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Sraffa and Gramsci: A recollection

a
Giorgio Napolitano
a
Camera dei Deputati , Rome, Italy
Published online: 19 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Giorgio Napolitano (2005) Sraffa and Gramsci: A recollection, Review of
Political Economy, 17:3, 407-412, DOI: 10.1080/09538250500147148

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 Review of Political Economy,
Volume 17, Number 3, 407– 412, July 2005

Sraffa and Gramsci: A Recollection

GIORGIO NAPOLITANO
Camera dei Deputati, Rome, Italy

In this short article I shall attempt to give a brief outline of the relationship
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between Piero Sraffa and Antonio Gramsci, and to recall my role in exploring it.
Their relationship began, as is well known, during the years immediately
following the First World War, in Turin, where both men were living, and the
backdrop for it was the periodical Ordine Nuovo (New Order), founded on 1
May, 1919, by Gramsci, Tasca, Terracini and Togliatti. There is no official
record of Sraffa’s participation in the activities of the group of socialist students
in Turin that he had joined, as there is no record of an official role on the editorial
staff of Ordine Nuovo. It is, however, certain that Sraffa contributed to the maga-
zine by correspondence from London—where in 1921, as a young economist, he
was doing research: a memorable contribution that appeared in Ordine Nuovo on 5
July of that year dealt with the ‘Open Shop Drive’ movement and the conditions of
the struggles of the working class in America. In subsequent years, while distan-
cing himself from Turin and political circles, Sraffa continued to follow the evo-
lving situation in Italy and the debate—within the workers’ movement—on how to
lead the struggle against the fascists in power. Evidence of this is given by a long
letter addressed to Ordine Nuovo and published in the issue dated 1 – 15 April,
1924. I think this letter can be considered the only political piece, in the full
meaning of the term, ever written by Piero Saffa. In it he defines the basic
problem: ‘The urgent issue, to be considered first and foremost, is “freedom”
vs. “order”: the others will follow. . . . Now the time has arrived for the democratic
opposition groups to be heard, and I feel it is necessary to let them be, and perhaps
even help them. . . . I think it is a mistake to openly oppose them and excessively
ridicule “bourgeois freedom” (as l’Unità does, for example).’ Sraffa adds that he
does not find his opinion ‘unreconcilable with being a communist, albeit an undis-
ciplined one.’ He is very personal and open at the end of his letter: ‘I was truly
moved when I saw the first issue of Ordine Nuovo. I hope that, as in 1919, it
will provide the password, missing today but much needed.’
His words, read again after these many years, have a profoundly political
resonance; and it was no coincidence that Gramsci’s reply, though harshly critical,
addresses Sraffa with great attention and consideration, calling him an ‘old
subscriber and friend to Ordine Nuovo’ (the importance of Sraffa’s letter led

Correspondence Address: Giorgio Napolitano, Camera dei Deputati, 00186 Roma, Italia. Email:
napolitano_g@camera.it

ISSN 0953-8259 print=ISSN 1465-3982 online=05=030407–6 # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080=09538250500147148
 408 G. Napolitano

Gramsci to bring it to the attention of Togliatti, Scoccimarro and Leonetti in his

own letter to them, written in Vienna). After developing a lengthy argument,
his reply ends with words of trust and friendship: ‘Intellectuals like our friend
Sraffa, who did not succumb to fascism, and who in one way or another refused
to renounce their position of 1919– 1920, can once again find in Ordine Nuovo
a vehicle for discussion and reflection.’
Sraffa never did renounce, in the course of his life, the ideals and political
values that had united him to Gramsci. Their direct relationship could not help
but become diminished during the years of Sraffa’s surprising success on the
European economic cultural scene; later, from 1927 on, it would be transformed
into the great, dramatic chapter of Sraffa’s relationship with Gramsci in
prison—which is the second, and more important, aspect of the portrait I am
attempting to sketch here.
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It is well known that Keynes, to whom Sraffa had introduced himself

in London in December, 1921—upon presentation of a letter by Gaetano
Salvemini—asked him to write an article on the banking crisis in Italy for the
Economic Journal, and another one on the same topic for the Manchester
Guardian Commercial, which published it on 7 December, 1922. It was the
second article that unleashed Mussolini’s furious reaction, directed at Piero’s
father. As a result, Keynes invited Sraffa to Cambridge for a short visit, but it
became impossible for Piero to accept, as he was stopped at the border. The
relationship between Sraffa and Keynes on a cultural and personal level began
to intensify in 1924; in 1926 Piero was called to teach at the University of Cagliari,
but it was reasonable to assume the difficulties that fascism would create for him,
owing to—as Robert Skidelsky notes in the second volume of his biography of
Keynes—‘his well-known socialist sympathies’ and ‘his friendship with the
communist leader Antonio Gramsci.’ In 1927, Keynes helped Sraffa to find
refuge in England and settle into the university world in Cambridge, a world
that Piero would never leave. His move to Cambridge, however, in no way
distanced him from the person of Antonio Gramsci, or his cause.
His relationship with Gramsci, while Gramsci was in prison began in the
same year, 1927, when Piero visited him at San Vittore, presenting himself as
‘a schoolmate’, and learned of the odyssey Gramsci had undergone during his
transfer from Ustica to Milan, an event that Sraffa denounced in a vehement
letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian, published on 24 October of that
year and signed ‘An Italian in England.’ This was only the beginning of an adven-
ture that would last for 10 years and whose repercussions would be twofold: the
help, in every possible way and in the fullest meaning of the term—I shall
discuss this aspect presently—that he extended to Gramsci, a prisoner of
fascism, as well as his attempts to obtain his friend’s freedom and save his life.
I said ‘help’, but the word is far too weak to convey the variety and intensity
of the efforts unleashed by Sraffa in his efforts to alleviate Gramsci’s physical and
psychological suffering while in prison. In the first place, in the sense of humane
presence. We may speak of a very real identification on the part of Sraffa with
Gramsci’s family problems, with his concern for his wife Giulia’s health and
the difficulties in their relationship. One is impressed by Piero’s sensitivity and
affection: in the summer of 1930, during a trip to Moscow, he visited Giulia,
 Sraffa and Gramsci: A Recollection 409

who was a patient at a nursing home, and Gramsci was deeply touched upon learn-
ing that Piero had brought his son Delio some gifts, after having given him a toy in
Rome which—his father remembered—the boy had been quite ‘taken with’. From
Gramsci’s Letters from Prison (which in the 1975 edition included some
previously unpublished letters to Sraffa written in 1926 and 1927), we learn that
Piero initially satisfied requests of a very elementary nature. There was an affec-
tionate intimacy between the two: ‘I shall write to you often, if I may,’ wrote
Antonio, ‘under the illusion that I still find myself in your pleasant company.’
Subsequently, as Gramsci’s health worsened, Sraffa repeatedly worked to get
him medical check-ups by a trusted physician.
But the other aspects of the assistance Piero offered Gramsci are not less
important. Above all, his decisive role in solving the problem—which ‘especially
worries me,’ Gramsci wrote him—‘of the brutalization of the intellect.’ His setting
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up a limitless account at the Sperling & Kupfer Bookshop in Milan, where

Gramsci could order all kinds of books and magazines, as well as his engagement
of Gramsci in a cultural dialogue on numerous topics and fields of study,
were indispensable in ‘allowing Gramsci to read and think in prison,’ as Eric
Hobsbawm wrote. Piero advised his friend on which books to read, provided
bibliographical references, was the middleman for research that interested him,
took part in discussions with him on a wide range of subjects, and delighted in
his curiosity about Ricardo’s ideas—curiosity that was piqued by news of the
edition of Ricardo’s works that Sraffa was preparing. (See Piero’s letters to
Tatiana Schucht, Giulia’s sister, written in 1931 and donated to the Italian
Communist Party (PCI) in November of 1985 by Giuliano Gramsci, Antonio’s
second son, who had kept them in Moscow. This is a very significant group of
letters, both as regards Sraffa’s humane presence to Gramsci and Giulia, and as
regards communication on an intellectual level between him and Gramsci. They
were published in 1986 by Editori Riuniti, under the title Nuove lettere di Antonio
Gramsci con altre lettere di Piero Sraffa, with a preface by Nicola Badaloni).
As they could not write to each other directly, Sraffa and Gramsci communi-
cated through Tatiana Schucht, who moved to Italy and devoted herself completely
to the relationship with her brother-in-law: correspondence, assistance, precious
collaboration with Piero. This relationship also allowed a link to be established
between the imprisoned Gramsci and his party: Sraffa would receive Gramsci’s
letters which had been recopied by Tatiana, and he would send them to Paris to
the party’s foreign affairs office. Sraffa became close to Togliatti, whom he
contacted on more than one occasion: he even sent him Gramsci’s letters by
means of a special ‘courier’, such as Giorgio Amendola in 1931.
As regards the relationship between Gramsci while in prison and his party,
an impassioned and prestigious historian, prematurely deceased, Paolo Spriano,
carried out a truly ‘historiographic investigation’ by working on all the available
documentation as well as precious testimony, amongst which was Sraffa’s,
taken in 1967: the book’s first edition came out in 1977 and a longer second
edition appeared in 1988 just before the author’s death. No reliable additional
information has been produced by subsequent historical-journalistic scoops,
because Spriano had not omitted or toned down any of the material. I am therefore
pleased to refer you to his study, because of the rigorous method used in verifying
 410 G. Napolitano

the episodes and reasons for Gramsci’s political dissent from the PCI’s position,
alias its exiled leaders, as well as his scrupulous analysis of the ‘shadows’ that
surrounded some events related to his conviction, and later to the attempts to
free Gramsci. It was the latter matter that tormented Sraffa over the years: and
I can personally testify to this.
Sraffa had spared no effort, on more than one occasion, in his attempts to
obtain a retrial for Gramsci and his comrades, amnesty and finally probation for
his friend, involving both his father and an uncle who was a top-level magistrate.
But he had a suspicion, like Gramsci himself, that a heavy shadow had already
been cast during the inquiry, when Gramsci received a ‘strange’ letter (posted
in Switzerland, but bearing stamps bought in Moscow) written by Ruggiero
Grieco, and addressed to Gramsci and Umberto Terracini, a letter that might
very well seem compromising because it underscored their leading roles as
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policy-makers. As regards this point, I shall not review the facts and arguments
put forth by Spriano to prove how Gramsci’s suspicion—which Sraffa shared
for many years—that the letter in question had been an attempt to damage him,
was, in fact, unfounded. In any case, it should be remembered that this event
was never kept secret. The 1965 edition of Letters from Prison included the
letter to Tatiana in which Gramsci spelled out his suspicion, and all the related
documents, found in the archives, were published in Rinascita in 1968. But
what is of interest here is how decades later Sraffa continued to rack his brain
over that episode and others, in the years that followed, concerning problems
caused by the attempts to free Gramsci through poorly-timed or reckless actions
on the part of the party.
Those ‘shadows’ continued to torment Sraffa in the 1970s when I had occasion
to associate with him (one of the most fortunate opportunities of my life), on my
frequent visits to Cambridge. Of course we discussed a wide range of subjects in
his Trinity College rooms, or strolling around the College’s gardens—to which
he held the key (a privilege reserved to Fellows back then). I was struck by his
curiosity for things Italian, and the affectionate way in which he would occasionally
ask for news of people such as Giuliano Gramsci or Umberto Terracini. His nagging
doubt about those long-ago events of the 1920s and 1930s would reveal itself when
we started discussing the ‘Gramsci papers’—essentially, letters by Tatiana—in his
possession (a problem already mentioned in a conversation between Sraffa, Luigi
Longo and Enrico Berlinguer, during one of Sraffa’s visits to Rome). Sraffa
wanted to entrust them to a scholarly institute, but preferred the Feltrinelli
Foundation to the Gramsci Institute, fearing that the latter, over time, would not
guarantee access to all those who were interested in studying them. He proceeded
cautiously, asking for clarification. In February 1972, after I let him know I was
about to visit, he invited me to postpone my trip because, he wrote, he did not
know ‘a) if you were coming alone (as I would prefer) or accompanied; b) what
exactly you want to talk about and c) what you have in mind for Tatiana’s letters
and other things.’ And he continued: ‘You must realize that I have aged quite a
lot, and therefore I do not want to make decisions that I haven’t had time to think
over. If you arrive here with requests that I’m not prepared for, and you want an
immediate answer, that answer would have to be No; if, on the other hand, I’ve
had time to think it over, it would almost certainly be Yes.’
 Sraffa and Gramsci: A Recollection 411

That letter embodied Piero’s style, his idiosyncrasies, his way of ‘defending
himself,’ and, in some way, a residual diffidence towards the old Communist
Party: it also occurred to me that in involving me in the revisitation of an
obscure and distant past—which I had not lived through—perhaps there was
also an element of pedagogy.
However, I made my reply as complete and as reassuring as I could. And yet,
Piero once again hesitated for a long time; in March of 1974 Pierangelo Garegnani
wrote to me from Trinity that ‘at this time he is not likely to make any decisions
about those papers.’ On the other hand, not long afterwards, after arriving in
Rome, he called me from the Hotel Hassler, invited me to call on him in his
room, and then and there drew from his briefcase a large bundle of papers—
they were photocopies—and gave them to me for the Gramsci Institute. He
would soon hand over the originals as well, to Elsa Fubini, who had been sent
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to Cambridge by the Institute.

That decision, and the distress that preceded it, was Piero Sraffa’s final
gesture of friendship towards Antonio Gramsci and his party.
A party, I might add, that Sraffa had helped to obtain some of Gramsci’s
writings, through Tatiana and with the help of Raffaele Mattioli. (Togliatti had
written Sraffa a beautiful letter after Gramsci’s death, asking him for clarification
and suggestions regarding ‘Antonio’s political and literary legacy.’)
A party—in the final analysis, the Italian Communist Party—that Sraffa had
maintained contacts with in democratic Italy: whenever he came to Rome, he
never missed meeting with Togliatti and other leaders, in particular Giorgio
Amendola (who would one day introduce me to him).
And the PCI was also aware of its ‘unpayable debt’ to Piero: it even
decided to prove it to him, proposing that he come and live in Rome; the PCI
would have taken care of all related practical problems. It was 1975: Piero
answered that he was pleased by the offer; but he added: ‘At my age, I have no
mobility at all. . . . I will not move any more from Cambridge.’
Sraffa’s friendship for Gramsci was political as well as intellectual; and it had
an extraordinary human and moral depth to it. I have at times referred to the image
of the ‘double life’ Sraffa lived for ten long years: the life he lived in the spotlight
that shone on the sphere of great ideas, the highest level of theoretical discussions
and his participation in the most sophisticated cultural circles, and the life lived in
the shadows—his relationship with Gramsci, prisoner of fascism. The Piero Sraffa
who, along with other young colleagues of Keynes, after the publication in 1930 of
the Treatise on Money, dedicated himself to the reflections of the Cambridge
Circus, or who, a while earlier, at a famous lunch with Keynes, had discussed
the topic of probability in the presence of the strongest philosophical minds of
the times, Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein, was the same Piero Sraffa that
unfailingly followed Gramsci’s vicissitudes, corresponded with him through
Tatiana—47 letters sent to her between 1932 and 1933—kept up the relationship
with his party, tried to see him in Turi (unsuccessfully) and then in Formia and at
the Quisisana Clinic in Rome, worked to save him, and assisted him in every
possible way. This was his ‘secret life’: a devotedness that he kept to himself,
that he never spoke of with those close to him, not even after decades. (I discov-
ered this myself, while telling this extraordinary story, at the end of the 1970s, to
 412 G. Napolitano

Nicholas Kaldor, to whom Piero had never said a word of all that he had done for
Gramsci.)
Unselfishness in total silence. A friendship, perhaps, without equal, from
every point of view, against the sinister backdrop of the 20th century.
Gramsci’s memory was engraved in Sraffa’s soul. In the painful and dark
years of the illness that led to his death, during his physical decline and final
solitude, a famous neurologist, director of the Milan Institute, visited him in
1982 in a Cambridge hospital at the request of Piero’s only living Italian relative.
The neurologist, after noticing that the patient had clearly ‘lost his mnemonic
faculties’ and was ‘disoriented in time and space’, declared: ‘He has however
maintained a considerable dose of vivacity, brilliance and critical skills. He can
speak effortlessly of economics, he passes confidently from Italian to English to
French, he can forget what he did the previous day, but is usually lucid if he
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speaks of David Ricardo or Antonio Gramsci.’

Ricardo and Gramsci: the two outstanding figures in his life—the former in
his life as a scholar and the latter in his human adventure.

Acknowledgments
I would like to express my sincerest thanks to the organizers of the conference on
‘Piero Sraffa 1898 –1983’ for the opportunity to revisit a topic which in the 1970s
and 1980s was the focus of considerable interest and energy on my part. My thanks
also go to Shevawn O’Connor, who translated the talk on which this article
is based.