> Amilcar Cabral's thought reminds of Gramsci on such matters. Both
> rejected notion of a simple determination of superstructure by
> economic factors and indicated ways in which state ideological
> apparatus operated with relative autonomy. Each stressed need for
> revolutionary classes to break cultural and ideological hegemony of
> existing ruling classes before seeking to seize state power. In a
> variety of ways, Cabral's analysis runs parallel to Gramsci's,
> including their examining the role of intellectuals. Michael Hoover
I don't know if I'm missing something, but the Cabral you quote doesn't sound at all like Gramsci to me. Firstly there is the question of method - in explaining Cabral's ideas on the 'trajectory' of the 'intellegentsia' (who are a part of the petit-bourgeoisie), you say:
"That Cabral did not offer any convincing economic reasons for why a group of intellectuals would constitute themselves as an intelligentsia of the working class (actually a working class in formation in Guinea-Bissau & Cape Verde) suggests that he saw the choice as both a moral one and one of individual reflection."
In contrast, Gramsci is quite hostile to understanding people on the level of 'moral' and 'individual' (if you mean individualistic) choice, maintaining a focus on the fact that individuals always construct themselves from social/historical material. This seems to be quite a methodological rift between the two thinkers.
Secondly, as I pointed out, for Gramsci intellectuals are everywhere. He emphasised the fact that the working class possessed an intellectual layeer *internal to itself*.
Maybe some of the difficulties on the question of intellectuals arise from the changing nature of the 'petit bourgeoisie' - a much blurred concept in the history of Marxism. Gramsci's theory is, in my mind, only possible because of the nature of work for the workers he was studying - in the large factories of Turin the role of certain elements of the working class in policing the class would have become apparent. The current emphasis on 'teams' which organise themselves to serve the 'higher logic' of the capitalists is an analagous example (and Dunayevskaya's emphasis on the question of time, and the organisation of time, in 'Marxism and Freedom', which was written during the 1950s - an eminently 'scientific' period for capitalism - might be another analogy).
So I can see a link between Gramsci's work and Cabral's emphasis on the layer of people responsible for 'organising administration' in the colonial state. And I can see how the material conditions of Italy around 1920 and Guinea-Bissau after WWII could provide two different pictures along the same basic pattern. And I can see comments of Cabral's such as: "the great merit of the First President of Mozambique's Liberation Party (FRELIMO) was not merely his decision to fight for his people; rather it was his knowledge of how to integrate himself with the reality of his country, to identify himself with his people, and to enculturate himself through the struggle he waged with courage, intelligence, and determination." are possibly the end result of the concept of 'totalising' intellectual that Gramsci described.
It just seems to me that there is still a pretty big difference between the two thinkers - and their similarity comes more from extrapolating them towards each other than from anything inherent in their own thought.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available 'The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.' - Karl Marx