Antonio Gramsci (Ales, Sardinia, the January 23rd 1891 - Rome, the April 27th 1937) was a writer and Italian political theorist. Founding member, a time with the head of the Italian Communist party, it was imprisoned under the mode mussolinien. He in particular studied in his many works and articles the problems of the culture and the authority, which does of them one of the principal thinkers of the Marxist tradition. He opposes to the Dialectique materialist a “philosophy of the praxis ”; its design of the cultural Hégémonie as average of the maintenance of the State in a capitalist company made date.
Biography
Wire of Francesco (1860 - 1937) and Peppina Marcias (1861 - 1932), Antonio is the fourth of their seven children. Francesco is condemned the October 27th 1900 to five years of prison for peculation, misappropriation and forgery in public writing. Deprived of resources, the family spends several years in misery. Antonio attends the elementary school until the twelve years age; he works then with the Office of the land register to provide for the needs for his family, which is not able to finance her inscription with the college.
January 31st, 1904, his/her father leaves prison. Rehabilitated, this one obtains a post of secretary to the Office of the land register. Antonio then can incrire with the college of the city close to Santu Lussurgiu; he obtains his licenza ginnasiale (equivalent of BEPC) with Oristano, in 1908, then enters to the college of Cagliari, where he places in company of his Gennaro brother, who works at a glacier.
Gennaro leaves to make its military service in Turin, and returns to Sardinia converted to socialism; Antonio reads various books and socialist reviews, in particular the writings of Gaetano Salvemini and Benedetto Croce, but also the popular novels of Carolina Invernizio and Anton Giulio Barrili. In the summer 1910, after its second year of college, Antonio in the daily newspaper Unione Sarda collaborates, thanks to one of its professors, who was director of this newspaper. The following year, it obtains brilliantly its licenza liceale (equivalent of the baccalaureat).
In Turin
In 1911, having obtained a purse, it starts studies of philology at the university of Turin. At the time, auto industry is established massively in the area, and the firms FIAT and Lancia engage a great number of workmen come from the poorest areas from Italy. Many trade unions are created, and the social conflicts appear very quickly. Gramsci attends the socialist circles in which gather the Sardinian emigrants; during the summer 1913, it adheres to the federation of the youth of the Socialist party, then with the Italian Socialist party the following year. Since 1914, he writes in socialist reviews like He Grido del Popolo ; being interested in all the aspects of the social life and policy of Turin, he becomes a famous journalist: starting from 1916, it collaborates in l
Starting from 1915, it is invested in the political combat through the political training of the young workmen. It takes share with the working insurrection of Turin in August 1917, which will fail fault of organization.
It animates, starting from 1919, the movement “conseillist”, which recommends the creation of councils of workmen in the companies. The same year, it takes part in the launching of a new newspaper, Processes It Nuovo , in the columns of which it exposes the need for providing to the workmen a political and cultural education, to reorganize the Italian company and to build a new socialist culture. This preparation also passes by a transformation of the Socialist party. It is necessary to put this organization on the war footing because once walk towards the engaged revolution, is it is the Socialist party which will seize the power, that is to say the capitalist capacity will make very to eliminate by violence any form from organization from the Working class. General secretary of the Italian Communist party as of his creation on January 21st 1921, it quickly becomes the intellectual reference about it. He is elected appointed of Turin of 1924 with 1926 and creates the daily newspaper Unità . He is stopped by the fascistic on November 8th 1926 and is condemned for Conspiration. On this occasion, the fascistic prosecutor declared: “it is necessary to prevent this brain from thinking”.
In captivity, he writes his Carnets of prison . Patient, it dies a few days after being left prison.
Thought
Gramsci wrote more than 30 books during its imprisonment. These writings, known under the name of “Notebooks of prison” ( Quaderni LED carcere ), contain its reflections on the Italian history, as well as ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory, such as:
⁴ the cultural Hegemony
⁴ the need to encourage the development of intellectuals coming from the working class, which it called “the organic intellectual”
⁴ the education of the workers
⁴ the distinction enters the political company and the civil society
⁴ absolute Historicisme
⁴ critic of the economic determinism
⁴ critic of the philosophical materialism
Cultural hegemony
Épicycle of the Marxist thought which mitigates the absence of the revolution envisaged by Marx and the reinforcement of the capitalist institutions: the middle-class dominates by the force but also by the assent, in particular by its cultural hegemony which makes that the proletariat adopts the interests of the middle-class. The Catholic church would illustrate for example this hegemony.
Intellectuals and education
Gramsci was interested closely in the role of the intellectuals in the company, it said in particular that all the men are intellectuals, but that all do not have the social function of intellectuals. It advanced the idea that the modern intellectuals were not satisfied to produce speech, but were implied in the organization of the social practices. It established moreover one distinction between a “traditional intelligentsia” which is thought (wrongly) like a class distinct from the company, and the groups of intellectuals whom each class generates “organically”. These organic intellectuals do not describe simply the social life according to scientific rules, but rather express the experiments and the feelings which the masses could not express by elles-mêmes.
The need for creating a culture specific to the workers is to be put in relation to the call of Gramsci for a type of education which allows the emergence of intellectuals who share passions of the masses of travailleurs.
The partisans of adult and popular education regard in this respect Gramsci as a reference.
Political company and civil society
The theory of the hegemony of Gramsci is inseparable from its design of the capitalist State, of which he says that he directs by the force and the assent. The State should not be included/understood like the only government, Gramsci distinguishes two great parts: the “political company”, place of the political institutions and constitutional-legal control (the police force, the army, the legal system); the “civil society”, that one usually indicates like the private sphere or not-official, and which includes the economy. First is governed by the force, the second by the assent. Gramsci specifies however that this distinction is before very conceptual and that the two spheres are often recut.
Gramsci affirms that, under modern capitalism, the middle-class can maintain its control economic by letting the political company grant a certain number of claims to the trade unions and to the political parties of mass. By doing this, the middle-class begins in a “passive revolution” by concessions on its immediate economic interests, concessions which prove in fact of the modifications of the forms of its hegemony. Gramsci regards movements as Fascism, the Réformisme, the Taylorisme and the Fordisme, like examples of this process.
For Gramsci, the revolutionary party is the force able to make emerge organic intellectuals for the workers, and an alternative hegemony in the civil society. The complex nature of the modern civil society means that to demolish middle-class hegemony and to lead to socialism is impossible without a “war of position”.
Although it is difficult to trace a clear line between “political company” and “civil society”, Gramsci warns against the worship of the State which rises from the identification of both, such as it is made by the Jacobins and the Fascistes. He thinks that the historical task of the proletariat is to create a controlled company, and defines the disappearance of the State as the moment when the civil society will be capable autoréguler. For Gramsci, the advent of the Socialisme passes firstly neither by the putsch, nor by direct confrontation, but by the subversion of the spirits, insistent on the role of the Intellectuel S.
Historicism
Like the Marx young person, Gramsci was a fervent supporter of the historicism. From this point of view, all the significance rises from the relation between the practical human activity (or “Praxis”) and the processes objective socio-histories of which it forms part. The ideas, their function and their origin, cannot be included/understood apart from the context socio-history. The concepts by which we organize our knowledge of the world do not derive indeed initially from our report/ratio to the things, but rather from the social relations between the users of these concepts. Consequently, there is not “human nature” inalterable, but only of the historical variations. In addition, science “does not reflect” not a reality independent of the man, it is not true that insofar as it expresses the process in progress in a given historical situation. The majority of the Marxists held for example for asset that the truth is the truth whatever that is to say the place and the moment of its knowledge, and that the scientific knowledge (Marxism included) is accumulated historically and thus does not belong to the illusory sphere of the superstructure. For Gramsci, however, the Marxism is “true” only in one pragmatic social direction, with the direction where by articulating the class consciousness of the proletariat it expresses the “truth” of its time better than any other theory. This position anti-scientist and anti-positiviste was allotted to the influence of Benedetto Croce, undoubtedly the Italian intellectual more respected of its time. It should however be recalled that Gramsci insisted on its “absolute historicism” in rupture with the idealistic content and hégélienne of the thought of Croce and with its propensity to maintain a synthesis metaphysical in the “historical destiny”. Although Gramsci was defended some, its design historicist of the truth could be taxed with relativism.
Critical of economism
In a famous article written before its imprisonment and heading “the Revolution against the Capital”, Gramsci affirmed that the Russian Révolution in Russia invalidated the idea that the socialist revolution could not be done before the total development of the capitalist forces of production. That returned to this design by Gramsci of the Marxism like a philosophy not-determinist. Gramsci insisted on the fact that to affirm the causal primacy of the relations of production was badly to include/understand the Marxism. The economic and cultural changes are the expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which element to the primacy on the other. The fatalistic belief, extremely widespread in the first socialist movements, in an inevitable triumph because of the “historical laws” was, from the point of view of Gramsci, the product of the historical conditions of an oppressed class reduced to a defensive action. This belief was to be abandoned once the workers were able to take the initiative. The “philosophy of the praxis” (euphemism for “Marxism” used to mislead the censure of the prison) cannot regard “historical laws” invisible as the agents of the social change. The history is defined by the human praxis and thus implies the human will. However, the will cannot lead in any situation: when the conscience of the workers reaches a level of development necessary for the action, the historical circumstances will be favorable. There is no historical inevitability in the realization of such or such process.
Critical of the materialism
Because he believed that the human history and the collective praxis determine the relevance of such or such philosophical question, the sights of Gramsci go against the metaphysical Matérialisme supported by Engels, although Gramsci does not mention it explicitly. For Gramsci, the Marxism does not deal with a reality existing by and for itself independently of humanity. The concept of an objective universe external with the history and the human praxis is according to him similar to the belief as a God. The natural history has direction only in relation with the human history. The philosophical materialism as common direction was the fruit of a critical lack of thought and could not, as opposed to what said Lénine, to be opposed to the religious superstition. In spite of that, Gramsci was resigned to the existence of this coarser form of the Marxism: the statute of the proletariat as classifies dependant meant that the Marxism, philosophy of the working class, could be often expressed in the form of the popular superstition and the common direction. Nevertheless, it is necessary to effectively defy the ideologies of educated classes, and for this reason the Marxists must present their philosophy in more sophisticated form, and undertake a true confrontation with the sights of their adversaries.
Criticisms
Gramsci is very criticized as theorist of the Entrisme. By allotting to the middle-class men the will conscious of dominating the spirits of the workmen, it justifies all the means whose a party claiming would use to defend the interests of those, in spite of them if it is needed, like propaganda or the infiltration.
See
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek.
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