0.0 Conspectus on the Prison Notebooks: Introduction (xvii-xcvi)

Antonio Gramsci is perhaps the most important twentieth century thinker of the radical tendency. His work, both political and theoretical, spanned a prodigious range and has left an edifying legacy within the intellectual canon, inside and outside the Marxist tradition. I would go so far as to say that in terms of depth and development implied by his contributions to dialectical and historical materialism, he is second only to the founders of the theory — Marx and Engels — and its most paradigmatic practitioner — Lenin.

In no uncertain terms, Gramsci revolutionised modern theory. Not content with reproducing theory on its traditional grounds, his work pushed the frontiers of the discipline into new fields, particularly those categories understood as “superstructures” in the Marxist tradition: political science, culture, religion, the intelligentsia, and beyond. In doing so, he brought Marxism to new levels of understanding, maturing the discipline and deepening its grasp of the world. But this was never merely for its own sake — it was directly inspired by the inertia and stumbling of that Marxism as a political movement. His work is always directed towards the real practice of revolution. In short, he wrote with purpose; even while entangled in fascist chains, he endeavored to extend communism’s theoretical and political substance, and in doing so advance the struggle for a better world.

Born in Sardinia in 1891, Antonio Gramsci was born to a family that was rendered destitute in 1898, with the arrest of his father, a modest-ranking functionary, for embezzlement. Raised in poverty along six siblings by his mother and facing life-long ill health, he came of age at the turn of the twentieth century, at precisely the juncture that would both inform and demand great radical thinkers. Studying in Turin, one of the great Italian centres of industry and proletarian politics, the young Gramsci entered the intellectual orbit of thinkers like Benedetto Croce, as well as a notably Hegelian interpretation of Marxism, that he would both perpetuate and critique in later life. Furthermore, he immersed himself in the radical politics and history of his time and place: initially, he was associated with the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano, PSI) and its fierce internal struggles: between (1) a reformist old guard, (2) an idealist and/or voluntarist youth, and (3) an orthodox and broadly economistic Marxist tendency to be lead by the great “intransigent” Amadeo Bordiga.

Naturally, the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917 drove enormous changes, both for Gramsci and for the political world that he found himself in. The theory and practice of Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard party made itself clear — as indeed did the imminent plausibility of social revolution. While initially identifying the uprising (an “act” of the working classes rather than an event by his reckoning) as a vindication of the collective will over the development of material and historical conditions, it would be the years that follow in which Gramsci first cut his teeth specifically as a Marxist theorist. He overcame many of the prevailing simplistic and economistic interpretations of historical materialism, not in thought but in practice. This was amidst the factory council movement of Turin, in its day primarily organised by local anarchists rather than the stagnant PSI leadership. He would join other Left figures like Palmiro Togliatti (a.k.a Il migliore) in breaking away from the inertia and electoralism long reproduced by the PSI’s moderate leadership — in the foundation of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) in January 1921. In this new formation, the thought of Bordiga took the lead effectively unchallenged.

The theoretical and political struggles within the PCI, in which Gramsci played no small role despite a significant lack of political experience, orbited many matters that would inform the Prison Notebooks: the role of international forces in national politics, Bordiga’s “organic centralism,” and the unprecedented novelty of fascism — as Mussolini came to seize power in October 1922. Gramsci’s own positions tended to align with the “Centre,” in opposition to Bordiga’s “Left” tendency — though it should be understood they had as much in common with one another as they fiercely disagreed upon. From 1924 to his arrest in 1926, Gramsci came to lead the PCI. He favoured a stronger alignment with the Leninist approach, including “bolshevisation” under heightening class tensions — as the politics of the Russian fraction of the Comintern were increasingly becoming the politics of the Comintern in general. Regardless, under the new regime Italian communism would stumble from formerly promising heights — by 1925, outlawed, crushed under heel, and driven underground. All, including Gramsci, underestimated the weight and severity of Mussolini’s dictatorship, and overestimated the role of social and economic crisis to igniting proletarian revolution. It is in correspondence with this political and historical context that Gramsci’s writings have to be understood.

Gramsci’s show trial commenced on 28 May 1928. The fascist prosecutor pronounced the following unwitting commendation: “for twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning.” Reading materials were strictly limited and censored. He suffered from tremendous isolation, both personal and political. His health, already fragile at the best of times, worsened rapidly in the wretchedness of fascist prisons: his teeth fell out, his internal organs broke down, and he endured headaches so agonising that they drove him to strike his head against the walls of his cell. Where he could, he wrote voraciously, likely as a means of struggle to keep himself sane, in fighting form — by any account an extraordinary feat of human will. I reproduce a passage he wrote about living in prison below, in an almost complete form. I found it particularly moving.

After eleven years of incarceration and internment, Gramsci died on 27 April 1937. His thirty-three notebooks were smuggled out by his sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht, and taken to Moscow.

Concretely, Gramsci’s thought emanated from the defiant core of a struggle for a new world. While his theories have been widely appropriated by numerous intellectual canons, it is only as a communist of the early twentieth century — bound by the rise of fascism and contemplating the struggle of and beyond such conditions, in which he lived, worked, and fought — that an honest and proper reading of Gramsci’s work may be divined.

Holding this spirit to heart, to read the text for what it is, this year I am embarking on a close reading of his most notorious work: the Prison Notebooks. As a relative newcomer to Gramsci (about three years of reading), I shall summarise each section in a piece of writing here as I finish them, as best I can. From time to time, I’ll also add in tentative applications of Gramsci’s theory as I understand it to current conditions in Aotearoa New Zealand and likely the wider world as well.

It seems to me that many of the Gramscian concepts deployed in modern Marxism and critical theory are misinterpreted, misguided, or misattributed. As Hoare and Smith put it:

Gramsci has perhaps suffered more than any Marxist writer since Lenin from partial and partisan interpretation, both by supporters and opponents; the Prison Notebooks themselves read seriously and in all their complexity are the best antidote to this.

Gramscian concepts as we know them tend to be reconstructed, rather than based on his actual theoretical work. This is not really the fault of those that utilise his ideas. We see this in how Marx is utilised as well, albeit to a lesser extent. The difference is that Gramsci’s actual work is much, much more marginal to its utilisation, compared to the canon of Marx or Engels or Lenin. Many of his key concepts — organic and traditional intellectuals, cultural-intellectual hegemony, and so on — are almost ubiquitous among leftists; but they are usually derivative in form. Worst still, they tend to be absorbed into what Gramsci himself refers to as the “Byzantine” tendency — to apply theory scholastically for its own sake, as another notch on the academy’s bedpost without political consequence. This tends to shed these notions of their real concreteness, complexity, and the actual historical and political junctures that gave these theories life.

Again, this is not for no reason: this work is fragmented, unorganised, under-developed. It was developed from a theorist that had to work in the conditions of vicious incarceration and censorship — from a man who could not speak for himself. Really, it is a small miracle that the Prison Notebooks were even able to be written, let alone that they are coherent enough to acquire the attention that they have. Overall, they emerge in a form comparable to the Grundrisse that gives some Marxists such excitement, only more so. The material is often contradictory. Basic initial intuitions are thrown together with concrete theorising. Ideas are visited and revisited from a succession of qualitatively different angles. A concept like the state, civil society, or the relation between them, meaning one thing in one context comes to mean another elsewhere. Gramsci goes back on himself, reworks his own thoughts. There are significant gaps that would probably have been filled by his internal mental processes. You see Gramsci in tension with his own thought. I shall do my best to recognise this in reflection.

The edition I shall be using will be what is most frequently held as canonical in the English speaking world: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, originally published in 1971 by Lawrence & Wishart.

A Dialogue:

Something has changed, fundamentally. This is evident. What is it? Before, they all wanted to be the ploughmen of history, to play the active parts…

Nobody wished to be the ‘manure’ of history. But is it possible to plough without first manuring the land? So ploughmen and ‘manure’ are both necessary. In the abstract they all admitted to it. But in practice?

Manure for manure, draw back as well, return to the shadows, into obscurity. Now something has changed, since there are those who adapt themselves ‘philosophically’ to being ‘manure’, who know this is what they must be and adapt themselves. It is like the problem of the proverbial dying man. But there is a great difference, because at the point of death what is involved is a decisive action...

Whereas in the case of the manure, the problem is a long-term one, and poses itself afresh at every moment. You only live once, as the saying goes; your own personality is irreplaceable. You are not faced abruptly with with an instant’s choice on which to gamble, a choice in which you have to evaluate the alternatives in a flash and cannot postpone your decision. Here postponement is continual, and your decision has to be continually renewed. This is why you can say that something has changed.

There is not even the choice between living for a day as a lion, or a hundred years as a sheep. You don’t live as a lion even for a minute, far from it: you live like something far lower than a sheep for years and years and know that you have to live like that.

Image of Prometheus who, instead of being attacked by the eagle, is devoured by parasites. The Hebrews produced the image of Job. Only the Greeks could have imagined Prometheus, but the Hebrews were more realistic, more pitiless, and their hero more true to life.