Gramsci's political legacy fifty
ITALY that is different from ours," and accuses Gramsci of "fundamentalism." The consequence is that, when he has to explain why Gramsci's thought remains valid, the PCI secretary either remains on a general level -an ambiguous generality, subject to several interpretations (it is from Gramsci that the impulse came to claim the heritage of the Italian socialist tradition and democratic thought") - or falls into the most appalling banality ("we hold on to Gramsci to give us more courage
THE GREAT Italian revolutionist and Marxist thinker, Antonio
Gramsci, died on April 27, 1937. The fiftieth anniversary of his death has brought forth a flood
Unfortunately, a lot of the attention paid to Gramsci has been less the revolutionary example he gave in the post World motivated by
War I Italian revolutionary upsurge than by the possibilities for misuse offered by the work he did in prison, under the eye of fascist jailers. Thus, Gramsci's reputation has been exploited for the sake of all sorts of new left and Eurocommunist wool spinning. But because of this, he is also one genuine modern Marxist thinker generally allowed in Eastern Europe. For both good and bad reasons, the question of Gramsci's contribution to revolutionary thought remains
- posited the pel is ne de Bandem Rose, a
The following interview with Livio Maitan on the legacy of paper of the Italian section of the Fourth International. His article
"Gramsci, 50 Years After," was published in the April issue of
Quatrieme Internationale, the French-language theoretical journal of the Fourth International. It will be published in the July issue of
International Marxist Review, the English-language theoretical journal of the Fourth International.
Question.
What do you think of the writings about Gramsci on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of his death?
Obviously, it is still too early to make a balance sheet. We will see if anything for understanding this great figure in the history of the workers' ment comes out of these tons of printed paper that are to overwhelm us, or whether the prewill be to
Gramsci in the light of today's ideological and political needs, if not simply those of propaganda.
The prelude, especially as regards the Communist Party, was certainly not encouraging. I am referring to the interview with Alessandro Natta published in I Unita of January 18, which contained allusions to Gramsci's and
Lenin's conceptions of the crucial problem of taking power that were lightminded at best.
In the 1950s, interwe saw an pretation of Gramsci designed to prove that the Gramsci of the Prison
Notebooks had anticipated the Communist Party's neo-reformist postwar
12 of writings in Italy in particular. strategy. (1) Now Natta claims to have found this anticipation in some of Gramsci's writings in Ordine Nuovo. (2) It is hard to say which is the more astonishing, his flight of imagination or the straight face he manages to
Q. But Natta says that Gramsci's conceptions are not those of the PCI [Italian Communist Party] today.
A. That's right. Even more than in the past, the PCI leaders and intellectuals are caught in a contradiction. For a whole number of obvious reasons, they need to go on laying claim to Gramsci. But at the same time, they have to take their distance, for the simple reason that it is impossible to maintain that there is a direct and unproblematic continuity. And, if they keep their identification with Gramsci, this will conflict with their celebrated integration into the "European left."
That is why, on the one hand, Natta shamelessly twists an article written by Gramsci in 1920, and on the other says explicitly: "In Gramsei, there is a conception of the party to innovate. It is his method that is valid - going to the root of the actual reality and fighting against all doctrinalism.").
• According to an article by "pointed up the link between Gramsci's thought and the PCI's strong emphasis on Europeanism today".
I read Spinella's little note (in l'Unita, Lombardy Supplement, January 22). Well, Gramsci's internationalist perspective included extending the socialist revolution, in the full sense of the word, throughout Europe, as a further development of the revolutionary that had occurred in Russia. The PCI for the Europe of the Common Market and NATO, that is, it integrates intself fully into the existing
Any attempt to make a parallel between the two conceptions is a grotesque obfuscation, and it is surprising that an intellectual like Spinella would get involved in this sort of thing.
Q. Do you think, then, that there is no continuity between Gramsci amd the present-day PCI.
A. It seems clear to me that there is no longer any continuity. It could be maintained that the split in Livorno was an error (3), that the condemnation of the social democracy by Lenin and the Third International were wrong, that revolution is no longer possible, and so on - views which I obviously reject - but even the most active imagination could not establish a real link between the PCI of Natta and the Communist Party of Gramsci's time. What is more, I would say, that there is now a significant part of Togliatti himself that Natta can no longer accept.
If you reread the report, a sig-
Written during Gramsci's imprisonment after the seizure of power by the fascists. The style was necessarily obscure at times and therefore lends itself to various interpretations.
2. The publication of a left group. ing in the Socialist Party during the workers' upsurge that came in the wake of World War I. 1921 that produced thee Socianist Party. The split in the Socialist Party in International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
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years on
icant one in many respects, that ogliatti made to the Gramsci studies neeting in January 1958, and compare it with what members have written about Gramsci in the more recent period, you can get an idea of how far the party has gone in its 30 years of more and more systematic integration into the socio-economic and institutional framework of bourgeois society.
Natta praises Togliatti for choosing to publish the Prison Note-
The cannot throw out Togliatti. But in the case of latter's supposed merit, seems to forget that Togliatti Notebooks, and that Gramsci's writings in Ordine Nuovo only started being republished in 1954, that is, ten years after the fall of fascism, and that the first editions of books included shameful instances of censorship. Besides this, why should it be virtuous to make such a "choice, since it is normal that such writings should be published. Is it conceivable Gramsci should be hidden from the party, from the workers' movement, or from anybody?
Q. And Berlinguer?
A. Berlinguer made a notable contribution to the outcome of the PCI's evolution. However, he continued to be concerned about reaffirming, if only after his own fashion, the Communist identity against the social democracy, while Natta, Napolitiano, Ochetto and company the present PCI leaders] are concerned above all about attenuating or toning down this identity, stressing the convergences rather than the differences.
Q. In Gramsci, you find several passages that criticize Trotsky's position, such as his famous letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in October 1926, cited by Natta, in which he criticized in particular the oppositionists.
A. Back in the Gramsci meeting of 1958, I expressed my point of view about that argument. I would refer you to an overall evaluation of Gramsci that I am working on. [See introduction.] I think that to a large extent Gramsci's polemic is not directed against Trotsky's real positions. It should be stressed, however, that there is a world of difference between the style and stance of Gramsci's critique and those of the slander campaign waged by the Italian Communist Party and the bureaucratized International, in which Togliatti took an active part.
It is significant, among other things,
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987 that Togliatti, who took an attitude of opportunistic adaptation to the Stalinist leading group, rejected the 1926 letter. By his decision in particular, the PCI did not publish it until take this opportunity to point out that the letter to the PC of the was published for the time in Italy by Bandiera Rossa, the paper of the Italian section of the Fourth International, in January 1956, eight years before it was published by the PCI. In his valuable Vita di Antonio Gramsci ["Life of Antonio Gramsci"], after correctly noting the publication of the letter in France at the behest of Tasca [an Italian Left Oppositionist], Giuseppe Fiori
SCRITTI
POLITICI
a cura di PAOLO SPRIANO
Il a biennio rosso ». la crisi del socialismo e la nascita del partito comunista (1919-1921)
GRAMSCI
Antonio Gramsci (DR) wrongly attributes the first publication in Italy to Eugenio Reale's magazine Corrispondenza socialista, which published it in December 1958, and therefore after Bandiero Rossa.
What do you think of Gramsci's position at the start of the 1930s?
About that, there is very little to discuss. Even the most pro-Togliatti historians have had to admit that in that period Gramsci made criticisms of the policy of the Communist International and of that of the PCI itself that went in as the criticism of the Left Opposition. To what extent Gramsci was aware of Trotsky's positions is hard to say. In any case, he was substantialwith the positions taken by the Three, that is Tresso, Leonetti and Ravazzoli, three leaders of the Italian Communist Party who posed the sectarian adventurist turn imposed by Togliatti and company.
Q. Do you think that it can be said that there were different Gramscis?
A. I think that one can define four periods, which seem to me to be an obvious breakdown: the Gramsci of 1919-1922, that is, of the period of Ordine Nuovo and of the founding of
4. The general secretary of the PCI who presided over the "Eurocommunist" turn. He died in 1984.
13
the CP; the Gramsci of the period his arrest, in which he was the author of the Lyon Theses, notes on the
Mezzogiorno question and letter to the CC of the CPSU; the
«turn" criticized the