in the way Cuvier approaches a single bone. Armed with a set of methodological principles they place each item in its proper place within the predetermined totality. Since they mistake their mechanistic formulas for history itself, there is no historical experience, no event to which they attend in its specificity. Every item unearthed by historical research serves only to fill in the details and to confirm the accuracy of the general picture. This is what happens when philosophy and social science are governed by the same kind of “naturalism” embodied in Cuvier’s principle. (58; my emphasis)6 What is striking about Buttigieg’s singular reading of Gramsci’s critique of “Lorianism” is its suggestion of the absolute correlation between Gramsci’s invocation of Cuvier’s natural scientific method to indict “Lorianist” and orthodox Marxist thinking and Michel Foucault’s invocation of the natural scientists of the Enlightenment to indict the thinking of the truth discourse of liberal bourgeois social “reformers.” I mean, more specifically, the inaugural role that the ocularcentric classificatory tables of Linnaeus, Cuvier, Buffon, Boissier de Sauvages, and

296  William V. Spanos many others played in the establishment of the disciplinary society of modernity – the society (“the regime of truth”), that is, that spatializes (and miniaturizes) particular sites on the continuum of being (matter, flora, fauna, disease, economy, humanity, etc.), then, under the aegis of the panoptic (metaphysical) gaze, individuates (classifies) their amorphousness (“places each item [the smallest detail] within its proper place in the predetermined totality”) the better to gain knowledge – and power – over them. It is worth quoting Foucault at length to suggest this remarkable correlation, and one of the essential reasons Gramsci’s critique has been so relevant to some of the most important thinkers of our poststructuralist occasions: Foucault, Althusser, Williams, and, not least, Edward W. Said. In organizing “cells,” “places,” and “ranks,” the disciplines create complex spaces that are at once architectural, functional and hierarchical. It is spaces that provide fixed positions and permit circulation; they carve out individual segments and establish operational links; they mark places and indicate values; they guarantee the obedience of individuals, but also a better economy of time and gesture … The first of the great operations of discipline is, therefore, the constitution of “tableaux vivants,” which transform the confused, useless or dangerous multitudes into ordered multiplicities. The drawing up of “tables” was one of the greatest problems of the scientific, political and economic technology of the eighteenth century; how one was to arrange botanical and zoological gardens, and construct at the same time rational classifications of living beings; how one was to observe, supervise, regularize the circulation of commodities and money and thus build up an economic table that might serve the principle of the increase of wealth; how one was to inspect men, observe their presence and absence and constitute a general and permanent register of the armed forces; how one was to distribute patients, separate them from one another, divide up the hospital space and make a systematic classification of diseases: these were all twin operations in which the two elements – distribution and analysis, supervision and intelligibility – are inextricably bound up. In the eighteenth century, the table was both a technique of power and a procedure of knowledge. It was a question of organizing the multiple, of providing oneself with an instrument to cover it and master it; it was a question of imposing upon it an “order.” (1979, 148)

3 What, in sum, Buttigieg is claiming in his commentary on the Prison Notebooks is that Gramsci’s critique of his age involved a profoundly proleptic understanding of the essential role that not simply culture but thinking itself played in constituting its “reality,” and that it was this overdetermination of thinking in the formation of culture and sociopolitics that distinguished his Marxist perspective from that of the “progressive” intellectuals of his time, both Italian and Soviet Marxist. In unrelentingly disclosing that the instrumentalist or positivist truth discourse of the latter was simply an allotrope of an imperial meta-physics, Gramsci was not only suggesting that their discursive system, insofar as it privileged a metanarrative

Cuvier’s little bone  297 (the answer to the question), was doing their thinking for them – that, in other words, it slighted the differential dynamics of history and thus precluded the possibility of rigorous criticism. He was also suggesting that this instrumentalist thinking, this obsessive privileging of the answer over the question was itself, in fact, a “totalitarianism” that was different from the fascism it ostensibly opposed only in the sense that the principle of presence, the transcendental center elsewhere – the visible will to power of totalitarian regimes – was internalized in the body politic and rendered invisible. This is why, as Buttigieg insistently affirms, Gramsci abandoned the Marxist (and capitalist) base/superstructure interpretive model in favor of an interpretation of being as an indissoluble continuum ranging from being as such through thinking and culture to economics and sociopolitics, a shift of emphasis the imperative of which was to think the emanicipatory possibilities of the intellectual, of historicity, and of the question. This is also why it is a mistake of great significance – one that is not only blind to the essential project of the Prison Notebooks but that paradoxically would reduce Gramsci’s text to another example of “Lorianism” – to assume, as so many commentators and some of his earlier editors have, that had the circumstances of their composition been more favorable, he would have had the opportunity to fill the gaps, work out the structure, narrativize what has come down to us as incommensurable fragments. As Buttigieg puts it, What has been insufficiently appreciated and largely ignored, however, is that the massive amount of detailed factual information recorded in the notebooks – somehow, the “philological” method at work in the notebooks has not attracted much attention. It is not very hard to understand why this is the case. Virtually every description and discussion of Gramsci’s text contains an observation about its fragmentariness and its incomplete character. Such observations are frequently accompanied by the assumption that it is the task of the Gramscian scholar to reconstruct out of these fragments a coherent whole. Implicitly or explicitly, the fragmentary nature of the notebooks is customarily attributed to the brutal conditions under which they were composed. Fragmentation, in other words, is taken to be an unfortunate obstacle that stands in the way of understanding what Gramsci meant to say or would have said if he only had had time and the means to produce a “normal” book, or series of books. Hence the effort to “organize” the notebooks, to collect the fragments around certain themes or under certain rubrics … The Gramscian editor, scholar or commentator, then, feels compelled to gather the pieces together and, like a latter day literary Cuvier, to stitch them together. Some times this operation of reconstruction is carried out responsibly, that is, with a critical awareness of its limitations. At other times, however, this operation is carried out with the misguided belief that one can actually reconstruct not just Gramsci’s thought but Gramsci himself. (Buttigieg 1992, 62–3)7 To put what Buttigieg is saying here in the language of Edward Said, one of Gramsci’s most acutely sympathetic readers, Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks (like, say, Theodor Adorno’s Minimal Moralia or, for that matter, Said’s Orientalism) is

298  William V. Spanos not the product of a professional scholar who was at home in the world he inhabited, an assured and assuring homeland informed by a comforting principle of Presence, a Center, an Origin or Telos. On the contrary, they are the reflections of a “damaged life”: a life, that is, that was damaged precisely by a brutal onto-sociopolitical regime that justified its brutality by a totalizing intellectual system that demanded the extermination or confinement or banishment of any contradiction – theoretical or human – that would delegitimate its polyvalent metanarrative. They are, to put it in terms of the epigraph, the originary and responsible reflections of a deracinated intellectual, “between domains, between homes, and between languages,” an “organic” and “exilic” intellectual whose corrosive worldly experience had taught him that the will to structure the temporal/differential dynamics of being in all its worldly manifestations – to force its errant historicity to yield answers – is not simply the totalitarian will to domination, but ultimately the will to annul its living force. The fragmentariness of the Prison Notebooks, in other words, is not the consequence of circumstantial lack; it is the positive expression of the nonbeing (the “truth”) of being that the truth discourse of “Lorianism” or orthodox Marxism or, more broadly, Enlightenment modernity, in its fiery pursuit of Totality, the End, the Answer, will have nothing to do with. It is this spectral character of the “truth” of Gramsci’s Notebooks – this differential historicity of history – that has haunted all too much of Gramsci scholarship and, on the other hand, has rendered it urgently relevant to the decentered postmodern occasion. This is what I think Buttigieg means when, following his critique of those on the Right and the Left who are obsessed by their desire for “a true Gramsci,“ he writes, echoing Edward Said: It would be futile to think that one can put an end to this game. Even the most conscientiously accurate and complete reproduction of Gramsci’s manuscripts will not settle the polemics, or still the urge to reconstruct the “true” Gramsci. However, it is only by going to and through the complete text of the notebooks that one can gain a thorough appreciation of what it means to place the accent on “history in its infinite variety and multiplicity,” the fragmentary character of the notebooks is due, at least, in part, to the “philological” method governing their composition. “Philology” requires minute attention to detail, it seeks to ascertain the specificity of the particular. Many of the items that make up the notebooks do precisely this – they recorded history in its infinite variety and multiplicity. To be sure, complex networks of relations are established among their details and they, in turn, give rise to general concepts and theories – the most famous of which is “hegemony.” However if the detailed record of the particular were allowed to vanish, if the relationships among the fragments were permanently fixed, then the concepts and theories would run the danger of becoming crystallized into dogma. In order to stabilize the relationship among the fragments that make up the Prison Notebooks one would have to abandon “philology” in favor of Cuvier’s principle … But history is presented in the notebooks as “experience” not as contemplation; and the “experience upon which the philosophy of praxis is based cannot be schematized.” (63–4)

Cuvier’s little bone  299 The “truth” of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, Buttigieg is implying, lies precisely in the abyssal gaps between its multitudinous fragments, and we postmodern intellectuals should be grateful to him for giving us this aporetic Gramsci. Which is to say, for reminding those of us who would put the fragments in their proper place, solve the puzzle they pose, construct them into a narrative – that is, give us an “essential Gramsci,” not only of that “reality” but also of the polyvalent emancipatory possibilities that reside in its dislocating dynamics.

Notes 1 I am referring to the first two of the projected volumes of the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 1992, 1996). 2 See also Althusser: “To my knowledge, Gramsci is the only one who went any distance in the road I am taking. He had the ‘remarkable’ idea that the State could not be reduced to the (Repressive) State Apparatus, but included, as he put it, a number of institutions from ‘civil society’: the Church, the Schools, the trade unions, etc.” (1971, 142). 3 I put quotations around Lombroso to suggest that he was precisely exemplary of the nineteenth-century European “reformers” of penology who, according to Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1979), contributed to the formation of the disciplinary society. 4 In Althusser’s terms: What classical political economy does not see, is not what it does not see, it is what it sees; it is not what it lacks, on the contrary, it is what it does not lack; it is not what it misses, on the contrary it is what it does not miss. The oversight, then, is not to see what one sees, the oversight no longer concerns the object, but the sight itself. The oversight is an oversight that concerns vision: non-vision is therefore inside vision, it is a form of vision and hence has a necessary relationship with vision. (1970b, 21) See also Spanos (1998). 5 At the risk of digressing, I think it is worth remarking that Gramsci, I’m sure, would have admired Herman Melville, an American writer who refused to adhere to the dictates of the truth of natural science and the instrumentalist sociopolitical narrative to which it gave rise. That affinity is clearly suggested by the following passage from The Confidence-Man, Melville’s devastating satirical critique of the reductive thinking that dominated the American culture of his day. If reason be judge, no writer has produced such inconsistent characters as nature herself has. It must call for no small sagacity in a reader unerringly to discriminate in a novel between the inconsistencies of conception and those of life. As elsewhere, experience is the only guide here; but as no man’s experience can be co-extensive with what is, it may be unwise in every case to rest upon it. When the duck-billed beaver of Australia was first brought stuffed to England, the naturalists, appealing to their classifications, maintained that there was, in reality, no such creature; the bill in the specimen must needs be, in some way, artificially stuck on. (1984, 70) 6 Since I see the unmistakable influence of Said’s scattered insights into the “meaning” of the prison notebooks in Buttigieg’s interpretation of “Gramsci’s method,” it might be worth referring to a passage from Said’s work that not only parallels Buttigieg’s reading of Gramsci’s invocation of “Cuvier’s little bone” but also points to the violence that this positivist and instrumentalist method is capable of perpetrating, not only against historical reality but against those constituencies of the human community to which its “truths” are applied. In his last published book, Freud and the Non-European, in which he invokes Freud’s assertion that Moses was an Egyptian to argue in behalf of “a bi-national state in which Israel and Palestine are parts, rather than antagonists of

300  William V. Spanos each other’s history and underlying reality,” Said quotes an Israeli archeologist who, analogous to the sociologist who “approaches history in the manner Cuvier approaches a little bone,” writes: This is a good moment to say that I am greatly indebted to the work of a young scholar, Nadia Abu el-Haj, whose major book is entitled Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. What she provides first of all is a history of systematic colonial archaeological exploration in Palestine, dating back to British work in the mid-nineteenth century. She then continues the story in the period before Israel is established, connecting the actual practice of archaeology with a nascent national ideology – an ideology with plans for the repossession of the land through renaming and resettling, much of it given archaeological justification as a schematic extraction of Jewish identity despite the existence of Arab names and traces of other civilizations. This effort … epistemologically prepares the way for a fully fledged post-1948 sense of Israeli-Jewish identity based in assembling discrete archaeological particulars – scattered remnants of masonry, tablets, bones, tombs, etc. – into a sort of spatial biography out of which Israel emerges “visibly and linguistically, as the Jewish national home.” (Said 2003, 47–8; my emphasis) 7 What Buttigieg means by “philology” no doubt derives from Edward Said’s discussion of another “damaged life,” Erich Auerbach, in his great essay, “Secular Criticism” (Said 1983): The answer to this question [How did exile become converted from a challenge or risk, or even from an active impingement on his European selfhood, into a positive mission, whose success would be a cultural act of great importance?] is to be found in Auerbach’s autumnal essay “Philologie der Weltliteratur.” The major part of the essay elaborated on the notion first explicitly announced in Mimesis, but already recognizable in Auerbach’s early interest in Vico, that philological work deals with humanity at large and transcends national boundaries. As he says, “our philological home is the earth: it can no longer be the nation.” His essay makes clear, however, that his earthly home is European culture. But then, as if remembering the period of his extraEuropean exile in the Orient, he adds: “The most priceless and indispensable part of a philologist’s heritage is still his own nation’s culture and heritage. Only when he is first separated from his heritage, however, and then transcends it does it become truly effective.”

22 The Prison Notebooks Antonio Gramsci’s work in progress Joseph A. Buttigieg

In May 1930, Antonio Gramsci took a fresh notebook and divided it into two sections. He planned to use at least part of the first half for a set of notes on Canto X of the Inferno and various other issues related to Dante scholarship and criticism; the second half was to be devoted to “Notes on Philosophy. Materialism and Idealism. First Series.” In Notebook 4 we see Gramsci attempting, for the first time, to organize at least some of his “notes and jottings” in thematic clusters. (Notebook 4, in fact, also contains a sequence of long notes on the intellectuals and on education; for these Gramsci used the pages in the first half of the notebook that were still blank after he had composed his observations on Dante and other miscellaneous matters.) He would later make an even more extensive effort to gather (and simultaneously modify or elaborate) many of his widely scattered notes on certain topics in “special notebooks,” each one of which was dedicated to a specific subject – for example, “Americanism and Fordism” (Notebook 22), “Literary Criticism” (Notebook 23), “Journalism” (Notebook 24), “On the Margins of History, History of Subaltern Social Groups” (Notebook 25). In spite of these and several other attempts that Gramsci made to give some semblance of order to his multidirectional and open-ended project of research, inquiry, and criticism, the body of work he produced during his incarceration remained impervious to systematization. The sprawling text of Gramsci’s prison notebooks has been described variously as fragmentary, incomplete, cryptic (or, rather, encrypted to circumvent the attentions of the prison authorities) – descriptions that, more often than not, have served as a prelude to and a justification for reconstructing the text, filling its lacunae, or unlocking its hidden meaning. Needless to say, the reconstructions, the filling of the blanks, and the decoding of Gramsci’s text have rarely been either innocent or innocuous; indeed, they almost always reveal the predilections, polemical motivation, ideological bias, or conventional way of thinking of the putative philologist, while they invariably fail to bring into relief the unique character of Gramsci’s work. What enables such treatments of Gramsci’s work, apart from the fact that those who read them are too lazy to examine the original document for themselves, is the common assumption that a text or a “work” must have a center and/or a circumference and that the identification of the former or the demarcation of the latter would reveal its core meaning, its controlling idea, or its telos. One is tempted to say that those who purport to compensate for or remedy the incompleteness, the supposed obscurity, or the fragmentariness of Gramsci’s

302  Joseph A. Buttigieg prison notebooks end up distorting their meaning. That, however, would be inaccurate for it implies that there is a “correct” or “true” version of Gramsci against which differing interpretations could be measured for accuracy, whereas Gramsci’s work is patently decentered, open, tentative, provisional, exploratory. On the other hand, though, it would be absurd to maintain that the incompleteness and fragmentariness of the notebooks make it impossible to distinguish instrumental, manipulative, parti pris interpretations of them from those readings that seek to follow the complicated and determinedly antidogmatic, nontotalizing processes of thought of which they are a record and an expression. In any case, the most damaging, even debilitating, effect of the systematizations and supposed reconstructions or reconfigurations of the prison notebooks is that, under the guise of elucidating them, they actually direct attention away from what Gianni Francioni (1984) called “the materiality” of Gramsci’s text. Francioni also aptly described the prison notebooks as “Gramsci’s workshop”; leafing through them one can see Gramsci at work, observe how he reads and studies, notice the attention he devotes to the specificity of the phenomena he examines, follow the intricate processes of analysis, critique, and reflection that lead to his insights, appreciate the discipline with which he resists the seductions of overarching, all-embracing theoretical abstractions. The most valuable and abiding aspects of Gramsci’s text are all too easily obscured or quite simply overlooked by the impulse to tame it, normalize it, paraphrase it so as to make it conform to habitual ways of thinking. As William Spanos (2006) correctly observes, it is the “structural principle” and “principle of inquiry” (or what Valentino Gerratana [1997] called “Gramsci’s method”) embedded in the notebooks that makes Gramsci’s legacy enduring and powerful – a principle or a method accessible only to patient and assiduous readers. Gramsci was a conscientious and rigorous reader; his notebooks are replete with remarks about the problems of evaluating documents, warnings against facile interpretations, and scathing denunciations of charlatan treatments of texts. A noteworthy, though hitherto untranslated, instance of this appears towards the end of Notebook 6: “Importuning the text.” In other words, when out of zealous attachment to a thesis, one makes texts say more than they really do. This error of philological method occurs also outside of philology, in studies and analyses of all aspects of life. In terms of criminal law, it is analogous to selling goods at lesser weight and of different quality than had been agreed upon, but it is not considered a crime unless the will to deceive is glaringly obvious. But don’t negligence and incompetence deserve to be sanctioned – if not a judicial sanction, at least an intellectual and moral sanction? (Notebook 6, §198) Most pertinent of all, however, is Gramsci’s first entry under the general heading “Notes on Philosophy. Materialism and Idealism. First Series” where he sketches his views on how best to approach the study of the writings and the thought of Karl Marx. Despite the incommensurable differences between Marx’s texts and Gramsci’s, to say nothing about the dissimilar circumstances of their

The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s work in progress  303 composition and publication, there are a number of elements in this note that no reader/interpreter of the prison notebooks and of Gramsci’s thought in general could justifiably ignore. I will quote at some length, not because herein lies the key to the core meaning of Gramsci’s opus or the map to his labyrinthine text, but because this in an instance where several (though by no means all) important aspects of Gramsci’s “method” stand out in bold relief thus providing the reader with valuable insights into work and thought processes that wove the fabric of the notebooks. If one wants to study a conception of the world that has never been systematically expounded by its author-thinker, detailed work is required, and it has to be conducted with the most scrupulous accuracy and scientific honesty. It is necessary, first of all, to trace the process of the thinker’s intellectual development in order to reconstruct it in accordance with those elements that became stable and permanent – that is, those elements really adopted by the author as his own thought, distinct and superior to the “material” he had studied earlier and that, at a certain time, he may have found attractive, even to the point of having accepted it provisionally and used it in his critical work or in his work of historical or scientific reconstruction. This precaution is essential, particularly when dealing with a nonsystematic thinker, with a personality in whom theoretical and practical activity are indissolubly intertwined, and with an intellect that is therefore in continuous creation and perpetual movement … The search for the leitmotiv, the rhythm of thought, [is] more important than single, isolated quotations. The thematically organized first edition, in Italian, of the prison notebooks had the merit of making Gramsci’s work accessible to the nonspecialist reader, but it also made it quite difficult to decipher the “rhythm of thought” of the author. The same is true of Quintin Hoare’s and Geoffrey Nowell Smith’s Selections from the Prison Notebooks, the anthology through which the overwhelming majority of anglophone readers became acquainted with Gramsci’s thought. Rather than look for Gramsci’s “rhythm of thought,” many scholars and commentators who relied on these (and similar) editions sought a fixed point of reference that would serve as a controlling principle or an arché for their systematization of Gramsci’s thought. Thus, for example, there have been repeated efforts to “explain” Gramsci by tracing his ideas to their purported roots in Benedetto Croce’s philosophy – a search for origins that must not be mistaken for, and that contributes little to, a genealogical account of Gramsci’s political, philosophical, cultural, and historiographical project. Others opted to juxtapose and string together “isolated quotations” to produce out of the fragments of Gramsci’s text a well-ordered coherent whole – much like one would reconstruct a mosaic out of a myriad of tesserae that for some reason had been haphazardly scattered. Perry Anderson is by no means the worst offender in this respect, yet, his argument in the very influential essay “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci” depends for its persuasiveness on the culling and juxtaposing of passages from the notebooks with scant regard for either their context or the chronology of their composition. An example of how one needs

304  Joseph A. Buttigieg to set about examining the emergence of the concept of hegemony in Gramsci is provided by David Ruccio (2006), whose approach stands in sharp contrast to the sweeping declarations one finds in Anderson. At one point, for instance, Anderson asserts that “Gramsci’s own treatment of the idea of hegemony descends directly from the definitions of the Third International” (1976, 18), an assertion directly contradicted by the passage in Notebook 1, §44 discussed by Ruccio. In addition, there has been a tendency to pluck “isolated quotations” out of the notebooks not for the purpose of “reconstructing” Gramsci’s theory or philosophy, but to lend credence to or reinforce a given thesis or an argument. This tendency is still very much in evidence among practitioners of cultural studies and in discussions of civil society. That such misreadings of Gramsci persist despite the fact that the complete Italian critical edition of the prison notebooks has now been available for thirty years is, to say the least, dispiriting. There is little excuse for such cavalier treatments of Gramsci’s writings. Long before work on the complete critical edition of the Quaderni del carcere had even begun, the most perspicacious readers of the thematic edition of the notebooks realized that their fragmentariness and incompletion could not be attributed simply to the atrocious conditions under which they were composed. Eugenio Garin, for example, in a superb essay written as far back as 1958, noted that the coherence of Gramsci’s work is to be found in the recurrence of certain themes, issues, and preoccupations rather than in some underlying or overarching explanatory system. Garin did not perceive this crucial aspect of Gramsci’s work through clairvoyance but through meticulous reading. Among other things he cites a passage in Gramsci’s critique of Bukharin’s systematization of “historical materialism” which concludes: “There are those who believe that science must absolutely mean ‘system’ and, therefore, they construct all kinds of systems which have only the mechanical outward appearance of a system.” Garin also draws attention to another revealing passage (in this instance, Gramsci is discussing one of Croce’s minor works): Dissolution of the concept of any delimited and closed – and thus pedantic and abstruse – philosophical “system”; affirmation that philosophy must resolve the problems that from time to time are presented as the historical process unfolds. One should not look for the systematic character of something in an external architectural structure but in the inner consistency and the broad inclusiveness of each particular solution. Philosophical thought, then, is not conceived as a progression – one thought leading to another – but as thought stemming from historical reality. (Notebook 10, I, §4) It is no coincidence, Garin explains, that the fragmentary style adopted by Gramsci enables him to attend to “small things”; Gramsci was always suspicious of grand schemes and repeatedly stressed the importance of paying attention to phenomena in all their particularity. In one of his early letters (4 July 1927) from prison to his friend Giuseppe Berti, he wrote: “I believe that inspiration should be tossed into a ‘ditch’; instead one should apply the method taught by the most particularized experiences and the most dispassionate or objective self-criticism.”

The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s work in progress  305 Paying attention to small things, focusing on the particular: this is the most important aspect of Gramsci’s “method” which he equated with philology. “Philology,” Gramsci wrote, “is the methodological expression of the importance of particular facts understood as definite and specific ‘individualities’” (Notebook 7, §6). Furthermore, he asserted that philology was the methodology appropriate to the philosophy of praxis: “The experience upon which the philosophy of praxis is based cannot be schematized; it is history in its infinite variety and multiplicity, the study of which can give rise to ‘philology’ as a method of scholarship” (Notebook 11, §25). To say that Gramsci adhered to the philological method is the same as saying, in Edward Said’s words, that “Gramsci is programmatically opposed to two things from one end to another of his career: (a) the tendency to homogenize, equalize, mediatize everything, what we can call the temporalizing and homological function by which the whole problem of specificity, locality, and/or identity is reformulated so as to make equivalence; (b) the tendency to see history and society as working according to deterministic laws of economics, sociology, or even universal philosophy” (2000, 466). Said also makes a poignant observation about the open-ended nature of Gramsci’s work, suggesting that Gramsci chose the forms of writing that he did “as ways of never finishing his discourse, never completing his utterance for fear that it would compromise his work by giving it the status of a text both to himself and to his readers, by turning his work into a body of resolved systematic ideas that would exercise their dominion over him and over his reader” (467). Gramsci’s prison writings acquired the status of a text, in a certain sense, only posthumously – a text over which he had no control and which his first editors tried to “normalize.” With the publication of Gerratana’s critical edition, in which the manuscript is reproduced in a manner that is as close to the original as anything but a facsimile could be, Gramsci’s work was, as it were, reopened – which is to say not only that the unfinished, undogmatic character of the notebooks as a work in progress is now hard to overlook, but also that the notebooks can elicit from readers responses, commentaries, and other forms of engagement that “finished” works systematically expounding well-wrought theories or finely honed philosophies cannot. The notebooks are “unfinished business” in more ways than one. Still, the task of reading Gramsci today is not a simple one, if for no other reason than that he remained firmly anchored in his time – adamant in his rejection of metaphysical and ahistorical perspectives and scornful of Olympian posturing. Gramsci needs constant translation – in the broader sense of the term, as Peter Ives (2006) explains. Translation, of course, is a double move: it brings the translated author into the present conjuncture, and it simultaneously brings to bear on the author the discourse of the current reader and interpreter. The results can be very fruitful, as is evident from Joseph Childers’s (2006) observations, which illustrate how Gramsci informs Said and Said’s thought elaborates Gramsci’s. Another instance of this kind of exchange can be found in Stuart Hall’s writings. The first extracts of Gramsci’s prison notebooks translated into English appeared in a slim volume entitled The Open Marxism of Antonio Gramsci (1957). It is Gramsci’s openness that continues to make him such a compelling interlocutor.

Appendix: The Presence of Gramsci in Rethinking Marxism (1988–2011)

Annunziato, F. R. 1992. Gramsci’s Theory of Trade Unionism. Rethinking Marxism 1 (2): 142–64. Ashbolt, A. 2007. Hegemony and the Sixties: Observations, Polemics, Meanderings. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 208–20. Boothman, D. 2008. The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony. Rethinking Marxism 20 (2): 201–15. Bové, P. 1991. Dante, Gramsci and Cultural Criticism. Rethinking Marxism 4 (1): 74–86. Buck-Morss, S. 2007. Sovereign Right and the Global Left. Rethinking Marxism 19 (4): 432–51. Buttigieg, J. A. 2006. The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s Work in Progress. Rethinking Marxism 18 (1): 37–42. Cahill, D. 2007. The Contours of Neoliberal Hegemony in Australia. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 221–33. Childers, J. W. 2006. Of Prison Notebooks and the Restoration of an Archive. Rethinking Marxism 18 (1): 9–14. Coutinho. C. N. 2000. General Will and Democracy in Rousseau, Hegel, and Gramsci. Rethinking Marxism 12 (2): 1–17. Davidson, A. 2007. Antonio Gramsci and Australia. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 159–68. Francese, J. 2009. Thoughts on Gramsci’s Need “To Do Something ‘Für ewig.’” Rethinking Marxism 21 (1): 54–66. Friedman, P. K. 2009. Ethical Hegemony. Rethinking Marxism 21 (3): 355–65. Green, M. E. 2002. Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern. Rethinking Marxism 14 (3): 1–24. Hall, St. 1992. Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies. Rethinking Marxism 5 (1): 10–18. Haug, W. F. 2001. From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx: Historical Materialism and the Philosophy of Praxis. Rethinking Marxism 13 (1): 69–82. Hawksley, C. 2007. Constructing Hegemony: Colonial Rule and Colonial Legitimacy in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 195–207. Howson, R. 2007. From Ethico-Political Hegemony to Postmarxism. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 234–44. Ives, P. 1998. A Grammatical Introduction to Gramsci’s Political Theory. Rethinking Marxism 10 (1): 34–51. Ives, P. 2006. The Mammoth Task of Translating Gramsci. Rethinking Marxism 18 (1): 15–22. Ives, P. 2009. Prestige, Faith, and Dialect: Expanding Gramsci’s Engagement. Rethinking Marxism 21 (3): 366–74.

Appendix  307 Kennedy, D. 1988. My Talk at the Gramsci Institute. Rethinking Marxism 1 (3): 100–30. Landy, M. 1991. Socialist Education Today: Pessimism or Optimism of the Intellect? Rethinking Marxism 4 (3): 9–23. Mansfield, S. R. 1993. Gramsci and the Dialectic. Rethinking Marxism 6 (2): 81–103. Moe, N. 1990. Production and Its Others: Gramsci’s “Sexual Question.” Rethinking Marxism 3 (3–4): 218–37. Morera, E. 2000. Gramsci’s Critical Modernity. Rethinking Marxism 12 (1): 16–46. Morton, A. D. 2002. Social Forces in the Struggle over Hegemony: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International Political Economy. Rethinking Marxism 15 (2): 153–79. O’Connell, D. 1993. Bloom and Babbitt: A Gramscian View. Rethinking Marxism 6 (1): 96–103. Rosengarten, F. 1999. Conferring on Gramsci. Rethinking Marxism 11 (1): 113–19. Ruccio, D. F. 2006. Unfinished Business: Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Rethinking Marxism 18 (1): 1–7. Sassoon, A. S. 1990. Gramsci’s Subversion of the Language of Politics. Rethinking Marxism 3 (1): 14–25. Selenu, S. 2009. Ives and Gramsci in Dialogue: Vernacular Subalternity, Cultural interferences, and the Word-Thing Interdependence. Rethinking Marxism 21 (3): 344–54. Shear, B. W. 2008. Gramsci, Intellectuals, and Academic Practice Today. Rethinking Marxism 20 (1): 55–67. Smith, K. 2007. Subjectivity, Hegemony, and the Subaltern in Sydney, 1870–1900. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 169–79. Spanos, W. V. 2006. Cuvier’s Little Bone: Joseph Buttigieg’s English Edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. Rethinking Marxism 18 (1): 23–36. Swanson, J. 2009. Gramsci as Theorist of Politics. Rethinking Marxism 21 (3): 336–43. Wainwright, J. 2010. Was Gramsci a Marxist? Rethinking Marxism 22 (4). Watkins, E. 1999. Gramscian Politics and Capitalist Common Sense. Rethinking Marxism 11 (3): 83–90. Wells, A. 2007. Imperial Hegemony and Colonial Labor. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2): 180–94. Wolff, R. D. 1989. Gramsci, Marxism and Philosophy. Rethinking Marxism 2 (2): 41–57. Zene, C. 2011. Self-consciousness of the Dalits as “Subalterns”: Reflections on Gramsci in South Asia. Rethinking Marxism 23 (1).

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Index

abstraction: anti-historicist 222; historically determined 2, 74, 224, 228, 249; method of 218 Adorno, Theodor 44, 147, 211, 297 Althusser, Louis 1, 42, 46, 129, 131, 143, 148, 171, 188, 243, 261, 270, 276, 290, 293, 296 Amariglio, Jack 107 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji 102 Americanism and Fordism 5, 6, 31, 33, 36, 113–43, 154, 211 Anderson, Perry 4, 58, 59, 179, 201, 303, 304 Annunziato, Frank R. 5 antagonism 42, 45–6, 49–51, 138, 143, 167, 168, 172–6, 184, 203 Arendt, Hannah 190 Aronowitz, Stanley 50 Ascoli, Graziadio Isaia 64, 65 Auerbach, Erich 23, 26, 300n7 Augelli, Enrico 159 Australian National Farmers Federation 167 Australian Sociological Association 167 Avanti 114 Bahktin, Mikhail 51 Baratta, Giorgio 90, 93, 98 Barthes, Roland 51 Barzellotti, Giacomo 79–80, 86, 92 base (economic). See structure and superstructure Baudrillard, Jean 42, 44, 142 Bellamy, Richard 286 Benjamin, Walter 44, 213, 281, 284–6 Bernstein, Edward 115, 116 Berti, Giuseppe 304 Bhaduri, Bhuvaneswari 94 Bhaskar, Roy 239 Bibliografia Gramsciana 3

biennio rosso 114, 119, 285 Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies 11, 39, 105 Blackburn, Robin 40 Block, Fred 106–7 Bloom, Alan 36 Bobbio, Norberto 57–8, 169 Bolsheviks/Bolshevism 45, 55, 57–61, 117–9, 201 Boothman, Derek 4 Bové, Paul 4 Bowman, Paul 168 Braudel, Fernand 250 Brecht, Bertolt 207, 209, 213 Bretton Woods 155, 156 Buddhism 98, 102 Bukharin, Nikolai 55, 58–9, 61, 148, 182, 205, 207–8, 217, 238, 262, 293–5, 304 Bulferetti, Domenico 79 Burnham, Peter 161 Buttigieg, Joseph A. 3, 6–7, 74, 85, 90, 269–70, 274–80, 282–7, 288–99 Cammack, Paul 163 capitalism 31–2, 34, 37, 40, 42, 45–6, 49, 83, 105–11, 112–29, 147–66, 181, 193–4, 200, 203, 212, 279, 282, 291–2; advanced 155–6; global 31, 83, 106–10; late 41–2, 44; modern 290, 292 Carr, E. H. 58, 222 catharsis 22, 171, 190, 202, 222 Catholic Church 36, 72, 129, 154, 262, 263; and ideology 263 Catholicism 241, 256, 262 Certeau, Michel de 92 Chattetjee, Partha 102 Childers, Joseph W. 6, 305 Christianity 14, 98–100, 239, 242, 265, 279 Ciccotti, Ettore 78–9

330  Index civil society 43, 45–6, 49, 70–4, 83, 86–7, 91, 95, 97, 103, 129, 131, 149–53, 156, 161–5, 169, 171, 191–3, 196–7, 200–2, 211, 214, 226, 263, 283, 304 class: alliances 57, 60, 83, 86, 89n12; consciousness 85, 97, 112–3, 206; social 48, 68, 97, 154, 192; structure 70, 157, 183, 217, 235, 273, 286; struggle 74, 153, 163, 179, 184, 212, 217, 223, 229, 235; working 49, 59–60, 113, 118, 123, 137, 140, 161, 172, 194 coercion and consent 40, 42, 62, 91 collective will 5, 117, 168, 174, 191, 195, 200, 202, 241; see also national popular colonialism 91, 95 Comintern. See Third International commodity fetishism 273, 286 common sense 4–5, 21, 40, 46–8, 50, 81, 86, 91, 105–11, 128, 167–8, 180, 182, 233, 239, 263–5, 272, 276, 283, 291; see also good sense communications 13–17, 47, 141–2, 160 Coutinho, Carlos Nelson 5 Cox, Robert 147–58, 160, 162 Crehan, Kate 286 critical theory 12, 44, 51, 147–56, 161, 164–5, 207 Croce, Benedetto 3, 6, 20–3, 26–30, 55, 61–2, 66, 70–2, 86, 169, 173, 188, 206, 212, 217–35, 239, 241–2, 249, 259, 303–4 Croceanism 217–36; dialectics 221, 226, 229; Gramsci’s anti-Croce 219, 233, 234, 236; Gramsci’s relationship to 23, 45, 218–20, 231–3; history 62; idealism 6; methodology 220; philosophy 218–19, 231; positivism 232 cultural criticism 19–30, 275, 289 cultural politics 19–20, 46, 131, 238 cultural studies 11–18, 39, 48, 51, 105–6, 111, 131, 304 culture 11–12, 19–20, 40, 52, 64–6, 131, 142, 150, 203, 206, 251, 254, 276–7, 291; American 32, 35; analysis of 4, 6, 15, 42, 46, 51, 68, 131, 182, 282–3; and class 65, 271; and literature 211; and political struggle 47, 85, 271; and politics 290; British 12–13; cultural history 19–20, 224; dominant 21, 47; English 13–15; European 35, 70–1, 240; immanent 292; Irish 31, 36; Italian 23; mass 44, 47, 49–50; national 261, 283; of consent 40; politics of 5, 132, 211; popular 11, 14, 47–9, 75, 91, 131; postmodern 254, 260–1; subaltern 47; thinking and 296–7

Cuoco, Vincenzo 62 Currie, Kate 253 Cuvier, Georges 288–99 Dalits 5, 90–103 D’Annunzio Gabriele 33 Dante Alighieri 4, 19–30, 282, 301 De Sanctis, Francesco 27, 65 deconstruction 48, 94–5, 217 DeLeon, Daniel 115, 126–7 Deleuze, Gilles 81–2, 93–4 democracy 39, 63, 88, 115–6, 158, 160, 168, 173, 190–203 Derrida, Jacques 43, 51, 93–4, 96, 167–8, 252–4, 275 determinism, economic 2, 49, 117, 130n4, 170, 188 dialectic 6, 26, 61, 164, 169–71, 173, 176, 182, 185, 198, 209, 214, 217–36, 257, 259–60 dialectic of distincts 169, 173, 218, 220–4, 228–30 dialectical materialism 116, 208 dictatorship of the proletariat 57, 119, 121 dogmatism 184–7 Drainville, André 163 economism 32, 40, 49–50, 57, 105, 114–17, 128, 130n4, 136, 163, 186, 249 education 4, 39–52, 65, 96, 100, 153, 245 Einaudi, Luigi 284 Eliot, T. S. 20, 23–30 empiricism 161, 180–3, 186–8, 223, 259 Engels, Friedrich 57, 68, 112–13, 127, 185, 190, 201, 205–9, 219, 227, 231 Enlightenment, the 133, 238, 265, 294–5, 298 epistemology 1–2, 6, 95, 98, 148, 163, 165, 170, 179–88, 206, 209–10, 238–66 equivalence 167–8, 172–5, 305 ethico-political: conscience 201–2; (see also hegemony); historical bloc 170–1; history 61–2, 232; moment 222; will 195, 202–3 Eurocentrism 40, 241 factory councils 5, 114–5, 119–25, 128 Fanon, Franz 16 Farley, Rick 167–8, 173 fascism 20, 33, 39, 44, 206, 211, 218, 282, 292, 297 feminism 51, 94, 96, 132, 141, 143, 173 Fiat 119, 121; autoworkers 122 Finocchiaro, Maurice 169, 219–21, 225–6, 229, 233–4

Index  331 First International 113 folklore 4, 47–8, 98, 233, 265, 282 Fontana, Benedetto 63–5, 169, 243, 286 force and consent 58, 62, 236 Fordism 32, 44, 52, 107, 136, 139–40, 154–6, 211, 213, 253, 281; see also Taylorism, Americanism and Fordism Forgacs, David 47, 278 Fortunato, Giustino 70 Foucault, Michel 42, 49, 51, 81, 82, 93–4, 132, 167–8, 217, 245–9, 251–4, 257–9, 264, 275–6, 290, 292–6 Francioni, Gianni 302 Frankfurt School, The 42, 44, 147 French Revolution 62, 195, 198 Frosini, Fabio 2 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 275 Garin, Eugenio 304 gender 42–3, 49, 52, 82, 131–43, 150, 153, 159 general will 5, 190–203 Gentile, Giovanni 206 Germain, Randall 163–4 Germino, Dante 65 Gerratana, Valentino 270, 279, 282, 302, 305 Gibson-Graham, J. K. 106, 108 Gill, Stephen 155, 157–9, 161–2 Giroux, Henry 50 Glassman, James 107 globalization 148, 156–65, 271–2 Golding, Sue 286 good sense 4, 48–50, 109, 168, 233, 263–4 Green, Marcus E. 90–3, 283 Grido del Popolo, Il 114 Guha, Ranajit 81, 82, 84, 93 Habermas, Jürgen 147, 190 Hall, Stuart 3–4, 39–41, 46, 143, 305 Hankinson-Nelson, Lynn 240, 245 Haug, Wolfgang Fritz 5 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 5, 27, 45, 61, 72, 169, 179, 188, 190–203, 212–13, 218–19, 221–3, 227–8, 239, 284 Hegelianism 206, 219, 222 hegemony 1, 4, 6, 39, 42, 45–6, 49, 51–66, 70–4, 83–4, 86–7, 91–2, 95, 103, 118, 120, 123, 129, 131, 135–7, 143, 147–66, 167–76, 181–3, 188, 190, 191–3, 197, 199–202, 210–11, 217–18, 236, 238, 240–54, 256, 259, 263, 265, 270–73, 276, 279, 283, 287, 290–2, 298, 304; as contract 199–203; capitalist 116–17, 142; concept of 5, 57–8, 137, 167, 171,

190, 217; counter- 45, 73, 86–7, 140, 143, 151, 162–3, 181, 228, 236; cultural 29, 64–5, 160, 276; ethico-political 167–76, 202, 210; ideological 116, 123; linguistic 64–5; political 29, 55; theory of 5, 57, 147, 161, 167, 169, 171–2, 190 Heidegger, Martin 100, 206, 275, 291 Hinduism 97–9 Hirsch, E. D. 36 historical bloc 1, 6, 55, 64, 151–2, 154–5, 158–9, 162, 164, 170–1, 202, 224, 230, 235–6, 247, 250; international 158; transnational 158 historical materialism 45, 56, 85, 147–8, 160, 162, 170, 190, 205–14, 227, 246, 259–60 historicism 208, 222–5, 247, 249, 260; absolute 208, 249, 260 historiography 182, 249–51, 254–6; Croce’s 225; Gramsci’s 249–50, 252; subaltern 69, 74–7, 82, 90–3 Hoare, Quintin 68, 270, 278, 288, 303 Hobsbawm, Eric J. 2 Hoggart, Richard 11 Horkheimer, Max 147, 207 humanism 98, 208 humble, the (humble classes) 80–1, 92 Ibsen, Henrik 137 ideology 6, 30, 33, 36, 40–4, 51, 73, 82–3, 86, 88, 95, 97, 100, 116, 118, 127–9, 131, 137, 142, 150, 159, 161, 171–2, 180, 182, 184, 206–8, 212–13, 241–5, 248–9, 252, 255, 257, 259, 261, 263–5, 273, 276, 291 imperialism 13, 50, 94–5, 288 integral historian 75–6, 78, 80–1, 86, 91–2, 96–7, 99 integral history 6, 75, 91, 96–7, 232, 250–1 intellectuals 271; analysis of 70, 72; European 4, 35, 37, 257; function of 41, 71, 109, 247, 265, 282; Italian 71, 79–80, 92, 292–3; organic 44, 129, 246; Southern 70, 269; traditional 44, 80 International Monetary Fund 155, 163 international relations 5, 147, 151–3, 160, 163–4, 283 Islam 98, 279–80 Italian Communist Party 113–14 Italian Socialist Party 114–15, 120 Ives, Peter 6–7, 65, 305 Jacobinism 63, 66, 193, 200 Jacobins 62, 195 Jameson, Fredric 26, 33, 260

332  Index Joyce, James 4, 31–7 justice: global 6, 271–2; social 167, 173 Kaldor, Mary 39 Kant, Immanuel 194, 213, 259 Kantian: ethics 194, 196, 284; notion of history 221, 247; teleology 240, 259 Kautsky, Karl 58, 172, 205 Kenny, Michael 163–4 Keynesian economics 107–9, 155–6 Kipnis, Laura 132 labor-power 123–5 Labriola, Antonio 205–7 Lacan, Jacques 42, 167–8 Laclau, Ernesto 168–9, 171–5, 206, 217–18, 234–6, 240, 242, 254–5, 260, 286, 291 Landy, Marcia 4, 5 Lazzaretti, David 79, 92 Lefebvre, Henri 33 Leibniz, Gottfried 228 Lenin, Vladimir 5, 55, 57–9, 61, 66, 115, 126–8, 170, 179–80, 185, 187–8, 190, 201, 205, 207–8, 211–12, 285 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 16 Lewis, Sinclair 4, 32–7 liberation 88, 248, 288; sexual 133; woman’s 137 linguistics 55, 66, 262, 286 literary criticism 69, 80 Lo Piparo, Franco 4, 64–5 Locke, John 192–3, 241 Lombroso, Cesare 79–80, 86, 92, 292 Loria, Achille 293–4 Lorianism 211, 215n20, 262, 293–5, 297–8 Lukács, Georg 33, 59, 61, 179–80, 188, 203, 209 Luxemburg, Rosa 115, 172, 208 Lyotard, Jean-François 44, 244, 246, 248, 254 Machiavelli, Niccolò 5, 24, 55, 62–6, 74, 190, 211, 241–2 Mansfield, Steven R. 6 Manzoni, Alessandro 64–5, 76, 80, 86, 91–2, 252, 256 Mao Zedong 188 Marx, Karl 5, 41–2, 46, 55, 61, 66, 68, 72, 82–3, 93, 112–13, 117–18, 127, 167, 169, 179–80, 183, 185, 190–5, 199–203, 205–14, 218–19, 223, 227–8, 230, 233, 242–3, 249, 251, 261, 273, 275, 282, 284–6, 289–90, 302

Marxism: crises of 212; degeneration/ deradicalization of 2, 183–4, 188; dialectical 116, 211; economistic 231–2; Gramsci’s 45, 113–14, 179–88, 292; history of 168, 212; liberal 59; orthodox 1, 294–5, 298; positivist 148, 217–18, 220, 225, 232; postmodern 243; renewal of 2, 4, 184, 188, 217; Western 179, 275 Marxist theory 45, 114, 117, 127–8, 180, 201, 206, 214, 234, 270 materialism: (see also historical materialism); mechanistic 217; metaphysical 207–8; naturalistic 205; philosophical 206, 209, 212; practical 209; vulgar 45, 226, 241, 262. media 14–17, 40, 43–4, 46, 50, 102, 141–3, 153, 272 medieval communes 69, 72, 78 modern prince 200, 241–2 modernism 25, 44, 245 modernity 23, 42, 103, 194, 196, 203, 248–65, 280, 289–93, 296, 298 Moe, Nelson 5 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis 191, 196 Morello, Vincenzo 24 Morera, Esteve 6, 72, 75, 91, 240 Moretti, Franco 31 Morton, Adam David 5, 283, 286 Mouffe, Chantal 168, 171–3, 217–18, 234–6, 242, 254–5, 260, 286, 291 Murphy, Craig 60, 156, 159 national popular 5, 35, 46, 50, 130n21, 168, 170–1, 202, 215; see also popularnational Negri, Antonio 42, 44–6, 49, 52 neoliberalism 158–60, 162–3, 165, 173, 272 New Economic Policy 58 Nietzsche, Friedrich 239–40, 246, 248 O’Connell, Daniel 4 O’Hara, Daniel T. 26 Ollman, Bertell 224 ontology 95, 98, 163, 165, 167, 196, 208, 247, 253, 291–2, 294–5; social 149, 168–9, 202 Ordine Nuovo, L’ 85, 114 Other, the 16, 82, 139–41 overdetermination 1, 171, 188, 289, 296 Paggi, Leonardo 116 Panitch, Leo 162 Paris Commune 57, 118

Index  333 passive revolution 41, 46, 62, 171, 210–11, 270–2 permanent revolution 57 Peters, Tom 107–11 philology 2, 7, 233–4, 236, 298, 300n7, 302, 305 philosophy of praxis 2, 5, 7, 61–2, 85, 200, 205–14, 219, 226–35, 244, 251, 262, 298, 305 Pirandello, Luigi 100 Plekhanov, Georgi 207 pluralism 5, 45, 172, 195, 197, 241, 257 political economy 1, 4, 44, 83, 158, 228, 269, 273; bourgeois 192; classical 228; global 156–62, 165; international 5, 147–66; liberal 192 political science See science popular-national 211, 215–16n21. positivism 2, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 199, 261, 295 post-Fordism 52, 158 post-Marxism 5, 167–76, 206, 286 postmodernism 44, 52, 242, 259, 265 postmodernity 44, 265 poststructuralism 42–3, 46, 49, 52, 93, 167, 275, 290, 296 power: political 40, 69, 74, 87, 88; social 147, 157, 257, 262; state 43, 58, 71, 79, 151, 152, 165; truth and 248–9, 263, 265 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 112, 222, 284 psychoanalysis 42 132–3, 171, 257 race 13–18, 49, 52, 86 racism 13–18 Radek, Karl 33 Rao, Anupama 90, 92 rationalism 180–1, 183, 186, 188 realism 6, 223, 239, 242, 249, 255–6, 259, 261–3 regulated society 193, 201–3 relations of force 49, 170–1, 202, 228 religion 34, 40, 43, 86, 98, 183, 211, 239, 241–3, 248–9, 257, 259, 262, 279 Resnick, Stephen A. 1, 6, 261, 273, 286 Rethinking Marxism 1–7, 270, 286 Ricardo, David 170, 228 Rifkin, Jeremy 107 Risorgimento 62, 68–9, 211, 248, 271 Rosengarten, Frank 23–4, 28 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 5, 190–203, 241 Ruccio, David F. 1, 6, 107, 275, 280, 286, 304 Russell, Bertrand 223 Russian Revolution 60, 117–19, 126, 285

Said, Edward 43, 275–6, 278, 288, 291–2, 296–8, 305 Santucci, Antonio 3 Sassoon, Anne Showstack 151, 163, 169, 171 sati (widow sacrifice) 93–5 Schucht, Julia 132, 246, 283 Schucht, Tatiana 19, 23, 27, 71, 129, 170, 278 science 6, 44, 48, 52, 92, 180, 182–3, 187, 205, 222, 226, 228–9, 238, 240, 243–4, 248, 260–5, 293, 304; and religion 248, 265; human 52; natural 56, 209, 239, 255, 262, 294–5; political 94, 113, 229, 241, 295; positive 148; social 11, 51–2, 165, 295 Second International 115, 117, 207 secularism 96, 98, 187, 208, 218 Sève, Lucien 208–9, 213 Sexual Question, The 5, 131–45 sexuality 42, 49, 52, 131–43, 211, 246 Smart, Barry 245, 265 Smith, Adam 108, 192 Smith, Geoffrey Nowell 47, 68, 270, 278, 288, 303 Smith, Steve 160, 162 social democracy 172 social science. See science socialism 32, 39–41, 45, 52, 59, 115–17, 122–3, 125, 127–8, 172, 242; evolutionary 115; scientific 45 sociology 94, 148, 207, 220, 234, 244, 255, 293, 294–5; positivist 249, 255 Sorel, Georges 241–2 Sorelian myth 241–2, 265 Southern Question, The 21, 70–1, 83, 170, 269 Soviet Union 213 Soviets 118–20 Spanos, William V. 6, 302 Spivak, Gayatri 42–3, 48, 81–5, 90–7, 99, 101, 136, 254–6 spontaneity 77, 91; and conscious leadership 77 Sraffa, Piero 214, 273, 278 Stalin, Joseph 57, 61, 205, 213 state 62, 74, 87, 95, 96, 119, 129, 226, 230, 276; as political society 71–4, 129, 152–3, 171, 191, 201, 263; ethical 87; integral 70–3, 91, 152, 153, 245; internationalization of the 156–8, 162, 165; limited notion of the 71–2; modern 69, 152, 201; theory of the 57, 71, 73, 86, 147, 151–3, 165

334  Index state and civil society 4, 39, 43, 45, 49, 62, 68, 70, 202, 233 Stein, Gertrude 32 Stewart, Bob 60 structure and superstructure 55–6, 72, 137, 169, 171, 211, 223, 226–31, 233, 235, 250–2, 259, 289–97 subaltern/subalternity 5, 40, 42, 44, 46, 47, 49, 56, 63, 65, 68–88, 90–103, 137, 169, 211, 250, 251–2, 254, 256, 259, 265, 270, 283; hegemony 64–6, 85, 86; history of 69, 76–7, 81; learning from 96–8; levels of 76–7, 96–7, 99; liberation 85–6; new 96; silence of 94, 96 Subaltern Studies 5, 81, 93, 252–3, 256 superstructure. See structure and superstructure surplus value 123, 273, 286 Taylor, Frederick 114 Taylorism 32, 33, 34, 44, 213; see also Americanism and Fordism Theses on Feuerbach 205–6, 208–9, 213, 223, 227, 231, 284 Third International 45, 55, 58, 60, 114, 285, 304 trade unionism 5, 112–29 transformation: cultural 41, 276; economic 44; political 41, 69, 81, 86, 87, 88; social 39, 44–5, 52, 84, 113, 120, 123,

127–8, 147, 258; socialist 114–29, 180; subaltern 88 translatability 46, 227–9, 233, 235, 261, 285 translation 6, 7, 227–8, 281–7, 305 Trilateral Commission 157, 158 Trotsky, Leon 59, 61 Turati, Filippo 115 Turin 56, 114, 118–19, 121–2, 125; auto­ workers 65; general strike of 1920 121–2 Untouchability 95, 100 Untouchables. See Dalits van der Pijl, Kees 154 Vico, Giambattista 232 Virilio, Paul 43 voluntarism 45, 125, 199, 212 Vossler, Karl 26 war of movement (maneuver) 87 war of position 87, 132, 202 Watkins, Evan 5 widow sacrifice. See sati Williams, Raymond 11, 43, 48, 162, 275–6, 289–91, 296 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 64, 234 Wolff, Richard D. 1, 2, 5, 6, 261, 286 women 17, 96, 131–43, 159, 173, 252, 254; and subalternity 69, 84, 91, 94, 96, 137, 252; Dalit 96–7 World Bank 155, 163