Gramsci Redux

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Mon Oct 16 19:37:38 PDT 2000


----- Original Message ----- From: <JKSCHW at aol.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>


> 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

I think that's too simplistic a way to evaluate Gramsci's idea of the party, since he had a very keen sense of the complexity of society and the rather dynamic role of the party in fighting the war of position against hegemonic capitalism. He specifically and vehemently criticized "bureaucratic centralism" as disregarding the "initiative and responsibility at the bottom" in favor of a "narrow clique which tends to perpetuate its selfish priveleges by controlling or even by stifling the birth of oppositional forces."("The Modern Prince")

Yes, he did see a counter-hegemonic party as critical in challenging capitalist power with strong democratic centralism directing the battle with strategic military direction, but I don't think Gramsci's idea of philosophical hegemony should be seen as reducing people to the status of "sheep" but is merely a way of deeping Marx's idea of the role of ideology as the unspoken assumptions that motivate people in their daily unthought activities.

Gramsci specifically downplays some special role for intellectuals as master thinkers for the movement, but rather sees them as serving a general professional role subordinate to the party's general organic goals. All actions by humanity have a rational basis that must be cultivated. "There is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded: homo faber cannot be separated from homo sapiens. Each man, finally, outside his professional activity, carries on some form of intellectual activity, that is, he is a 'philosopher', an artist, a man of taste, he participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought."("The Intellectuals")

This is hardly a reduction of the average person to the status of "sheep", even if he sees day-to-day activity by party members as subordinate for strategic reasons to the democratic will of party as a whole. But Gramsci's continual stress on the idea of "organic" decision-making that ties the bottom to the top of his military pyramid is a key part of his thinking, I believe. It is a rejection of anarchist consensus in action, but is not a rejection of the contribution of all party members to decision-making.

-- Nathan Newman



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