Antonio Gramsci: An Intellectual Biography

Description

This intellectual biography provides an organic framework for understanding Antonio Gramsci’s process of intellectual development, paying close attention to the historical and intellectual contexts out of which his views emerged. The Gramsci in Notebooks cannot fully account for the young director of L’Ordine Nuovo, or for the communist leader. Gramsci’s development did not occur under conditions of intellectual inflexibility, of absence of evolution. However, there is a strong thread connecting the “political Gramsci” with Gramsci as a “cultivated man.” The Sardinian intellectual’s life is marked by the drama of World War I, the first mass conflict in which the great scientific discoveries of the previous decades were applied on a large scale and in which millions of peasants and workers were slaughtered. In all of his theoretical formulations, this dual relation, which epitomizes the instrumental use of “simpletons” by ruling classes, goes beyond the military context of the trenches and becomes full-fledged in the fundamental relations of modern capitalist society. In contrast with this notion of social hierarchy, which is deemed natural and unchangeable, Gramsci constantly affirmed the need to overcome the historically determined rupture between intellectual and manual functions, due to which the existence of a priesthood or of a separate caste of specialists in politics and in knowledge is made necessary. It is not the specific professional activity (whether material or immaterial) that determines the essence of human nature: to Gramsci, “all men are philosophers.” In this passage from Notebooks, we find the condensed form of his idea of “human emancipation,” which is the historical need for an “intellectual and moral reform”: the subversion of traditional relations between rulers and ruled and the end of exploitation of man by man. Contents Part I: The Young Revolutionary Chapter 1: The Premises of an Uninterrupted Discourse Chapter 2: Dialectics Versus Positivism: The Young Gramsci’s Philosophical Background Chapter 3: Self-education and Autonomy of Producers Chapter 4: Lenin and the Topicality of Revolution Chapter 5: L’Ordine Nuovo Chapter 6: The Origin and Defeat of the Italian Revolution Chapter 7: The Party Problem Chapter 8: Revolutionary Reflux and Reactionary Offensive Part II: The Political Leader Chapter 9: The New Party Chapter 10: The Comintern and the “Italian case” Chapter 11: Toward a New Majority Chapter 12: Gramsci Leading the Party Chapter 13: Theoretical Maturity between 1925 and 1926 Chapter 14: The Congress of Lyon Part III: The Theoretician Chapter 15: From Sardinia’s Contradictions to the Southern Question Chapter 16: The Notebooks: The Difficult Beginnings of a “Disinterested” Work Chapter 17: Hegemonic Relations, Productive Relations and the Subaltern Chapter 18: Permanent Transformism Chapter 19: Historical Premises and Congenital Contradictions in Italian Biography Chapter 20: “The Old Dies and the New Cannot be Born” Chapter 21: The Double Revision of Marxism and Similarity with Lukács Chapter 22: Translatability and Hegemony Chapter 23: The Philosopher Man and the Tamed Gorilla Chapter 24: Michels, the Intellectuals and the Issue of Organization Chapter 25: The Dismantling of the Old Schemes of Political Art Chapter 26: Epilogue References Index