Antonio Gramsci

POLITICAL THOUGHT

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Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

INTRODUCTION
• Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist leader and Marxist philosopher,

• Contemporary of Mussolini, he was very active in the communist movement in Italy.

• He was the founder of the Communist Party of Italy.

• His writings during his imprisonment by the fascist regime of Italy,

• Known as Prison Notebooks are considered to be very important for all those who seek a more
democratic, less dogmatic and open version of socialism.

• He saved Marxism from the criticism of crude economic determinism.

• He is considered as the Godfather of Cultural Marxism.

Influences on Gramsci
Marx

• Gramsci seems to be influenced by the early writings of Marx. His main attempt was to establish ‘human
subjectivity’ as a core element of Marxism. In classical Marxist tradition, objective material conditions
were given an important place.
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• Human consciousness was seen merely as a reflection of deeper social consciousness. He therefore
reviewed the Marx theory of History.

Difference Between Marx & Gramsci’s thoughts

Marx Gramsci

• Rejected Economic Determinism and supported

• Economical Deterministic Ideas. Human Subjectivity
• Scientific and Positivist thought • Anti-positivist and anti-scientific relativism
• Historical Materialism • Historical Relativism
• Base determines the nature of Superstructure • Base and superstructure are relative, and
superstructure also determines the base.
• Capitalism survives and exploits by use of coercive
force. • Capitalism survive and exploits by manufacturing
consent, which he called “Hegemony”.

Conditions in Italy

• During Gramsci’s times, Italy was a semi-developed country with deep internal differences between north
and south, industrial areas and countryside, modern and ancient.

• It possessed a proletariat with a broad rural base, a large, essentially conservative peasantry, influence of
intellectuals in the working class leadership.

• It had a powerful Catholic Church backed by a vast army of clerics and functionaries.

• Hence, Italy during the times of Gramsci was unsuited for deterministic Marxism.

Historian Benedetto Croce

• Another major influence on Gramsci is Italian Historian Benedetto Croce.

• Croce gave the philosophy of history and like Hegel, he focused on the importance of cultural and
ideological factors in shaping history.

• Gramsci rejects the division of thought as scientific and unscientific. He rejects the idea of science as
‘objective, universal truth’ and considers it to be a part of superstructure.

• This anti-positivist and anti-scientific relativism of Gramsci was influenced by Croce. He believed this
historical relativism to be the core of Marxism or ‘the philosophy of praxis’ as he would call it.

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Writings of Gramsci

• A Great and Terrible World: The Pre-Prison Letters, 1908-1926

• The Prison Notebooks (three volumes) (1929-1935) – They are considered as one of the most original
contributions to 20th century political theory. They cover a wide range of topics from Italian history and
nationalism to fascism, religion, culture and French revolution.

• The Southern Question

• The Modern Prince: And Other Writings (1949).

Essays by Gramsci

• Newspapers and the Workers (1916) - Gramsci talks about the bourgeois newspaper as an instrument of
hegemony. He talks about the newspapers serving the dominant class. He talks about how everyday
thousands of workers shell their pennies to the bourgeois newspaper, assisting them in creating their
power.

• Men or Machines? (1916) – Gramsci talks about the preference of the bourgeois class to have worker-
machines over worker-men.

• One Year of History (1918) – Here he describes about the Russian Revolution and its effects on the
workers.

Major themes of Gramsci’s political thought

Hegemony

• Hegemony is manufacturing consent. Hegemony signifies the control of the intellectual life of society by
purely cultural means.

• According to Gramsci, the supremacy of a social class manifests itself in two different ways: Domination or
coercion and Intellectual and moral leadership. The latter type of supremacy is Hegemony.

• Thus, hegemony is a supremacy acquired by consent rather than force. Whereas ‘domination’ is realized
through the coercive machinery of the state, ‘hegemony’ is mainly exercised through civil society.

• Moreover, this ideological superiority must have solid economic roots. Thus, according to Gramsci, the
working class could only conquer by first imparting its world view and system of values to the other
classes.

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• As Croce had stated, people would leave religion only when the spiritual needs which used to be
satisfied by religion, can be fulfilled by something else. Marxism should fulfill this need.

War of Position vs. War of Movement

• Gramsci wrote in the 1930s of a “war of position” for socialists and communists to subvert Western
culture from the inside in an attempt to compel it to redefine itself.

• War of Position is a kind of trench warfare. In Western societies, Gramsci observed that the state is “only
an outer ditch” behind which lies a robust and sturdy civil society. So, if socialism wants to control the
western country then the socialist forces have to attack the cultural structure which gives support to the
capitalist economic system.

• War of Movement is a Frontal attack on the already established Political system resulting in complete
social upheaval. Gramsci considered the Russian Revolution as a war of movement. He suggested that War
of Movement will not work in Western Societies, because they have a strong civil society that holds the
state from inside.

• As described by Forgacs, “War of movement is a frontal assault on the state whereas war of position is
conducted mainly on the terrain of civil society.”

Organic Intellectuals

• In the words of Gramsci, ‘All men are intellectuals but everyone does not perform the function of
Intellectuals’.

• Gramsci recognized the role of intellectuals in maintaining Capitalism. Intellectuals play an important role
in manufacturing Hegemony.

• It is in this context he gave the concept of Organic Intellectuals. Gramsci suggests the working class to
have their own Organic Intellectuals, persons belonging to their class, having interest in the protection of
the interests of their class.

• These Organic Intellectuals will play the role of creating counter hegemony. Gramsci believed that the
working class was on the way to creating its own original culture, quite different from that of the
bourgeoisie. It would destroy bourgeoisie myths and prejudices and set up for the first time truly universal
spiritual values.

• Gramsci had asserted that the workers could win if they achieved cultural ‘Hegemony’ before attaining
political powers.

• Gramsci viewed churches, charities, the media, and schools as organizations that needed to be invaded by
socialist thinkers.

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• Critique of Economism – Gramsci refuted economic determinism as anti-Marxist. Even though he was
aware that there exists a strong stand of economic determinism in the history of Marxism, he attributes
this to the historical circumstances of the early phase of the workers movement. Gramsci rejected that
there exists some fixed historical laws which are realized through human beings. According to him history
is nothing but human praxis and therefore it includes will.

• Self Sufficiency of History/ historical relativism – The main theme of Gramsci’s thought is the relation of
human thoughts, feelings and will to ‘objective’ social processes. Gramsci rejected the division between
base and superstructure as non-essential. He refuted the notion that the superstructure was a world of
mere appearances or a ‘less real’ side of life than mode of production.

• Revolution – According to Gramsci, the proletarian revolution is not only a question of political
opportunity but also of cultural and technical conditions, the spiritual emancipation of the working
masses and attainment of a level of social development so that socialist transformation can be effective. It
is proletariat revolution only when it liberates existing productive forces, strengthens initiative of the
proletariat,

• and establishes a classless and stateless society. It must transform the production apparatus from an
instrument of oppression into an instrument of liberation. For this to happen, the communist party must
be a party of masses. Gramsci, however, was not a democratic socialist. He did not believe that power
could be achieved by parliamentary means.

• Workers Council- Gramsci believed in ‘Government by Councils’ as distinct from government by the party.
He criticized bureaucratic centralism and communism in its Leninist form. He even criticized the
totalitarian parties that degenerate into a privileged class. Gramsci believed that socialist society should
be democratically organized. Like Marx, he believed that the difference between the civil society and state
would be reduced by socialism.

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Quotes by Antonio Gramsci

• “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

• “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”.

• “To tell the truth is revolutionary”.

• “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned”.

• “Every state is a dictatorship”.

• “Indifference is the dead weight of the history”.

• “Man is above all else mind, consciousness---that is, he is product of history, not of nature”.

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