gramsci 87 [supplement]

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Fifty years ago this month Antonio Gramsci died after spending manyyears incarcerated in Mussolini's jails. But like a composer whosemajor symphonies are only discovered many years after his death, so ittook many decades before most of the world, especially outside Italy,discovered Gramsci's writings.It was not until the early 70s that Gramsci's impact became anything

like widespread on the British Left when a substantial English versionof the Prison Notebooks became available for the first time. The effectthen was profound. Suddenly a whole new world was opened up.Gramsci made sense of Western societies in a quite new way.Over-dependence on coercive notions of the state and such ideas as'false consciousness' gave way to a new subtlety and complexity.British marxism had always been over-dependent on the Russian

experience - historically and theoretically. Gramsci's concepts of hegemony, civil society and much else now enabled completely newinsights. He rapidly became seen as the theorist of revolution inWestern Europe.

In the 70s a generation of marxists was influenced by Gramsci. He wasthe key figure. By the late 70s the debates of that period were drawingto a close, not least as new political realities began to assert themselves;the swing to the right was there for all to see. Yet those debates - and,above all, Gramsci's influence - were to have an enormous impact onthe political analyses of the 80s. To put it bluntly, without Gramsci, ourunderstanding of Thatcherism would be impoverished. And withoutdoubt, Gramsci has been the most important single theoreticalinfluence on Marxism Today over the last decade.On April 11, Marxism Today is organising a one-day conference to

mark the 50th anniversary of Gramsci's death. A powerful array of speakers will help us assess the significance of Gramsci's ideas,introduce those ideas to a new generation, and discuss their relevancefor Britain today. • Martin Jacques



GRAMSCI 87

PROGRAMMEThis event is being held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Gramsci's death, and

will provide an invaluable opportunity to reassess his work.

Saturday April 11th 10-6pmUniversity of London Union, Malet Street, London WCl

10-10.30am

Registration and coffee

10.30-11.30am

Gramsci and the Marxi st T ra di ti on (Manning Hall)ERIC HOBSBAWM outlines Gramsci's contribution to Marxism.

11.45-1.15pm

Lenin vs Gramsci (Room 3A)QUINTIN HOARE, ROGER SIMON and GAVIN KITCHEN

debate the question 'did Gramsci simply develop Lenin's ideasor break with them?'

Gramsci an d the Na ti on al (Room 3B)Reviewing the concept of the 'national-popular'; speakers will

include JUDE BLOOMFIELD, PAUL GILROYand ANTHONY BARNETT.

Is a 'Gramscian Feminism' possible? (Room 3C)Finding the answers will be ANNE SHOWSTACK SASSOON

and MICHELE BARRETT.

BertoluCCl's 1900 - Part One (Manning Hall)

2.30-4pm

Why did Eurocommunism fail? (Room 3A)An international exchange between JON BLOOMFIELD and

DONALD SASSOON with guest speakers from the French andItalian Communist parties.

Gramsci, the Left and the Popular (Room 3B)Revealing the links between Gramsci's cultural writings and

today's 'designer-socialism' debate will beKATHY MYERS, STUART COSGROVE and ROS BRUNT.

Berto lucc i ' s 1900 - Part Two (Manning Hall)

2.30-4pm

Labour, the State, Civil Society (Room 3D)A discussion between BEATRIX CAMPBELL and PETER HAIN

on the relationships between the Labour Party, autonomousmovements and local councils.

Gramsci and the British Marxist Tradition(Room 3C)

Discussing the nature of Gramsci's impact on the British left

will be GREGOR McLENNAN, ROSALIND DELMAR,DAVID FORGACS and BILL SCHWARZ.

4.15-5.30pm

'Occupations' (Room 3D)A drama workshop based on Trevor Griffiths' dramatisation of

the early life of Gramsci.

Bertolucci's Cinema (Room 3A)A chance to discuss '1900' in the context of both Bertolucci's

work and Italian political history.

Gramsci and Britain Today (Manning Hall)STUART HALL closes the daytime event by explaining how we

can use Gramsci's original concepts to explain the politics of

1980s Britain.

Throughout the day

Gramsci Bookfair • PCI and Gramsci Exhibitions• Light Refreshments • Creche

8pm-midnight

Luci e Suoni (Manning Hall)A rare live appearance by former 'Body Snatcher', Rhoda Dakar

with her new six-piece band.The hottest new stars of the soul scene, Hue and Cry.

Spinning the discs will be Simon Booth of 'Working Week' andDr Cosgrove of the NME.

Gramsci 87 Tickets £5.50/£4 for unwaged and students (please provide evidence of status).

Lucie e Suoni Tickets £4/£3 for unwaged and students (please provide evidence of status).

For tickets or further details please fill in the form below and sendto Gramsci 87,16 St John Street, London EC1M 4AY. Tel: 01-608 0265D Please send me further detailsD Please send me waged Gramsci 87 ticketsD Please send me waged Luci e Suoni ticketsD Please send me unwaged/student Gramsci 87 tickets

(please provide evidence of status)O Please send me unwaged/student Luci e Suoni tickets

(please provide evidence of status)

• Please send me creche registration form(must register before April 3rd)

I enclose a cheque/postal order for £_ _ (payable to Marxism Today)

Name-

Address.

Tel No._ MT(S)



GRAMSCI87



GRAMSCI 87

ramsci by Renzo Galeotti. Paintings on view at Gramsci 87

Gramsci:a glossary of revolution

RAMSCI HAS be-come widely knownfor his concept of hegemony and this is

ndoubtedly the cornerstone in hisolitical thought and his major con-bution to marxist theory. But itnnot be fully grasped without tak-g into account his other concepts,d it may be helpful to begin with

ne of these, civil society, which Ielieve has not yet received thetention on the Left that it deserves.Gramsci distinguished between theublic institutions comprising theate, and all the private, voluntarylations that people enter into thate outside the sphere of the state.hese voluntary relations are embo-

ed in a wide variety of organisa-ons and activities such as tradenions, political parties, churches,nd community, cultural and charit-ble organisations. All these diverseoluntary activities make up civilciety; they belong to the domain of ciety rather than to the state. Thusvil society consists of a network of cial relations distinct from the eco-

omic structure as well as from theate. It is particularly important toote that it encompasses all culturalnd leisure activities.Gramsci argued that a ruling classominates other classes by a com-

nation of force and consent. Forceexercised mainly by the coercive

pparatuses of the state - the armedrces, police, law courts and pris-

ns - while consent is securedrough the exercise of political,oral and intellectual leadership.e used the term hegemony to de-ribe this exercise of national lead-ship. The building of alliances is

entral to the concept of hegemony.hegemonic class is one that main-

ins a position of national lead-ship by gaining the consent of her classes and social groups

rough creating a system of liances, and continually adaptingto changing conditions.

Gramsci suggested that it was with-in civil society that hegemony wasmainly exercised. In one of the best-known passages of his Prison Note-

books he compared civil society to asystem of'fortresses and earthworks'standing behind the state: civil soci-ety had become far more complex inadvanced capitalist countries than itwas in Tsarist Russia before 1917,where society was dominated by thestate and where the ruling class re-lied much more on force, and muchless on hegemony, than was the casein the West. Thus in Russia a frontalattack, which Gramsci called a warof movement, could succeed. But inthe West a different revolutionarystrategy was required - a war of

position. The advance to socialismconsisted in the transformation of civil society, as a basis for the trans-formation of the state.

Thus in countries where civil socie-ty is highly developed, as in Britain,the labour movement has to under-mine the hegemony of the capitalistclass by building its own system of alliances and its own alternativehegemony in civil society.

This requires great attention toideological struggle, to changing theway people think and act, to whatGramsci called moral and intellec-tual reform. He made a novelapproach to the question of ideologyby applying the term to the ways inwhich people make sense of theworld they live in. He used the termcommon sense to mean the ordinaryassumptions which people make,their way of seeing the world inwhich certain values seem naturaland unquestionable.

Thus ideology, in this meaning of common sense, is not just an instru-ment of domination or a set of falsebeliefs. Rather, it is a terrain of strug-gle. It is the site on which the domi-nant ideology is constructed but it is

also the site of resistance to thatideology.

Gramsci suggested that ideology is

effective in so far as it succeeds inbinding together a bloc of diversesocial forces. Thus the idea of the'welfare state' was central in formingthe consensus around the postwarpolitical settlement, and the themeof individual self-interest has beencentral to Thatcherism. The labourmovement has to build up a new blocof social forces, cemented by anideology - a new common sense -expressing socialist values in waysthat are related to the needs and

experiences of the working class.

For building a network of alliances,Gramsci adds a very importantdimension with his concept of national-popular: a class cannot behegemonic if it confines itself to itsown immediate material interests asa class. It must take into account therange of popular and democraticissues which do not have a purelyclass character, and which havegiven rise in many cases to signifi-cant social movements, such asthose concerning women, peace,ethnic minorities, civil liberties,

national liberation and the environ-ment. These democratic issues con-stitute arenas where the two fun-

Sardinian beginnings

ORN IN Sardinia in1891, Gramsci won ascholarship in 1911 tostudy at the University

of Turin, the capital of the rapidlyexpanding industrial north of Italy.Here, the political formation of theyoung Sardinian nationalist began inearnest when he joined the SocialistParty in 1913.

As news of the October Revolutionbroke in 1917, the socialists of Turin,Italy's 'Petrograd', chose Gramsci astheir leader. In 1919, with Togliatti,he founded the journal L'Ordine Nuovo, which gave inspiration to thefactory council movement.

The congress of the Socialists inJanuary 1921 resulted in a split, and

Gramsci, Togliatti and others, wi thindays, founded the Italian Commun-ist Party. From 1922-3 Gramsci was

damental classes contend for sup-remacy. The hegemonic class is theone that succeeds in combining theinterests stemming from these issueswith its own interests so as toachieve national leadership.

I should like to make two conclud-ing points.First, Gramsci's concepts of civil

society and war of position havefar-reaching effects: they extend thescope of politics and deepen itsmeaning. Electoral activity of poli-tical parties is shown to be only partof socialist politics, which concernsthe transformation of civil society.The achievements of feminism - 'thepersonal is political' — and of theGLC are excellent illustrations of this, pointing the way forward.

Second, Gramsci only succeeded indeveloping his concepts becausethey arose out of his concrete analy-sis of Italian and European history.That is why the work of MarxismToday is so important in laying thebasis for the left to rethink its politic-al and economic strategy, and to

adapt and develop Gramscian Marx-ism to British conditions. • Roger Simon

the party's representative on the ex-ecutive of the Communist Interna-tional in Moscow. On his return toItaly he soon emerged as the intellec-tual and political leader of anopposition to the sectarian posturesof the party under Bordiga.

Gramsci replaced Bordiga as leaderin 1924, marking a decisive turning

point for Italian communism. Hebrought to the party a new sense of mass politics. The period 1924-6found him analysing the social rootsand development of fascism in Italy,and the types of political alliancesrequired to defeat it. Shortly after thePCI's 1926 congress in Lyons whichapproved his ideas, Gramsci wasarrested, held until 1928, then con-demned to 20 years in prison.

Even in prison, Gramsci had moreto give. His Prison Notebooksdeepened the new analyses begunduring his leadership. The newsituation required new instrumentsof analysis. 'Historic bloc', 'war of position', 'hegemony' were ideasborn out of Gramsci's passionatecommitment to creating effectivestrategic concepts to meet this need.

The leadership of the party hadpassed to Togliatti, his closest poli-tical collaborator. Togliatti, in exile,read the Notebooks smuggled out of prison after Gramsci's death in 1937.Gramsci's thought and political in-stincts became almost a mental habitwith Togliatti, and when he returnedto Italy in 1944 his former comrade'sideas became part of the political

texture of the direction he gave to the'new party'. •Gino Bedani



GRAMSCI87

Hegemonyin print

HERE ARE TWO waysinto reading Gramsci:through writings byhim or through writ-

ngs about him. It is always prefer-ble to start with the former, sincehe latter are a minefield strewn withonflicting views of what he is sup-

posed to have said.In English Gramsci's works are inive main volumes: a selection of his

Letters from Prison (Jonathan Cape,975), two volumes of Selectionsrom Political Writings from the

period 1910-1926, Selections fromPrison Notebooks and Selectionsrom Cultural Writings (all pub-ished by Lawrence and Wishart).Where you begin and how you readhese texts depends on which aspectf Gramsci you are looking for. If you

want to find out why Gramsci hasmattered to the Left in Britain over

he past 15 years, a good startingoint is the note on state and civilociety on p238 of Selections from

Prison Notebooks. Another key pas-age is on ppl81-2, where Gramscixplains that in order to attain hege-

mony, the working class must makets interests 'the interests of otherroups too', it must become a 'uni-ersal' class.

Gramsci by Renzo Galeotti

These notes have been read as sug-gesting a left strategy appropriatemainly to the advanced capitalistWest. As such, they illuminate justone facet of Gramsci. He also dealswith the culture of the ruralperipheries, with the peasant ques-tion, with national movements in the

context of development and mod-ernisation. Some of these issues mayseem 'past' for Eurocentric marxists,but they are very 'present' for thedeveloping world, for the Europeanperipheries and for national minor-ities everywhere.

A third facet of Gramsci emerges inthe two volumes of Political Writ-ings, namely the political activist

engaged in day-to-day problems of tactics and strategy in the fraughtperiod between the first world warand the rise to power of fascism. TheGramsci of the factory councils,workers control and socialist demo-cracy is represented in Volume 1(1910-1920). His writings on the ear-ly communist movement and hisanalyses of fascism can be found inVolume 2 (1921-1926).

These earlier writings have beenused by some commentators to sup-

port a view of a more 'orthodox'Gramsci than the allegedly 'revision-ist' figure who surfaces in the prisonwritings. The later pieces in Volume2, notably the 'Lyons Theses' and'Some Aspects of the Southern Ques-tion', are important reading for any-one trying to make up their mind onthis question.

Turning to writings about Gramsci,there is a wide array to choose fromin English, though the quality isuneven. Of the accounts of Gramsci'slife, Giuseppe Fiori's AntonioGramsci: Life of a Revolutionary

(NLB/Verso) is essential reading,beautifully evocative on his Sardi-nian origins, though not the bestsource on his ideas. Paolo Spriano's Antonio Gramsci: the Prison Years(Lawrence and Wishart) contains awell-documented account of Grams-ci's disagreement with Togliatti andthe PCI leadership over their accept-ance of the 'class against class' poli-

cy in the early 30s.Of the short introductions, James

Joll's Gramsci (Fonatana ModernMasters) is probably the best. Thereis also an excellent introductoryessay on 'Gramsci and Marxist Poli-tical Theory' by Eric Hobsbawm in Approaches to Gramsci, edited byAnne Showstack Sassoon (Writersand Readers) (the essay originallyappeared in the July 1977 issue of Marxism Today). Roger Simon'sGramsci's Political Thought (Lawr-

ence and Wishart) is a model of lucidity, as well as an eloquent ap-plication of Gramscian ideas to prac-tical politics in contemporary Bri-tain, though because of this it is notalways the most reliable guide toGramsci's ideas in themselves.

Among the criticisms of the variousliberal, social-democratic and Euro-communist betrayals of Gramisci'srevolutionary thought, Chris Har-man's pamphlet Gramsci Versus Re- formism (SWP) still repays reading,as does John Hoffman's more dense-ly theoretical but intelligent book

The Gramscian Challenge (Black-well). The criticisms are often well-aimed, even though the authors havea tendency to throw out a few vitalorgans of the Gramscian baby withthe reformist bathwater and to endup suggesting either that Gramsciwas wrong or else that Marx, Leninor Trotsky said it all before. David Forgacs

Home-ground

comebackN THE LAST 10 years orso, Gramsci has almostbeen relegated to a streetname in Italy. As the his-

oric compromise broke down, ter-orism created an atmosphere of nearivil war in the late 70s, and neo-beralism in the unlikely guise of

Craxi's socialists improved the stan-ard of living of a large part of theopulation (leaving a large minority

well behind), Italian intellectualsave considered Gramsci out of ashion.

A constructive criticism of theimits of marxism and left politicsas arrived at a wholesale rejectionf the theoretical 'fathers' of the 1968eneration. Writing about him andales of his work have been reducedo a trickle.This is the context in which thetalian Communist Party (PCI) hasaunched a year of debates and dis-ussions to celebrate the 50thnniversary of Gramsci's death.ymbolically the 1987 PCI mem-ership card bears his portrait, but

more significantly in January L'Uni-

a, the PCI daily, published a longnterview with PCI general secretary

Alessandro Natta about Gramsci.

The thrust of his argument was that just as Gramsci was writing during awatershed for European societywhen capitalism was being reorga-nised along an 'American' model inthe 1930s and the Soviet Union wasencountering enormous problems inthe first concrete attempt to buildsocialism, today Europe, East andWest, is at another crossroads.

While suggesting that the PCI hasgone beyond certain Gramscian cate-gories, for example a totalising con-cept of the party, Natta maintainedthat others, such as passive revolu-tion, and Gramsci's whole approachto analysing the changes confrontingEuropean society, are useful in theimmense task confronting the Euro-

pean left: developing an analysis of the contemporary situation whichprovides the basis for a European-wide strategy.

Gramsci's status as a world-widecultural figure whose categories areuseful for re-thinking the presentworl d crisis will be the theme of thisGramsci 'year' in Italy.

Gramsci, therefore, is being offeredas part of the PCI's attempt to presentitself as an integral part of a Euro-pean Left which has to reconstituteitself if it is to have any affect on thedeveloping social, economic, poli-

tical and cultural processes now evi-dent in the Western world.

Anne Showstack Sassoon

In praise of

the peculiarRAMSCI'S INFLU-ENCE on people likeme, who first readhim, in translation,

in the early 1960s, has been pro-found. Our interest in Gramsci wasnot scholastic. We appropriatedGramsci for ourselves in our ownway. Reading Gramsci has fertilisedour political imagination, trans-formed our way of thinking, our styleof thought, our whole political project.

Certainly, 'appropriating Gramsci'

has never licensed us to read himany way that suits us, uncontrolledby a respect for the distinctive grainand formation of his thought. Our'reading' is neither wilful nor arbit-rary - precisely because that wouldbe contrary to the very lessons welearned from him. It is, after all,Gramsci himself who first taught ushow to 'read Gramsci'. He re-tunedour intellectual ear to the historical-ly-specific and distinct register inwhich his concepts operate. It isfrom Gramsci that we learned tounderstand - and practise - the dis-

cipline imposed by an unswervingattention to the 'peculiarities' andunevenness of national-cultural de-

velopment. It is Gramsci's examplewhich cautions us against the too-easy transfer of historical generalisa-tions from one society or epoch toanother, in the name of 'Theory'.

If I were to try to summarise, in asentence, what Gramsci did for peo-ple of my generation, I would have tosay something like this: simply, hemade it possible for us to read Marxagain, in a new way: that is, to go on'thinking' the second half of the 20thcentury, face-to-face with the reali-ties of the modern world, from aposition somewhere within the lega-cy of Marx's thought. The legacy of Marx's thought, that is, not as aquasi-religious body of dogma but asa living, developing, constantly re-

newable stream of ideas.If I had to make that general claim

more specific, I would probablychoose to emphasise - out of an arrayof possible arguments - the follow-ing points.

First, his boldness and in-dependence of mind. Gramscicame to 'inhabit' Marx's ideas, not asa strait-jacket, which confined andhobbled his imagination, but as aframework of ideas which liberatedhis mind, which set it free, which

put it to work. Most of us had beenfed on a diet of so-called marxist

writing in which the explicator,mindful of the quasi-religious char-acter of his (definitely his) task,



GRAMSCI 87

allowed himself only the occasionalfree-range moment of textualemendation. Consequently, we ex-perienced the freedom and freshnessof Gramsci's writing as a liberation,revolutionary in its impact. Here,what was undoubtedly a limitationfrom a textual point of view - name-ly, the fragmentary nature of hiswritings - was, for us, a positiveadvantage. Gramsci's work resistedeven the most concerted effort to knitup its loose ends into a seamless

garment of Orthodoxy.Then, there is the way in which

Gramsci, without neglecting theother spheres of articulation, madehimself par excellence the 'theoristof the political'. He gave us, as fewcomparable theorists ever have, anexpanded conception of 'politics' -the rhythms, forms, antagonisms,transformations specific and pecul-iar to it as a region. I am thinking of the way he advances such conceptsas 'the relation of forces', 'passiverevolution', 'transformism', 'strategicconjuncture', 'historical bloc', thenew meanings given to the conceptof 'party'. These concepts are re-quired if we are to think the politicalin modern terms, as the strategiclevel into which other determina-tions are explosively condensed.

Next, I would want to fasten on themanner in which his notion of 'hege-mony' forces us to reconceptualisethe nature of class and social forces:

indeed, he makes us rethink the verynotion of power itself - its projectand its complex 'conditions of exist-ence' in modern societies. The work on the 'national-popular', on ideolo-gy, on the moral, cultural and intel-lectual dimensions of power, on itsdouble articulation in state and incivil society, on the inter-play be-tween authority, leadership, domi-nation and the 'education of con-sent' equipped us with an enlargedconception of power, and of its

molecular operations, its invest-ment on many different sites. Hispluri-centered conception of power made obsolete the narrow,one-dimensional conceptions withwhich most of us had operated.

The same could be said for theastonishing range of his writing oncultural questions, on language andpopular literature and, of course, hiswork on ideology. The notion of theproduction and transformation of 'common sense', of the 'the popular'as the cultural terrain which allideologies must encounter andnegotiate with, and to the logic of which they must conform if they areto become historically organicchanged the thinking of a wholegeneration on these questions. Hiswork on the necessarily contradic-tory nature of the subjects of ideolo-gy, their fragmentary, pluri-centeredcharacter have been extraordinarilygenerative. They helped us to cut

through the arid wastes of a progres-sively abstract definitional debateabout ideology, to look at the cultu-ral logics and forms of practicalreasoning where the languages of thepopular masses take shape andwhere the historic struggle to createthe forms of a new culture is en-gaged. Nothing is so calculated todestroy the simple minded notion of ideology as 'correct thoughts' para-chuted into the empty heads of wait-ing proto-revolutionary subjects as

Gramsci's stubborn attendance tothe real, living textures of popularlife, thought, and culture which cir-cumscribe the historical effectivityof even the most coherent and per-suasive of 'philosophies'.

Gramsci held aloft, with fortitudeand courage, the torch of criticalthought and political commitmentamidst the darkening storm-cloudsof fascism. We have drawn inspira-tion, in our own 'Iron Times', fromhis courage and commitment. It istherefore a bizarre turn in the wheelof fortune that he should have madehis most profound mark, on my ownpolitical thinking, in two relateddirections apparently quite foreignto his own practice and circumst-ances.

It is by trying to understandGramsci that I have come to havesome glimmer of an understandingof the profound transformationwhich is now under way in Western

liberal-bourgeois societies under theaegis of the 'new Right' -the momentof revolution-and-reaction, of 're-construction in the very moment of destruction' which, under the nameof Thatcherism, Reaganism and theother forms of crisis-resolution incapitalist societies, have come todominate our epoch.

It is by studying this 'counter-hegemony' at work that one begins tounderstand what a 'hegemonic poli-tical project' might be like. Hence it

is also Gramsci who has helped meto begin to understand the enormityof the task of renewal which social-ism and the Left now has before it if itis ever to become a truly hegemonicproject.

I mean by that, capable notsimply of winning and holdingoffice, or of putting into effect anoutdated programme, but of layingthe basis for a whole new conceptionof life, a whole new type of democra-tic socialist civilisation. Still, when Ilook at Gramsci's embattled face,that wild shock of hair, the unex-pected orthodoxy of those wire-framed glasses, or into those lumi-nous eyes, I like, fondly, to imaginethat this is a reversal of fortunewhich, perversely, the Sardinianwould have relished.Stuart Hall

A version of this article has been pub-lished in Rinascita



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29 MARXISM TODAY APRIL 1987

gramsci 87 [supplement]

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