The Gramscian Framework
Before we embark on a critical examination of the key Gramscian concepts and their implications, certain points need to be kept in mind. In his heart of hearts Gramsci was an ardent follower of Marx and Lenin. He never tried to develop any alternative philosophy or theory. Even his most original ideas he sought to base on Marx and Lenin; how far he succeeded is debatable though. His publicist and political career comprised barely two decades — one in prison and the other outside — spent under fascist repression and severe brain ailments. He never got the opportunity to study some of the more important Marxist-Leninist classics or to test and develop his ideas in the course of his practice. Moreover, the constant concern to avoid any words and phrases that might be considered objectionable by the fascist censorship, and the unfinished fragmentary character of his Prison Notes which he could not prepare for publication and which were edited and published posthumously — these two additional factors which render a proper reading of Gramsci very difficult.
With these qualifying observations let us now acquaint ourselves with the most salient features of Gramsci's philosophical views.
Problems of Philosophy and Methodology
1. Gramsci saw philosophy as a concrete social practice involving everybody rather than an elitist preserve; a popular-political affair involving not only the dissemination of ideas from above but also the extension of critical intellectual activity among ever broader sections of the population. Said he, alluding to the Bolshevik revolution, “For a mass of people to be led to think coherently... about the real present world, is a ‘philosophical’ event far more important and ‘original’ than the discovery of some philosophical ‘genius’ of a truth which remains the property of small groups of intellectuals”.
2. Gramsci was very much opposed to the notion of “theory as a ‘complement’ or ‘accessory’ of practice”. In his prison notes he always refers to Marxism as ‘philosophy of praxis’ (where praxis means the practice of a field of study) not only to delude the censorship but also to stress this point.
3. The truth of philosophy or science is truth only in a socio-historical sense: what is true is that which, in a particular historical situation, expresses the real developmental trend of that situation. Thus Marxism is true because it expresses the truth of its times better than any other doctrine. This historicism, this anti-positivist and anti-scientistic relativism, is one of the principle distinctive features of Gramsci vis-a-vis his Marxist contemporaries.
4. Extending this historical relativism to another fundamental question of all philosophy, Gramsci asserts that “... reality does not exist on its own, in and for itself, but only in an historical relationship with the men who modify it, etc.”
Thus for Gramsci objectivity is conditioned by man's cognition. While opposing what he calls ‘metaphysical materialism’ Gramsci seems to slip into Hegelian idealism. We shall see later how the proponents of post-Marxism drew essentially upon this very slippage.
5. Gramsci made a thorough attack on economic determinism and stressed the superstructural factors vis-a-vis the economic base. Here he takes as his point of departure two fundamental Marxist propositions which he quotes again and again: (a) that it is only in the sphere of ideology that men become conscious of conflicts in the economic base and (b) that when an idea grips the masses, i.e., acquire the character of popular conviction, it becomes a material force. But from these correct premises he sometimes draws wrong conclusions. Take for example his assertion: “the economic factor is only one of several ways in which the basic historical process manifests itself (factors of race, religion etc.)... ”
However, Gramsci never directly challenged the basic Marxist position on this score of which he was well aware. Thus, while discussing ‘structure and superstructure’ he says that these two “... form a ‘historical bloc’. That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructure is the reflection of the ensemble (of the social relations of production”.
6. Gramsci fought against vulgar, metaphysical materialism which was staging a comeback after the death of Lenin and sought to develop the critical, creative spirit of Marxism. He stressed the role and power of human will, of consciousness, vis-a-vis the blind working of historical laws. He strongly opposed the “deterministic, fatalistic and mechanistic conception” of Marxism. This conception, he explained, was historically necessary at the early phase of working class movement: in fact every oppressed class, so long it is in the initiativeless defensive position, is apt to develop the compensatory idea that sooner or later it is bound to triumph because history is on its side. Hut now that the proletariat is capable of taking conscious initiative, this primitive, quasi-religious faith — comparable to fatalistic theories of predestination in Christianity — must be ‘buried with all honours’.
This otherwise valuable point Gramsci carries too far — to the total denial of objective laws of societal development. Note this highly interesting passage from ‘The Revolution Against Capital’, a short article published in Avanti on 24 December 1917, where Gramsci hails the anti-dogmatism and revolutionary will power of the victorious Bolsheviks: “They live Marxist thought — the thought which is eternal, which represents the continuation of German and Italian idealism and which in the case of Marx was contaminated by positivist and naturalist encrustations. This thought sees as the dominant factor in history, not raw economic facts but man, men in societies, men in relation to one another, reaching agreements with one another, developing through these contacts a collective (civilisation), social will, men coming to understand economic facts, judging them and adopting them to their will until this becomes the driving force of the economy and moulds objective reality, which lives and moves and comes to resemble a current of volcanic lava that can be channelled wherever and in whatever way man's will determines”.
The revolutionary fervour is all very fine, but no Marxist would endorse Gramsci’s view that “objective reality... can be channelled wherever and in whatever way man’s will determines”. Also it is a bit shocking to see Gramsci accusing Marx of contaminating the pure Hegalian idealism with positivism and natural ism. This was a very early piece of writing, of course, but the point recurs in the Prison Notes also. Thus while developing the concept of passive revolution he bases himself on the two basic principles
Before we pass over to a study of Gramsci’s political concepts, a word or two on his philosophical moorings in historical idealism. Mention must be made in this connection of two lea ding philosophers of Italian social ism to whom Gramsci refers approvingly even in his mature writings.
One was Antonio Labriola, who veered around to Marxism and socialist movement rather late in his life, bringing with him fairly conspicuous traces of Hegalian idealism. The phrase ‘philosophy of praxis’ was first introduced in Italy by Labriola and it soon became a key phrase in a specifically anti-materialist philosophical trend in Italy represented also by Rodolfo Mondolfo and Giovanni Gentile. Gramsci praised Labriola as “the only man who has attempted to build up the philosophy of praxis scientifically” and counterposes him against two wrong currents: (1) “The so-called orthodox tendency, represented by Plekhanov (cf. his Fundamental Problems) who... relapses into vulgar materialism ... (and) the positive method ... (2) The orthodox tendency has determined the growth of its opposite: the tendency to connect the philosophy of praxis to Kantianism and to other non-positivist and non-materialist philosophical tendencies”.
The other was Mondolfo, who made a very definite distinct ion between the ‘philosophical’ Marx and the more ‘empirical’ Engels. Although otherwise critical of him, Gramsci endorses this particular trait of Mondolfo, partially at least. This would be evident from a comprehensive study of Gramsci’s philosophical writings, which are marked by a constant underplaying of the materialist element in Marxism.
In an early piece of writing referred to under Paint 6 above, we found Gramsci speak highly of “Italian and German idealism, ... which in the case of Marx was contaminated by positivist and naturalist encrustations”. It would now appear that even in his more mature works Gramsci did not altogether discard his idealist matrix. In his endeavour to develop the subjective or active side which, as Marx had pointed out in his first thesis on Feuerbach, was neglected by vulgar materialism, he, often takes up an idealist position. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why some intellectuals feel more attracted to Gramsci than to Marx, Engels or Lenin.
Problems of Leadership and Strategy: Hegemony and War of Position,
“The supremacy of a social group manifests itself”, says Gramsci in “Notes on Italian History”, in two ways, as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate’, or to subjugate even by armed force; it leads kindred and plied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ (i.e., be hegemonic — AS) before winning governmental power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well”.
Here we have the most precise formulation of one of Gramsci’s two most celebrated and debated conceptual tools. Developing this concept further, Gramsci says elsewhere that the modern state is an organ of class rule, as Marx and Lenin had maintained. But this rule is secured in two distinct though closely interlinked means: coercion or repression on the one hand and consent or voluntary allegiance on the other. The first is designated as ‘domination’ and the second as ‘hegemony’. The former is a function of ‘political society’ and the latter, of ‘civil society’. Thus “state = political society + civil society, in other words, hegemony protected by the armour of coercion”.
It is interesting to note that at least thrice in the Prison Notebook Lenin is accredited as the originator as well as implement or of this concept. In Problems of Marxism, for instance, Gramsci speaks of “the philosophical importance of the concept and fact of hegemony, for which Ilich is responsible,” adding that “Hegemony realised means the real critique of a philosophy, its real dialectic.”
Gramsci’s own interpretation in Leninist terms not withstanding, this concept has been widely regarded as an affront to Leninism. And not without reason. Hut before we take up this question in some detail, it will be convenient to present here another related concept: that of ‘War of Position’ (WOP) as the principal strategic means in developed capitalist societies vis-a-vis ‘War of Movement or Manoeuvre’ (WOM).
These two terms are borrowed into political science from military theory. When an army makes a forward march, breaks open the enemy formation with artillery fire, captures enemy strongholds and so on, that is WOM. When, by contrast, it digs trenches and lays siege to an enemy fortress, tries to make the enemy succumb to hunger, engages in a war of nerves and staying power, that is WOP. In politics the former is the appropriate name for insurrection, offensive general strike to paralyze the government, frontal assault on the state by a revolutionary army etc., the latter for protracted democratic movements, parliamentary struggles, revolutionary work on the cultural front and so on.
Gramsci combines the concepts of hegemony and WOP to lay down the proletariat’s general strategic principle in modern times. Since an advanced capitalist stale relies more and more on its hegemonic apparatus lo rule over subaltern classes, so the proletariat's counter-strategy should be to challenge and break that hegemony in civil society with its own hegemony. To establish this ‘civil hegemony’ is a long-term task requiring persistent WOP, and this prepares the ground for advancing towards the higher phase of WOM. In the words of Gramsci,”... the Forty-Eightist formula of ‘Permanent Revolution’ (the reference is to Marx’s slogan during the revolutionary storm of 1848-50 — AS) is expanded and superseded in political science by the formula of ‘civil hegemony’. The same thing happens in the art of politics as happens in the military art: war of movement increasingly becomes war of position, and it can be said that a State will win a war in so far as it prepares for it minutely and technically in peacetime. The massive structures of modern democracies, both as State organisations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were ‘trenches’ and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely ‘partial’ the element of movement (WOM — AS) which before used to be ‘the whole’ of war, etc.
“This question”, Gramsci hastens to add a proviso, “is posed for modern states, but not for backward countries or for colonies, where forms which elsewhere have been superseded and become anachronistic are still in vogue”.
Now we can come back to the question briefly mentioned a short while ago. Is the strategy of civil hegemony through WOP consistent with — or is it a departure from — Leninism? Gramsci says, "It seems to me that Ilich understood that a change was necessary from the war of manoeuvre applied victoriously in the East in 1917, to a war of position which is the only form possible in the West ...”
“But to start without preparation a revolution in a country in which capitalism is developed and has given democratic culture and organisation to even/body, down to the latt man — to do so would be wrong, absurd”.
On another occasion he explained why he says this: “... the stupid, unorganised, uncultured bourgeoisie” of Russia could by no means be “compared with the international bourgeoisie who have turned all achievements of the human mind into a weapon to suppress the will of the working people ...”
On yet another occasion Lenin referred to the Western ‘bourgeoisie of modern civilisation and engineering’ and said, “That is why it was so easy for us to start the revolution and more difficult to continue it, and why over there in the West it will be more difficult to start and easier to continue”.
While saying all this, however, Lenin always regarded class struggle — sometimes dormant, sometimes breaking into open civil war — as the crux of the protracted ‘preparation’. This stress is conspicuous by its absence in Gramsci's conceptualisation of civil hegemony of the proletariat and in his writings as a whole. Of course, Gramsci never renounced class struggle or revolutionary overthrow of the dominant class, rather he speaks of an advance from WOP to WOM, but the lack of thrust on those aspects renders his strategic guideline highly amenable to reformist (or as we can now say, Euro-communist) interpretation.
And that is what actually happened in real life. Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci’s close comrade since student days, became one of the major theorists of Euro communism along with others like Santiago Carillo of the Spanish and Louis Althusser of the French communist parties. It was asserted that in the face of developed bourgeois rule which rests on the organisation of consent through moral and cultural leadership combined with constitutional coercion, socialism cannot be built other than by achieving a counter-hegemony for socialist ideas and culture in every sphere of social life: in the parliamentary arena, in literature and the arts, in the educational system, in sports and leisure-time activities and so on. If this was the general understanding, Togliatti gave it a concrete shape in the Togliatti Memorandum, where he dwelt on "the possibility of the working people winning positions of power within the framework of a state, whose nature as a bourgeois state has still not changed ... to gradually remake this nature from within”. Taking a step further than Gramsci, Althusser distinguished between “ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)” and “repressive state apparatuses (RS As), whereas for Gramsci the mechanism of hegemonic domination was an organic, inseparable fusion of consent and coercion. In (ISAs) were included schools, churches, the family, the media, and the literary, cultural and sporting organisations, and even TUs and political parties and so on — most of which belong to the private domain but are subtly influenced by the slate; in the ‘RSAs’ are counted the police, the army and so on.
This is not the place to discuss Eurocommunism, for Gramsci was by no means the theorist of this trend. It arose some three decades after his death owing to a whole set of objective and subjective factors obtaining in the cold war period. The only point is, when Euro-communists renounced revolution for evolutionary advance within the framework of the bourgeois state, it was not in Marx, Lenin or Mao but in Gramsci that at least some of them sought and found the ideological inspiration.
Problems of Revolution/Restoration: The Passive Revolution
Let it be clarified at the outset that Gramsci envisaged “the theory of passive revolution not as a programme, as it was for the Italian liberals of the Resorgimento, but as a criterion of interpretation, ... (as) a necessary critical corollary to the introduction to the “Critique of Political Economy”.
Firstly, as a “revolution without mass participation”. Gramsci develops this concept in the first instance by contrasting the history of the formation of the Italian nation-state through the Resorgimento with the French revolution and then extends it to cover the modern history of Europe. Unlike the 1789, 1831 and 1848 bourgeois revolutions in France, which involved revolutionary mass participation from below, after the experience of the Paris Commune (1871) the bourgeoisie opted for a path in which the requirements of a capitalist social order would be “satisfied by small doses, legally, in a reformist manner — in such a way that it was possible to preserve the political and economic position of the old feudal classes, to avoid agrarian reform, and, especially, to avoid the popular masses going through a period of political experience such as occurred in France ...”
However, this is not to say that an opposite tendency — which is more radical and involves the popular masses — does not occur. Gramsci shows that almost always there are two contrary tendencies within national movements: one of modernisation, of gradual changes controlled from the top, the other of popular initiative, of quick revolutionary change. At what point would the two tendencies converge, i.e., an equilibrium be reached, depends on the historically determined relations of forces. In the case of Italian Resorgimento, for example, the ‘moderates’ led by Cavour represented the former and the “Action Party’ led by Mazzini the latter tendency. Cavour was more conscious of his as well as Mazzini’s role; so he was able to utilise the latter and to leave his strong imprint on the nature of the Italian state that emerged out of the Resorgimento. Had the opposite been true, i.e., if Mazzini were more conscious of Cavour’s and his own roles, “then the equilibrium which resulted from the convergence of the two men's activities would have been different, would have been more favourable to Mazzinism. In other words, the Italian state would have been constituted on a less retrograde and more modern basis”.
Secondly, Gramsci used the concept of passive revolution to signify a gradual, “molecular” social transformation which lakes place beneath the surface of society, either in situations where a progressive social group cannot advance openly (e.g., the progress of the French bourgeoisie after the 1815 Restoration, and the development of Christianity within the Roman Empire), or when major improvements are introduced into the system of production without any basic change in the relations of production (e.g., “Fordism” in America and corporate capitalism in fascist Italy). Fordism refers to the whole gamut of methods and means introduced by the US automaker Henry Ford : mass production based on assembly line operation, relatively higher wages made possible by massive cost reduction, ‘betterment’ of workers’ family life (prohibition, control of sexuality, etc.) so that they can serve better, and so on. This was made possible in America thanks to the absence of feudal vestiges, best technology and management systems and other factors not available in Italy. So in the latter country “a passive revolution was involved in the fact that — through the legislative intervention of the state, and by means of the cooperative organisation—relatively far-reaching modifications are being introduced into the country’s economic structure in order to accentuate the “plan of production” element; in other words, that socialisation and cooperation in the sphere of production are being increased, without however touching... individual or group appropriation of profit.”
As Fordism does in America, so in Italy the new system, that is fascism, creates “a period of expectation and hope, especially among certain Italian social groups such as the great mass of urban and rural petit bourgeoisie. It thus reinforces the hegemonic system and the forces of military and civil coercion at the disposal of the traditional ruling classes”.
So these are the two broad meanings — which some interpreters wrongly fuse together — of the expression ‘passive revolution’. Gramsci was conscious of both the ‘utility and dangers of this thesis’. He explains, “Danger of historical defeatism, i.e., of indifferentism, since the whole way of posing the question may induce a belief in some kind of fatalism, etc. Yet the conception remains a dialectical one — in other words, presupposes, indeed postulates as necessary, a vigorous anti-thesis which can present intransigently all its potentialities for development”.
Factory Councils: Nucleus of Socialism
In 1919-20 a very militant workers’ movement broke out in Italy with Turin as its epicentre and factory councils (not TUs) as its organisational nuclei. The movement, therefore, came to be known as the Turin Factory Council Movement. The L'Ordine Nuovn group of Marxists led by Gramsci acted as its political-organisational guide as well as propaganda mouthpiece.
The factory council movement took as its point of departure a thorough critique of established TUs and political parties as an institutionalised fixture of capitalist society and stressed the principle of workers’ control at the point of production as the basis of a different kind of politics. The movement never enjoyed the support of the old reformist leadership of the Socialist Party or that of the CGIL (the TU centre led by it). It was ruthlessly suppressed in less than two years, but the conception of revolution emerging out of it remains a basic component of the Gramscian framework.
According to Gramsci, real socialism would have to embrace ‘two revolutions’ : one to destroy the bourgeois state and another to transform the capitalist economy. It was in the latter, within the realm of the factory, that the nucleus of the new stale would originate. The evolving socialist structures (i.e., councils) would be the medium through which the totality of proletarian existence — its economics and politics, its culture and social relations, its general consciousness — would be gradually transformed.
Why this emphasis on the factory level, on the point of production? Because it is here that the revolutionary process unfolds “subterraneously, in the darkness of the factory, and in the obscurity of the consciousness of the countless multitudes that capitalism subjects to its laws”.
He explains: “The revolutionary process takes place on the terrain of production, in the factory, where the relations are those of oppressor to oppressed, of exploiter to exploited, where freedom for the worker does not exist, where democracy does not exist”.
Organically linked with everyday proletarian life, the councils would be the institution through which the proletariat could take control of the economy and realise its freedom to create history; in this sense, they would become the primary organs for combating bourgeois hegemony.
If these views carry distinct marks of a syndicalist thought-process, a few other articles of the same period appearing in L’Ordine Nuavo show up Gramsci as a staunch partisan. It was he who led the ideological struggle in the Italian Socialist Party, a struggle which culminated in the formation of the Communist Party as a unit of the CI. When in March 1924 L’Ordine Nuavo began to reappear as the party organ, Gramsci was its editor as well as party general secretary. In the very first editorial of the new series he pointed out that during the factory council movement the paper had before it the dual tasks of (a) building an independent party of the revolutionary proletariat and (b) organising the broad masses in a movement that would overthrow the bourgeois rule and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and the rural toilers. Now that party was already there, he observed, and already it had written with the blood of its best comrades an immortal saga of heroic struggles.
While Gramsci was certainly a strong partyman, he had his own ideas of party leadership with accent on the spontaneous mass element. Between Marxism and the ‘spontaneous’ feelings of the masses, he asserted, there is a ‘quantitative’ difference of degree, not one of quality. A reciprocal ‘reduction’, so to speak, a passage from one to the other and vice versa, must be possible”.
“The popular element ‘feels’ but does not always know or understand; the intellectual element ‘knows’ but does not always understand and in particular does not always feel ... ” “The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned ...
“If the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation, between the leaders and the led, the rulers and the ruled, is provided by an organic cohesion in which feeling-passion becomes understanding and thence knowledge (not mechanically but in a way that is alive), then and only then is the relationship one of representation. Only then can there take place an exchange of individual elements between the rulers and the ruled, leaders and led, and can the shared life be realised which alone is a social force ..."
Towards an Overall Assessment
It is time we knitted together the loose ends left in the different subsections above. We have had some preliminary ideas about
(1) Gramsci’s valiant philosophical battles against vulgar materialism — economic determinism in particular — and for developing an integral approach towards objective reality and man’s active subjective role fused into one; a battle which sometimes led him back into the idealist moorings of Hegel and Labriola.
(2) The strategic perspective of intellectual-moral leadership (hegemony) to be acquired through protracted war of position; a perspective whose only practical-political crystallisation, if distorted, has been Euro-communism.
(3) The ‘interpretative criterion’ of passive revolution which, as Gramsci himself pointed out, has both its ‘utility and dangers’.
(4) The hypothesis of factory councils as the nuclei of revolutionary class struggle as well as of the socialist state; a brilliant hypothesis which could not be tested in practice.
From our discussion it is perhaps clear by now that we cannot simply say yes or no to Gramsci, We can neither wholly affirm the Gramscian framework as a development of Marxism-Leninism, nor reject it as a heap of revisionist rubbish. If Mao is our essential key to the development of Marxism-Leninism, Gramsci can also be a valuable inspiration and guide in this — especially in our endeavour to retrieve and develop the anti-dogmatic, critical, creative spirit of Marxism. But to ensure this, i.e., to benefit from and not to be led astray by his highly original ideas, we must take a critical, selective approach to them. For this purpose his ideas or analytical tools can be divided into three broad categories.
First, some of these can be directly incorporated into our Marxist-Leninist conceptual framework. Examples are: the categorisation of traditional and organic intellectuals, the discussion on religion, common sense/good sense and philosophy as successive stages of human consciousness and so on. Sometimes we find well-known Marxist-Leninist ideas re-elaborated in unconventional terms or contexts, e.g., Jacobinism, the historical bloc of several progressive classes, and so on.
Second, certain of Gramsci’s ideas can be put to good use with circumspection, after some critical screening and within certain limits. The best examples are the theses relating to hegemony and passive revolution. We shall shortly come back to an elaboration of this point.
Lastly, there are areas where we have to reject Gramsci’s observations either wholly or in part: his denial of existence of objective reality independent of humankind, for instance. Neither can we accept Gramsci’s over stretching of the anti-positivist and anti-scientistic thrust which led him to drive a wedge — however respectfully—between Marx and Engels and to reject outright Plekhanov’s best philosophical works. But even in certain of such cases, e.g., the one just mentioned, our theoreticians might benefit from doing some research work on the challenging questions Gramsci throws up against some of our uncritically accepted notions.
Of these three categories of Gramsci’s ideas and concepts, clearly the most crucial are those belonging to the second. If the distinctive Gramscian formulation about complete civil hegemony as the precondition of the seizure of power etc., is taken as the basic point of departure, as a basic programmatic guideline complete in itself and considered in isolation from the fundamental Marxist-Leninist propositions on state and revolution, then that takes you only to revisionism or Euro-communism. But if we, as a proletarian party firmly grounded in revolutionary Marxism, critically adapt the Gramscian framework to our own circumstances, then that will yield quite different results. In that case it will serve as a useful reference material in an otherwise neglected area — the superstructural questions in particular. In this approach, for instance, Gramsci’s ideas on cultural hegemony could be read in conjunction with Mao’s assertion that every politico-economic revolution is preceded by a cultural revolution. Similarly on certain questions of strategy. To take an example, did not Mao also advise his cadres in cities, which were enemy strongholds, to preserve and accumulate strength for a very long time, i.e., to engage in a war of position? Of course, the difference is that for Mao this was only one aspect — the minor aspect —counterbalanced by the more or less permanent project of armed struggle (war of movement) in the countryside. For us, the battle over ideals and values (the battle between hegemonies, so to speak) — the propaganda against the economic philosophy of liberalisation-globalisation, for example, or against patriarchal domination — have no mean significance as a necessary corollary to general strikes or street demonstrations.
Somewhat more important for us is the interpretative tool of passive revolution. Gramsci said that “Gandhism and Tolstoyism are naive theorisations of the ‘passive revolution’ with religious overtones”.
Gramsci and Subaltern Studies
It is indeed not only its name that the Subaltern Studies Group (SSG) borrows from Gramsci, but also its basic concepts and methodology. In Notes on Italian History, Gramsci draws a sharp line of demarcation between the history of ruling classes and that of subaltern classes and outlines-a six-point “methodological criteria” for studying the latter. These six points
As advised by Gramsci, some fifty and more monographs have been produced by the historians belonging to SSG, most of these being collected in the six volumes of Subaltern Studies. Obviously, here we cannot take up even a few of them for discussion. To acquaint you with the most essential theoretical and methodological propositions of the SSG, therefore, I would depend on their own version of these, as outlined by a prominent member of the group. Mr. Dipesh Chakrabarty, in a “Discussion” piece included in Vol. IV of SS, answers a number of charges levelled against the group by a Social Scientist reviewer and in the process describes the group's basic propositions. While examining these one by one, we should remember that Mr. Chakrabarty does not purport to give an account of their views, hence our assessment also should not be taken as comprehensive or final.
1. Mr. Chakrabarty insists that “Marx’s thoughts were not without their tensions — generated, among others by the contradictory pulls of Darwin and Hegel, for example—and have given rise to several, and often different readings”.
2. So what are the common points uniting all the Marxists? First, unlike bourgeois liberals, all of them are committed “to all forms of struggle against inequality and exploitation based on class, race and gender”. Secondly, and this “more to the point in the present context”. Like other Marxists, members of the SSG are “agreed in attributing to the concept of ‘mode of production’ a key theoretical and determining status in the analysis of societies. Beyond this, however, all agreement dissolves. The word ‘determination’ allows for a range of meanings from simple ‘causation’ to the more subtle ‘correspondence’. And it is by no means certain that the concept ‘mode of production’ validates a separation between an “economic (material) infrastructure (base) and a ‘political (ideological) superstructure’, with the former ascribed the status of independent variable”. Continuing, Mr. Chakraborty puts on record “our refusal to accept the base-superstructure metaphor and all that its application has entailed in Indian historiography”.
3. “The central aim of the Subaltern Studies project is to understand the consciousness that informed and still informs political action taken by the subaltern classes on their own, independently of any elite initiatives (Needless to say, this autonomy or independence is only ‘relative’). It is only by giving this ‘consciousness’ a central place in historical analysis that we see the subaltern as the maker of the history she/he lives out. However, this does not mean that we place this consciousness outside history, as the charge of ‘idealism’ implies”.
4. “... (The) word ‘subaltern’ in Subaltern Studies ... refers to the specific nature of class relationships in India ... ‘Subalternity’ — the composite culture of resistance to and acceptance of domination and hierarchy — is characteristic of class relations in our society, where the veneer of bourgeois equality barely masks the violent, feudal nature of much of our systems of power and authority.
The persistence of these relationships in the face of industrialisation and capitalism cannot be explained by a theory that seeks assurance in the primacy of ‘economic infrastructure’. By focusing on these relationships, Subaltern Studies opens up once more the thorny question of ‘consciousness’ and how Marxists might study it. For Marxist historians of India, the task today is not to repeat the received orthodoxies of Marxism, but to restore to Marx’s thoughts the tensions original to them. For it is only by accentuating these tensions that we may be able to extend the Marxian problematic to cover the peculiar problems thrown up by our experience of capitalism”.
The above are the concluding sentences of the piece and they take us beyond the specialised problems of historiography to the more general, more fundamental question of attitude to Marxism.
Between points 1 and 4, the eminent representative of SSG reveals both the plus and minus points of subaltern theorising. By implication they also point to some inherent weaknesses of the Gramscian framework on which the subaltern approach is based.
Earlier we found Gramsci opposing economic reductionism and highlighting the superstructural factors to the point of almost ignoring the ultimately determining role of the economic base. Anyway he did recognise that “the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructure is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production”. Taking a step further ahead, his followers in the SSG deny the base-superstructure ‘metaphor’ altogether!
The subalterners are justified in their disgruntlement with the very many instances of mechanical ‘applications’ of this conceptual tool in Indian history-writing; in fact the crude economic deterministic vulgarisation of Marxism is as old as Marxism itself. Like Gramsci, they are to be credited for a highly productive critique of this trend; and more than Gramsci they are to be criticised for a deviation from Marxism in the opposite direction.
Gramsci did an excellent work in studying the various dimensions of human consciousness — particularly that of subaltern classes. Drawing inspiration from him the SSG has produced a wealth of historical works so rich in variety and depth. These works are based on admirable collections of facts and they shed valuable light on little-explored areas of subaltern consciousness. But in their anxiety to give “this consciousness a central place in historical analysis” and to “see the subaltern as the maker of hi story she/he lives out”, the SSG loses track of the scientific methodology and historiographic tradition of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
To clarify this point, we will present here a few longish quotes from two letters by Engels
Writing to Conrad Schmidt in mid-1890, Engels commented that “The materialist conception of history has a lot of dangerous friends nowadays, who use it as an excuse for not studying history. Just as Marx, commenting on the French ‘Marxists’ of the late seventies used to say: “All I know is that I am not a Marxist”. To save Marxist historiography from these ‘dangerous friends’ — self-styled Marxists bent on turning historical materialism into an absurdity — Engels clarifies that, “our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a 1 ever for construction after the Hegalian manner. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined in detail before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious etc., views corresponding to them”.
Continuing the clarification in a letter to Joseph Bloch written a month latter, Engels says, “The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, such as the constitution established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and especially the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases determine their form in particular...
“We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite antecedents and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one”.
In a self-critical vein, Engels writes that, “Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-a-vis our adversaries who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other factors involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to applying the theory in practice, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible”.
In another letter to Conrad Schmidt in late 1890, Engels cites examples of the correct way of “presenting a section of history”: “Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire, which deals almost exclusively with the particular part played by political struggles and events, of course within their general dependence upon economic conditions. Or Kapital, the section on the working day, for instance, where legislation, which is surely a political act, has such a drastic effect. Or the section on the history of the bourgeoisie. And why do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat if political power is economically impotent? Force (that is, state power) is also an economic power!”
So much, we think, should be enough for a primary exposition of the Marxist understanding on base and superstructure, objective and subjective, social being and consciousness; an understanding the totality of which the SSG fails to grasp in their over-reaction to vulgar materialism.
Now for the definition of ‘sub-alternity’ given by Mr. Chakraborty: “The composite culture of resistance to and acceptance of domination and hierarchy” — is this anything peculiar to India? Was it not a hallmark of, for example, the Chinese society dominated by Confucianism? In fact ruling classes everywhere maintain their supremacy by a combination of economic and extra-economic coercion (‘domination’) on the one hand and intellectual-moral leadership (‘hegemony’) on the other. A degree of legitimacy is thus achieved, which is reinforced by religious doctrines, social customs etc., and challenged by struggles of the repressed classes. In other words, submission and revolt, acceptance and resistance on the part of the subaltern classes combine in different proportions and in various forms to constitute what is here called ‘subalternity’; both aspects being basically conditioned by economic positions of subaltern classes. This is a general rule for all class societies, India not excluded.
The “persistence of these relationships” in our country has to be understood with reference to both superstructural and economic factors. In the former are to be included the strong traditions of varna hierarchy and its refurbished continuation in the caste system, the Hindu philosophy of karma and so on; in the latter—the conservative model of capitalist growth, particularly the landlord path in agriculture, the economic dependence on imperialism and so on. These peculiar features of the retarded Indian capitalism, which is closely allied with feudalism and imperialism, is beyond the grasp of subalterners precisely because they refuse to study the economic process in any detail and talk in simplistic terms of ‘industrialisation and capitalism’. They do not understand that the Marxist theory not only acknowledges “the primacy of ‘economic infrastructure’” but relates the features and movements in this infrastructure to those in the political-cultural-ideological superstructure to arrive at a cogent, holistic and active—that is pro-change and revolutionary—conception of society.
Probably the most interesting part of the subaltern project is their call to “restore and accentuate ... the tensions” within Marx's thoughts. Earlier we have seen Gramsci driving a wedge between Marx and Engels, here we find his more zealous followers doing the same between Marx and Marx. It is by intensifying the 'contrary pulls’ or ‘tensions’ — or could we simply say contradiction—within “the thoughts of Karl Marx that they propose to ‘extend’ Marxism to cover ‘the peculiar problems’ of our time and place.
Here we have a most thoroughly idealist and introvert project for ‘extending’ Marxism — one which, ironically, goes against the grain of philosophy of praxis. Well, we communists also have our own concern for going ‘back to Marxism’ and for developing Marxism not only through further study and research but also, and more importantly, by theorisation of practical revolutionary experiences involving billions of people. Perhaps that is the difference between those who study the history of the subaltern classes to explain the world and those who study all history to explain and change the world!
NOTES
Antonio Gramsci (22.01.1891 —27.04.1937):
Born into a lower middle class family in the small town of Ales in Sardinia, south Italy, Antonio suffered from severe spinal and nervous ailments throughout his life. From boyhood days he had to work at petty casual jobs and penury was his constant companion ever since. In 1911 he earned a scholarship to Turin University. From backward and impoverished South he thus came to industrialised North, to Turin — the home city of Fiat and a rapidly growing industrial centre. He joined the Socialist Party in late 1913, began to write for the socialist press a year later, and in 1916 joined the editorial staff of Il Gride del Popolo and Avanti!
In 1917 Gramsci enthusiastically welcomed the February and October revolutions in Russia and got involved in the barricade struggle of Turin workers in August. In May 1919 he became the cofounder of the magazine L’Ordine Nuovo along with Angelo Tasca and Palmiro Togliatti. From spring that year to the autumn of 1920, North Italy was rocked by waves after waves of massive strikes which culminated in seizure of factories by some 5 lakh workers. This was the famous factory council movement, of which the leading theoretician, practical organiser and propagandist were Gramsci and the L’Ordine Nuouogroup, in the factory councils, Gramsci discovered an Italian version of Soviets as organs of workers’ power.
The surge in the movement also found its parliamentary expression: as many as 156 socialist deputies were elected to the parliament. But the party leadership was sadly lacking in ideological-political clarity and unity. It was Gramsci who provided the theoretical lead in reorienting the party towards communism. His article Towards A Renewal of the Socialist Party was specifically commended by Lenin in the second congress of the Comintern (July 1920) as upholding the basic principles of the Third International.
Barely two months after this, the Socialist Party was split into two in its Livorno Congress. A sizable minority led by Bordiga formed the Italian Communist Party (ICP); Gramsci was elected to the CC. He went to Moscow in May 1922 as the party’s representative on the Executive Committee of the Communist International (CI) and came back two years later. In the mean time the CI had withdrawn support to Bordiga because of his opposition to the anti-fascist united front policy and recognised Gramsci as the principal leader. Mussolini had captured power late in 1922and fascist repression was getting intensified daily. In the Spring of 1924 Gramsci was elected to the Parliament where he delivered his famous anti-fascist speech in the presence of Mussolini on 16 May, 1925. He also carried on intense ideological-political struggle against Bordiga’s ultra-left line and this culminated in the adoption of Gramsci’s thesis at the III Congress of the ICP held at Lyons, France in January 1926. He was arrested in November that year. Shortly before that he wrote a letter to the CPSU CC, supporting the theoretical position of the majority group led by Stalin and Bukharin against those of Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev, but at the same time asking the majority group not to be vindictive against the opponents. He criticised the CC for the internecine quarrels which were destroying all that Lenin had worked for, and doing immense harm to the cause of the world proletariat.
Gramsci was released on 21 April, 1937and died only 6 days later. During the last two years of his prison term he enjoyed some relaxations while undergoing treatment at a clinic in Rome, but did not try to contact the party. Not only physically but mentally too he was a broken man. This was partly because of virtual abandonment by his wife and partly owing to ideological difference with the CI and the ICP since 1928 when the sectarian anti-UF line was adopted at the VI Congress of the CI and accepted by Togliatti and other ICP leaders. But nothing could prevent him from writing extensively, while in prison, on a whole range of fundamental problems of philosophy, politics and history. These writings have come down to us as Prison Notebooks, the most authentic repository of his highly original ideas.