Antonio Gramsci

Gramsci was born in a poor family in Sardina which was the poorest region of Italy. His father was arrested for embezelement when Gramsci was a small child and sentenced to five years imprisonment. In his absence, the family lived in utter poverty because of which Gramsci suffered physical deformity and became a hunchback. After some elementary education, Gramsci started working in an office. In 1911 he won a scholarship and joined Turin University. At Turin, he noticed that there was a lot of difference in the standard of living in the rural areas of Italy and its cities. While at the university, he got associated with the Italian Socialist Party. By and by he was attracted to Marxist ideas. He was also influenced by Corce's emphasis on the role of culture and thought in the development of history. It was this idea of Corce which provided the historical framework within which Gramsci carried out his adapiation of Marxian ideas. In 1914-15 he attended a series of lectures on Marx which made him particularly interested in the problem of relation between the base and the super-structure. He began to engage himself in the workers' movement. When the Italian Communist Party was founded in 1921, Gramsci became one of its founding member. Soon, he became its General Secretary and was also elected to the Italian Parliament. He was arrested in 1926 in the wake of the rise of fascism and remained imprisoned till his death. During his prison life he wrote on several topics. These writings were published later as Prison Notebooks. It is these Notebooks of Gramsci which made him a great theoretician of Hegelian Marxism (alongwith Lukacs). His other major work is Modern Prince and other writings.

Notion of Hegemony

Gramsci's Prison Notebooks and Modern Prince and Other Writings deal with diverse issues of politics, history, culture and philosophy, but in this unit we will refer to only some of them: his notion of hegemony, his views about the role of intellectuals, his philosophy of Praxis and his analysis of relations between the base and the super-structure. Out of ail these, his notion of hegemony is considered to be the most significant and original contribution of Gramsci. In the previous unit, it was pointed out that in all societies there are two classes: the class which owns the means of production and the class which owns only labour power. The class which owns the means of production establishes its rule over the class which owns labour power and exploits it. Thus, in the Marxian scheme, the capitalist state is the managing committee of the bourgeoisie, which facilitates and legitimizes the exploitative processes in the society. It is the economic power (or the ownership of means of production) that enables the ruling class to remain in power. Gramsci contested this Marxian position. He argued that the ruling classi maintains its domination in diverse ways including the use of force, use of its economic power and the consent of the ruled. in other words, the bourgeois class maintains its domination not merely by force, but in several nun-coercive ways. Two such non-coercive ways prominently come out in his writings. One of them is the ability of the ruling class to impose its own values and belief systems on the masses. Gramsci argued that the ruling class uses various processes of socialization to impose its own culture on the ruled. The ruling class attempts to control the minds of men by imposing its own culture on them in several subtle ways. So, cultural hegemony of the ruling class is the basis of its ruling power. Secondly, he argues that the ruling class does not always work for its narrow class interest. In order to maintain its ruling position, it enters into compromises and alliances with other groups in societies and creates a historic bloc. It is this strategy of creating a social bloc which enables the ruling class to get the consent of the ruled. You will notice that this argument of Gramsci is completely at variance with the orthodox Marxian position in which the class rule of the bourgeois is justified on the basis of its control of means of production. In other words, in the Gramscian argument the role of ideas and culture become central instead of the economic factor. Secondly, Gramsci's explanation of dominance of the ruling class in terms of its compromises and alliances with other allies underplays the orthodox Marxian position in which the state is viewed merely as the managing committee of the bourgeoisie. So much so that Gramsci also suggested a system of alliances for the working class to enable it to overthrow the bourgeois rule. He emphasized the need for creating a historic bloc.

Role of Intellectuals

Here a question arises as to how does the ruling class establish its hegemony in society? Gramsci argued that it does so with the help of intellectuals. But he added that intellectuals could also play a significant tole in the revolutionary transformation of society. He argued that intellectuals provide a philosophy for the masses so that they do not question the ruling position of the bourgeoisie. In this respect, Gramsci talked of two categories of intellectuals: traditional intellectuals and organic intellectuals. The former largely refers to those who think that they are not linked to any class. In this sense, they are independent. Organic intellectuals, on the other hand, are those who are actively and closely associated either with the ruling class or with the masses. Those who are associated with the ruling class churn out ideas, which helps in legitimizing the rule of one class over the other. Those who are associated with the masses work for and provide leadership to bring about revolutionary change in society. Such intellectuals emerge from within the working class.

Philosophy of Praxis

Gramsci wrote in his Prisan Notebooks that his philosophy of praxis is a reform and a developed form of Hegelianism. For him, philosophy of praxis is interaction of theory and practice. In Marx's writings, praxis refers to creative and self-creative activity through which human beings create and change their historical universe and themselves. It is activity specific to human beings and it differentiates them from other beings. It is a mix or rather interaction of theory and practice in such a way that theory enriches practice and practice enriches theory. Marx had discussed the notion of praxis in his Theses on Feuerbach. Gramsci treated Marxism as the philosophy of praxis. He was himself involved in practical revolutionary activity. Gramsci maintains that man can affect his own development and that of his own surroundings only in so Far as he has a clear view of what possibilities of actions are open to him. To do this, he has to understand the historical situation in which he finds himself and once he does that, he can play an active part in modifying that situation. The man of action is the true philosopher and the philosopher must of necessity be a man of action. Gramsci holds the view that man does not enter into relations with the natural world, just by being himself a part of it, but actively by means of work and technique. It is only through historical awareness and understanding of historical circumstances in which man finds himself that he can remake his surroundings and remake himself.

Relations between the Base and the Super-Structure and the Notion of Historic Bloc

It was in 1914-15 when Gramsci attended some lectures on Marxism that he got interested in the problem of relations between the base and the super-structure. You would recall that Marx had expressed the view that no society can undergo any transformation till necessary and sufficient conditions for such transformation are already there. One form of society cannot be replaced by another, unless it has developed all forms of life which are inherent and implicit in its economic relationship. In the Critique of Political Economy, Marx had stated that "no social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions for their existence have matured in the womb of old society". For Marx, the economic order of society constituted the base and the political order constituted the super structure. The nature of super structure depended on the nature of the economic base. Gramsci modified this Marxian position. He talked of a historic bloc. The historic bloc for Gramsci was a situation when both objective and subjective forces combine to produce a revolutionary situation. It is a situation when the old order is collapsing and there are also people with will and historical insight to take advantage of this situation. The union of base and super-structure, material conditions and ideologies, constitute the historic bloc. In other words, even when the material forces have reached a point where revolution is possible, its occurrence would depend on correct intellectual analysis in order to have a rational reflection of the contradictions of the structure. For Gramsci, dialectics means three things:

I) interaction between the intellectuals (party leaders) and the masses;

i) explanation ofhistorical developments in terms ofthesis, anti-thesis and synthesis;

iii) the relation between the sub-structure and super-structure.

In vulgar Marxism, the super-structure i.e., ethics, laws, philosophy, art and the whole realm of ideas is directly conditioned by the economic system, by means of production and exchange. Material conditions determine man's consciousness' Gramsci criticized this view. Like Lukacs, he argued that revolution and preparations for it would involve profound changes in the consciousness of masses. Dialectics in the physical world are different from dialectics in society. In physical nature, it is the backlash of physical forces but in society, it is a moment in which men contribute to becoming a deliberate force in the dialectical process. Thus, it is the moment when sub-structure and super-structure interact on each other to produce a historic bloc.

You must have noticed that there is a lot in common between Lukacs and Gramsci. Both emphasized the role of cultural and philosophical factors in understanding historical materialism of Marx. Both brought out the element of Hegelian idealism in Marx. Both attached greater importance to consciousness than to material forces. Both saw the relationship between the base and the super structure in a new light.