> In fact, Gramsci is, IMHO, the most democratic of classical Marxist
thinkers
by a very wide margin.
Well, Marx was one of the classical Marxist thinkers, and he was highly democratic. Gramsci is a complex and ambivalent figure. He adovated what he called a "totalitarian" party. He expressly adopts an extreme version of the Jacobin-Machiavellian (as he calls it) conception of leadership on which the masses are sheep to be lead by the sheep in the party, acting in accord with ideas they themselves cannot understand but which are formulated by clever leaders. That is not a highly democratic conception, although it may be a clear-eyed and realistic one. --jks