> It suspect that the age of Jacobin social revolutions -- beginning
> with the French Revolution and ending with Iran's Islamic Revolution
> -- is over.
Gramsci seemed to indicate that this was true for Europe at the time of the writing of the notebooks. The more important distinction in this case is that the French revolution was able to produce a sense of the national-popular that the Italian revolt was not. I think that this links directly to Dabashi's argument in Iran: A People Interrupted, which makes the claim that socialism, nationalism, and Islam offer partial explanations of Iranian history, but none can either produce this national-popular nor can they adequately explain Iranian history. Dabashi seems to think that it will take some kind of synthesis that he gestures to but cannot conceptualize himself.
> Gramsci posed a question: ". . . does there exist an absolute identity
> between war of position and passive revolution? Or at least does
> there exist, or can there be conceived, an entire historical period in
> which the two concepts must be considered identical -- until the point
> at which the war of position once again becomes a war of maneuver?"
> (Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 108).
>
> That historical period is now. Today, what is on the political agenda
> is indeed a war of position, and it is in this context I consider the
> concepts of hegemony and passive revolution as useful ones for working
> toward social change, especially in such countries as Iran and
> Venezuela.
I think that this does a lot of theoretical work for you. The troubling aspect to this is that it operates on a fairly reductionist reading of Gramsci. As the notebooks point out, Gramsci's concept of a war of position and a passive revolution are fairly ambiguous and contradictory. The answer to the question above is that this linkage seems fair.... sometimes. This links to the way the way the Italian Risorgimento is both a creation of the Italian nation and a restoration of the monarchy. The creation of a republic is never fully successful. At other times, Gramsci links the war of position with a necessary struggle within advanced capitalist societies, which capitalist hegemony has reached a certain sophistication. This conceptualization of a war of position doesn't link up with a conceptualization of passive revolution and its dialectic of revolution and restoration. I think that when we conceptualize 'passive revolution in the way that Gramsci intended it, as a combination of restoration and revolution then it doesn't offer an adequate explanation of Venezuela, although the concept of the war of position does. Ultimately, I think a contemporary theory of the war of position would have to delink it from the passive revolution, which is, when you read it closely, a theory of counter-revolution.
> What is passive revolution? Gramsci put it this way: "what was
> involved was not a social group which 'led' other groups, but a State
> which, even though it had limitations as a power, 'led' the group
> which should have been 'leading' and was able to put at the latter's
> disposal an army and a politico-diplomatic strength" (Selections from
> the Prison Notebooks, p. 105).
As I said before, I don't think that this has anything to do with Venezuela. It ignore the importance of the popular movement and the ways that its active involvement in politics has shaped the movement as well as allowing it to stay in power. The 'revolution' has allowed for active involvement in Venezuelan politics that was unimaginable in earlier eras. It has also explored the possibilities of creating new property relations and is currently trying to reintegrate the economy. It seems that Venezuela's advocates have been caught up in the image of Chavez as much as its opponents when the real importance is in the transformation of everyday social relations. I don't know if it will succeed, but I would like to be pointed to something similar with the contemporary Iranian situation.
Robert Wood