Alternative Modernities Antonio Gramscis Twentieth Century by Giuseppe Vacca

MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS
Alternative
Modernities
Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century
Giuseppe Vacca
Translated by
Derek Boothman · Chris Dennis
Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
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Marcello Musto
York University
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Terrell Carver
University of Bristol
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Giuseppe Vacca
Alternative
Modernities
Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century
Giuseppe Vacca
Fondazione Gramsci
Rome, Italy
Translated by
Derek Boothman Chris Dennis
Perugia, Italy Modena, Italy
ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

Marx, Engels, and Marxisms
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Preface
Antonio Gramsci’s thought has influenced the political choices I have

made and the overall direction of my research starting from my years at
university, although it was only in 1975 that I began a systematic study of
it. This was the year that the Critical Edition of the Prison Notebooks was
published, an edition which gave the public access to the chronological
sequence of these prison writings. Reading the Notebooks diachronically
persuaded me once and for all of the validity of the criterion suggested by
Palmiro Togliatti for studying Gramsci. In Togliatti’s Notes for his speech
at the first conference of Gramsci studies, in January 1958, he wrote.
Gramsci was a theorist of politics but above all a practical politician, that is
a combatant […] The whole of what Gramsci wrote should be approached
with [this] in mind, but this task will only be accomplished by those having
such a detailed knowledge of the concrete moments of his activity that
makes it possible for them to see how these concrete moments correspond
to each of his general doctrinal definitions and statements. They must also
be sufficiently impartial to resist the temptation to let false doctrinal gener-
alizations obscure the clear connection linking thought to concrete facts
and real movements. (Togliatti 2001 [19581 ], pp. 213–4: cf. Togliatti
1979, pp. 161–2).
Since the mid-1970s I have, then, lent myself to reconstructing the life
and thoughts of Gramsci through their insertion into the history of the
twentieth century.
ix
x PREFACE
As is borne out by the online Bibliografia Gramsciana,1 from the

1980s onward, knowledge of Gramsci’s writings and studies devoted to
his thought have been undergoing a continuing expansion at the interna-
tional level. On becoming Director of the Fondazione Gramsci in January
1988 I therefore sought to give a new impetus to the dialogue between
students of Gramsci in Italy and abroad, to acquire new documents and
foster the necessary philological research for reconstructing his political
and intellectual biography. Fundamental in this respect is the project of
the National Edition of his writings, to which I shall return later. I flanked
this polyphonic and choral undertaking by personal involvement in the
clarification of Gramscian categories given that, faced with the expansion
of their uses, a work of conceptual cleansing seemed to me useful.
The intention to promote a new season of Gramsci studies took root in
me for two reasons: the first was the need to get rid of the singular paradox
that, while internationally Gramsci’s reputation was growing exponen-
tially, there was an increasing conviction in Italy that his thought should
be consigned to oblivion.2 The second reason was born from the devel-
opment of my studies of the Notebooks, from which in my view there
emerged new possibilities of reading them. Here I have in mind three
essays recently republished but conceived during the 1970s and 1980s.3
1 This bibliography is available for consultation on the site of the Fondazione Gramsci,
www.fondazionegramsci.org.
2 To denounce this incongruence, in April 1987 the then head of the Cultural Commis-
sion of the Italian Communist Party, Giuseppe Chiarante, and I were responsible for
a special number of the monthly Contemporaneo supplement to Rinascita devoted to
the diffusion of Gramsci throughout the world. A short time afterwards, on becoming
Director of the Foundation, I organized an international conference on the worldwide
studies and translations of Gramsci. This conference was held on 25–28 October 1989
in Formia (where Gramsci had spent two years in a prison-approved clinic), the proceed-
ings being published some time later in 1995 (Gramsci nel mondo, ed. Maria Luisa Righi,
Rome: Fondazione Istituto Gramsci). During the conference John Cammett presented the
brochure of the International Gramsci Bibliography, on which he had been working alone
for years. This Bibliography was published in the Annali (Yearbooks) of the Foundation
(Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1991), and then transferred on line and continued, again under
the editorship of John Cammett, by Maria Luisa Righi and Francesco Giasi, who are still
currently responsible for its update.
3 These correspond to the first three chapters of the volume edited by Marcello Musté:
G. Vacca In cammino con Gramsci (Vacca and Musté, 2020), appearing under the titles
‘La “quistione politica degli intellettuali” nei “Quaderni del carcere”’, ‘Dal materialismo
storico alla filosofia della praxis’ and ‘I “Quaderni” e la politica del Novecento’ respectively.
PREFACE xi
The crisis of democracy, the subject of discussion in the whole of the

West, took on in Italy the dimension of a crisis of the nation-State and, in
reading Gramsci, it struck me as ever more obvious that this question had
been at the centre of his research from the time of the First World War.
My first essay on Gramsci had its origins in the preparation for the inter-
national conference on Gramsci Politics and History in Gramsci, held in
Florence in 1977. The contribution was entitled ‘The “political question
of the intellectuals” and the Marxist theory of the State in the thought
of Gramsci’ (Vacca 1977) and was intended as a reply to the theses put
forward by Norberto Bobbio. In maintaining that the theory of the State
in Marx and Marxism did not exist, Bobbio provided an authoritative
platform for the campaign of demolition launched by the socialist review
Mondoperaio (Coen 1976, 1977). The essay introduced a significant inno-
vation into Gramsci studies since it linked the revision of Marxism under-
taken in the Notebooks to the centrality that the question of the intellec-
tuals had assumed in Gramsci’s elaboration of the theory of politics and
history.
The second essay initially constituted the central part of the book
Marxism and the Intellectuals (Vacca 1985). In the early 1980s I became
convinced that a return to Italian Marxism, from Labriola to Gramsci,
could be of use in the search for new answers to the crisis then underway.
I had followed the passage from the 1970s to the 1980s from a privi-
leged vantage point, that of the Board of Governors of the Italian State
Radio and Television Network—the RAI—of which I was a member from
Autumn 1978 to Summer 1983. From there, I had realized the inad-
equacy of the political cultures of the time, faced with the changes in
the structure of the world that had begun with the shift in the techno-
logical paradigm of western industrialism and the growing international
instability generated by the end of dollar standard and of the regime of
fixed exchange rates. What to many in Italy seemed the renewal of a ‘gen-
eral crisis of capitalism’ to me, on the other hand, presented itself as a new
cycle of expansion of the world market founded on the ‘commodity form’
and its growing capacity of penetrating into the ‘worlds of life’, destroying
or evading the barriers that had been erected by the political regulation
of national economies and by the creation of the Welfare State in Europe.
That experience had made the approach of the ‘national roads to social-
ism’, in which I too had been educated, emerge in all its narrowness, as
well as highlighting the asymmetry between the horizon of the Prison
Notebooks and the rhetoric of the transition to socialism in which I had
xii PREFACE
been cradled. Rather than abandoning the theoretical heritage of Gramsci,

I attempted to rethink it in the light of the most attentive analyses of
the global transformations of the last few decades, singling out the nexus
between internal domestic politics and international politics as the pivot
of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. In other words, it seemed to me that
the theoretical horizon of the Notebooks was marked by the perception
that the Great War had heralded a crisis in the nation-State and caused
an acceleration of the processes of globalization, by which the strug-
gles for hegemony, while continuing to be carried out on the national
territory, were configured as the ways in which the differing combina-
tions of national life interlocked with the international conditionings of
development.
Marxism and the Intellectuals aimed at appraising the philosophical
dimension of Marxism by developing the nexus between the ‘political
question of the intellectuals’ and the conception of politics as the struggle
for hegemony. In this way, an original figure of Marxism emerged, eman-
cipated from the economic determinism and the sociological reductionism
of the vulgate; and its theoretical autonomy was put to the test to provide
its own narration of twentieth-century world history, challenging the
hegemonic narrations of the ‘neoconservative revolution’. This involved
the recovery of interdependence in the Marxist reading of the Modern,
going beyond the dichotomic scheme that has connotated so much of
the historiography of the twentieth century and bringing back into circu-
lation a processual conception (politico-historical not sociological) of the
subject. The idea that this new research programme could revitalize what
was left of Italian communism appeared to find confirmation in the advent
to power of Mikhail Gorbačev and his project for reform in the USSR
and of global politics. In going into depth into the ‘new way of thinking’
which lies at the base of Gorbačev’s proposal of a ‘new world order’,
it seemed to me that returning to Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, in
connection with the interdependence principle, could infuse new lifeblood
into political projectuality in Italy and internationally. But, in drawing up
a balance sheet of Eurosocialism and Italian communism, it seemed to
me necessary to disengage Gramsci’s destiny from the vicissitudes of the
political struggles in which he has been read up to then.4
4 I refer readers to my contribution ‘I Quaderni e la politica del Novecento’ in G. Vacca

(1991). As for the encounter with the ‘new way of thinking’, cf. G. Vacca and G. Fiocco
(2019).
PREFACE xiii
Work was thus begun on the National Edition 5 of Gramsci’s writings,

to which I added my research on the editorial fortunes of his writings
and on his biography during the years of his detention. Work in both
of these fields aimed at clearing the ground of the long-accumulated
publishing controversies and vicissitudes characterized by factional inter-
ests, the results being brought together in my essay ‘Togliatti editore di
Gramsci’ (Daniele 2005, pp. 13–54) and my 2012 volume Vita e pensieri
di Antonio Gramsci 1926–1937 . This latter contains a careful reconstruc-
tion of the intertwining of the scientific programme of the Notebooks,
the interpretation of twentieth-century world history and Gramsci’s polit-
ical biography, the events of his personal life and his intellectual profile.
It therefore constitutes an introductory study for the systematic exposi-
tion of the birth, development and connections between the fundamental
conceptions of his thought, which the present volume deals with.
Gramsci’s thought takes on a systematic form only in the Prison Note-
books, a posthumous work, it is well to remember, and one which now
lives through the ever more detailed work of its editor-publishers.6 Its
origins lie in the analysis of the political events, economic processes and
cultural life of his time, with Italy as its main workshop; but right from the
Great War onwards, Gramsci’s mind was projected onto the world scene.
Already in the first years of his reflections, he began to conceive contem-
porary history as ‘world history’, furrowed by the contrast between the
cosmopolitanism of the economy and the nationalism of politics. A style
of thought was thus born which distinguishes Gramsci’s analyses even
when—roughly speaking between 1916 and 1930—he had not as yet
worked out a real narration of the twentieth century. This narration may
be extracted from the Notebooks, by coming to grips with an overall inter-
pretation of modernity, although it must be added that the Notebooks are
5 The National Edition got underway in 1999 and 2007 saw the publication of the
Translation Notebooks (Quaderni di traduzioni), up to then unpublished, after which there
followed the first two volumes of Correspondence (the Epistolario) between Gramsci and
others, the 1917–1918 Writing s (Scritti), the Notes on Glottology (Appunti di glottologia),
the first volume of the Miscellaneous Notebooks, and the 1910–1916 Writings, published
in 2019. Currently underway are the two volumes of the Correspondence of Tat’jana
Schucht, which contain her exchanges with Piero Sraffa and with her own family members.
Regarding the plan of the entire series and the publication criteria used cf. Studi Storici
52(4), 2011.
6 Cf. G. Vacca (with Chiara Daniele) Togliatti editore di Gramsci (2005); F. Giasi
‘L’eredità di Antonio Gramsci’ in P. Togliatti (2014), pp. 919–962.
xiv PREFACE
not solely this (Ciliberto 1982, 1999, 2016; Ciliberto and Vasoli 1991;
Izzo 2009; Montanari 1997). In any case, the task that I set myself in the
first chapter of this book was to follow the development of the concept
of hegemony from when the term first appeared (in 1919) to the drafting
of the ‘special notebooks’, attempting to shed light on the historical situ-
ations to which it referred. This seems to me the main highway for clari-
fying the meaning of the conception of politics as the struggle for hegemony,
around which the philosophy of praxis is pivoted. And the same procedure
is followed in the second chapter in analysing the concept of passive revo-
lution which constitutes a historiographical complement to the concept
of hegemony.7
From the 1970s onward, ‘hegemony’ and ‘passive revolution’ have
been the concepts towards which the greater number of Gramsci’s inter-
preters have directed their efforts, together with those who have him
as their point of reference for reconstructing national histories and
world events. In this exceptionally wide literature, there appear concep-
tual couplings of the hegemony-‘counter hegemony’, passive revolution-
‘active revolution’ type which reveal quite evident misunderstandings of
his thought. These are almost always born from an urgency to find recipes
for immediate political use.
The third chapter has, instead, the nature of an essay. Its aim is to bring
out the more properly philosophical dimension of Gramsci’s thought by
shedding light on the translatability of languages which he indicates as
the distinctive feature of his own reflections. However I have not wished
to give an exposition of the entire system of the philosophy of praxis,
but rather bring into focus his fundamental problem, meaning that of
the subject, around which the whole of modern philosophy revolves. In
the Prison Notebooks this culminates in the question of how ‘permanent
collective wills are in fact formed’ (Q8§195, p. 1057; PN Vol. 3, p. 346),
giving rise to a processual conception of subjectivity: in other words, for
Gramsci the subject is not given but is the result of ‘relations of force’
and dynamic combinations of the relations between ‘intellectuals’ and
‘masses’. In the theory of the constitution of subjects, hegemony, passive
revolution and the translatability of languages are cardinal concepts and
7 For a corroboration of this way of posing the question see the introductions to the
anastatic edition of the Prison Notebooks (Gramsci 2009) by G. Francioni, G. Cospito and
F. Frosini, which taken together comprise an illuminating history of the Notebooks.
PREFACE xv
I have therefore oriented my research mainly towards their reconstruc-

tion. Generated by an original interweaving of historical analysis and
strategic political thought, they give body to a narration of the twentieth
century centred on ‘Americanism’, communism and fascism, investigated
as alternatives to the liberal civilization that with the war had entered into
crisis.
The world history to which Gramsci turned his gaze covers only about
two decades, but his analyses go beyond those of his contemporaries and
comprise a vivid figure of the first half of the twentieth century. Between
the 1970s and the 1980s, the progressive narrations of the history of
the twentieth century were demolished, narrations which had upheld the
diffusion of democracy in the West; their place was taken by ideological
narrations—the century of the Holocaust, the century of ideologies and of
totalitarianisms—which stopped time at the 1940s. But the nexus between
past and present cannot be structured in an arbitrary manner. When this
happens, it becomes aleatory, if not entirely impossible, to interrogate the
present with one’s mind turned towards the future. If, then, one wishes to
measure the ‘actuality’ of Gramsci, one has to start off from his perception
of Americanism, communism and fascism as figures of antinomy of a new
season of modernity and restore his gaze on the history of the twentieth
century, which is still speaking to us.
The last chapter of the book regards a crucial subject of the debate
among the interpreters of Gramsci. It offers a precise corroboration of
the nexus between politics as the struggle for hegemony and theory of
democracy which sinks its roots in the morphology of modernity. Faced
with the crisis of the modern subject —the twentieth-century nation-State,
the working-class movement, and the political party—one cannot stop at
the traditional procedures and thematizations of democracy. Thus, the
proposal to read Gramsci as the theorist of civil society, advanced in 1967
by Norberto Bobbio, may be considered a typical example of passive
revolution. The comparison between the reading of Marx, proposed by
Benedetto Croce at the end of the nineteenth century, suggested in the
‘Afterword’ is by no means a polemical gesture. Bobbio’s thesis belonged
to a historical period in which political struggle was characterized by the
‘war of position’ and, on a par with Croce’s reading of Marx, it seemed
the conditioned reflex of a dominant culture which, in not contemplating
the possibility of hegemonic challenges that went beyond its conceptual
universe, ended up by crystallizing the western liberal democratic world.
The comparison thus also constitutes a valid example of how the concept
xvi PREFACE
of ‘passive revolution’ may be applied to experiences successive to those

investigated by Gramsci, as long as one knows how to deal with the
historical contexts.
Rome, Italy Giuseppe Vacca

March 2020
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Vacca, G. (1985). Il marxismo e gli intellettuali. Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Vacca, G. (1991). Gramsci e Togliatti. Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Vacca, G. (2005). Togliatti editore di Gramsci. In Daniele (Ed.), (2005), pp. 13–
54.
Vacca, G. (2012). Vita e pensieri di Antonio Gramsci 1926–1937 . Turin: Einaudi.
Vacca G., & Fiocco, G. (2019). La sfida di Gorbaciov. Guerra e pace nell’era
globale. Rome: Salerno Editori.
Vacca, G., & Musté M. (2020). In cammino con Gramsci. Rome: Viella.
Contents
1 The Concept of Hegemony 1

1 ‘Historical Breaks’: The Great War and the October
Revolution 1
2 The Problem of the Revolution in Italy
and the ‘Hegemony of the Proletariat’ 12
3 The Essay on the Southern Question: First Draft
of a Theory of Intellectuals 26
4 The Origin of the Notebooks 36
5 Gramsci the Theorist of ‘Revolution in the West’? 44
6 The Concept of Hegemony in the Notebooks 48
7 Interdependence, ‘Civil Hegemony’, ‘International
Hegemony’ 54
8 The Crisis of the Modern State and the Remedies:
Political Cosmopolitanism and Supranationality 64
References 78
2 The Nature of Passive Revolution 85

1 Developments of the Concept of ‘Passive Revolution’ 85
2 Gramsci’s Analysis of the History of Italy, from the War
to His Arrest 89
3 Liberal Italy and Fascism in the Notebooks 112
xix
xx CONTENTS
4 The ‘Passive Revolution’ in the International Scenario.

America, Europe, Soviet Union 128
References 143
3 From Historical Materialism to the Philosophy

of Praxis: Foundations for a Processual Theory
of the Subject 151
1 The Turin Factory Council Movement 151
2 The Research Programme of the Notebooks 160
3 ‘A Heresy of the Religion of Liberty’ 165
4 Economism and Scientism 170
5 Socialism as the Process Generating a New Rationality 178
6 The Constitution of the Political Subject 185
References 191
4 Hegemony and Democracy 195

1 The Legacy of Liberalism 198
2 Crisis and Critics of Democracy 208
3 ‘The Modern Prince’ 218
4 Europe After Fascism 230
5 Epilogue 236
References 240
5 Afterword 243
1 Gramsci Studies in Italy 243
References 259
Index 265
Translators’ Note
The list following this note contains the abbreviations used in the textual
and bibliographical references for the most widely quoted selections of
Gramsci’s writings used in the current volume. Taking account of the
needs of an international readership, which may have access to either
English or Italian publications but usually not both, the references give
information in both languages for Gramsci’s writings. We use the cita-
tions given in Giuseppe Vacca’s Italian text for the pre-prison writings, but
often readers may have access to these in other anthologies of Gramsci’s
writings. For Togliatti’s articles on Gramsci, we normally use as the Italian
source Guido Liguori’s 2001 anthology Scritti su Gramsci, as being the
most widely available one, but readers can also find them in the 2014
Togliatti anthology La politica nel pensiero e nell’azione. Scritti e discorsi
1917–1964, edited by Michele Ciliberto and Giuseppe Vacca, used in the
present volume when necessary.
Note that the greater part of Gramsci’s newspaper and journal articles
have not been translated into English and so, for them, only an Italian
source can be mentioned. Titles of articles discussed by the author are
given in English in the text, and found under that name in the alphabeti-
cally arranged references lists, followed by theoriginal title in Italian, with
indications of where they were published. Given that the author normally
follows a chronological reconstruction of the early writings, in particular,
we include the date of their first publication. There then follow the refer-
ence to the volumes in which these articles may now be consulted, first
xxi
xxii TRANSLATORS’ NOTE
in Italian and then, where possible, in English; for the latter, we give the
translation used and, as help to readers alternative sources where these
exist.
As regards letters, in Italian we use for purposes of completeness
the published volumes of correspondence between, as needed, Tanja
(Tat’jana) Schucht and Gramsci (Gramsci-Schucht 1997) or Tanja and
Piero Sraffa (Sraffa 1991). For Gramsci’s exchanges of letters with other
members of the Italian communist leadership, use is made of Palmiro
Togliatti’s 1962 volume Formazione del gruppo dirigente del partito comu-
nista italiano nel 1923–1924; as with the newspaper articles, these may be
accessed in other Italian anthologies. In English we use the most complete
translation of the prison letters available, not listing other partial selec-
tions. For well-known Russian figures and organizations, we use the form
of names familiar to Anglophone readers; elsewhere we follow the ISO
rules for transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet.
Occasionally earlier ‘standard’ translations of Gramsci quoted have
been ‘silently’ updated since a few lexical choices have now undergone
modification in the light of later work; this is the case especially with
‘corporative’ rather than ‘corporate’ and the difficult term ‘determinate’,
often previously glossed rather than translated. Sometimes readers will
encounter ‘soviet’ written with a small initial letter; this occurs when the
emphasis is on the meaning of the term as a council, hence the ‘republic
of soviets’ means quite literally the ‘republic of councils’.
Abbreviations Used in References
to Volumes
Italian Publications in Volume

Form of Gramsci’s Writings
CF La Città futura (1917–1918) (1982) ed. S. Caprioglio, Turin: Einaudi.
CPC La costruzione del partito comunista (1923–1926) (1971) Turin: Einaudi.
CT Cronache torinesi 1913–1917 (1980), ed. S. Caprioglio, Turin: Einaudi.
NM Il nostro Marx (1918–1919) (1984) ed. S. Caprioglio, Turin: Einaudi.
ON L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920 (1987) ed. V. Gerratana and A.A. Santucci,
Turin: Einaudi.
QdC Quaderni del carcere (1975) ed. V. Gerratana, Turin: Einaudi.
SF Socialismo e fascismo. L’Ordine Nuovo 1921–1922 (1966) Turin: Einaudi.
English-Language Volumes of Gramsci’s Writings

FSPN Further Selections from the Prison Writings (1995), ed. and
trans. D. Boothman, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
GTW Letters 1908–1926. A Great and Terrible World (2014), ed.
and trans. D. Boothman, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
LfP Letters from Prison (1994), 2 Vols., ed. F. Rosengarten and
trans. R. Rosenthal, New York: Columbia University Press.
PN Vol. 1 Prison Notebooks Vol. 1 (1992), ed. and trans. J.A. Buttigieg
(with the assistance of A. Callari), New York: Columbia
University Press.
PN Vol. 2 Prison Notebooks Vol. 2 (1996), ed. and trans. J.A. Buttigieg,
New York: Columbia University Press.
xxiii
xxiv ABBREVIATIONS USED IN REFERENCES TO VOLUMES
PN Vol. 3 Prison Notebooks Vol. 3 (2007), ed. and trans. J.A. Buttigieg,
PPW Pre-Prison Writings (1994), ed. R. Bellamy and trans. V. Cox,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
SPN Selections from the Prison Writings (1971), ed. and trans.
Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith, London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
SPW 1910–1920 Selected Political Writings 1910–1920 (1977), ed. Q. Hoare
and trans. J. Mathews, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
SPW 1910–1926 Selected Political Writings 1910–1920 (1978), ed. and trans.
Q. Hoare, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
CHAPTER 1
The Concept of Hegemony
1 ‘Historical Breaks’: The Great

War and the October Revolution
World War I influenced the entire development of Gramsci’s thought; to
reconstruct the origin of the concept of hegemony, which forms the basis
of his analysis of the twentieth century; it will therefore be useful to start
from how he perceived the Great War.
Gramsci’s first important text, an article entitled ‘Active and Operative
Neutrality’ (CT , pp. 10–15; SPW 1910–1919, pp. 6–9 and, with alter-
native title, PPW , pp. 3–7), published in the Turin socialist weekly Il
Grido del Popolo on 31 October 1914, suggested to the Socialist Party
the need to go beyond the formula of ‘absolute neutrality’. Whether
this article contained a position that was favourable to Italy’s interven-
tion in the war is a controversial question, long debated by historians
and now clarified, in my opinion, in a well-documented contribution by
Leonardo Rapone (Rapone 2007). But rather than his political position,
our interest here is to reconstruct Gramsci’s thinking about the war and in
this regard the most important analyses date from 1916. The ‘Maximal-
ist’ majority of the Socialist Party, of which Gramsci was a member, was
part of the European revolutionary socialism that conceived of socialism
as the ‘coming of the International’. In their view, socialism presupposed
the worldwide spread of capitalism, because that would have strengthened
the proletariat even further, thus preparing the conditions for its rise to
power. Revolutionary socialism was thus laissez-faire liberal in outlook
© The Author(s) 2021 1

G. Vacca, Alternative Modernities, Marx, Engels, and Marxisms,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7_1
2 G. VACCA
since it intended, via the class struggle, to accelerate the achievement of

capitalism’s historical ‘mission’, namely the antagonistic unification of a
world divided between ‘bourgeoisie’ and ‘proletarians’. Italian ‘Maximal-
ists’ were laissez-faire liberals because they were solidly classist (Losurdo
1997); however Gramsci’s liberalism depended not only on his political
position, but sprang also from his intellectual education, for which, as is
known, Croce and Einaudi, Salvemini and Sorel, Bergson and the prag-
matists had been fundamental (Paggi 1984; Rapone 2011). We therefore
need to focus on the influence this culture had on how Gramsci analysed
the phenomenon of war. Rapone and other scholars have suggested that
his extraneousness to the socialist ‘war doctrine’ and his selective approach
to theories of imperialism are due to these cultural influences: this theme
calls for further enquiry.
Gramsci analysed the situation from 1916 on from the viewpoint of
the change in the subjectivity of the peoples that war was rapidly gener-
ating and the first phenomenon upon which he cast his eye was the
re-awakening of colonial peoples. The article ‘War and the Colonies’
published on 15 April 1916, was his reaction to an article by Mario
Girardon, the Paris correspondent of the Resto del Carlino, and it
underlines the ‘universal’ character of the phenomenon. But of equal
significance is the conception of colonialism that Gramsci reveals on that
occasion. Clearly influenced by the interpretation of Antonio Labriola
(Labriola 2012, pp. 97–127), he states that colonialism can be ‘the histor-
ical drive necessary for the social agglomerates who were behind the times
of civilization to change, to become disciplined, to acquire the conscious-
ness of their being in the world and of having to collaborate in the life of
the world’. However this had not been the result of French and British
colonialism, since both had ‘obeyed the impulse of their capitalisms and in
the colonies [had] created capitalist enterprises, but not within a capitalist
society’.
The article contains two concepts that would turn out to be funda-
mental for Gramsci’s analysis of politics and history: the first concerns
the corporativist character of nationalism; the second is that capitalism’s
progressive ‘function’ is distorted or even deformed by the force with
which restricted economic interests manage to dominate the field of
politics. From the outset, therefore, Gramsci’s thought reveals the deci-
sive influence of Marx, since the pathology that he denounced concerns
not only the colonial phenomenon, but also the relations between the
economy and politics in the contemporary capitalist world (Gualtieri
1 THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY 3
2007). To Labriola’s influence can also be ascribed the observation that

‘the European world’s contact with coloured people has not been without
its consequences’, positive consequences since ‘even indirectly capitalism
has succeeded in creating new needs, new wills, latent aspirations which
(…) could overflow unexpectedly in a violent action’. (‘The War and the
Colonies’, CT 1913–1917 , pp. 255–258)1
The way in which Gramsci initially conceived of capitalism reflects a
widespread mentality. The ‘spirit of the time’ that inspired him is well
represented by Norman Angell, an author who was very dear to the
‘intransigent’ Italian socialism of the 1910s. This British journalist’s most
successful work, The Great Illusion, was published in Italian in 1913 and
the actuality of his analyses of the globalization of the world economy
between the end of the 1800s and the first years of the twentieth century
is of great interest still today. In the preface to the Humanitas edition
which we have before us, Angell is presented as the ‘discoverer’ ‘of the
economic interdependence of civilized nations’. For Gramsci, ‘economic
interdependence’ certainly did not constitute a ‘discovery’; yet the anal-
ysis of globalization developed in The Great Illusion was so persuasive
as to make Angell one of his favourite authors.2 Gramsci accepted the
thesis that economic interdependence favours peace among nations and
may be an instrument for continually neutralizing if not altogether elim-
inating the phenomenon of war. He wrote this clearly on 24 July 1916
and reasserted it once more on 23 March 1918, referring explicitly to
Angell (‘The Great Illusion’, CT , pp. 446–448; also ‘Norman Angell’ CF
1917 –1918, pp. 773–774). In particular, in the first article dedicated to
The Great Illusion, he draws a distinction between Angell’s pacifism and
humanitarian pacifism, which he did not appreciate at all, asserting that
the former was ‘solid’ because it was ‘founded on the recognition of a
new state of things, created unintentionally by capitalism, as a pure
economic force, and not as the backbone of bourgeois nations’ (‘The
Great Illusion’, CT , p. 446). The distinction between capitalism and
1 Cf. M. Girardon, ‘Le libertà coloniali dopo la guerra europea’, published in the
Bologna daily paper Il resto del carlino on 9 April.
2 N. Angell, La grande illusione. Studio sulla potenza militare in rapporto alla prosperità
delle nazioni (1913), with a preface (‘Proemio’) by Arnaldo Cervesato (Bari: Humanitas),
pp. v–xii, here p. v; see also Cervesato’s preface to the Voghera (Rome) edition also of
1913, p. vii and Angell’s use of the words ‘economic interdependence’ on p. viii of his
own ‘Synopsis’ of the book, enlarged edition of 1914 published by Heinemann (London).
4 G. VACCA
bourgeoisie not only anticipates the contrast between the cosmopoli-

tanism of the economy and the nationalism of politics, shortly to become
the key to explaining the war, but also evokes the possibility of polit-
ically radicalizing Marx’s well-known thesis about the global vocation
of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism and bourgeoisie are
complementary so long as the national market and the nation-State are
indispensable to capitalist development. But Gramsci claims that the more
capitalism develops as a global economic form, the less it requires the role
of the State. Economic cosmopolitanism creates a need for supranational
political institutions and at this ‘stage’ of historical development, capi-
talism and the bourgeoisie are separable or at least distinguishable from
each other, thus providing the historical justification for revolutionary
internationalism. But even more significant is the fact that Gramsci, in
developing in an original manner his vision of laissez-faire liberalism,
not only does not adhere to the theories of imperialism, but elaborates
his own theory of war based on the perception that imperialism is not
an economic category (it does not indicate a change in the nature of
capitalism) but a historical and a political one. War is conceived of as
‘a necessity’ he writes, only by certain ‘economic groups’ and political
forces, it is the offspring of protectionism and nationalism, which are
both political phenomena, not the expressions of supposed ‘economic
laws’ (‘The Sirens’ Song’ and ‘The Socialists for Tariff Freedom’, CF ,
pp. 382–387 and 402–405 respectively). The correlation with his analysis
of colonialism, where we started from, is evident.
This is the background to his approach to the project of the League
of Nations, proposed by US president Woodrow Wilson on 8 January
1918. The approach culminates in the claim that if the League of Nations
were to be set up following Wilson’s blueprint it would constitute the
‘prerequisite’ ‘for the advent of the socialist International’ (‘Wilson and
the Socialists’ NM 1918–1919, p. 315). Limiting ourselves to the salient
points of his analysis, the League of Nations, writes Gramsci on 19
January, ‘is an attempt to adapt international politics to the needs of inter-
national trade’; ‘it represents the squaring of politics with economics’;
‘it is the great bourgeois supranational State which has dissolved tariff
barriers, broadened markets, changed the pace of free competition and
makes possible great enterprises, great international capitalist conglomer-
ates’ (‘The League of Nations’ CF , p. 571). These are remarks of great
interest, since they contain the basis of the theory of crises and war elabo-
rated by Gramsci in Notebook 15; but no less important is the perception
of supranationality as the main highway for bringing political spaces into

line with the globalization of the economy. At this point however we
need to focus on the categories that Gramsci developed as he analysed
the Great War, when his thinking was dominated by his expectation of the
‘advent of the International’. We observe in rapid succession, the presence
of ‘interdependence’ as an analytical category of the structure of the world
(‘A Socialist Peace Programme?’, CF , pp. 694–697); his assessment of
the British Commonwealth as the birth of a ‘new form of society’, thanks
to the creation of a ‘colossal federation’ capable of solving ‘the problem
of nationalities’; and his prediction that the League of Nations would
rotate around an Anglo-American bloc made up of a ‘free federation
[comprising] 500 million inhabitants and an immense territory, which
would dominate and control the seas of the whole world’. ‘In all probabil-
ity’ concludes Gramsci ‘it will be the new phenomenon that characterizes
twentieth century history’, forcing ‘the Latin nations (…) to become
satellites of this new formidable historical power which is coming into
being’. And ‘it will be a good thing’ he adds, not only because the Latin
nations will be obliged to modernize, but also because, perhaps, peace
‘will be ensured precisely by this emergence of a huge power, against
which any other would be weak and would be destroyed in a conflict’
(‘The New Religion of Humanity’, in NM 1918–1919, pp. 175–176).
Gramsci thus describes the emergence of a new hegemony in interna-
tional relations, founded on the expansivity of the industrial, commercial
and cultural power of the more advanced capitalist countries, which are
capable of spreading development and promoting peace. The word used
is not hegemony but pre-eminence; but the concept is already there and
was soon to appear in the expression world hegemony which is present in
‘The Tasca Report and the Congress of the Turin Chamber of Labour’ (5
June 1920, in ON 1919–1920, p. 451; SPW 1921–1926, p. 258). In this
piece, the first references to the Bolshevik debate on imperialism surface,
irrefutably demonstrating the derivation of the term ‘hegemony’ from
Leninism. But returning to ‘The New Religion of Humanity’, it is signifi-
cant that originally, the concept of ‘international pre-eminence’ was linked
to the fact of ‘economic interdependence’ and with an appreciation of
Wilson’s project to create new political spaces that were adequate to the
expansion of the economy:
6 G. VACCA
The League of Nations is the capitalist Cosmopolis, with a citizenship

comprised of millionaires (…) it is the juridical fiction of an interna-
tional hierarchy of the bourgeois class with the Anglo-Saxon individualists
predominating over other bourgeois.
The article comments on the armistice with Germany and the start of
the Paris Conference, where Gramsci sees a clash between two representa-
tives of post-war capitalism, with the Wilson-Lloyd George ‘bloc’ destined
to prevail over militarism à la Foch. To his mind this clash constituted
‘the supreme revolution of modern society, the genesis of the capitalistic
unification of the world, under the discipline of a hierarchy of States,
who are equals under a juridical fiction’. The prediction and presage of
the prevalence of the Anglo-American bloc induced him to ask a radical
question, i.e. whether perhaps the time was ripe for the supersession of
the nation-State’s principal function, the construction of citizenship:
Has capitalistic society become differentiated to the extent that, in its

progressive development, it has entered once and for all into the supreme
phase of the individual superior even to the State and the citizen of the
League of Nations? (‘The Armistice and Peace’, NM 1918–1919, p. 539)
But when the Paris Conference concluded with the restoration of the
irreconcilable contrast between French and German nationalisms, Gram-
sci’s thought underwent a sudden about-turn. Already mentally inserted
into the newly-formed Communist International (March 1919), he saw
in ‘Anglo-American capitalism’ a ‘global monopoly’ which proletarianized
subaltern nations and above all destroyed all traces of sovereignty. In that
year he wrote (15 May, referring to Italy) that
the national State is dead, becoming a sphere of influence, a monopoly in

the hands of foreigners. The world is “unified” in the sense that an inter-
national hierarchy has been created which is disciplining the entire world
and controlling it in an authoritarian manner; there has been created the
greatest concentration of private property, the whole world is a trust in the
hands of a few score Anglo-Saxon bankers, ship-owners and industrialists.
(‘The Unity of the World’ in ON 1919–1920, p. 20)
Gramsci’s period of communist militancy was beginning, but never-

theless he seemed to be even more convinced of the progressive value of
economic interdependence, considering his enquiry as the premise for the
‘advent of the International’ and believing that the main problem raised
by the war was that of adapting the ‘spaces’ and forms that regulated
politics to the spaces of a world economy that was increasingly one and
interdependent.
His conviction sprang from the widening of the crisis of national
economies. Gramsci was taking his cue from the wave of strikes and
the depression that had struck the US economy, which was therefore
no longer capable of financing a European economic recovery, and
contrasting the globalization of the nineteenth century’s final decade with
twentieth-century Europe’s nationalisms, which had been responsible for
the catastrophic war:
Before the war, a dense network of commercial relations had begun to

be formed in the world; economically, the world had become a living
organism with a rapid blood circulation (…) A multiplicity of arteries and
veins, through which the life of the world circulated. (‘Italy and the United
States’ ON 1919–1920, pp. 303–304)
This network had represented a great manifestation of the capitalist

mode of production’s global vocation and of its progressive ‘spontane-
ity’. But then there had followed ‘the period of national economies
moving as a complex, organized as military might in order to conquer
world markets, to conquer the world. This period culminates in war
(…) and destroys the conditions of capitalism for capitalism’. The asym-
metries and antagonisms generated by the war had not been cured by
the equilibria achieved with peace: ‘wars continue [against the working
classes within States and among States themselves], trade embargoes
continue; the bloody wound in the world body continues to be widened
by hands rendered spasmodic by panic’ (loc. cit.). The conflict between
the cosmopolitanism of the economy and the nationalism of politics had
resulted in war and that huge catastrophe had demonstrated the need to
eliminate the roots of nationalism.
But as we have seen, the conclusion of the war had proposed anew, in
an even more exasperated form, the contradiction that had generated the
war and, by ushering in a proletarian revolution, brought to the forefront
those forces that could remove it. We therefore need to direct our atten-
tion to the epochal changes that war had wrought on the position of the
subaltern classes—workers and peasants—and their psychology. Immedi-
ately after the October Revolution, Gramsci had written two illuminating
8 G. VACCA
articles about the world that was coming into being. The first one, in a
cultural and ethical tone, took no position on the Bolsheviks’ conquest of
power and focused on the psychological changes occasioned by the war:
Three years of war have certainly caused changes in the world. But perhaps
the most significant change of all is this: three years of war have made the
world sensitive to change. We feel the world, are sensitive to it; previously
we simply thought it. We felt our little world, we took part in its sadness, in
its hopes, in its wishes and in the interests of the little world in which we
were most directly immersed. We welded ourselves to the wider collectivity
only through the effort of thought, with an effort of abstraction. Now this
weld has become more intimate. We see distinctly what before was indis-
tinct and vague. We see people, multitudes of people where yesterday we
saw only States or single representative people. (‘Readings’ in CF , p. 452)
In this way Gramsci set forth a theme that would characterize the
entirety his thought: the nexus between understanding and feeling, the
inspiring principle behind the philosophy of praxis.3 But no less impor-
tant appears his emphasis on war as the accelerant of the globalization
of the collective conscience. This argument had been developed in the
celebrated article ‘The Revolution against Capital’ (CF , pp. 513–517;
SPW 1910–1920, pp. 34–37 and PPW , pp. 39–42). The article is too
well known for us to analyse it in detail but we would like to focus on
one point. The October Revolution surprised and disconcerted Euro-
pean socialism because none of the currents of Marxist thought of the
time, including Lenin up to the eve of the war, had predicted that the
‘socialist revolution’ could start in a backward country. But the war, by
also involving Russia, had created the subjective conditions for a ‘prole-
tarian revolution’ there. It had ‘aroused the popular collective will’, which
‘normally’ would have required a lengthy experience of capitalist devel-
opment, class struggles, the creation of an industrial proletariat and the
formation of a widespread socialist conscience. ‘In Russia’ Gramsci writes
‘the war has served to galvanize the people’s will. As a result of the suffer-
ings accumulated over three years, they found themselves very rapidly in
unanimity’ and the Russian proletariat, although it had not known Euro-
pean capitalist development, once in power ‘made use of the Western
capitalist experiences to bring itself rapidly to the same level of production
3 Cf. here Chapter 3, pp. 151–193.

as the Western world’ (‘The Revolution against “Capital”’, CF , p. 515;

SPW 1910–1920, p. 36).
It is worth noting that in the article there already appears the concept
of the ‘collective will’, which in subsequent developments of Gramsci’s
thought would come to designate the subjectivity that generates histor-
ical changes; but the salient point of the article is the justification of the
Bolshevik revolution in the light of the unification of the mentality of
peoples that was generated by the war. The text in which the historical
determination of the phenomenon is most significant is the article of 2
August 1919, ‘Workers and Peasants’, centred on a comparison between
Russia and Italy, in which the accent falls on the change in the peasants’
historical position and psychology:
Four years of the trenches and exploitation of his blood have radically
changed the peasant psychology. This change has occurred especially in
Russia, and has been one of the essential factors in the revolution. What
industrialism had not brought about in its normal process of development
was produced by the war. The war forced those nations which were less
advanced in capitalist terms, and hence less endowed with technological
equipment, to enrol all available men and to oppose wave after wave of
living flesh to the war instruments of the Central Powers. For Russia, the
war meant that individuals who had previously been scattered over a vast
territory came into contact with each other. It meant that humans were
concentrated together uninterruptedly for years on end under conditions
of sacrifice, with the ever present danger of death, and under a uniform
and uniformly ferocious discipline. The lengthy duration of such condi-
tions of collective living had profound psychological effects and was rich
in unforeseen consequences (…) Within four years, in the mud and blood
of the trenches, a spiritual world emerged that was avid to form itself into
permanent and dynamic social structures and institutions. (‘Workers and
Peasants’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 157–158)
These analyses underpin an ever more convinced adherence to Bolshe-

vism, finally leading to two articles from 1920: ‘Two Revolutions’, of 3
July, and ‘Russia, a World Power’, of 14 August. The former demonstrates
a critical approach that is precociously aware of the exceptionality of the
‘Russian experiment’. Written as the development of the Councils expe-
rience was in full swing, the article proposes a significant relativization
of the October Revolution. In previous months revolutions had failed
in Germany, Austria, Bavaria and the Ukraine. Gramsci’s reflection moves
10 G. VACCA
from there: ‘The experience of the revolutions’ he writes ‘has shown how,
since Russia, all other two-stage revolutions have failed’. The possibility
that arose in Russia for the proletariat, through the effect of the war,
not only to conquer power, but also successfully to hold onto it, had
not been replicated elsewhere. This showed that the ‘two-stage revolu-
tion’ could not provide a model for the proletarian revolution. Unlike
what had happened in bourgeois revolutions, the proletariat could not
plan to conquer the power of the State and then ‘construct’ a socialist
society in a ‘second stage’. These failures therefore proved the anachro-
nistic character of the ‘permanent revolution’ theory. The other salient
theme of the article was European experiences with Councils, which
Gramsci considered inconceivable without the pressure of the war and
the October Revolution. As he wrote immediately afterwards in the
article ‘The programme of L’Ordine Nuovo’, there were mainly two
problems that had arisen from the founding of the weekly with Togli-
atti: first, whether the soviet was not ‘a purely Russian institution’, but
instead, ‘a universal form’, that is to say, ‘wherever there are proletarians
struggling to win industrial autonomy’, whether the soviet was not the
most appropriate institution form for realizing it. The second concerned
the possibility of identifying the equivalent of the soviet in Italy (‘The
Programme of L’Ordine Nuovo’ ON 1919–1920, pp. 619–620; PPW ,
p. 179). The Turin experience with Councils constituted in his opinion
the demonstration of the universality of the soviets inasmuch as they had
‘translated’ ‘the Russian experiment’ into an industrial situation among
the most advanced in Europe. However it is useful to underline the moti-
vation that Gramsci provides for these claims to demonstrate that the
Turin experience had highlighted the possibility of separating capitalism
and industrialism thus rendering superfluous both capitalist command
over production and the very figure of the ‘capitalist’ (‘The Programme’,
cit., ON 1991–1920, pp. 623–624 and 626–627; PPW , pp. 182–183 and
185–186). In the soviet, Gramsci recognized the organ of the working
class’s ‘industrial autonomy’ and ‘historical initiative’, which however
could only be acquired by means of adequate preparation under the
guidance of communist parties (which found therein their principal justi-
fication), so as to create the conditions for socializing production before
conquering power (‘Two Revolutions’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 569–574;
PPW , pp. 168–172 and New Left Review I/51, pp. 45–48).
In spite of this initial attempt at differential analysis, the consolidation

of soviet power did provide Gramsci with a chance to identify the ‘uni-
versal’ elements of the ‘Russian experiment’. The first is that the working
class ‘shows that it is capable of constructing a State’ inasmuch as ‘it
manages to convince the majority of the population (…) that its imme-
diate and future interests coincide with those of the majority itself’ (all the
other classes ‘recognize the working class as the ruling class’). Its ‘lead-
ership’ is exercised by ‘convincing’, thus establishing ‘a new hierarchy of
social classes’. This reflection marks the moment when for the first time
Gramsci comes close to Bolshevism’s concept of hegemony, predicating it
as a combination of persuasion and command, and this in the year when
for the Bolshevik élite the concept was tending towards coercion exerted
on the peasants to make them accept the programme of the workers’
party. We do not know to what extent Gramsci was aware of that debate,
but we shall have occasion to return to it later.
As already mentioned however, the term hegemony does appear in his
analysis of international relations and receives an initial specification in the
article ‘Russia, a World Power’. ‘With its military victory’ over Poland,
Gramsci writes optimistically, as the Red Army is just about to be halted
at the gates of Warsaw, and ‘thanks to the courage of its army (…)
the Russia of the soviets has become one of the greatest world powers’,
placing itself ‘at the head of the system of the historical powers that are
struggling against hegemonic capitalism’. The latter expression refers to
Anglo-American capitalism which Gramsci, as we have seen, considered
to be the real victor of World War I.
Yet its ability to dominate seemed to him to be greatly limited by the
failure of Wilson’s project and the strident incongruities of the Treaty
of Versailles. Therefore Anglo-American power could be victoriously
challenged by Soviet Russia, now the global reference point for prole-
tarian revolutions, for defeated nations, and for nations like Italy which,
although among the victors, had been ‘economically destroyed’ by the
war; and finally by the ‘insurrection of the colonies, which had been bled
to death by the metropolis’:
The World War, won by the Entente, should have been able through the
Peace of Versailles and the League of Nations to install a monopoly regime
over the globe; an unchallenged hegemony ought to have succeeded
to the system of inter-State equilibrium and competition. The Russia of
12 G. VACCA
the soviets, acceding to the position of a great power has breached the
hegemonic system. (‘Russia, a World Power’, ON , p. 618)
It is no surprise that the concept of hegemony should appear for

the first time in an analysis of a geopolitical nature. The article that
we are examining follows two other articles with the same approach,
‘Russia and Europe’ of 1 November 1919 (ON 1919–1920, pp. 267–
271) and another one, a week later, entitled ‘Italy and the United States’
(ON 1919–1920, pp. 302–305), which contain an initial synthesis of the
changes to the world equilibria generated by the war. We shall analyse
them in Chapter 2 because they are mainly dedicated to the history of
Italy’s foreign policy; but we should already mention that both are clearly
geopolitical in nature.
In its first reception then, the concept of hegemony appears to
be combined with an already autonomously elaborated mechanism for
analysing international relations, while the terrain upon which it would
develop is above all that of domestic politics. To commence this anal-
ysis we must skip forward three years, to deal with the period in which
Gramsci started to prepare his succession to Bordiga.
2 The Problem of the Revolution in Italy

and the ‘Hegemony of the Proletariat’
After the Rome Congress (20–24 March 1922) Gramsci was sent to
Moscow to represent the PCI on the Executive Committee of the Inter-
national and he remained there from May 1922 to November 1923.
There then commenced a period of intense theoretical and strategic elab-
oration which went from the summer of 1923 to the spring of 1924 and
would bear its most mature fruits at the Lyon Congress (January 1926).
His in-depth study of Bolshevism and direct knowledge of Soviet Russia
and of the International confirmed his conviction about the ‘universal’
validity of the Russian experiment, but at the same time provided him
with proof of the Comintern’s weakness, stemming in his opinion from
how centralism functioned. The intensification of the conflict between
the PCI and the Comintern, which Bordiga clearly intended to push to
breaking point, obliged Gramsci to overcome all ‘inertia’.4 Immediately

after the Third Enlarged Executive (June 1923), he noted:
The tactic of the united front, laid down with considerable precision by
the Russian comrades, both technically and in the general approach to its
practical application, has in no country found a party or the men capable of
applying it in concrete terms. (…) Obviously, all this cannot be accidental.
There is something that is not functioning in the international field as
a whole, there is a weakness and inadequacy of leadership. The Italian
question must be seen in this framework. (CPC, p. 457; SPW 1921–1926,
p. 155)5
In this way Gramsci initiated a mid-period reflection on the ‘translation

into Italian historical language’ of the Comintern’s policy. As is known,
the first significant document of his research is the letter of 12 September
1923 to the Executive of the PCI in which he suggested the orientation
and title for the new daily newspaper that the International had decided
to launch in support of the fusion with the Maximalists. Its salient points
regard the way in which the alliance between workers and peasants was
to be approached and the need to specify the form of State that best suits
a ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’:
As a title I propose L’Unità pure and simple, which will be significant

for the workers and have a more general significance. I am proposing this
because I think that after the decision of the En[larged] E[xecutive] on the
Workers’ and Peasants’ government, we must give importance especially to
the southern question, that is, to the question in which the problem of
the relations between workers and peasants is posed not only as a problem
of class relations, but also and especially as a territorial problem, that is to
say as one of the aspects of the national question. Personally, I believe that
the watchword ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’ has to be adapted
in Italy to the ‘Federal Republic of the Workers and Peasants’. (Gramsci
Epistolario 2, p. 127; GTW , p. 171 and SPW 1921–1926, p. 162)6
4 The criticism of ‘inertia’ via-à-vis Bordiga was formulated by Togliatti in his letter to
Gramsci of 1 May, 1923. Cf. P. Togliatti (1962, pp. 53–60); SPW 1921–1926, pp. 132–
137.
5 From manuscript notes, probably dating to June 1923 while Gramsci was still in
Moscow.
6 Letter of Gramsci from Moscow to the PCI Executive (12 September 1923).
14 G. VACCA
The reasons why the tactic of the United Front made it necessary to
specify the form of the workers’ State are not limited to the particular-
ities of the ‘peasant question’. The main reason why the party needed
to have its own position on the nature of the State was the presence of
fascism. Although the government still maintained the political appear-
ances of a parliamentary regime, fascism had achieved power thorough
violence and, through the government, was continuing and intensifying
its destruction of working class organizations and of democracy (Vacca
1994, pp. xxiii–xxv). The conditions for uniting the working classes and
for leading them could only be created if the party adopted the strategy
of a democratic revolution. In his letter from Vienna of 5 January 1924
to Mauro Scoccimarro, Gramsci wrote:
Fascism has posed a very sharp and cruel dilemma in Italy, that is to say
that of the revolution in permanence, and of the impossibility not only of
changing the State form, but simply of changing government, except by
armed force. (Togliatti 1962, pp. 152–153; GTW , pp. 199–200 and SPW
1921–1926, p. 176)7
The victory of fascism, its peculiarity of being a popular movement

endowed with an armed organization that aimed to suppress its adver-
saries, and the rapid authoritarian transformation that it imposed on the
State, induced bitter self-criticism in Gramsci: ‘The Livorno split (the
separation of the majority of the Italian proletariat from the Commu-
nist International) was without a doubt the greatest triumph of reaction’
(Togliatti 1962, p. 102; SPW 1921–1926, p. 160).8 But the reunification
of the Italian proletariat could not be resolved by a fusion between the
PCI and the Maximalists, as called for by the Comintern; it required a
revision of the party’s strategy to identify the weaknesses of fascism in
order to attract to itself those forces that could detach themselves from
fascism. In actual fact, Gramsci believed that fascism could not be stabi-
lized and that a crisis was possible in the short term. But, in order to be
able to stamp its mark on events, the party needed to formulate a realistic
prediction of the possible course of the crisis and adopt an appropriate
tactic. The most likely hypothesis was that the crisis of fascism would
lead to a democratic revolution. The PCI therefore needed to elaborate
7 Letter of Gramsci to Scoccimarro of 5 January 1924.

8 One of three fragmentary drafts of notes or letters by Gramsci.
transitory watchwords to enable it to be transformed into a proletarian

revolution. That meant the party needed to develop a strategy suited to
the Italian situation, where the watchword of the ‘workers’ and peasants’
government’ was insufficient:
In the political field we have to establish with precision the theses on the
Italian situation and on the possible stages of its future development. (…) I
think that, in any revival, our Party will still be in a minority position, that
the majority of the working class will go with the reformists and that the
liberal bourgeois democrats will still have much to say. I do not doubt that
the situation is actively revolutionary and that therefore, in a given period
of time, our Party will have the majority on its side; but if this period
will perhaps not be long in terms of time, it will undoubtedly be dense in
secondary stages, which we shall have to foresee with a certain precision in
order to be able to manoeuvre and not fall into errors that would prolong
the experiences of the proletariat. (Togliatti 1962, pp. 199–200; GTW ,
pp. 229–230 and SPW 1921–1926, pp. 201–202)9
The concept of hegemony of the proletariat appeared for the first time
during this research. As is known, when Gramsci wrote his letter from
Moscow on founding L’Unità, he was preparing the plan for the first issue
of the third series of L’Ordine Nuovo (Somai 1989, pp. 53–54), which
appeared in March 1924. Together with the renowned editorial, ‘Capo’
(‘Leader’), dedicated to a comparison between Lenin and Mussolini, the
fortnightly journal contained a biography of the recently deceased Soviet
leader, translated from Russian but adapted by Gramsci to the Italian situ-
ation. The text which he drew on was Zinov’ev’s introduction to the first
volume of his Works, comprising an ‘outline history of Bolshevism’ and
written as a polemic against Trotsky (Paggi 1970, pp. 43–44). The origi-
nality of Bolshevism, wrote Zinov’ev, consists of the fact that for the first
time, ‘in the international history of the class struggle’ it had ‘developed
the idea of the hegemony of the proletariat and (…) addressed in a prac-
tical manner the principal institutional problems that Marx and Engels
had explored in theoretical terms. The idea of the hegemony of the prole-
tariat’, Zinov’ev continued, ‘for the very reason that it was conceived
historically and concretely, brought with it the need to find an ally for the
working class: Bolshevism found this ally in the mass of poor peasants’.
9 Letter of Gramsci from Vienna of 9 February 1924 to Togliatti, Terracini and others.
16 G. VACCA
Gramsci added that in this way, ‘theoretically and practically the histor-
ical task of the peasant class’ had been established, whereas international
socialism had not yet succeeded in doing this. But what appears even more
important from a theoretical viewpoint is that, in his reconstruction of
the genealogy of the concept of ‘hegemony of the proletariat’, he based
himself on the pamphlet Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Demo-
cratic Revolution, in which Lenin, elaborating the experience of the 1905
Russian revolution, had not only introduced that concept but had also put
forward a conception of the democratic and socialist revolution, summed
up in the slogan democratic dictatorship of the workers and the peasants.
This was no casual choice. The salient point of the Bolshevik vision of the
hegemony of the proletariat was the need for the working class to ‘make
concessions’ of an economic nature to the peasants (Di Biagio 2008,
pp. 397–402). That had indeed happened in the October Revolution,
with the adoption of the Social-Revolutionaries’ agrarian policy, which
aimed to assign the land to the peasants; and with the New Economic
Policy (NEP), which introduced a limited market economy to the coun-
tryside. At the centre of Gramsci’s approach there was instead the need
to ‘make concessions’ to the peasantry that were also political. Indeed,
as we have seen, in the letter about founding L’Unità Gramsci proposed
replacing the slogan ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’ with ‘Federal
Republic of the Workers and Peasants’, thus placing the two classes on
the same level.
For Gramsci, the alliance between workers and peasants in Italy thus
involved not only the problem of the government, but also the form of
the State. The State of the dictatorship of the proletariat could not be
solely the State of the workers, but needed, unlike the Soviet State, to
be a workers’ and peasants’ State. Therefore the leadership function of
the working class vis-à-vis its principal ally ought to assume the character
of influence and political and intellectual leadership, not that of subordi-
nation and coercion. In an unpublished study, the much missed Anna Di
Biagio reconstructed the variations of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’
concept in Lenin’s writings, from his What Is to Be Done? of 1902 to the
last article On Cooperation of 6 January 1923: only in Two Tactics was
the hegemony of the proletariat conceived of as the political leadership of
an alliance between classes of equal importance and rank; instead, in his
other writings where the concept appeared or was operationally present,
hegemony of the proletariat assumed the character of predomination by
the working class over the peasant masses and, from 1920, of more or
less flexible coercion exercised by the working class to induce the peas-
ants to accept the programme of the workers’ party. Between 1920 and
1923, discussion on this point in the Russian Party had been very heated
and after the launch of the NEP, had ended in favour of coercion of the
peasants by the workers. The theses of the Comintern, instead, went in
the opposite direction, especially after Lenin, in launching the ‘United
Front tactic’, had invited ‘fraternal’ parties to study the Russian expe-
rience in-depth, but not to follow it slavishly, and instead to ‘adapt’ it
to national particularities (Di Biagio, unpublished research). As already
mentioned, in June 1923 Gramsci started to re-elaborate the ‘tactic of
the United Front’ in order to adapt it to Italy. It is not surprising that
in handling Lenin’s biography he should have taken Two Tactics as his
point of reference: the proletarian revolution in Italy was to be at the
same time a democratic and a socialist revolution, not only because of the
presence of fascism but also because Italy is a western European country.
The ‘translation into Italian historical language’ of the United Front tactic
was not just the search for a ‘national way’, but part of a wide-ranging
reflection on the differences between East and West as illustrated in his
letter to Togliatti and Terracini of 9 February 1924. Commenting on
the discussion that had commenced in the Bolshevik leadership imme-
diately after the failure of the insurrection in Germany, Gramsci showed
that while he shared Zinov’ev’s reaffirmation of the actuality of revolution
(Pons 2008, pp. 403–407), the problem of the ‘intermediate phase’ was
acquiring particular significance throughout western Europe:
In central and western Europe, the development of capitalism has created

not only broad proletarian strata but also, and for that very reason,
an upper stratum, the working-class aristocracy, with its appendages of
trade-union bureaucracy and social democrat groupings. The determina-
tion which in Russia was direct, and which launched the masses into
the streets in a revolutionary assault, becomes complicated in central and
western Europe by reason of all these political superstructures created by
the greater development of capitalism. Indeed it slows down and urges
caution on the action of the masses, and thus requires the revolutionary
Party to have a strategy and tactics that are much more complex and of
longer range than were necessary for the Bolsheviks between March and
18 G. VACCA
November 1917. (Togliatti 1962, pp. 196–107; GTW , p. 227 and SPW
1921–1926, pp. 199–200)10
In the course of 1923, Gramsci had reached the conviction that fascism
was undergoing a process of dissolution (Somai 1989, pp. 805–824) and,
for an effective intervention by the proletariat, he thought its alliance
with the peasantry was indispensable. Attention has correctly been drawn
to the impulse given by the Comintern to this reflection via the creation
of the Krestintern (the Peasant International) and by the Soviet State’s
transformation in a federalist direction (Paggi 1970, pp. 151–160). But
Gramsci went beyond that impulse, evoking the West’s morphological
complexity. The fusion between the PCI and the Maximalists was also the
subject of a comparison which highlighted above all the differences with
respect to the ‘Russian experiment’, attributing to the tactic of the United
Front the significance of a ‘limiting idea’ (Togliatti, pp. 223–227; GTW ,
pp. 239–246).11 In fact workers and peasants, rather than as the levers for
a revolutionary process on the Russian model, were considered as being
the potential protagonists of a rationalization of the Italian economy in
a productivist perspective which would remedy the nation’s fragile unity
and weak competitiveness. Then, in August of 1924, in the very middle of
the Matteotti crisis, Gramsci put forward the idea of a popular revolution
that could reinsert Italy into the European circuit from which fascism had
excluded it:
Only by participating in a European and world revolution can the Italian

people regain the ability to utilize fully its human productive forces, and
to restore development to the national productive apparatus. Fascism has
merely delayed the proletarian revolution, it has not made it impossible.
Indeed, it has helped to enlarge and enrich the terrain of the prole-
tarian revolution, which after the fascist experiment will be a truly popular
one. (‘The Italian Crisis’—Gramsci’s report to the August 1924 Central
Committee meeting: CPC, p. 31; SPW 1921–1926, p. 257)12
10 Letter of Gramsci from Vienna of 9 February 1924 to Togliatti, Terracini and others.
11 Letter of Gramsci from Vienna of 1 March 1924 to Scoccimarro and Togliatti.
12 At this meeting Gramsci’s nomination by the 5-strong Executive as the General
Secretary of the Party was accepted by the Central Committee.
With the Lyon Congress, the characterization of the proletarian revolu-

tion as a ‘popular revolution’ became the PCI’s strategy until June 1929,
when the Comintern forced the party to renounce it (Ragionieri 1971,
pp. 108–170). The disagreement concerned not only the refusal to iden-
tify social democracy with fascism, but also the conception of the State
which, the ‘popular revolution’ formula suggested, was not a ‘dictator-
ship of the proletariat’. Going on however to the letter of 21 March 1924,
Gramsci explained the complexity of the political unity of the proletariat
by evoking the multiple articulations of civil society. In Western Europe
the working class had long been inserted within the ganglia of the hege-
monic system and it could neither be disentangled from it by force, nor
rapidly reshaped in its political configuration:
Do we make an alliance with the maximalists for a sovietist government,

just as the Bolsheviks did with the left Social Revolut[ionaries]? It seems to
me that, should this situation come about, it will not be as favourable for
us as it was for the Bolsheviks. We have to take account of the tradition of
the S[ocialist] P[arty], of its three-decade-long links with the masses, which
cannot be resolved either by machine guns or by small-scale manoeuvres
on the eve of the revolution. It is a big historical problem that can be
resolved only if, as from today, we pose it in all its breadth and if, as from
today, we begin to solve it. (…) [T]he Comintern tactic of the conquest
of the majority of the S[ocialist] P[arty] (…) is, then, our horizon, our
overall direction, certainly not something to be achieved in the here and
now. (Togliatti 1962, pp. 246–247; GTW , p. 256 [translation corrected]
and SPW 1921–1926, pp. 221–222)13
The tactic of the United Front implied a struggle for hegemony

within the working class between communists and social democrats. Social
democracy inverted the terms of the problem as regards Bolshevism,
since these two rivals moved from contraposed visions of capitalism. For
Bolshevism, the imperialist war had initiated a new historical epoch, char-
acterized by a ‘general crisis of capitalism’ that could only be resolved by
a proletarian revolution. Therefore the proletariat’s role was to accelerate
the revolution. Social democracy did not accept this analysis and aimed
to play a key role in stabilizing capitalism, subjecting it to a democratic
civilizing process, albeit limited to the more developed countries. Seen
13 Letter of Gramsci from Vienna to Togliatti, Scoccimarro and Leonetti of 21 March

1924.
20 G. VACCA
in these terms, the struggle between social democracy and communism

could only end in the victory of one or the other, but Gramsci thought
that it should not turn into a ‘military’ clash, as was happening in various
countries. This was neither Gramsci’s preferred option nor the line of
the Italian communists, who until July 1929 continued to conceive of
the duel with social democracy in terms of a struggle for hegemony. In
any case, with the Matteotti crisis and the shift to the left of the French
situation on the one hand, the victory of Labour and the long strike in
Britain in 1926 on the other, the idea matured in Gramsci that ‘relative
stabilization’ was about to come to an end, and that summer he formu-
lated predictions that were more radical than those put forward by the
Comintern at its Fifth Congress (1924) (Vacca 1999b, pp. 123–128).
The signs that the end of capitalist stabilization was approaching involved
Italy first of all, where Gramsci therefore saw a return to the theme of a
constituent assembly.14
The fact that since the eve of the 1924 elections he had suggested that
the PCI should adopt the constituent assembly watchword clearly shows
how distant he was from the spirit of 1920–1921. In the well-known
article ‘Against Pessimism’ which appeared on 15 March in the first issue
of the third series of L’Ordine Nuovo, he had mercilessly criticized the
Livorno split:
We were - it must be said - overtaken by events. Without wanting to

be, we were an aspect of the general dislocation of Italian society, which
had become a burning crucible in which all traditions, all historical forma-
tions, all prevailing ideas were melted down, sometimes leaving no trace.
(‘Against Pessimism’, CPC, pp. 16–19 and Togliatti 1962, p. 357; SPW
1921–1926, p. 215 and PPW , p. 257)
But already in his letter to Scoccimarro, Leonetti and Togliatti of 21

March he had proposed a careful examination of the possibility of linking
up with the democratic opposition, and of seriously considering the
prospect of a constituent assembly, as relaunched by Giovanni Amendola:
We must illustrate all the probable solutions that the current situation may
give rise to, and for each one of these probable solutions we must establish
14 As is known, this theme had been at the centre of political debate immediately after
the end of the war: Cf. A. Tasca (1995).
guidelines. I have, for example, read Amendola’s speech, which seems to

me very important; there is a hint in it that could be developed. Amen-
dola says that the constitutional reforms suggested by the fascists pose the
problem as to whether, in Italy, it might be necessary to divide off consti-
tutional activity from normal legislative activity. It is likely that what he
says here contains the germ of the political orientation of the opposition
in the next Parliament. Parliament, already discredited and deprived of any
authority through the electoral mechanism on which it is based, cannot
discuss constitutional reforms, which can only be done by a constituent
assembly. Is it likely that the watchword of a constituent assembly could
again come onto the agenda? (GTW , pp. 255–256 and SPW 1921–1926,
p. 221)
Thus the ‘translation into Italian historical language’ of the watchword

of the ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ government’ slogan was enriched not only
by a State perspective (the ‘Federal Republic of the Workers and Peas-
ants’), but also by a democratic slogan that was necessary to profit from
fascism’s crisis.
[O]ur party does not have an immediate programme, based on perspectives

of the likely solutions which the present situation may have. We are for the
workers’ and peasants’ government, but what does that mean concretely in
Italy? Today? No one would be able to say, because no one has bothered
to say. (Togliatti 1962, p. 245; GTW , p. 255 and SPW 1921–1926, p. 220)
The constituent assembly slogan could allow the party to overcome its
strategic weaknesses and offer the proletariat a new opportunity to play
its cards:
there must be a political solution to the present situation: what is the most
likely form for such a solution to adopt? Is it possible to think that we can
go from fascism to the dictatorship of the proletariat? What intermediate
phases are possible or probable? We have to carry out a political examina-
tion, we have to do it for ourselves, for the masses of our Party and for the
masses in general. In my opinion, in the crisis that the country is going
to go through, the party that comes out on top will be the one which
has best understood this necessary process of transition. (Togliatti 1962,
p. 246; GTW , p. 256 and SPW 1921–1926, p. 221)
A few weeks later, general elections sealed the victory of fascism

but also the defeat of the liberal democrat and reformist oppositions,
22 G. VACCA
along with a certain amount of success for the PCI.15 Elected to parlia-
ment, Gramsci returned to Italy and had his first tests as a leader in
dealing with the Matteotti crisis. The reaction of the country to the
finding of Matteotti’s body, the attitude of all the anti-fascist parties and
fascism’s initial discomfiture induced him to conclude that, from that time
‘the fascist regime entered its death-agony’ (‘The Italian Crisis’ CPC,
pp. 28–39; SPW 1919–1926, pp. 255–266, here p. 258). The commu-
nists participated in the Aventine secession, proposing a fiscal strike and
the mobilization of the masses to resolve in an anti-fascist direction the
dualism of powers towards which the situation seemed to be tending.
But power relations were extremely unfavourable, so we find Gramsci
writing on 13 August, ‘we can only foresee an improvement in the polit-
ical position of the working class, not a victorious struggle for power’
(SPW 1921–1926, p. 262). The Aventine secession was not willing to
challenge fascism for fear that any intervention by the worker and peasant
masses in the crisis would turn into a revolution. At the same time, the
PCI could not detach itself from the other anti-fascist parties because it
would have risked self-destruction. It had to manoeuvre in such a way
as to attempt to modify the situation fighting on two fronts: against
fascism, and within the anti-fascist camp, exposing the Aventine seces-
sion’s subalternity to fascism and trying to attract the majority of the
proletariat to its side (op. cit.). The proposal that the party elaborated
on the eve of the re-opening of parliament was an Antiparliament: a
two-pronged proposal, aiming to legitimate the communists’ return to
parliament if, as was more than likely, the other anti-fascist parties refused
the proposal; and a weak proposal, because it also aimed to set the party
apart from the substantially impotent and passive opposition bloc (the
parties of the Aventine secession had placed their trust in Crown inter-
vention) so as to have at its disposal a parliamentary platform from which
to conduct the struggle on the two fronts. What was however realistic was
the fear that, should the opposition parties not return to parliament, the
PNF would be able to transform it into a ‘fascist Constituent Assembly’
(Spriano 1967, pp. 405–408).16 In any case, the Matteotti crisis clar-
ified unequivocally the ‘Constituentism’ of 1924–1926. A Constituent
15 Compared with the 1921 elections the communists lost 10% of their votes, with the
reformists and Maximalists losing three-fifths of theirs. On the character of the elections,
cf. Spriano (1967, pp. 324–341).
16 Cf. Gramsci ‘The Italian Crisis’, CPC, esp. p. 37; SPW 1921–1926, p. 264.
Assembly presupposed a crisis of fascism through the detachment from

it of forces which supported it in 1922. The detonating element was
identified in the crisis of the petty bourgeoisie—the social base of the
fascist movement (‘The Italian Crisis’, CPC, pp. 30–32; SPW 1921–1926,
pp. 257–258). The expectation was that the initiative would remain in
the hands of the liberal opposition; the adoption of watchwords of the
constituent type therefore had the aim of intervening in a situation domi-
nated by other forces in order to re-open the prospect of winning over
the majority of the proletariat. It is altogether obvious that Gramsci did
not believe in a democratic revolution led by the intermediate forces, and
he conceived of it as a form of transition to the dictatorship of the prole-
tariat. The struggle was directed against fascism, but tended at the same
time to unmask the other anti-fascist parties.
On 15 March Gramsci published an important article in L’Ordine
Nuovo entitled ‘The Mezzogiorno and Fascism’ (PPW , pp. 260–264)
in which he commented on the inclusion of candidates representing
Southern liberalism, such as Vittorio Emanuele Orlando and Enrico De
Nicola, in fascism’s national list (‘listone’) of candidates. This episode
confirmed his feeling that the Mezzogiorno was the area creating the
most worries for fascism; it spurred him on to pursue his analysis in
greater depth, and with an eye on the actions of the Union Nazionale
Combattenti (National Union of Combatants), the party founded and
led by Giovanni Amendola, he remarked: ‘The Mezzogiorno has become
a reserve for the constitutional opposition’ and has ‘once again signalled
its “territorial” diversity from the rest of the State, its determination not
to allow itself to be absorbed unresistingly into an exaggeratedly unitary
system’ (PPW , p. 260). In the composition of the listone he detected a
continuity in the approach to the Southern problem between Mussolini
and Giolittism, but he also underlined fascism’s difficulty in gathering all
the dominant élites around itself:
The Corriere and La Stampa (…) have not allowed themselves to be occu-
pied because there are three categories of national “institutions” that have
not been occupied or allowed themselves to be occupied: the General
Staff, the banks (…) and the National Confederation of Industry. (CPC,
p. 172; PPW , p. 261)
He then goes on to consider the alternatives to fascism ventilated by

the two newspapers:
24 G. VACCA
The Corriere (…) would even form an alliance with the reformists, but
only after having subjected many of them to humiliating conditions; the
Corriere wants an “Amendola” government – that is, it wants the petite
bourgeoisie of the South and not the working-class aristocracy of the North
to be incorporated into the effectively dominant system of forces. It wants
to see a rural democracy in Italy, with Cadorna as its military leader rather
than Badoglio, as La Stampa would prefer, and with a kind of Italian
Poincaré as its political leader, rather than a kind of Italian Briand. (CPC,
p. 173; PPW , p. 262; translation modified)
The communist party’s action was supposed to insinuate itself into

these manoeuvres, but the developments of the situation highlighted the
need to frame the Southern question differently from how it had been
formulated initially, i.e. as a ‘peasant question’ which the industrial prole-
tariat would resolve automatically when it took power (‘The Week in
Politics [xv]. ‘Workers and Peasants’, SPW 1910–1920, pp. 147–149).
The article ‘The Mezzogiorno and Fascism’ shows that the objective of
the reflection which initiated with the letter on the founding of L’Unità
and continued in the correspondence on the formation of the new leader-
ship, was the search for a new paradigm other than that of the ‘proletarian
revolution’ (CPC, pp. 171–175; PPW , pp. 260–264).
Therefore it seems to me that the theoretical nucleus of the article
constitutes an intermediate link between the letter about founding
L’Unità and ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question’. However the
general expectation was always that of a crisis of fascism in which the
transitory objectives did not represent real, intermediate stages: they did
not configure formulas for a government in which the proletariat could
recognize itself, but rather slogans of political agitation aimed at achieving
hegemony in the struggle on two fronts mentioned above (cf. ‘The Italian
Situation and the Tasks of the Party [Lyons Theses]’ in CPC, pp. 495–
498 and 510–513; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 349–354 and 371–375). In
conclusion, the ‘constituentism’ of 1924–1926 was closely linked to a
perceived instability of fascism, to a hypothetical crisis threatening its
dissolution, and to the possibility that, despite the enormously more
complex conditions of a Western European country like Italy, the crisis
might generate a process similar to that of the two Russian revolutions
of 1917. In the course of 1926 this analytical and strategic apparatus
would be further refined, based on a reading of the world crisis which,
as we have mentioned, induced Gramsci to contest the very idea of ‘rel-

ative stabilization’. But in that year, Gramsci’s thought also manifested
further significant innovations, called forth by fascism’s evolution, by the
developments of the international situation and by Soviet politics being
taken over by Stalin’s vision of ‘socialism in one country’ (Vacca 1999b,
pp. 84–140). The fundamental text in this respect is the report to the
Executive Committee of the PCI of 2–3 August 1926, which we deal
with in the next chapter. Here suffice it to note that Gramsci, in analysing
the various crises that fascism went through between 1922 and 1926,
turned his attention to the middle classes and was increasingly attentive to
their shifts. He states: ‘[t]hese phases traversed by Italy, in a form which I
would call classical and exemplary, we find in all those countries which we
have called peripheral capitalist countries’ (CPC, p. 122; SPW 1921–1926,
p. 410 and PPW , p. 299). The principal innovation that he introduced at
this point concerns the inadequacy of the Comintern’s strategy. In fact he
concludes that ‘for all the capitalist countries, a fundamental problem is
posed – the problem of the transition from the united front tactic, under-
stood in a general sense, to a specific tactic which confronts the concrete
problems of national life and operates on the basis of the popular forces
as they are historically determined’ (CPC, p. 123; SPW 1921–1926 and
PPW , loc. cit.). It seems therefore that he was beginning to perceive the
inadequacy of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ formula, even though it
remained the foundation of the transition strategy. Gramsci called for the
tactic of the United Front to be developed in State-political formulas that
would enable the nationalization of communist parties, which had not
yet been achieved. For Italy, he proposed a deepening of the relations
between the intellectuals (who constituted the politically most significant
part of the middle classes) and the peasant masses, and he immediately
went on to analyse them in his essay on the Southern question. But
the framework of this text was also influenced by the USSR’s political
evolution. ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question’ is contemporary
with the letter of 14 October 1926 to the Central Committee of the
Russian Communist Party. The point of intersection between the two
texts appears to us to be the fear that the nationalist involution, common
to all factions of the Bolshevik élite in their struggle for power, might
be generated by a deficit of hegemony, which was blocking the interna-
tional expansivity of the USSR, and that the notion of hegemony of the
proletariat was unsuited to overcoming it, and indeed might lead to its
crystallization.
26 G. VACCA
3 The Essay on the Southern Question:

First Draft of a Theory of Intellectuals
From Gramsci’s return to Italy until the Lyon Congress, deeper anal-
ysis of the agrarian question was one of the major commitments of the
leadership group that had formed around him. A distinctive trait of the
Lyon Theses was the approach to the ‘Southern question’ as a ‘national
question’, according to which the southern peasants were considered a
‘driving force’ of the Italian revolution: ‘the function of the southern
peasant masses in the evolution of the anti-capitalist struggle in Italy
must be examined independently, and must lead to the conclusion that
the southern peasants are – after the industrial and agricultural proletariat
of northern Italy – the most revolutionary social element of Italian soci-
ety’ (‘The Party’s First Five Years’, CPC, pp. 106–107; SPW 1921–1926,
p. 396). He had reached this conclusion via an analysis of the ‘Italian
social structure’. ‘The relations between industry and agriculture’—as said
in Thesis 8 of the Lyon Theses—‘which are essential for the economic
life of a country and for the determination of its political superstructures,
have a territorial basis in Italy’. His analysis of the class makeup of the
national population is not sociological in nature, but embraces all the rela-
tions between social groups and is based on the way in which the financial
and industrial bourgeoisie had exercised its leadership of society and the
State since unification. It is characterized by a ‘compromise’ between the
different fractions of the industrial bourgeoisie concentrated in the North,
and between these taken together and the agrarian bourgeoisie, princi-
pally to the detriment of the southern peasantry. Thus the South had
taken on the character of an internal colony, making the unity of the
nation permanently precarious since ‘economic exploitation and political
oppression thus unite to make of the working people of the South a force
continuously mobilized against the State’ (‘The Italian Situation and the
Tasks of the PCI—The “Lyons Theses”’, CPC, p. 492; SPW 1921–1926,
pp. 344–345).
Yet Southern peasants were not an amorphous, passive mass like those
of Tsarist Russia. From brigandage to the Sicilian Fasci, and from the
occupation of the land to the formation of movements of former combat-
ants in the post-war period, they had shown a more advanced capacity for
initiative and political maturity than even the working class of the North
in 1919–1920. However ‘colonial’ subordination of the peasants of the
South was not based solely on economic or even exclusively political rela-
tions of power, but depended on the specific function of the ‘intellectuals
as a mass’ who provide the sinew of the relations between the classes
in ‘civil society’. Gramsci started to go deeper into this subject between
the summer and autumn of 1926, introducing a decisive variant to the
dichotomy of historical materialism.
The essay on the ‘Southern question’ is an investigation into how the
problem of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ was posed in Italy. As we
have seen, for Gramsci the year 1926 marked a crisis in ‘capitalist stabi-
lization’, which was proceeding differently along a centre–periphery axis.
Italy was one of European capitalism’s peripheral countries, characterized
by a significant presence of rural and urban middle classes; the strongest
of these was the intellectual petty bourgeoisie because, faced with an
acute social crisis, it was able to orient the peasant masses and prevent
them from allying with the industrial proletariat. Naturally at the origin of
this analysis was the experience of fascism, which demonstrated how the
petty bourgeoisie too was capable of ‘historical initiative’; but from the
report to the Executive of 2 August onward, Gramsci’s observations were
placed within a wider analytical framework, where once again the theme
of the morphological differences between East and West underlined the
distance between the Italian situation and that of revolutionary Russia.
The problem of the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ shifted even more
significantly to the political terrain and Gramsci, accentuating the ideo-
logical role of the middle classes, for the first time mentioned the theme
which in the Notebooks he would formulate as the ‘political question of
the intellectuals’:
… in the advanced capitalist countries, the ruling class possesses polit-

ical and organizational reserves that it did not possess, for example, in
Russia. This means that even the most serious economic crises do not have
immediate repercussions in the political sphere. Politics is always one step
behind – or many steps behind – economics. The State apparatus is far
more resistant than is often possible to believe; and, at moments of crisis,
it is far more capable of organizing forces loyal to the regime than the
depth of the crisis might lead one to suppose. This is especially true of
the most important capitalist States. In typical peripheral States, like Italy,
Poland, Spain or Portugal, the State forces are less efficient. But in these
countries one finds a phenomenon that merits the closest attention. This
is what the phenomenon consists of, in my view: in countries like these,
28 G. VACCA
between the proletariat and capitalism there is a broad stratum of inter-

mediate classes which seek to promote (and in a certain sense, succeed
in promoting) policies of their own, with ideologies that often influence
broad strata of the proletariat, but that have a particular hold over the
peasant masses. (‘A Study of the Italian Situation’, CPC, pp. 121–122;
PPW , pp. 297–298—trans. modified to read ‘stratum’ [‘strato’])
There is no one who does not perceive the originality of these analyses
compared with the schemata of the Comintern (Pons 2008, pp. 420–
421), but in the essay on the ‘Southern question’ Gramsci made a further
step forward, claiming that for the proletariat to be able to exercise its
hegemony, it must achieve the ability to lead not only the peasants but
also the intellectuals; its leadership function thus assumes ever more signif-
icance as opposed to the exercise of domination. Developing a crucial
theme of the Leninist conception, according to which the proletariat
should ‘sacrifice’ its ‘corporative’ interests (Di Biagio 2004),17 in ‘Some
Aspects of the Southern Question’ Gramsci writes:
The proletariat, in order to become capable as a class of governing, must

strip itself of every residue of corporativism, every syndicalist prejudice
and incrustation. What does this mean? That, in addition to the need to
overcome the distinctions which exist between one trade and another, it is
necessary – in order to win the trust and consent of the peasants and of
some semi-proletarian urban categories – to overcome certain prejudices
and conquer certain forms of egoism which can and do subsist within the
working class as such, even when craft particularism has disappeared. The
metalworker, the joiner, the building-worker, etc., must not only think as
proletarians, and no longer as metal-worker, joiner, building-worker, etc.;
they must also take a further step. They must think as workers who are
members of a class which aims to lead the peasants and intellectuals. Of
a class which can win and build socialism only if it is aided and followed
by the great majority of these social strata. If this is not achieved, the
proletariat does not become the leading class; and these strata (which in
Italy represent the majority of the population), remaining under bourgeois
leadership, enable the State to resist the proletarian assault and wear it
down. (CPC, pp. 144–145; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 448–449)
17 This study, commenting on the origin of this concept, reconstructs the influence of
Georgij Valentinovič Plekhanov on Lenin due to the famine of 1887, which could not
leave the working class indifferent to the dramatic plight of the peasant masses.
Thus the main innovation of the essay consists in a deeper consider-

ation of the problem of the intellectuals. The analysis of the role and
function of intellectuals makes it possible to focus first of all on the pecu-
liar morphology of Southern society, which appears as ‘a great agrarian
bloc, made up of three social layers: the great amorphous, disintegrated
mass of the peasantry; the intellectuals of the petty and medium rural
bourgeoisie; and the big landowners and great intellectuals’. The deci-
sive political role belongs to the intellectuals of the intermediate stratum,
because the technical functions that these intellectuals perform and the
ideological orientations that they irradiate shape the attitudes of the
peasantry vis-à-vis the dominant classes and the State. However these
‘intermediate intellectuals’ are not autonomous, since they depend polit-
ically and ideologically on the dominant strata of the agrarian bloc. The
latter is so structured that the ‘the big landowners in the political field
and the great intellectuals in the ideological field centralize and dominate,
in the last analysis, this whole complex of phenomena’ that derive from
the ‘aspirations’ and ‘needs’ of the peasantry. Yet ‘it is in the ideolog-
ical sphere that the centralization is most effective and precise’. ‘Giustino
Fortunato and Benedetto Croce’ concludes Gramsci ‘thus represent the
keystones of the Southern system and, in a certain sense, are the two
major figures of Italian reaction’. However, he continues, they are ‘men
of the highest culture and intelligence, who arose on the traditional
terrain of the South but were linked to European and hence to world
culture’. Their influence on the ‘intermediate intellectuals’ is exercised
by detaching them from the ‘impulses’ of the peasant world and aiding
the sublimation of their ‘their restless impulses to revolt against existing
conditions, to steer them along a middle way of classical serenity in
thought and action’ (CPC, pp. 150, 155 and 156; SPW , 1921–1926,
pp. 454, 459 and 460 respectively). Anticipating a concept that would
be elaborated in the Notebooks, it could be said that the influence of
Croce and Fortunato on the South’s ‘intermediate intellectuals’ turned
them into the protagonists of a ‘passive revolution’, the active agents
of the continued existence of a fracture between theory and practice
that generally speaking is unacceptable for a technical intellectual, who
is the product of modern industry and is directly linked to the indus-
trial proletariat. On the other hand, the fact that Gramsci judges Croce
and Fortunato to be ‘the most active reactionaries of the whole penin-
sula’ (CPC, p. 155; SPW 1921–1926, p. 459) does not prevent him from
considering that Crocean philosophy possesses great progressive value. In
30 G. VACCA
polemic with the ‘neo-protestant’ current close to the journal Conscientia

of Giuseppe Gangale, the Bilychnis publishing house18 and even Gobetti’s
Rivoluzione liberale, he observes that since ‘a mass religious reform’ was
impossible in Italy, ‘the only historically possible reform’ had taken place
‘with Benedetto Croce’s philosophy’, due to which ‘the direction and
the method of thought’ had been changed and ‘a new conception of the
world ha[d] been constructed, transcending catholicism and every other
mythological religion’. ‘In this sense’, he added ‘Benedetto Croce has
fulfilled an extremely important “national” function’. This function was
however ambivalent since, by detaching ‘the radical intellectuals of the
South from the peasant masses’, and forcing them to ‘take part in national
and European culture’ he had ‘secured their absorption by the national
bourgeoisie and hence by the agrarian bloc’ (CPC, p. 156; SPW 1921–
1926, p. 460). If we add the fact that Gramsci attributed the leadership of
the ‘agrarian bloc’ to the ‘intellectual bloc’ led by Croce and Fortunato,
the innovation of marrying the theory of the intellectuals to the theory
of hegemony appears even more evident. The architecture of hegemonic
systems assigns to the intellectual élites and philosophies, which—thanks
to their activity—become common sense, the task of providing cohesion
and guiding political power. Thus it is not possible to conquer hegemony
without ‘disintegrating’ the ‘intellectual bloc’ which confers legitimacy to,
and orients the ‘dominant bloc’. This leads us to the theme of cultural
hegemony, an indispensable premise of political hegemony:
The proletariat will destroy the Southern agrarian bloc (…) but only if
it has the ability to break up the intellectual bloc that is the flexible, but
extremely resistant, armour of the agrarian bloc. (CPC, p. 158; SPW 1921–
1926, p. 462)
Therefore the task of the industrial proletariat is to promote the forma-

tion of new strata of intellectuals that are capable of seeing it as the new,
historically progressive, social class, and of creating a new common sense:
Intellectuals develop slowly, far more slowly than any other social group, by
their very nature and historical function. They represent the entire cultural
tradition of a people, seeking to resume and synthesize all of its history.
18 A Roman publishing house, then in operation, linked to the Baptist Theological

School.
This can be said especially of the old type of intellectual: the intellectual
born on the peasant terrain. To think it possible that such intellectuals, en
masse, can break with the entire past and situate themselves totally upon
the terrain of a new ideology, is absurd. (CPC, p. 158; SPW 1921–1926,
p. 462)19
Until the summer of 1926, Gramsci’s horizon of ideas was the ‘actu-
ality’ of world revolution. As we have seen, albeit with all the variants
suggested by the differences between East and West, the hegemony of
the proletariat formula was inscribed within a transition strategy which,
all things being equal, would repeat the sequence of the two Russian
revolutions of 1917—the democratic one in February and the socialist
one in October.20 But with the essay on the Southern question Gramsci
seems to want to leave this approach behind him and it is possible to
imagine that he did not publish this text immediately, not because he
considered it incomplete (Giasi 2007), but because he was aware of the
radical innovation that the ‘political question of the intellectuals’ intro-
duced to the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ schema. Probably the new
research that he had started was inspired by his preoccupation, which had
been growing during 1926, about the turn being taken by the political
struggle within the Bolshevik leadership and the ever more authoritarian
and restrictive character that the Soviet State was assuming, in his view
to the point of compromising the construction of socialism. As we have
already mentioned, the essay on the Southern question was contempo-
rary with his correspondence with Togliatti of October 1926. Towards
the end of the essay there is a passage in which the overlap of themes
between the two texts is particularly marked: ‘The proletariat, as a class’,
writes Gramsci ‘is poor in organizing elements. It does not have its own
stratum of intellectuals, and can only create one very slowly, very painfully,
after the winning of State power’ (CPC, p. 158; SPW 1921–1926, p. 462).
This concept is essential within the general conception of the letter. His
fear, transparent and not to be underestimated, was that after the death
of Lenin, the Bolshevik élite might be incapable of developing a cultural
hegemony, of creating a new stratum of intellectuals capable of attacking
19 Cf. also CPC, pp. 144–145 and 150–158; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 448–489 and 453–
462.
20 On Gramsci’s collocation in international communism between 1924 and 1926, cf.
Vacca (1999b, pp. 94–98 and 123–127).
32 G. VACCA
the ‘Asiatism’ of Russian rural society, of providing a backbone for civil

society, and making Soviet power expansive.
This fear is not made explicit; it can be however deduced from his
polemics with the Tribuna, La Stampa and Il Mondo (cf. SPW 1921–
1926, p. 420 and ‘The Peasants and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’,
pp. 410–416) that had preceded his letter to the Central Committee
of the Russian Communist Party, by linking this letter to his reply to
Togliatti of 26 October, and by reconsidering the essay on the Southern
question in the light of these writings. In the letter of 14 October,
written on behalf of the party, Gramsci’s main worry is that the frac-
ture of the unity of the ‘Bolshevik nucleus’ could make all the factions of
the Russian party regress to the ‘corporativism’ and ‘syndicalism’ of social
democratic tradition, thus thwarting the party’s capacity to preserve the
alliance between workers and peasants. Such a fracture would have made
it impossible to maintain the hegemony of the proletariat, which had
been achieved under Lenin’s leadership. Gramsci’s polemic was directed
above all at the oppositions, which in June had united under Trotsky’s
leadership, because they had gained traction thanks to the aversion of
a significant part of the working-class base of the party towards the
NEP, given the increasing inequalities that it was creating between the
rich peasants and the workers. For Gramsci the only guarantee that the
working class would accept these ‘sacrifices’ would be the certainty that
they were necessary for the development of its own hegemony, and
such faith could only be inculcated in the working class by maintaining
the unity of the leadership, tangible proof of the validity of the party’s
policy. Even in much more developed countries than Russia, he wrote,
once the working class had taken power, it would have to put up with
great economic sacrifices for a long time to maintain the alliance with
the peasant masses, which constituted the majority of the population.21
21 A. Gramsci, ‘Political Bureau of the PCd’I to the Central Committee of the Russian
Communist Party’ (14 October 1926): ‘The questions that today are being posed to
you, may be posed tomorrow to our Party. In our country, too, the rural masses are the
majority of the working population. Furthermore, we shall find ourselves faced with all
the problems inherent in the hegemony of the proletariat in a form that will certainly be
more complex and acute than in Russia itself, since the density of the rural population in
Italy is enormously greater, since our peasants have a very rich organisational tradition and
have always succeeded in making their specific weight as a mass felt very considerably in
the political life of the nation. This is because in Italy the organisational apparatus of the
In Russia the sacrifice was far greater because the economic develop-
ment and modernization of the countryside was a long-term task and
the working class in power constituted but a tiny minority of the popula-
tion. As he himself writes, the clash taking place within the Bolshevik élite
allowed the adversaries of communism to make shrewd use of the social
contradictions that were shaking Soviet power to undermine the Western
proletariat’s trust in Soviet Russia, and in the possibility of constructing
socialism (Daniele 1999, pp. 406–407; GTW , p. 371 and SPW 1921–
1926, p. 428). His condemnation of the harshness of the clash and alarm
about the risks of a split in the party arose from his conviction that the
NEP was indeed the right way forward, and from the acknowledgement
that the processes of economic and social differentiation generated by the
introduction of limited capitalist development in the countryside involved
a small minority of the peasantry who, thanks to the workers’ State’s
control over banks, industry and foreign trade, did not represent a real
risk for the alliance between the proletariat and the immense masses of
poor peasants. (‘In What Direction is the Soviet Union Developing?’,
CPC, pp. 319–323; ‘The Peasants and the Dictatorship of the Prole-
tariat’, CPC, pp. 324–328, SPW 1921–1926, pp. 412–416). Were the
‘Bolshevik nucleus’ to split however, the risks of economic and corpora-
tive regression would involve all its components; indeed, the tone of the
discussion highlighted a fracture—common to all the factions—between
the ‘Russian question’ and the destiny of world revolution, and this cast
doubt upon both the possibility that Russia would continue with the
construction of socialism, and upon the international proletariat’s orien-
tation towards Russia. By placing majority and opposition on the same
plane, Gramsci was attacking Stalin’s vision of ‘socialism in one coun-
try’ and accusing the entire Soviet leadership of ineptitude because to a
varying extent it was saturated in nationalism:
Comrades, in these last nine years of world history you have been the
organisational element and driving force of the revolutionary forces of
all countries. The role you have played has no precedent in the entire
history of humankind that equals it in breadth and depth. But today you
are destroying your own work, you are degrading and running the risk of
nullifying the leading role that the CP of the USSR had gained through the
church has two thousand years of tradition behind it and is specialised in propaganda and
the organisation of the peasants in a way that bears no comparison with other countries’.
34 G. VACCA
impetus of Lenin. In our opinion the violent passion of the Russian ques-
tions is making you lose sight of the international aspects of the Russian
questions themselves, is making you forget that your duties as Russian mili-
tants can and must be carried out only within the framework of the interests
of the international proletariat. (Daniele 1999, p. 408; GTW , p. 373 and
SPW 1921−1926, pp. 429–430; emphasis in Gramsci’s original manuscript
letter)
As is known, Togliatti concentrated his criticism on this passage in the

letter, inviting the Italian comrades not to lose their nerve and instead
to take a position on the ‘Russian question’ based on the validity of the
political line of the majority of the Russian communist party, rather than
the symbolic value of the unity of the leadership (Daniele 1999, pp. 421–
423).22 Gramsci responded harshly that the question concerned not only
communist militants, who, via an extraordinary pedagogical commitment,
could be enabled to understand the various passages of the internal polit-
ical struggle within the Bolshevik leadership, but also the great masses
of the international proletariat, and that only unity of the ‘Bolshevik
nucleus’ could infuse in these masses the trust that the process initiated
with the October Revolution would continue its course. The unity of
the Bolshevik leadership was therefore not a symbolic value that could be
surrendered, but the guarantee that the revolutionizing of the interna-
tional proletariat and its socialist orientation could continue their course.
In short, Gramsci feared that a split in the leadership, by compromising
the alliance between workers and peasants, could prevent the construc-
tion of socialism in the USSR. He responded to Togliatti, who considered
maintenance of Soviet power the main factor linking revolutionary Russia
and the European proletariat, by expressing doubt that the line imposed
22 Although it is not fundamental here to examine in depth the elements of the differen-
tiation that developed between Gramsci and Togliatti on the ‘Russian question’, it should
be remembered that the clash within the Bolshevik élite concerned above all the prospects
of the USSR’s foreign policy as the European political situation changed from Rapallo
to Locarno, the differing perceptions of the ‘war risk’ and the different evaluations of
the need, and the manner in which, to accelerate the construction of the Soviet State.
Furthermore, their disagreement was based on differing evaluations of the prospects for a
‘world revolution’, which both Stalin and Bukharin thought was at that point blocked, at
least in the short term. The differentiation between Gramsci and Togliatti derived above
all from Togliatti’s adhesion to the positions of Stalin and Bukharin, which matured in
an increasingly convinced manner in the course of 1926. Cf. Vacca, ‘Gramsci a Roma,
Togliatti a Mosca’ in Daniele (ed.) (1999a); Pons (2009, pp. 209–228); and Vacca (2014).
by Stalin on constructing socialism ‘in one country’ would allow it to

continue:
Today, nine years after October 1917, it is no longer the fact of the seizure
of power by the Bolsheviks that can revolutionise the Western masses,
because this is already taken for granted and has had its effect; today the
conviction (if it exists) is politically and ideologically active that, once the
proletariat has taken power, it can build socialism. The authority of the
P[arty] is bound up with this conviction, that cannot be inculcated into
the broad masses by the methods of scholastic pedagogy but only through
revolutionary pedagogy, in other words only through the political fact that
the R[ussian] P[arty] as a whole is convinced and is fighting in united
fashion. (Daniele 1999, pp. 438–439; GTW , p. 381 and SPW 1921–1926,
p. 440)23
The nationalist involution for which Gramsci had reproached all

factions of the Russian party, and his denunciation of the corporative
regression of not only the oppositions but also of the majority, involved
the very nature of the Soviet State. By putting at risk the hegemony of the
proletariat, majority and opposition alike were impressing upon the Soviet
State, both internally and on the world stage, an increasingly authoritarian
and non-expansive turn.
As leader of a small, persecuted and yet, because it was involved in
opposing fascism, internationally significant communist party, Gramsci
could not limit himself to criticism or recrimination, but instead intended
to contribute to the search for the causes of the Russian Party’s crisis.
Naturally he did so following a method common to the parties of the
International, and therefore investigated the problems of the hegemony
of the proletariat in the Italian situation in order to find indications that
might also be of use in explaining the difficulties of the alliance between
workers and peasants in Russia and other countries. In the letter of 14
October to the All-Union Party he summarized the re-elaboration of the
peasant question that he had performed in the preceding two years to
signal that the Italians were aware of the complexity of the problem of
the hegemony of the proletariat. Of course he could not go so far as to
give the Bolsheviks operational suggestions, but he did not conceal his
fear that the crisis of the Russian Party, which in the one-party regime
23 Emphasis and abbreviations in Gramsci’s original handwritten letter.

36 G. VACCA
directly involved the State itself, might have arisen from the difficul-
ties inherent in the original approach to the alliance between workers
and peasants. We have seen how Gramsci, in ‘translating’ that alliance
‘into Italian historical language’, had not limited himself to the economic
content of the ‘concessions’ to be made to the peasants, but had projected
them onto the form of the State. In the essay on the Southern ques-
tion an awareness surfaces that Lenin’s theory of the hegemony of the
proletariat, which arose on the terrain of backward Russia, posed the
problem of the alliance between the workers and the peasants in simpli-
fied and inadequate terms. Of course, given the collapse of the Tsarist
Empire, it had not been necessary to decipher and disaggregate the hege-
monic scaffolding that bound the peasants to the Tsar’s power. But when
the construction of the new State began, the ‘primordial and gelatinous’
society of peasant Russia had made its weight felt and Lenin’s embry-
onic outline of the hegemony of the proletariat had turned out to be
inadequate. While no civil society even remotely comparable to that in
the West had existed in Russia, in the construction of socialism—of an
advanced industrial society based on an alliance between city and coun-
tryside—the problem of the relationship between State and civil society
erupted in all its complexity. By introducing the theme of the intellec-
tuals into the theoretical schema of historical materialism in his study on
the Southern question, Gramsci was beginning to show his awareness of
the inadequateness of the different currents of Marxist thought, including
Bolshevism, regarding the problems of the State. Unequal development
and differential analysis were paradigms of Leninism. But the ‘translation
into Italian historical language’ of Leninism upset and complicated its
parameters. The innovation of the theoretical schema of historical mate-
rialism had been elaborated on a national terrain and this emphasized
its particularities; but it appears evident that Gramsci, spurred on by the
crisis of the Russian Party, had undertaken a theoretical revision which
concerned the international workers’ movement as a whole.
4 The Origin of the Notebooks

The Prison Notebooks provide confirmation that at this point the theory of
the intellectuals constituted the dynamic nucleus of Gramsci’s thought. In
the three indexes, compiled respectively on 8 February 1929 (beginning
of Q1), in November-December 1930 (beginning of Q8) and in March-

April 1932,24 the theme of the intellectuals is always at the centre of his
investigation. The innovations recorded in his last writings of 1926 and in
his correspondence provide unequivocal evidence that the programme of
research of the Notebooks was continuing, and included a profound revi-
sion of Leninism and the Marxist vulgate, which he had begun shortly
before his arrest. In this way a heterodox thought was taking shape
about which Togliatti and Sraffa, the prisoner’s direct interlocutors, were
progressively informed.
The correspondence is an essential source for reconstructing the forma-
tion of the Notebooks research programme, but it must be used with
discernment. What is certain is that after he was confined on the island
of Ustica, Gramsci chose Tanja and Sraffa as his correspondents, also as a
way to remain in touch with the party, but his correspondence was subject
to censorship and conditioned by judicial events, and by the attempts to
have him freed that were already underway in 1927 (Vacca 2012). Until
he was sentenced (4 June 1928) it is reasonable to think that he also
wished to use his correspondence to influence the attitude of the fascist
authorities regarding not only his judicial situation, but also regarding his
chances of being released. Judicially, the court warrant for his arrest—
previously he had been detained in pre-trial custody—was issued in Milan
on 14 January 1927, while the initial stages of the Special Tribunal trial
proceedings began on 9 February, when, in custody in the San Vittore
prison from the seventh of that month, Gramsci was interrogated for
the first time by the investigating magistrate Enrico Macis. As is known,
the first attempt to have him freed of which we have certain knowledge
took place in September–October 1927 (Ricchini et al. 1988, pp. 15–
26). However Gramsci may have thought from the very beginning of his
detention that a prisoner exchange might be possible.25 This possibility
was certainly influenced by the progress of the judicial investigation. It
cannot therefore be excluded that Gramsci, by formulating an extensive
24 For dating of the second and third indexes, entitled Raggrupamenti di materia, see
Francioni (1984a, p. 142).
25 In a letter to her family, datable to 12–16 November 1926, Tanja Schucht, sending
detailed information about Gramsci’s last week in freedom, had already talked of the possi-
bility of having him set free, as if in the milieux of the Russian Embassy (for whom she
worked) and of the Italian party this was considered a matter of course: letter published
in L’Unità, 7 November 2008, G. Vacca (ed.).
38 G. VACCA
plan of studies in his letters also wished to suggest to the investigating

authorities, and above all to Mussolini, that in exchange for his freedom
he could abandon political activity.
An examination of the letter of 19 March 1927, which many scholars
consider to have contained the first draft of the research programme of
the Notebooks, suggests that this possibility should be borne in mind. This
is the famous letter in which Gramsci tells Tat’jana that he wants ‘to do
something für ewig ’, i.e. that he wished to occupy himself ‘intensely and
systematically’, ‘following a predetermined plan (…) with some subject
which (…) might absorb and centre his inner life’. At that moment,
Gramsci neither knew whether he would be found guilty, nor how long
his detention might last (though he anticipated that it would be very
long). Moreover, he was not allowed to write while in his cell, and
neither could he know whether the authorization he had requested would
ever be granted. It is hard to believe that he was already thinking of a
proper research plan as he would two years later in Turi. We are there-
fore faced with the problem of deciphering this letter, and in particular
the mention of für ewig, which gave rise to a vulgate about the char-
acter of the Notebooks that was as misleading as it was hard to put to rest.
Although Gramsci had specified that für ewig was to be interpreted ‘in
accordance with a complex conception of Goethe’s, which [he remem-
bered] had tormented our Pascoli’, ever since the publication of the first
edition of the Lettere dal carcere (Letters from prison) the expression
has been taken literally, as a manifestation of his will to devote himself
to a ‘disinterested’ intellectual activity, distinct and remote from polit-
ical matters. It is likely that Gramsci wanted the fascist authorities to
believe this so as to facilitate his being authorized to study in his cell;
however the metaphor contains a coded message that his captors could
not decipher, though Sraffa and above all Togliatti could. If the decoding
of für ewig suggested by Giancarlo Schirru and Roberto Gualtieri has a
factual basis (Schirru 2007; Gualtieri 2007, p. 1030),26 Gramsci prob-
ably wanted to inform Togliatti that the theoretical revision that he had
begun in the essay on the Southern question needed to be continued.
26 Both authors base upon new philological research the hypothesis that the reference to
Pascoli is to his poem entitled Per l’eternità and that with the expression für ewig Gramsci
wanted to inform the Party’s Foreign Centre that his intellectual research, of which he was
beginning to perceive the heterodoxy, would be oriented toward continuing the struggle
for communism.
In addition, given the close link between the essay and the correspon-
dence of October 1926, it is possible to imagine that he wanted to add
new arguments to back up his position. The separation of the Notebooks
from Gramsci’s political biography is a result of the criteria adopted for
the first edition (1948–1951), and it was done on purpose, to render
them less explosive vis-à-vis the dominant Stalinist orthodoxy. After the
publication of the critical edition (1975), of the first editions of Gramsci’s
correspondence and of that between his correspondents, this separation
and the idea that the Notebooks contained thought that was disconnected
from political matters have now finally been abandoned. Nevertheless,
their isolation from Gramsci’s political biography warped their interpre-
tation for a great length of time; the legacy of the thematic edition still
weighs upon the reception of Gramsci’s thought (especially outside Italy);
and the copious legends about für ewig accumulated over time have
contributed to no small degree to this deformation. For me, the most
likely hypothesis would seem that the plan of studies outlined in the letter
to Tanja of 19 March 1927 was formulated in such a way as to suggest to
a watchful gaoler (i.e. Mussolini) that Gramsci might abandon his polit-
ical commitment, in order to facilitate his judicial situation and all the
attempts to obtain his release. The reference to für ewig appears only
twice in Gramsci’s letters, at the beginning of his detention. However
after he was sentenced to twenty years in prison and was able to conceive
of a ‘systematic’ programme of research, he made no further use of this
metaphor. There is therefore more than one reason to suppose that his
emphasis on ‘disinterested’ study and the reiteration of für ewig was a
dual message, directed at both his political interlocutors and his captors,
rather than the main characteristic of his subsequent prison writings.
It is certainly true that the study topics announced in that letter are in
the notes of the Notebooks and they all revolve around the history of the
intellectuals. However I do not believe it possible to start the interpreta-
tion of the Notebooks (which Gramsci began to write two years later) from
March 1927. As a source for the Notebooks project however, the corre-
spondence can be used in a linear fashion, starting from when Gramsci
was sentenced, after which his letters could no longer have any influ-
ence on the outcome of his trial; having received the authorization to
write in his cell (January 1929), he was able to devise a real, long-term
plan of studies. In our opinion the most important indication contained
in the letter of 19 March 1927 is instead the reference to the essay on
the Southern question. After having declared that he wanted to develop
40 G. VACCA
‘research on the formation of public spirit in Italy in the last century; in

other words to research the Italian intellectuals, their origins, their group-
ings according to cultural currents, their different ways of thinking etc.
etc.’, Gramsci writes:
Do you remember my very hasty and quite superficial essay on southern

Italy and on the importance of B. Croce? Well, I would like to fully develop
in depth the thesis that I sketched out then, from a “disinterested”, “für
ewig” point of view. (Gramsci and Schucht 1997, pp. 61–62; Gramsci LfP,
p. 83)
Thus Gramsci presented his plan of studies as the development of the

‘thesis’ ‘outlined’ in the essay on the Southern question, which, as we
have seen, had heterodox implications. What was his message? And to
whom was it addressed? Tanja’s epistolary intermediation between Sraffa
and Gramsci dates to the end of 1928 (Rossi and Vacca 2007, pp. 64–
66) but the letters sent to Tanja from Ustica show that she was aware of
Sraffa’s role27 ; one can therefore suppose that her forwarding of Gram-
sci’s letters to Sraffa had started earlier, or that once she had established
contact with Sraffa at the end of 1928, she had consigned to him previous
letters, as yet not forwarded to the Foreign Centre. There are at least
two indications to support this. The first is Sraffa’s letter to Tanja (for
Gramsci) of 11 July 1931, in which Piero, requesting the dispatch of
information about the development of the ‘programme’ ‘of studies and
of reading’ which Gramsci was carrying out, refers precisely to the letter
of 19 March 1927 (Sraffa 1991, p. 15).28 The second is in Gramsci’s own
letter. After having presented the ‘four topics’ of his study plan, namely
the history of Italian intellectuals in the 1800s, ‘a study of comparative
linguistics’, which was probably an allusion to the translation of Finck’s
Le famiglie linguistiche del mondo (Language families of the world) on
which he had already started work (Gramsci 2007, Vol. 1, pp. 23–24), ‘a
study of Pirandello’s theater’ and ‘an essay on the serial novel and popular
27 On the relations between Gramsci and Sraffa and on the political role of the latter,
cf. Vacca (2012, pp. 47–62).
28 Sraffa’s wrote: ‘Some years ago Nino (…) wrote you a letter detailing his plan of
readings and studies. It would be interesting to know how he developed that programme;
and (…) to know what his present one is. Try asking him’.
taste in literature’, Gramsci went on to add: ‘if you examine them thor-
oughly, there is a certain homogeneity among these four subjects: the
creative spirit of the people in its diverse stages and degrees of develop-
ment is in equal measure at their base’. He then asks Tanja: ‘What do
you say of all this? (…) Let me know your impressions; I have great faith
in your good sense and in the soundness the validity of your judgment’
(Gramsci and Schucht 1997, p. 63; Gramsci LfP, p. 84).29 We know that
Gramsci had informed Sraffa of his studies and via him Togliatti, who
continued to be his main interlocutor (Sraffa 1991, p. 225).30 It is hard
to believe that Gramsci was interested in the opinion of Tat’jana on such
complicated topics; in particular, the reference to ‘popular creative spirit’
anticipates a crucial theme of Gramsci’s thought on politics and the party:
the reflections on the relation between ‘spontaneity and conscious lead-
ership’ which recur in the Notebooks. As we will see later (Chapter 2),
those notes foreshadow a sharp critique of the transformation undergone
by the Soviet party between the end of the Twenties and the early Thir-
ties. How can we not detect in that expression of March 1927 the will to
confirm the positions expressed in the correspondence of October 1926
and the intention to explore in greater depth the themes outlined in the
essay on the Southern question? And to whom could they have been
addressed if not to Togliatti? Further, up until Gramsci’s arrest the essay
had remained unknown to Togliatti, who at the time was in Moscow. But
in March 1927 Togliatti was in Paris directing the party’s Foreign Centre,
Grieco had taken charge of Gramsci’s essay and the leadership of the party
must have studied it thoroughly. It is therefore possible to give credit to
the hypothesis that Gramsci mentioned it because he thought it should
be published and was asking the party to do it (Rossi and Vacca 2007,
pp. 16–17).
However I must repeat that if, as is correct, use is made of the corre-
spondence to reconstruct the origin of the Notebooks, the first letter to
which we can refer without excessive caution is that of 25 March 1929:
this is both because it follows only a brief interval after the drafting of the
list of 16 topics for study outlined on the first page of Notebook 1, and
29 Translation modified to read ‘good sense’ (‘buon senso’) rather than ‘common sense’
(senso comune’), often used by Gramsci with negative connotations.
30 Sraffa, letter to Palmiro Togliatti, 4 May 1932.
42 G. VACCA
because the topics are grouped into three lines of research which regard
the most important innovations of the Notebooks. In fact Gramsci wrote:
I’ve decided to concern myself chiefly and take notes on these three
subjects: (1) Italian history in the nineteenth century, with special attention
to the formation and development of intellectual groups; (2) the theory
and history of historiography; (3) Americanism and Fordism. (Gramsci and
Schucht 1997, p. 333; Gramsci LfP Vol 1, p. 257)
The first topic groups together points 2 and 3 of the initial index
of the Notebooks: ‘Development of the Italian bourgeoisie up to 1870’
and ‘Formation of Italian intellectual groups: development, attitude’. The
second topic is a literal reference to the first point of the index written at
the beginning of Notebook 1, while the third refers to point 11 of the
Index. It is hard to believe that the selection and ordering of the topics
was casual. In the letter of 19 March 1927 Gramsci had already made
it known that he wanted to ‘develop in an ordered manner the thesis’
‘outlined’ in the essay on the Southern question, and two years later
he was announcing that he was doing precisely that. Further, by placing
‘the theory of history and historiography’ at point 2, he was communi-
cating in code that he intended to rethink the materialistic conception of
history, with regard to which the topics mentioned in the essay of 1926
represented a significant innovation. Finally, by indicating ‘Americanism
and Fordism’ as the third topic he signalled that his field of research was
world history and that he intended to study the potentialities of Amer-
ican industrialism in greater depth as a possible answer to the emerging
problems of the great crisis. There was enough here to arouse Togliatti’s
interest, but a few months later the tenth Plenum of the International
was held and the Italian party was forced to abandon Gramsci’s strategy.
The ‘turning point’ of 1930 was rejected by Gramsci and, from the redis-
covery of the two reports that his brother Gennaro wrote for the Foreign
Centre of the Party after the visit to Turi, we know that Gramsci was
requesting greater political communication with the party, but also that
Togliatti was informed of Gramsci’s opposition to the ‘turning point’ and
possessed sufficient elements to be able to guess his most profound moti-
vations (Rossi and Vacca 2007, pp. 207–218). We also know that the
subterfuge excogitated by Gramsci to inform Togliatti of how his research
was proceeding was the suggestion that topics should be proposed to him
on which they could communicate in code. The topics were proposed to
Gramsci by Sraffa, who had agreed them beforehand with Togliatti (Sraffa
1991, p. 225). This is the context in which on 11 July 1931, Sraffa began
to ask Gramsci to inform him about the point of arrival of his research on
the intellectuals and he asked again with insistence on 23 August (Sraffa
1991, p. 23). Gramsci replied on 7 September that at the centre of his
reflection were the theme of hegemony and its connection with the theory
of the intellectuals. The drift of his research had already been condensed
in a note in Notebook 6, dated August 1931 and entitled ‘Concept of
State’, where he had written that the ‘State does not mean only the appa-
ratus of government, but also the “private” apparatus of hegemony or
civil society’ (Q6§137, p. 801; PN Vol. 3, p. 108). In the letter to Tanja,
he summed up his thought as follows:
I greatly amplify the idea of what an intellectual is, and do not confine
myself to the current notion that refers only to the preeminent intellec-
tuals. My study also leads to certain definitions of the concept of the State
that is usually understood as political Society (or dictatorship; or coercive
apparatus meant to mold the popular mass in accordance with the type
of production and economy at a given moment) and not as a balance
between the political Society and the civil Society (or the hegemony of
a social group over the entire national society, exercised through the so-
called private organizations, such as the Church, the unions, the schools,
etc.), and it is within civil society that intellectuals operate especially (Ben.
Croce, for example, is a sort of lay pope and he is a very effective instru-
ment of hegemony even if from time to time he comes into conflict with
this or that government, etc.). (Gramsci and Schucht 1997, pp. 791–792;
LfP Vol. 2, p. 67)
The letter continued listing further crucial topics of the Notebooks; but
here we need to attend to the part concerning the theory of the intel-
lectuals. It confirms that the focus of the Notebooks is the development
of the theory of hegemony, that its cornerstones are the theory of the
intellectuals, the theory of civil society and the theory of the State, and
above all, it indicates the trajectory along which Gramsci was developing
a general theory of hegemony. This trajectory is summarized at the end
of the digression on the topics of study, where Gramsci signals that the
concept of hegemony was being developed as a general analytical tool
for politics and history: ‘I present these comments’ he wrote to Tanja
‘to convince you that every period of history that has unfolded in Italy,
44 G. VACCA
from the Roman Empire to the Risorgimento, must be viewed from this
monographic standpoint” (loc. cit.).
Compared with the Marxist vulgate, Gramsci’s research displayed its
original and heterodox character writ large. The concept of State summa-
rized in the letter, from a Leninist viewpoint, was momentous. The
most immediate confirmation of this would appear to come from Sraf-
fa’s response, in which he invited Gramsci to condense the results of
his research on intellectuals into an essay so it could be transmitted to
the party; on the theses illustrated in his letter, he limited himself to
writing: ‘The latest letters from Nino, although very interesting, require
no response’ (Sraffa 1991, p. 36).
What reply could Togliatti have given to a letter in which Gramsci was
informing him about his revision of Leninism? Yet Sraffa’s understatement
makes it clear that the message had been received.
5 Gramsci the Theorist

of ‘Revolution in the West’?
In the Prison Notebooks Gramsci indicates the sources of the theory of
hegemony. The first is Hegel, to whom in December 1931 he dedicates
a highly significant note entitled ‘Intellettuali’:
The position that Hegel ascribed to the intellectuals has been of great
importance, not only in the concept of politics (political science) but also
in the entire conception of cultural and spiritual life; (…) With the advent
of Hegel, thinking in terms of castes and “States” started to give way to
thinking about the “State”, and the “aristocrats” of the State are precisely
the intellectuals. (Q8§187, p. 1054; PN Vol. 3, p. 343)
A few months later, starting Notebook 10, he evokes the Crocean

conception of ethico-political historiography:
Credit must be given to Croce’s thought for (…) forcefully [having] drawn
attention to the study of the factors of culture and ideas as elements of
political domination, to the function of the great intellectuals in political
life, to the moment of hegemony and consent as the necessary form of
the historical bloc. Ethico-political history is therefore one of the canons
of historical interpretation that must always be borne in mind in the
study and detailed analysis of history as it unfolds if the intention is
to construct an integral history rather than partial or extrinsic histories.

(Q10I<Summary>xi, p. 1211; FSPN , p. 332)
Finally, polemicizing with Croce about the totally negative position

assumed vis-à-vis Marxism from the time of the war onward, he quotes
Lenin:
One can say that not only does the philosophy of praxis not exclude ethico-
political history, but that, indeed, in its most recent stage of development
it consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony as essential to
its conception of the State and in attaching ‘full weight’ to the cultural
factor, to cultural activity, to the necessity for a cultural front alongside the
merely economic and political ones. (Q10I§7, p. 1224; FSPN , p. 344)
The sources indicated call to mind his formative experiences in Turin

(Rapone 2011, pp. 259–292) and in Russia in 1922–1923 (Schirru 1999;
Carlucci 2014, pp. 122–128). He summarizes his thought at the time as
follows: ‘Elements of ethico-political history in the philosophy of praxis:
concept of hegemony, reappraisal of the philosophical front, systematic
study of the function of intellectuals in historical and State life, doctrine
of the political party as the vanguard of every progressive historical move-
ment’ (Q10I§13, Note 1, pp. 1235–1236; FSPN , p. 358). Limiting
ourselves for the moment to the intellectuals-hegemony nexus, it is worth
repeating that Gramsci was not thinking about the sociology of intellec-
tuals, but about cultural history as the milieu of political history. Indeed,
Notebook 12, entitled ‘Loose Jottings and Notes for a Group of Essays on
the History of the Intellectuals and of Culture in Italy’ (heading of Q12,
p. 1511)31 he warns in a parenthesis on the reverse of the initial page
(p. 1a of the anastatic reproduction of the Notebooks ) that his ‘research
into the history of intellectuals will not be of a “sociological” character,
but will give rise to a series of essays on cultural history (Kulturgeschichte)
and the history of political science’ (Q12§1, p. 1515).32 However the
concept of hegemony is, as we have seen, of political origin and its char-
acter is both analytical and strategic. It is therefore indispensable to recall
31 The heading given in Gerratana’s critical edition of the Notebooks (Gramsci 1975)
omits the words after ‘Intellectuals’, here reinstated after consultation of the anastatic
edition of Gramsci’s manuscript.
32 On this theme, Cf. E. Garin (1997).
46 G. VACCA
the change in the historical situation upon which Gramsci was reflecting
between the end of the Twenties and the early Thirties. His salient data
were as follows: the fall of the myth of the ‘world revolution’, the rise of
the economic power of the United States, the consolidation of the Soviet
State, the birth of the corporativist State and the strengthening of fascism
thanks to the Lateran Pacts, the world crisis of 1929–1932 and the rise
of Hitlerism in Germany. These events determined a shift in perspective
which impacted on the conception of hegemony, linking it to the concept
of ‘war of position’.
The concept of war of position is brought into focus in a group of
notes written between November 1930 and the end of 1931, and in a
subsequent note in summer 1932, where the concept of ‘civil hegemony’
is introduced. The ‘war of position’ concept, Gramsci wrote in October
1931, ‘is also (if one can say so) the point of intersection of strategy
and tactics, both in politics and in the art of war’ (Q6§155, p. 810; PN
Vol. 3, p. 117 and SPN , p. 239). The military metaphors that charac-
terized Bolshevik language from which Gramsci drew the notion of ‘war
of position’ bear witness to the cultural influence exerted by the Great
War (Procacci 1981; Pons 2012). In any case, he continues, ‘in politics
the error’ of not understanding the passage to the ‘war of position’ as
the present-day form of the struggle for power ‘stems from an inaccurate
understanding of the nature of the State (in the full sense: dictatorship
+ hegemony)’ (Q6§155, pp. 810–811; PN Vol. 3, p. 117 and SPN ,
p. 239). This reflection is part of the revision of the concept of State
about which Gramsci had informed the Foreign Centre in the already
cited letter of 7 September 1931. But the concept of ‘war of position’
also redefines his relationship with Lenin and ‘Leninism’.33 Only a few
days earlier he had written a note significantly entitled ‘Past and Present.
The transition from the war of maneuver (frontal attack) to the war of
position – in the political field as well’ (Q6§138, pp. 801–802; PN Vol.
3, pp. 109 and SPN , pp. 238–239),34 in which his critique of Trotsky’s
‘permanent revolution’—with Trotsky defined as ‘the political theorist of
frontal assault, at a time when it could lead only to defeat’—would seem
rather to be addressing Stalin’s policy and the Comintern’s strategy after
33 ‘Leninism’ is taken to mean the codification of Lenin’s thought performed by his

successors after his death.
34 As often happens, the sequence of the title of the rubric and that of the note tends
to signal its importance.
the Sixth Congress (1928). Postponing in-depth analysis on this point

(Chapter 2), it is worth directing attention here to the fact that the ‘pas-
sage to the war of position’ points to a general change in political action
that had already become necessary from the end of the First World War.
‘This’ wrote Gramsci is ‘the most important postwar problem of political
theory; it is also the most difficult problem to solve correctly’ (loc. cit.).
There is an evident readjustment, made both with respect to the period
between 1923 and 1926, and also to the way in which he had approached
the ‘translation into Italian historical language’ of the tactic of the United
Front: while then, his research centred on the differences between East
and West, now Gramsci was talking about a global transformation of poli-
tics caused by the war and linked to the concept of hegemony. In fact the
‘war of position’ is equivalent to ‘siege warfare’ and ‘in politics, the siege is
a reciprocal one (…) and the mere fact that the ruler has to muster all his
resources demonstrates how seriously he takes his adversary’ (Q6§138,
pp. 801–802; PN Vol. 3, p. 109 and SPN , p. 239). Even though he
affirms that ‘in politics the “war of position”, once won, is decisive defini-
tively’ (loc. cit.), it is clear that in the epoch of the ‘war of position’,
defeats are not irreversible. Thus the concept of ‘war of position’ re-
locates his reflection on East and West, which in the Notebooks takes on a
different meaning than in 1924–1926. In a previous note, ‘War of posi-
tion and war of maneuver or frontal war’, written between November and
December 1930, Gramsci had dealt more thoroughly with the confronta-
tion between Trotsky and Lenin, centring it on the East/West paradigm.
He had defined the theory of ‘permanent revolution’ as ‘a reflection
of the general-economic-cultural-social conditions in a country in which
the structures of national life are embryonic and loose, and incapable of
becoming “trench or fortress”’. Obviously the country was Russia, where
he says a little later that ‘the State was everything, civil society was primor-
dial and gelatinous’ (Q7§16, pp. 865–866; PN Vol. 3, p. 169 and SPN ,
pp. 238–239). The tactic of the United Front had instead been formu-
lated in relation to an overall vision of post-war capitalism based on the
dynamic role of the more advanced countries. It is true that this vision
was proposed first of all to the European communist parties but, for the
communist movement of the Twenties, world history was substantially
European history, and victory of the proletariat in Europe would have
constituted not only the guarantee of the construction of socialism in the
USSR, but also the victory of the ‘world revolution’ (loc. cit.). Further,
the ‘war of position’ in the Soviet Union was the NEP which, as we
48 G. VACCA
have seen, for Gramsci constituted the link between the construction of
socialism in Russia and ‘revolutionizing’ the masses of the world. We have
drawn attention to this passage because Gramsci has been (and partially
still is) interpreted as the theorist of ‘revolution in the West’ as much by
those who posit his presumed conversion in prison to social democracy
or liberalism (Tamburrano 1963; Anderson 1976; Lo Piparo 2012), as by
those who have claimed that the theory of hegemony was nothing more
than a cosmetic makeover of the dictatorship of the proletariat (Salvadori
1977; Pellicani 1977).35 But Gramsci’s revision of Marxism knew no
geopolitical limits. Indeed, in a more advanced phase of his reflection,
returning in Notebook 13 to the comparison between ‘war of position’
and ‘war of manoeuvre’, he wrote that the October Revolution consti-
tuted the last episode of a victorious ‘war of assault’, because at this
point the ‘war of position’ should be considered the universal form of
the struggle for power. ‘The last occurrence of the kind [‘war of manoeu-
vre’] in the history of politics’ he wrote ‘was the events of 1917. They
marked a decisive turning-point in the history of the art and science of
politics’ (Q13§24, p. 1616; SPN , p. 235). Clearly we have before us the
reformulation of a concept that he had already put forward in the article
‘Two Revolutions’ in L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 July 1920; but while then, his
preoccupation had been to relativize the Russian Revolution in order to
enhance the movement of the Councils, now that world revolution was
no longer on the agenda, ‘war of manoeuvre’ and ‘war of position’ desig-
nated not only geo-strategical differences but also two diverse historical
periods. This conclusion is confirmed by another note in the same Note-
book, which we shall have time to focus on in the final section, dedicated
to summarizing the changes that had made the ‘permanent revolution’
formula anachronistic and led to its being replaced by the ‘civil hegemony’
formula (Q13§7, p. 1566; SPN , pp. 242–243).
6 The Concept of Hegemony in the Notebooks

Gramsci’s elaboration of the intellectuals-hegemony nexus takes as its
starting point the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Polit-
ical Economy. The elaboration began in the same months during which
he partially translated it (Gramsci 2007, Vol. 1, cf. p. 26), and is based
35 On the use of this interpretation by Latin American military élites in the cycle of
dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s, cf. J. Aricó (2011).
on the concept of ideology, which in that text Marx had only mentioned
in passing.36 It concerns the assertion that since historical change arises
from the contradiction between the development of the ‘material forces
of production’ and ‘existing relations of production’, it is on ‘the terrain’
of ‘ideological forms’ that ‘men become conscious of this conflict and
resolve it’ (Gramsci 2007, Vol. 2, p. 746). Reference to this principle
first occurs in paragraph 15 of Notebook 4, and Gramsci, going beyond
Marx’s thought, transforms it into the concept of the reality of ideolo-
gies;37 then, in August 1932, in polemic with Croce, he links it to the
concept of hegemony. For Croce, he writes, ‘ideologies for the governed
are mere illusions, a deception they are subject to, while for the governors
they are a willed and conscious deception’.
For the philosophy of praxis [on the other hand], ideologies are anything
but arbitrary; they are real historical facts which must be combated and
their nature as instruments of domination exposed, not for reasons of
morality and so on, but precisely for reasons of political struggle so as to
make the governed independent of the governors, in order to destroy one
hegemony and create another as a necessary moment of the overturning
of praxis. (Q10II§41xii, p. 1319; FSPN , p. 395)
In other words, of collective action capable of promoting political changes

of historical importance (loc. cit.).
The first observation that should be made is that, unlike in 1924–1926,
the concept of hegemony is here no longer linked to the proletariat, but
refers to the conquest and exercise of power by any class or social group.
As we have seen, this extension was due to the insertion of the function of
the intellectuals into the schema of historical materialism and established
the direction in which Gramsci was developing the theory. It emerged,
on the one hand, from the need better to articulate the bourgeoisie–
proletariat polarity and, on the other, from the need, having restored a
36 It should be noted that Gramsci was not familiar with Marx and Engels’s German
Ideology, written between 1845 and 1846 but published in Moscow in 1932, although
he had read a summary of the first essay, made by Gustav Mayer for the anthology of
texts by Marx that was published in Moscow in 1924, edited by Vladimir Adoratskij: cf.
Antonini (2018).
37 ‘Marx explicitly states that humans become conscious of their tasks on the ideological
terrain, (…) which is hardly a minor affirmation of “reality”’ (Q4§15, p. 437; PN Vol.
2, p. 157).
50 G. VACCA
role of primary importance in the historical process to intellectuals (“great

intellectuals”, “intermediate intellectuals” and “intellectuals as a mass”),
to prevent a return to a liberal conception of history.
On the analytical plane Gramsci starts from the reconstruction of the
Italian Risorgimento. His analysis unfolds through paragraphs 43 and
44 of Notebook 1, datable to February–March 1930. Re-elaborated in
inverse order in paragraphs 24 and 26 of Notebook 19 (February 1934–
February 1935), they constitute the main nucleus of his interpretation of
the Risorgimento. Paragraph 43 of Notebook 1 links back to the structure
of the Lyon Theses and to the essay on the Southern question, extending
the analysis to the period 1849–1860 and establishing the first reference
points for a characterization of the forces involved (the Moderates and the
Action Party). His reflection develops using large schemata, extending to
the crisis after World War I, and it is here that Gramsci inserts an initial
formulation of the theory of the intellectuals:
By “intellectuals” one must understand not [only] those strata commonly

referred to by this term, but generally the whole social mass that exercises
an organizational function in the broad sense – whether it be in the field
of production, or culture, or political administration. (Q1§43, p. 37; PN
Vol. 1, p. 133)
But in 1930 the Risorgimento had not yet been analysed in terms
of hegemony; Gramsci tended rather to derive theoretical generaliza-
tions from the historical analysis of a national event, and this does not
imply the emancipation of the concept of hegemony from its sociolog-
ical bonds. Indeed paragraph 44, specifically dedicated to placing the
Risorgimento within a wider historical context, is entitled ‘Political class
leadership before and after assuming government power’. In the re-
elaboration contained in Notebook 19 the paragraph is instead entitled
‘The Problem of Political Leadership in the Formation and Development
of the Nation and the Modern State in Italy’. Gramsci therefore places
at the centre of his analysis the problem of the ‘connection between the
various political currents of the Risorgimento, and of their relations with
the homogeneous or subordinate social groups existing in the various
historical sections (…) of the national territory’ (Q19§24, p. 2010; SPN ,
pp. 55–56). It is clear that this reformulation of the theme reflects a
substantial evolution of the concept of hegemony. What Gramsci intends
to emphasize is that deeper study of the ‘connection between the various
political currents of the Risorgimento’ brings to the surface the histor-

ical reasons why the Moderates prevailed, and why the democrats were
not only led by them but also accepted their leadership. This means that
the pre-eminence of the Moderates was based on objective reasons for
domination thanks to which they established an asymmetrical interdepen-
dence via-à-vis the Action Party, using its contribution (classic example:
the expedition of the Mille),38 but at the same time subordinating it. The
theoretical innovation springs from the nexus between hegemony and
interdependence, which reveals the decisive function of the intellectuals
in defining relations of force. The hegemony of the Moderates sprang
from the fact that their political élite, unlike that of the Action Party,
was the expression of a complex of specific economic, social and cultural
forces:
The Moderates were “intellectuals” already naturally “condensed” by the

organic character of their relations with those classes whose expression they
were. (For a good number of them, an identity was realized between the
represented and the representative, the expressed and the expressor; that
is, the Moderate intellectuals were a real, organic vanguard of the upper
classes because they themselves belonged economically to the upper classes:
they were intellectuals and political organizers and, at the same time, heads
of businesses, great landowner-administrators, commercial and industrial
entrepreneurs, etc.). Given this organic “condensation” or concentration,
the Moderates exercised a powerful attraction in a “spontaneous” way, over
the whole mass of intellectuals who existed in the country, in a “diffuse”,
“molecular” state. (Q1§44, pp. 41–42; PN Vol. 1, p. 137)
The most important conclusion that Gramsci draws from this analysis
contains the nucleus of the theory of the intellectuals:
Herein is revealed the truth – Gramsci continues – of a criterion of

historico-political research: there does not exist an independent class of
intellectuals, but every class has its intellectuals; however, the intellectuals
of the historically progressive class exercise such a power of attraction that,
in the final analysis, they end up by subordinating the intellectuals of the
38 Garibaldi’s “expedition of the thousand” (“spedizione dei mille”) volunteers in 1860

to bring the Bourbon Kingdom (Sicily and Southern Italy) into the new Kingdom of
Italy, under Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy.
52 G. VACCA
other classes and creating an environment of solidarity among all the intel-
lectuals, with ties of a psychological (…) and often of a caste character.
(Q1§44, p. 42; PN Vol. 1, pp. 137–138)
But it is not our intention here to follow all the developments of this
conception. Rather we are interested in taking note of its implications
concerning the State and ‘civil society’. In a ‘B text’ (i.e. a single draft
text) in Notebook 6, datable to December 1930, Gramsci writes that in
his notes the concept of civil society is ‘… often used (…) in the sense
of political and cultural hegemony of a social group over the whole of
society, as the ethical content of the State’ (Q6§24, p. 703; PN Vol. 3,
p. 20 and FSPN , p. 75). For Gramsci, unlike for Marx, civil society does
not embrace all production relations, but is situated between them and
the State: ‘Between the economic structure and the State with its legis-
lation and its coercion stands civil society’ (Q10II§15, p. 1253; FSPN ,
p. 167). If the State is posited as the union between ‘political society’
and ‘civil society’, the distinction between them must be clarified. Now,
writes Gramsci, although ‘in actual reality, civil society and State are one
and the same’, nevertheless the two concepts concern different aspects of
the life of the State. Schematically they can be indicated as the moment of
‘force’ and the moment of ‘consent’, which however cannot be separated
and exist intertwined in various ‘combinations’. The distinction between
State and civil society is therefore ‘methodological’, and not ‘organic’
(Q13§18, pp. 1589–1590; SPN , p. 160).39
It is natural that, in developing the concept of hegemony, Gramsci
should formulate a conception of the State which is neither that of the
State as force of liberal ‘realism’, nor that of the State as machine of the
Marxist and Leninist tradition:
The State is seen as the organ of one particular group, destined to create
favourable conditions for the latter’s maximum expansion. But the devel-
opment and expansion of the particular group are conceived of, and
presented, as being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a develop-
ment of all the “national” energies. In other words, the dominant group
is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the subordinate
groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a continuous process
39 For Gramsci the fundamental error of liberalism consists in the fact that it transforms
the ‘methodical’ distinction between ‘political society’ and ‘civil society’ into an ‘organic’
one.
of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (on the juridical plane)

between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subor-
dinate groups – equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group
prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of narrowly
corporative economic interest. (Q13§17, p. 1584; SPN , p. 184)40
Looking more closely at the nexus between theory of hegemony and

theory of the State, Gramsci clarifies a little further on that a State—any
State—is founded upon the compromise equilibrium of the dominant class
with both the allied and the subaltern classes (Q13§18, p. 1591; SPN ,
p. 161). Some interpreters have underlined the originality of this concep-
tion in the development of Gramsci’s thought and his critical position
vis-à-vis Stalin’s USSR (Buci-Glucksmann 1980 [19751 ]; Francioni ‘Ege-
monia, società civile, Stato’, in id., 1984b); indeed, it dates to October
1930, a crucial moment of the disagreements on the ‘turning point’ and
the ‘conversations’ regarding the Constituent Assembly in the prison at
Turi (Vacca 2012, Chapters vii and viii).
In order to achieve this revision of the Marxist conception of the State,
a reformulation of the theory of the class struggle was necessary, and it
appears clear that in Gramsci’s view there was not only antagonism but
also interdependence between the struggling classes. This acquisition too
can be framed as a ‘return to Marx’, who had warned that it is necessary
to prevent the class struggle leading to the ‘common ruin’ of the classes
in struggle. In any case, the thesis that any type of State is founded on a
‘compromise equilibrium’ among social classes and social groups clearly
shows that the concept of hegemony is based on the elaboration of the prin-
ciple of interdependence (Vacca, I ‘Quaderni’ e la politica del ’900, in id.,
1999a; Giasi 2007). The theory of the intellectuals is fundamental for the
development of the concept since the ‘expansivity’ of the dominant classes
and the elaboration of the ‘universal’ values connected with their domina-
tion—in other words, the interaction between the ‘economic-corporative’
and the ‘ethico-political’—specifically concerns their activity.
The theory of the “organic intellectual” is based first of all on the
historicization of the intellectual classes:
40 Q13§17 is entitled ‘Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force’, and is a re-elaboration

of Q4§38, ‘Relations between Structure and Superstructures’.
54 G. VACCA
Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an

essential function in the world of economic production, creates together
with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give
it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the
economic but also in the social and political fields. (Q12§1, p.1513; SPN ,
p. 5)
The concept is a lucid definition of the morphology of complex soci-

eties: the performance of any technical activity implies either a directive
or a subaltern function; any work is defined by its intellectual ratio as
superordinate or subordinate; the exercise of any working activity there-
fore implies an asymmetrical relationship whereby the life of societies as
a whole is configured as a system of relations between the governed and
the governors, the rulers and the ruled.
7 Interdependence, ‘Civil
Hegemony’, ‘International Hegemony’
The nexus between hegemony and interdependence comes over as partic-
ularly effective in the analysis of the Risorgimento because the birth of
the Italian nation-State was accomplished at a time when the European
panorama was already dominated by a constellation of states that had
come into being thanks to the impulse of the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars. The Italian Risorgimento therefore constitutes an
emblematic case of the birth of a modern State within the framework of
a ‘European nexus’—the ‘Concert’ of Nations—which made the Italian
State possible but at the same time irremediably conditioned it. The
note which we are about to examine, in its initial drafting, is entitled
‘The Conception of the State according to the Productivity [Function]
of the Social Classes’. Gramsci emphasizes here the fact that, unlike
in the processes of national State formation in other countries (espe-
cially France), the protagonists of the process in Italy had been not
the economic bourgeoisie, but the intellectual strata, who thus became
the interpreters of the most advanced political and economic situa-
tions in Europe (Q1§150, pp. 132–133; PN Vol. 1, pp. 229–230). In
the re-elaboration contained in Notebook 10, the ‘European nexus’ is
investigated more in detail and interdependence is analysed in greater
depth.
The conception of the State according to the productive function of the

social classes cannot be applied mechanically to the interpretation of Italian
and European history from the French revolution throughout the nine-
teenth century. Although it is certain that for the fundamental productive
classes (capitalist bourgeoisie and modern proletariat) the State is only
conceivable as the concrete form of a specific economic world, of a specific
system of production, this does not mean that the relationship of means
to end can be easily determined or takes the form of a simple schema,
apparent at first sight. It is true that conquest of power and achievement
of a new productive world are inseparable, and that propaganda for one
of them is also propaganda for the other, and that in reality it is solely in
this coincidence that the unity of the dominant class – at once economic
and political – resides. But the complex problem arises of the relation of
internal forces in the country in question, of the relation of international
forces, of the country’s geo-political position. In reality, the drive towards
revolutionary renewal may be initiated by the pressing needs of a given
country, in given circumstances, and you get the revolutionary explosion
in France, victorious internationally as well. But the drive for renewal may
be caused by the combination of progressive forces which in themselves are
scanty and inadequate (though with immense potential, since they repre-
sent their country’s future) with an international situation favourable to
their expansion and victory. (Q10II§61, pp. 1359–1360; SPN , p. 116)
This was the case with the Italian Risorgimento, in which—Gramsci

continues—the social group that best interpreted ‘the reflection of inter-
national development’ and the possibility of spreading its ‘ideological
currents’ was ‘the intellectual stratum (ceto)’ (loc. cit.). Thus the hege-
monic process that led to the birth of the modern State consists of the
capacity of élites to ‘combine’ internal and international factors of devel-
opment. Further, inserting into his arguments a parenthesis of much
wider import, Gramsci calls into doubt the possibility of ‘thinking history
as only “national history” at any given moment of historical development’
and asks himself ‘whether the manner of writing (and thinking) history
has not always been “conventional”’. Then, recalling ‘the Hegelian
concept of the “world spirit” which is impersonated in this or that country
[as] a “metaphorical” or imaginative way of drawing attention to this
methodological problem’,41 he enunciates a general theory according to
41 Q10II§61, p. 1359. This appears in a parenthesis, not included in the SPN

translation (pp. 114–118) of this paragraph.
56 G. VACCA
which history, in proper terms, is ‘world history’ and only ‘convention-

ally’ can ‘national histories’ be isolated, on condition that one is capable of
identifying the nexuses with general history. Against this backdrop, world
history is marked by a succession of hegemonic constellations centred on
the pre-eminence of one or another national power.
No less binding is the nexus between hegemony and interdependence
in the interpretation of contemporary European history, and in the course
of this analysis Gramsci introduces the concept of ‘civil hegemony’. This
innovation became necessary upon consideration of the economic and
social changes that had occurred in the previous half-century, both inter-
nationally and within the countries of Europe, significantly changing the
formations of ‘collective wills’ and historical subjectivities. Interrogating
himself of these changes Gramsci starts anew from Marx’s formula of ‘per-
manent revolution’ to bring synthetically into focus the historical changes
that had rendered it anachronistic and upon them he bases the concept
of ‘civil hegemony’:
The formula [of “permanent revolution” elaborated by Marx after 1848]

(…) belongs to an historical period in which the great mass political parties
and the great economic trade unions did not yet exist, and society was still,
so to speak, in a state of fluidity from many points of view: greater back-
wardness of the countryside, and almost complete monopoly of political
and State power by a few cities or even by a single one (Paris in the case
of France); a relatively rudimentary State apparatus, and greater autonomy
of civil society from State activity; a specific system of military forces and
of national armed services; greater autonomy of the national economies
from the economic relations of the world market, etc. In the period after
1870, with the colonial expansion of Europe, all these elements change:
the internal and international organisational relations of the State become
more complex and massive, and the Forty-Eightist formula of the “Perma-
nent Revolution” is expanded and transcended in political science by the
formula of “civil hegemony”. (Q13§7, p. 1566; SPN , pp. 242–243)
The focus of his analysis is international interdependence, which had

intensified to the point of generating a global mutation which was condi-
tioning in an uncommon way both the life of States and political action.
But attention should be drawn to the fact that Gramsci, in order to
make a synthesis of this, felt the need to introduce a lexical innovation of
such significance as to detach the concept of hegemony from the matrix
provided by Lenin. There is no doubt that in the Notebooks he continued
to attribute to Lenin the merit of having replaced the ‘Forty-Eightist

doctrine of “permanent revolution”’ with the ‘concept of hegemony’
(Q10I§12, p. 1235; FSPN , p. 357); but the fact that he introduces
the concept of ‘civil hegemony’, which cannot be traced back exclusively
to Lenin, has highly specific implications. In fact, when he returns to
the defeat of the revolutions of the Twenties, Gramsci does not draw
back from the task of pointing out the strategic limits of Lenin who, in
launching the tactic of the United Front, had shown that he understood
the change in politics generated by the Great War, but had been unable to
theorize it. The theme relates to the transition from the ‘war of manoeu-
vre’ to the ‘war of position’ which we have already examined. Here we
should recall the arguments regarding why Lenin did not go the whole
way:
In my view Ilyich understood the need for a shift from the war of maneuver
that had been applied victoriously in the East in 1917, to a war of position,
which was the only viable possibility in the West (…) This, I believe, is the
meaning of the term “united front” (…) Ilyich, however, never had time to
develop his formula. One should also bear in mind that Ilyich could only
have developed his formula on a theoretical level, whereas the fundamental
task was a national one. (Q7§16, p. 866; PN Vol. 3, pp. 168–169 and
SPN , pp. 237–238)
Reading the rest of the note, it might appear that Gramsci is reiterating
the relativization of Lenin’s work on the basis of the East-West paradigm;
but in reality in the course of three years his thought had evolved so much
that a lexical innovation was required to distinguish his theory of politics
from that of Lenin. In fact the ‘historical break’ from which Gramsci now
moves is war alone. The elements that characterize the change do not
go back to the war-Russian Revolution coupling, but to the historical
period of 1870–1915, and the accent falls on the degree of development
achieved by the European workers’ movement in the pre-war decades.
[e]verybody recognises that the war of 1914-18 represents an historical

break, in the sense that a whole series of questions which piled up individ-
ually before 1914 have precisely formed a “mound”, modifying the general
structure of the previous process. It is enough to think of the importance
which the trade-union phenomenon has assumed, a general term in which
various problems and processes of development, of differing importance
58 G. VACCA
and significance, are lumped together (parliamentarism, industrial organi-

sation, democracy, liberalism, etc.), but which objectively reflects the fact
that a new social force has been constituted, and has a weight which can
no longer be ignored, etc. (Q15§59, p. 1824; SPN , p. 106)
This raises questions of capital importance: the first concerns the

conception of the maturity of socialism, which Gramsci, in prison at Turi,
claimed had existed for half a century—greatly disconcerting his comrades
(Lisa 1971, pp. 81–90). To clarify the sense of this claim we need to
return to his correspondence of October 1926. In replying to Togliatti
that for the great masses the unity of the ‘Leninist nucleus’ was the sole
guarantee of the continuity of the nexus between the construction of
socialism in the URSS and the ‘revolutionizing’ of workers and peasants
on a world scale, Gramsci had introduced an argument to which attention
must be paid. ‘The question of unity, not only of the R[ussian] P[arty]
but of the Leninist core, is (…) of utmost importance in the interna-
tional field; from the point of view of the masses, this is the most important
question in this historical period of the intensified contradictory process
towards unity’ (CPC, p. 135; GTW , pp. 378–379 and SPW 1921–1926,
pp. 437–438). The characterization of the historical period as an ‘inten-
sified contradictory period towards unity’ clearly refers to world unity
considered from the point of view of the subjectivity of its peoples. It
seems evident to me that the passage from 1933 that we are analysing
reconnects with the argument of October 1926, and if Gramsci at that
time had been worried that the nexus between Leninism and world revo-
lution might be broken, now that the nexus had dissolved he was trying
to identify the reasons, even in the limits of Leninism.
It seems to us that the point he had reached suggested to him that he
should try to find a remedy by starting from a new perception of the rela-
tions between politics and the masses. The arguments which justify the
concept of ‘civil hegemony’ would in fact seem to indicate that the war
had intensified processes that had begun after 1870, and the significance
of which is characterized by the following elements: the main actors of
the struggle were all in the field, differently organized and positioned;
therefore the political space was already occupied. What was at stake
was not the organization of each actor on stage, but the overall polit-
ical leadership of the masses, both nationally and internationally, and the
struggle was at the same time over the economic, political, intellectual
and moral leadership of society in its entirety. There was no before and
after demarcated by a ‘conquest of power’, or such a distance between

‘political society’ and ‘civil society’ as to delimit the ‘spaces’ within which
the political leadership could be conquered. It was politics as such, the
whole of politics that was characterized by the struggle for hegemony.
Indeed the elaboration of the concept of ‘civil hegemony’ corresponds
also chronologically to the definition of the philosophy of praxis as a
‘conception of the world with a conformant ethic’ (Q10I§31, part i,
pp. 1269–1273; FSPN , pp. 383–386).42 Gramsci came to a definition
of these two concepts between February and June 1932, thus offering
extremely significant testimony of the ‘translatability’ of the theory of
hegemony into the philosophy of praxis and vice versa.43 The theory of
hegemony thus corresponds to a particular view of history and while up
to now we have examined its progressive liberation from the ‘class’ bond,
now we need to proceed to its emancipation from economic determinism,
the often unconscious foundation of contemporary historiography. Crit-
icism of economism forms the ‘aroma’ of the Notebooks, but the theme
upon which it is developed most fruitfully is that of ‘crisis’. On this theme
too, Gramsci develops lines of research that he had already framed before
his arrest. In the report to the Central Committee of 2–3 August 1926,
his reflections on capitalism’s instability had achieved a vision of economic
crises which we should recall:
In the advanced capitalist countries – writes Gramsci – the ruling class

possesses political and organizational reserves which it did not possess,
for instance, in Russia. This means that even the most serious economic
crises do not have immediate repercussions in the political sphere. Politics
always lags behind economics, far behind. (CPC, p. 121; SPW 1921–1926,
pp. 408–409 and PPW , p. 297)
But it is only in the Notebooks that he elaborates a real theory of crises.

In general terms the problem is outlined in October 1930, in Q4§38
(‘Notes on Philosophy I’) entitled ‘Relations between Structure and
42 Chapter 3 in this volume is dedicated to the development of this theme. Cf. also
Q10II§41v, p. 1308 (FPSN , p. 390) for the use of this specific phrase.
43 On these themes I suggest the writings of Francesca Izzo and Fabio Frosini which
are analysed in the ‘Afterword’ (‘Gramsci studies in Italy’), the last part of the current
volume.
60 G. VACCA
Superstructures’. Later on, however Gramsci poses the question of under-

standing ‘whether fundamental historical crises are directly determined by
economic crises’, replying that
[i]t may be ruled out that immediate economic crises of themselves

produce fundamental historical events; they can simply create a terrain
more favourable to the dissemination of certain modes of thought,
and certain ways of posing and resolving questions involving the entire
subsequent development of national life. (Q13§7, pp. 1586–1587; SPN ,
p. 184)44
His intention is clearly to dissolve economic crises into the wider

notion of ‘historical crises’, thus avoiding the risks of causal determinism.
The objective is reached in Q15§5, entitled ‘Past and Present. Crisis’,
dating to February 1933. Analysing the crisis of 1929–1932, Gramsci
starts out with a warning of a methodological character, the salient point
of which is the need to avoid a monocausal explanation of the crisis:
Whoever wants to give one sole definition of these events, or what is

the same thing, find a single cause or origin, must be rebutted. We are
addressing a process that shows itself in many ways, and in which cause
and effects become intertwined and mutually entangled. To simplify means
to misrepresent and falsify. (Q15§5, p. 1755; FSPN , p. 219)
In other words, it is a question of inserting all the manifestations of the

crisis into a historical process which does not isolate the economy from
politics and identifies moments and actors on the world stage. Therefore
the first question that Gramsci asks himself has the aim of collocating the
passages of the crisis within a historical perspective, thus establishing a
periodization: ‘When did the crisis begin?’ He rejects the thesis that its
beginning coincides with its most sensational manifestation, the collapse
of the New York Stock Exchange, and in proposing his answer he outlines
a true general theory of crises, of a historico-political nature:
The whole post-war period is one of crisis, accompanied by attempts to

obviate it that from time to time have had some success in this or that
country, nothing more. For some (and perhaps they are not mistaken)
44 I am quoting here the re-elaboration in Q13§17, ‘Analysis of Situations: Relations

of Force’.
the war itself is a manifestation of this crisis, even its first manifestation;
the war was in fact the political and organisational response of those who
were also responsible for the crisis (…) One of the fundamental contradic-
tions is this: that whereas economic life has internationalisation or rather
cosmopolitanism as a necessary premiss, State life has developed ever more
in the direction of ‘nationalism’, of ‘self-sufficiency’, and so on. One of
the most apparent features of the ‘present crisis’ is nothing other than
the intensification of the nationalistic (nationalistic State element) in the
economy. (Q15§5, pp. 1755–1756; FSPN , pp. 219–220)
The first consideration regards the explanation of ‘world crises’, such

as those in the 1890s and in 1929–1932. These were great economic
crises in the epoch during which interdependence took hold not only
as a fundamental resource of the productive activity of peoples, but also
as a historical ‘law’ which conditioned State life and political action as
never before. We are not dealing with ‘conjunctural crises’, which are
part of the physiology of capitalist development, but of world crises,
which were unsolvable using the existing forms of regulation. Gram-
sci’s thesis is that while economic life, thanks to the intrinsic vocation
of the capitalist mode of production, developed in the direction of ‘cos-
mopolitanism’, it is not possible to stabilize its beneficial influence because
‘national life’ continued to be based on nationalist, or worse still autarkic,
criteria. Therefore the problem is not economic, but historico-political;
Gramsci suggests that the response to the crisis should be to adapt the
forms of regulation to the world economy: an epochal task, which evokes
the need to go beyond the identification between politics and the State,
upon which the modern age was built.
The second consideration is that not only the crisis, but the war too,
sprang from the clash between the cosmopolitanism of the economy and
the nationalism of politics. As we saw at the beginning of this chapter, for
Gramsci the war was neither an inevitable consequence of imperialism (the
‘supreme phase of capitalism’), nor the umpteenth manifestation of the
perverse nature of capitalism (‘capitalism bears within it war as a sleeping
cloud bears the storm’ in Jean Jaurès’ motto) but ‘the political and organ-
isational response of those who were also responsible’. Thus the Great
War constituted a historical event, as such avoidable, for which the blame
lay with the European ruling classes who, faced with the intensification
of the contrast between the cosmopolitanism of the economy and the
nationalism of politics, instead of reforming the function of the State, had
62 G. VACCA
unleashed a world war for the control over markets. Thus both in the case
of the great crisis and that of the Great War, a deficit of political hege-
mony was evidenced and at the same time, the instrument to surmount
it was identified in the principle of interdependence. Among the most
significant consequences of this assumption was the change in the notion
of ‘great power’, in which military force appeared to be a substitute for
economic and cultural power. There are three ‘elements for calculating
the hierarchy of power among States’ writes Gramsci: ‘1) extension of
territory, 2) economic power, 3) military power’. The latter ‘sums the
value of territorial extension (with an adequate population, naturally) and
the economic potential’. But ‘military power’ is not a primary attribute
of a ‘great power’, both because it is subordinate to economic power and
because that which characterizes a ‘great power’ is its ‘ability to imprint
upon its activities an autonomous direction, of which all other powers,
great and minor, have to undergo the influence and repercussions’. The
ranking of a power therefore derives not from military supremacy, but
from the influence that the country succeeds in exerting over all the
others. The concept of hegemony, projected onto the system of inter-
national relations, subtracts it from the presumed ‘anarchy’ of traditional
‘realism’. In the international arena, States do not act solely in the name
of force but according to their capacity to influence and condition the
life of other peoples. This renders consent decisive even in international
relations; in fact ‘the great power is the hegemonic power’ inasmuch as
it is at the head of ‘a system of alliances and accords of greater or lesser
extension’ (Q13§19, pp. 1597–1598).
The power factor cannot be separated from the logic of war; indeed
Gramsci writes, ‘these elements are calculated within the perspective of
a war’ (loc. cit.). But the application of hegemony to the system of
international relations tends to exclude the inevitability of war. Gram-
sci’s knowledge of Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege was second-hand, but in the
conception of war as the continuation of politics by other means, he finds
confirmation of his political vision; therefore, in an only apparently para-
doxical fashion, he reads into this a confirmation of the possibility of
avoiding war.45 Moving in the same direction are the considerations on
45 I am referring to the singular comment on Emil Ludwig’s Wilhelm II in which

he writes: ‘It should be recalled how Bismarck, following Clausewitz, maintained the
supremacy of the political moment over the military; whereas Wilhelm II, as Ludwig
records, scribbled furious notes on a newspaper in which Bismarck’s opinion was quoted.
the concept of the ‘great power’, whose prerogative consists in being able
to irradiate such economic, political and cultural influence as to achieve
its objectives without needing to resort to war: ‘… to possess all the
elements which, within the limits of the predictable, provide the certainty
of victory, means having the potential of diplomatic pressure of a great
power’ capable of ‘obtaining part of the results of a victorious war without
needing to fight’ (loc. cit.).
Finally, his attention towards cultural power must be underlined. ‘An
“imponderable” element’ Gramsci observes ‘is the “ideological” position
a country occupies in the world at any given moment, inasmuch as it is
considered to represent the progressive forces of history’; and he cites the
example of France ‘during the Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic
period’ (loc. cit.). Thus in his eyes, the only country possessing the
attribute of ‘great power’ then was the United States of America. As
we have seen, in 1920, with President Wilson’s project defeated and
the United States once again isolationist, Gramsci thought revolutionary
Russia might exercise world ‘ideological’ primacy. But at that point, world
history revolved around the dialectic between the United States and
Europe, and in the heart of the great crisis it was the United States that
emerged as the only power capable of representing ‘the progressive forces
of history’. Gramsci, reacting in a celebrated note from Notebook 22 to
the widespread anti-Americanism among the European cultured classes,
claims that:
America, through the implacable weight of its economic production (and

therefore indirectly), will compel or is already compelling Europe to over-
turn its excessively antiquated economic and social basis. This would
have happened anyway, though only slowly. In the immediate perspec-
tive it is presented as a repercussion of American super-power. (Q22§15,
pp. 2178–2179; SPN , p. 317)
Let us attempt to sum up the effects of applying the concept of hege-

mony to international relations. At the beginning of the Thirties the
world appeared as a hierarchical system, based not so much on the mili-
tary strength, as on the economic strength and ‘ideological’ influence of
Thus the Germans won almost all the battles brilliantly, but lost the war’ (Q19§28,
p. 2052, SPN , p. 88).
64 G. VACCA
the hegemonic power. The preponderance which underpinned the exer-

cise of hegemony allowed the hegemonic power to extend its alliances
as the vehicle of its economic and ideal influence, but also to make any
recourse to war more remote, if not actually to eliminate it altogether. The
exercise of international hegemony had therefore the aim of neutralizing
adversaries, imposing upon them a lasting acceptance of their subalter-
nity. It was an exercise based on being able to define one’s own role, but
also to a more or less agreed extent to decide that of allies and adversaries.
Rather than about the hegemony of a ‘great power’, we should be talking
about hegemonic constellations, within which the leading country seeks
and to some extent obtains the consent of the other countries thanks to
a weighted calculation of the relations of force and their respective inter-
ests. The polemical content of this brief note vis-à-vis the ‘theory of war’,
of the isolationism and of the militarization of politics that distinguished
the Soviet Union is difficult to gauge; however it seems possible to assert
that in international relations the nexus between hegemony and interde-
pendence is even more stringent than in internal politics, since hegemony
is substantiated in a country’s ability to create situations of asymmetrical
interdependence which take into account the interests of the subaltern
countries in such a way as to obtain lasting acceptance of its supremacy.
8 The Crisis of the Modern

State and the Remedies: Political
Cosmopolitanism and Supranationality
The ‘intensified contradictory process towards unity’ of the world (letter
to Togliatti of 26 October 1926, there referred initially to the ‘masses’,
GTW , p. 379), which characterized the ‘historical period’ preceding and
subsequent to the war, brought with it the crisis of the national State,
but also provided the remedies. The way in which, at the beginning
of the Notebooks, Gramsci outlines the post-war crisis fluctuates, but he
treats it with particular emphasis. In Q1§76, at the beginning of 1930,
commenting on an article by Filippo Burzio, he seems to believe that the
solution to the crisis of liberal civilization will only be found in socialism:
In our times there is almost no happy day (but is this crisis not linked,
rather, to the collapse of the myth of limitless progress and the optimism
that depended on it; in other words, is it not linked to a form of reli-
gion rather than to the crisis of historicism and critical consciousness? In
reality “critical consciousness” was restricted to a small circle, a hegemonic

circle, to be sure, but a restricted one; the spiritual “steering apparatus” has
broken down and there is a crisis, but it is also a widespread crisis which
will bring about a new, more secure and stable “hegemony”). (Q1§76,
p. 84; PN Vol. I, p. 181)
Instead a little later, reflecting on the authoritarian solution that fascism

had brought, he summed up the sense of the crisis in an aphorism that
would become famous: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the
old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum morbid
phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass’ (Q3§34, pp. 311–312;
PN Vol. 2, pp. 32–33 and SPN , p. 276). Shortly after, the crisis of the
European national State would be at the heart of Gramsci’s reflection
on the twentieth century and his analysis would centre upon it, but its
origin was in the writings of 1919–1920, where he had analysed the post-
war crisis in real time. Therefore we need to proceed to a preliminary
recapitulation of its salient points.
The crisis of the national State began with the war and exploded in
the post-war period, assuming in Gramsci’s opinion an epochal char-
acter. It was generated both by changes in conditionalities external to
the life of the State—disruption of the world economy—and by changes
that took place within it. This dual motion is characterized by lacera-
tions to interdependence in both spheres. The breakdown of the world
market, which appeared beyond repair, stands out among the exogenous
elements (‘A Break-Down and a Birth’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 3–4). To this
must be added the crisis in national sovereignty caused by the exorbitant
preponderance of the ‘world monopoly exercised [mainly] (…) by Anglo-
American capitalism’ (‘The Unity of the World’, ON 1919–1920, p. 20).
It suffocated not only the defeated countries but Italy too, which saw in
Germany’s destruction the removal of a pillar of its economic life, and
the loss of an important actor within European political equilibria within
which, by shrewdly ‘manoeuvring’, it had achieved its unity, independence
and a significant role as a medium-sized power. These events favoured
an anachronistic, revanchist spirit which increased the consensus around
nationalism. Strengthened by intervention in the war and by ‘mutilated
victory’ demagogy, nationalism took the field against the liberal State,
creating armed militias and aiming to instal a military dictatorship (‘A
Return to Freedom’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 105–108). But as we have seen,
the exasperated disequilibrium in the structure of the world generalized
66 G. VACCA
the crisis of national economies, affecting even the heart of the world
system, the United States, and the British Empire, which was shaken by
uprisings by its colonial peoples (‘Italy and the United States’, ON 1919–
1921, pp. 302–305). The forms of economic and political dependence
that had seemed to have taken the place of the system of interdependence
existing before the war thus revealed themselves to be precarious and
unsustainable. Given the degree of integration that had been achieved by
the world economy, interdependence might be temporarily modified into
exasperated forms of asymmetry, but these did not create a new system
of equilibria, indeed they made the crisis of the structure of the world
more widespread, more serious and longer lasting. A solution could only
be found by reactivating the circuits of globalization.
The manifestations of the crisis appeared even more numerous and
complex within the State. The most significant of these concerns the
political subjectivity of the worker and peasant masses analysed in the
first section of this chapter.46 The changes mentioned exerted pressure
in favour of socialism, which however could not be a force for the recon-
struction of the State because socialism ‘is against the national economies,
which stem from the national State and are conditioned by it’ (‘The State
and Socialism’, L’Ordine Nuovo, 28 June–5 July 1920, ON 1919–1920,
p.118; PPW , p. 102). What is more, the war had bureaucratized and
militarized economic and civilian life, mobilized the petty bourgeoisie
and conferred upon it undeserved command functions which it had no
intention of giving up, and which is why it turned its weapons against
the proletariat (‘The Events of 2–3 December. The Petty Bourgeoisie’,
ON 1919–1920, pp. 350–352). The petty bourgeoisie lay at the origin
of the Fiume [Rijeka] affair47 which unleashed the ‘civil war’, and it
was preparing to become the mass base of fascism, with backing from
State apparatuses and big capital, thus demonstrating that the liberal
bourgeoisie’s ‘national function’ had evaporated (‘National Unity’, ON
1919–1920, pp. 230–233).
46 See above, p. 50.

47 On 12 September 1919 Italian military rebels, headed by the poet Gabriele
D’Annunzio (with Mussolini’s personal backing), occupied the Adriatic city of Rijeka,
unilaterally proclaiming its annexation to Italy (contested by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia).
The 1924 Treaty of Rapallo finally assigned the city to Italy (with the name “Fiume”) in
exchange for other territorial concessions.
Lastly but no less important, the Councils movement had demon-

strated, as we have seen, that capitalism and industrialism could be
detached from one another, and that the figure of the capitalist
entrepreneur was historically no longer necessary (‘The Factory Worker’,
ON 1919–1920, pp. 432–433). This generated a crisis of legitimization
that did not remain within the world of production but affected all
representative institutions, including workers’ trade unions. The general
election of 18 November 1919 with a Socialist victory and the strong
showing of the Popular Party projected the crisis into the political system.
The Socialist party’s success was made even more significant by the strong
turnout of the peasantry. The good result of the two mass parties had a
constitutive value because it highlighted the need to construct a demo-
cratic nation that was inclusive of the peasant masses (‘The Bourgeois
Rout’ and ‘The Populars’, in ON 1919–1920, pp. 323–324 and 272–
274, respectively). Parliament, half of which was occupied by Socialist
and Popular deputies, could no longer function as the place of political
unification of the possessing strata of society. It meant the end of parlia-
mentarism and of transformism as a typically Italian government formula
(‘The Problem of Power’, ON 1919–1920, p. 338), but these analyses did
not fuel optimism. Gramsci foresaw that the crisis could lead to an author-
itarian conclusion, marked by a victory for nationalism and militarism
(‘Towards a Renewal of the Socialist Party’, ON 1919–1920, p. 511;
PPW , p. 156 and New Left Review I/51 pp. 51–52; and ‘The Commu-
nist Party’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 657–658, SPW 1919–1920, pp. 335–356
and PPW , pp. 193–194). Especially in Italy, the crisis of the national State
showed itself as a crisis of the hegemony of the ruling classes to which the
proletariat was incapable of responding.
When Gramsci started writing the Notebooks, ten years had passed since
the period during which he had outlined the analyses summarized up to
this point, but the changes that had taken place in Italy and the world
had not weakened their foundations; if anything they were favourable to
decanting and refining them. The consolidation of fascism in Italy, the
Weimar crisis, the further decomposition of colonial empires, the Soviet
Union’s closing in on itself, the crisis of 1929 and the innovative power
of Fordism all defined the context into which he now introduced the
crisis of the State, turning this into the central theme of his analysis of the
twentieth century.
In November 1930 the first aspect upon which he reflected anew was
how the crisis of the State manifests itself. At first glance it presents itself as
68 G. VACCA
a crisis of the parties and Gramsci took as his point of reference the Italian
experience of the post-war period (Q4§69, p. 513; PN Vol. 2, pp. 241–
242). But when—two or three years later—he returned to the theme,
framing it within a general reflection on politics, his analysis extended
to include Europe and presupposed the development of the concept of
hegemony as a general theory of politics and history. The paradigmatic
form of the crisis of the State is the crisis of the hegemony of the ruling
classes, and while the process presented in different ways in each country,
the content was the same.
At a certain point in their historical lives, social groups become detached

from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in
that particular organisational form, with the particular men who consti-
tute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class
(or fraction of a class) as its expression. (…) These situations of conflict
between “represented and representatives” reverberate out from the terrain
of the parties (…) throughout the State organism, reinforcing the rela-
tive power of the bureaucracy (civil and military), of high finance, of the
Church, and generally of all bodies relatively independent of the fluctua-
tions of public opinion. How are they created in the first place? In every
country the process is different, although the content is the same. And
the content is the crisis of the ruling class’s hegemony, which occurs either
because the ruling class has failed in some major political undertaking for
which it has requested, or forcibly extracted, the consent of the broad
masses (war, for example), or because huge masses (especially of peas-
ants and petit-bourgeois intellectuals) have passed suddenly from a state
of political passivity to a certain activity, and put forward demands which
taken together, albeit not organically formulated, add up to a revolution.
A “crisis of authority” is spoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony,
or general crisis of the State. (Q13§23, pp. 1602–1603; SPN , p. 210)
The fact that the crisis happens in all countries more or less simul-
taneously is further proof of the pervasiveness of interdependence. The
judgement configured by a crisis of hegemony, i.e. the loss of trust by
those represented in the old élites of the representatives, brings us back
to the nexus between the theory of intellectuals and theory of hegemony
which constitutes the fulcrum of our reconstruction.
However the crisis of the State is at the centre of the politics of the
twentieth century not only because it manifests itself everywhere, but
also because it finds no solution. The main reason why it has no solu-
tion resides in the economic-corporative limit shared by the fundamental
classes. In the case of the bourgeoisie, it derives from the crisis of the
State, which determines the loss of the shell within which its ability to lead
was formed: ‘The “normal” exercise of hegemony on the now classical
terrain of the parliamentary regime’ writes Gramsci ‘is characterised by a
combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally,
without force predominating excessively over consent’. But ‘in the period
following the World War, cracks opened up everywhere in the hegemonic
apparatus, and the exercise of hegemony became permanently difficult
and aleatory’ (Q13§37, p. 1638; SPN , p. 80, note). The reason is that
in the post-war period the bourgeoisie was not, and no longer perceived
itself as being, the hegemonic subject of world history. With the war, and
because of the events that it sparked—from the Russian Revolution to
the break-up of colonial empires—the globalization of capitalism reached
a historical limit. On the other hand, the conflict between the cosmopoli-
tanism of the economy and the nationalism of politics appeared to the
liberal bourgeoisie to be insoluble, clinging as it was to the nation-State
and to its traditional form of domination, namely oligarchic democracy.
The ethical underpinning of the equilibrium between force and
consent was the belief in the universality of bourgeois civilization and
the worldwide projection of its élites in ‘a period in which the spreading
development of the bourgeoisie could seem limitless, so that its ethicity or
universality could be asserted: all mankind will be bourgeois’ (Q8§179,
pp. 1049–1050; SPN , pp. 258–259). But with the war, this epoch came
to an end because ‘competitive capitalism’ was finished and there was ‘a
return to the concept of the State as pure force (…). The bourgeois class
is “saturated”: it has not only stopped growing – it is breaking down; not
only has it stopped assimilating new elements, but it is losing part of itself”
(Q8§2, p. 937; PN Vol. 3, p. 234 and SPN , p. 260). Among those he
holds responsible for this phenomenon are the ‘great intellectuals’, among
whom the figure of Benedetto Croce stands out: terrified by the spread
of mass society, he attempted to contrapose a new European cosmopolis
of the cultured classes against the crisis of the nation-State; but in this
way he assisted the detachment of the intellectuals from the dominant
classes and contributed to making the crisis of the State ‘catastrophic’. For
its part, the proletariat was also without historical initiative because the
Soviet Union limited the proletariat’s action to the economic-corporative
sphere:
70 G. VACCA
Generally speaking, the modern world is currently experiencing a

phenomenon similar to the split between the “spiritual” and the “tempo-
ral” in the Middle Ages, a phenomenon that is far more complex now than
it was then, to the extent that modern life itself has become more complex.
Regressive and conservative social groups are shrinking back more and
more to their initial economic-corporative stage, while progressive and
innovative groupings are still in their initial phase – which is, precisely,
the economic-corporative phase. The traditional intellectuals are detaching
themselves from the social grouping to which they have hitherto given
the highest, most comprehensive form and hence the most extensive and
complete consciousness of the modern State. Their detachment is in fact an
act of incalculable historical significance, and they are signaling and sanc-
tioning the crisis of the State in its decisive form. (Q6§10, pp. 690–691;
PN Vol. 3, pp. 8–9)
This poses the problem of whether these phenomena may be inter-

preted as ‘repercussions’ of the October Revolution and whether Euro-
pean post-World War I history may be compared to the ‘Age of Restora-
tion’ (Q15§59, p. 1824; SPN , p. 106); but we shall return to this theme
when we analyse the concept of ‘passive revolution’. At this point we need
to examine the solution put forward by Gramsci for the crisis of the State.
In the Europe of the post-war period, economic and political nation-
alism was, as we have seen, both an actor in, and a symptom of, the crisis
of the State. What could the communist movement offer as an effective
answer? Could it be the Comintern’s policy, which Gramsci considered
to be a reflection of the ‘economic-corporative’ limit of the Soviet State?
I think attention should be drawn to those notes in the Notebooks where
he reflects on the theoretical and political limits of ‘internationalism’ and,
bringing into play the concept of hegemony, suggests that it should be
replaced by ‘a modern form of cosmopolitanism’. This should not surprise
us since: if the world economic crisis and the crisis of the State spring from
conflict between the cosmopolitanism of the economy and the nation-
alism of politics; if the progressive element is the former, and that which
prevents it from irradiating its beneficial influence is the latter; then the
only remedy can be to create new symmetries between the economy and
politics.
In a note which is contemporary to these reflections on the crisis of
the State, Gramsci turns his attention to the limits of Italian socialism,
evidently also bearing in mind its responsibilities for the post-World War
I crisis. He identifies the basic defect as ‘poor understanding of the State’,
which ‘means poor class consciousness’: ‘understanding of the State’ he

observes ‘exists not only when one defends it but also when one attacks it
in order to overthrow it’. This is the recurrent theme of the responsibil-
ities of the Socialist Party for not having wanted to mobilize the masses
in support of the occupation of factories. But it is symptomatic that now
these considerations are inscribed within a reflection on the ‘subversivism’
of the dominant and the subaltern classes, which Gramsci considers a
distinctive trait of the history of Italy, and he equates the ‘subversivism’
of the subaltern classes with the ‘internationalism’ of the revolutionary
socialism in which he had been a militant until 1920 (Q3§46, pp. 323–
327; PN Vol. 2, pp. 44–47, especially p. 47). The equivalence drawn
between ‘internationalism’ and ‘subversivism’ highlights an organic limit
of the Italian socialist tradition, consisting in its indeterminate ‘revolu-
tionarism’, that is its inability to be a revolutionary force. This limit
could be overcome only through the complete nationalization of the
workers’ movement, that is, by it acquiring a national function of its
own. In a note of February 1933, commenting on Stalin’s interview
with the ‘first American labor delegation’ (Q14§68, p. 1729; SPN ,
p. 240), Gramsci reflects anew on the Stalin-Trotsky conflict. Perhaps this
reflection was prompted by Hitler’s rise to power and by Trotsky’s crit-
icisms of Comintern policy.48 Gramsci seems to have thought that the
main problem of the communist movement resided not in the fact that
Stalin had concentrated on the construction of the State power of the
USSR, but in the lack of an international perspective in Soviet policy and
Comintern policy. This is not only a continuation of the paradigm in the
1926 letter. Continuing in his revision of Marxism, which runs through
the entire research of the Notebooks, Gramsci proposes a reformulation of
internationalism based, precisely, on the national function of the working
48 As is known, of Trotsky’s work, Gramsci in prison was only able to read La mia
vita [My Life], published by Mondadori (cf. ibid., pp. 365–366), but received a great
deal of information about his activities and his thought from the press that he followed
habitually. Among the daily newspapers he was allowed to read was Corriere della Sera,
from which the articles from Moscow by Salvatore Aponte have been gathered together
in volume form (Aponte 2010). But Gramsci habitually read the Foreign Ministry press
review and until 1932 he was able to continue to read the daily newspapers. On Trotsky’s
criticisms of the Comintern’s policy in that period see his 1931 pamphlet La chiave della
situazione è in Germania (Germany, the Key to the International Situation), in L. Maitan
(ed.) (1962, pp. 272–293) and in various English-language reprints.
72 G. VACCA
class. He dwells ‘on certain key points of the science and art of politics’
raised by the Stalin interview.
The problem which seems to me to need further elaboration is the

following: how, according to the philosophy of praxis (as it manifests itself
politically) whether as formulated by its founder [Marx] or particularly as
restated by its most recent great theoretician [Lenin] – the international
situation should be considered in its national aspect.
But national politics is always the result of a ‘combination’ of national

and international elements:
In reality – Gramsci continues – the internal relations of any nation are

the result of a combination which is “original” and (in a certain sense)
unique: these relations must be understood and conceived in their origi-
nality and uniqueness if one wishes to dominate them and direct them. To
be sure, the line of development is towards internationalism, but the point
of departure is “national” – and it is from this point of departure that one
must begin.
Therefore he rejects Trotskyist accusations of ‘nationalism’ against the

USSR, because it could not be denied that in the ‘nucleus of the ques-
tion’ Stalin was following Lenin’s concept of hegemony, having purged
‘internationalism of every vague and purely ideological (in a pejorative
sense) element, to give it a realistic political content’. However, his ‘real-
ism’ was insufficient because the communist movement needed effective
internationalism: ‘the [general] perspective is international and cannot be
otherwise’. He suggested the following formulation of this ‘perspective’:
It is necessary (…) to study accurately the combination of national forces

which the international class will have to lead and develop, in accordance
with the international perspective and directives. The leading class is in
fact only such if it accurately interprets this combination – of which it is
itself a component and precisely as such is able to give the movement a
certain direction, within certain perspectives. (Q14§68, pp. 1728–1729;
SPN , p. 240)
The reader will recall that in 1923 the ‘translation into Italian histor-
ical language’ of the tactic of the United Front had started out from
criticism of the Comintern’s centralism, to which Gramsci attributed at
least partially the incapacity of communist parties to transform the slogans

of the International into effective political formulas in their respective
countries. Then, in the Notebooks, claiming for Lenin the merit of having
intuited the necessity of switching from the ‘war of manoeuvre’ to the
‘war of position’, he had stressed how Lenin’s work had remained a sketch
not only because of his premature death, but above all because the task
of developing it was the duty of the individual communist parties, each in
its own country. But if the ‘centralism’ of the Comintern had not worked
in the Twenties, it worked even less in the Thirties. Gramsci sought the
explanation by developing a comparison between ‘democratic centralism’
and ‘organic centralism’. One of the most interesting notes in this regard
is entitled ‘La battaglia dello Jutland’ (‘The Battle of Jutland’), dating to
February 1930. Referring to Winston Churchill’s description of it in his
memoirs, Gramsci observes:
The English command had “organically” centralized putting into action

the plan in the flagship: the fleet’s ships had to “wait for orders” every
time. The German command, instead, had explained the general strategic
plan to all the subaltern commanders and allowed the individual units that
certain freedom of manoeuvre that could be required by circumstances.
The German fleet accounted for itself very well. The English fleet on the
other hand (…), in spite of its superiority, was unable to attain its positive
strategic goals. (Q13§38, pp. 1650–1651)49
The metaphor seems to suggest the idea that the Comintern not only
did not work, but could not work in any case because internationalism
cannot be expressed through a centralized body.
So how should the ‘international perspective’ be understood? Or the
‘international directives’ that define it? We need to turn our gaze towards
the concept of ‘democratic centralism’, which in Gramsci’s opinion,
… consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diver-

sity of form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed
in apparent uniformity, in order to organise and interconnect closely that
which is similar, but in such a way that the organising and the intercon-
necting appear to be a practical and “inductive” necessity, experimental,
49 The first draft of this paragraph (Q1§54, p. 67), containing slight variations from
the second one here, may be consulted in English in PN Vol. 1, p. 164.
74 G. VACCA
and not the result of a rationalistic, deductive, abstract process. (Q13§36,

p. 1635; SPN , pp. 189)
In the international field this formula entails a ‘continuous effort to

separate out the “international” and “unitary” element in national and
local reality’; and this ‘effort’, concludes Gramsci, ‘is true concrete polit-
ical action, the sole activity productive of historical progress’ (Q13§36,
p. 1635; SPN , pp. 189–190). Can this differentiated and convergent
action of the national parties be defined as the concept of ‘internation-
alism’? Gramsci seems to think not and proposes it be replaced by the
concept of cosmopolitanism, as usual taking as his example the Italian
situation.
In a note entitled ‘The Italian Question’, the first draft of which
dates to June 1932, he shows interest in a number of parliamentary
speeches by Dino Grandi which had aroused wide discussion in the Italian
and international press. Gramsci followed with attention the differen-
tiations surfacing in the fascist polyarchy regarding how to deal with
the consequences of the international economic crisis, not excluding
that the currents opting for a ‘productivist’ line might prevail and that
Mussolini might re-open the problem of agrarian reform and ‘industrial
reform’. He thought the Communist Party, albeit reduced to organiza-
tional irrelevance since it was a national projection of the Soviet Union,
could make its voice heard by supporting the ‘productivist’ line backed
by the advocates of ‘integral corporativism’ (Santomassimo 2006; Vacca
2012, Chapter viii). For this reason he dedicated careful consideration to
Grandi’s speeches. ‘The Hon. Grandi poses the Italian question as a world
question that must of necessity be resolved, together with the others that
constitute the political expression of the general post-war crisis, which in
1929 intensified in an almost catastrophic manner’. But the Italian foreign
minister was only attempting to obtain international legitimization for the
regime’s plans for colonial expansion, justified by the need to solve the
problem of overpopulation. Gramsci replied that ‘there is no example, in
modern history, of “settler” colonies because colonialism is based on the
export of capital’, which is later followed by significant migratory flows;
he then added ‘the “natural” relative poverty of individual countries in
modern civilization (…) is of relative importance’, while what is important
is the ability of the ruling classes to know how to grasp the opportunities
offered by the international division of labour (Q19§6, pp. 1989–1991).
This analysis gives rise not only to a productivist strand that could be
used in the debate opened up among the currents of fascism and those
of Italian economic thought, but also to a reconsideration of internation-
alism which, though based on ‘the Italian question’, assumed the value of
an indication that was valid for the entire communist movement. Indeed
Gramsci suggests cosmopolitanism as the true antidote to nationalism,
and what is more important, links the national function of the prole-
tariat to this concept. He denies that the Risorgimento ‘of necessity led
to nationalism and militaristic imperialism’, recalling that the traditions
of the Italian people are cosmopolitan and that Mazzini and Gioberti
had even attempted to ‘graft the nationalist myth onto the cosmopolitan
tradition (and) create the myth of reborn Italy’s mission within a new
European and world Cosmopolis’. But above all to nationalists and fascists
he objects that ‘the conditions of a military expansion in the present and
the future do not exist and do not appear to be in the process of forma-
tion’. ‘Modern expansion is of a financial-capitalist nature’. Then, linking
together ‘theory of war’ and the theory of crises, he continues:
In present-day Italian “humanity” as an element is either “humanity-as-

capital” or “humanity-as-labour”. Italian expansion can only be that of
humanity-as-labour (…) Traditional Italian cosmopolitanism has to become
a modern type of cosmopolitanism such, that is, as to ensure the best
conditions for the development of Italian humanity-as-labour in whatever
part of the world it is to be found. (…) One can therefore say that the
Italian tradition is carried on in the working people and their intellectuals
(…). The Italian people is that people which is “nationally” more interested
in a modern form of cosmopolitanism. Not only the worker but the peasant
and in particular the southern peasant. (Q19§5, p. 1988; FSPN , p. 253)
Summing up his argumentation, he then suggests an illuminating

definition of ‘cosmopolitanism of the modern type’:
To collaborate in the economic reconstruction of the world in a unitary

fashion is in the tradition of the Italian people and of Italian history, not
in order to dominate it hegemonically and appropriate the fruits of other
people’s labour for itself, but in order to exist and in fact to develop as the
Italian people. (loc. cit.)50
50 The FSPN translation is a very short excerpt from Q19§5, nowhere near Gramsci’s
entire paragraph (trans. note).
76 G. VACCA
It is clear to me that this reasoning concerns not only the Italian ‘case’,
but also the mission of the modern proletariat. The distance that separates
this position from the catastrophic interpretation of the crisis and the
bandying of the ‘risk of war’ that characterized the Comintern’s policy
is abyssal (cf. Romano 1999; Di Biagio 2004) but we would see as even
more important his assertion that ‘modern cosmopolitanism’ consists in
the attempt ‘to collaborate in the reconstruction of the world in an
economically unitary fashion’. This is the point of arrival of the reflec-
tion that began with the World War and sedimented in the analysis of
the contradictions between the ‘cosmopolitanism of the economy’ and
the ‘nationalism of politics’. It is a point of arrival that redefines the
line of action of the workers’ movement because to ‘to collaborate in
the reconstruction of the world in an economically unitary fashion’ is
an effective response to the crisis of the post-World War I period both
from a national point of view, and an international perspective. It is
clear why the concept of cosmopolitanism is a better fit than that of
internationalism: given the global dimension of the then-contemporary
crises and wars, communist internationalism—the only internationalism
that had a worldwide network—appeared unable to formulate definite
proposals; indeed, it remained caught up in a vision of the inevitability
of war, was forced to repeat the ‘Russian experiment’ and—despite the
outward show of the ‘voluntarism of the third period’51 —inertly awaiting
the recreation of those conditions. It is hardly necessary to underline how
this reflection returns to the theme of the relation between the bour-
geoisie and cosmopolitanism that we mentioned in the first section when
analysing the 1916 article, ‘The Great Illusion’. The fact that Gramsci
had finally decided to replace the formula of ‘proletarian international-
ism’ with that of a ‘new cosmopolitanism’ would appear to confirm his
conviction that globalization of the economy might mark the historical
limit of the bourgeoisie. In fact the crisis of the nation-State raises the
theme of superseding it: the theme of supranational sovereignty, not of
the dictatorship of the proletariat. Returning to the considerations on the
interview with Stalin, Gramsci specifies in terms of what, and to what
extent, the proletariat must ‘nationalize’ itself:
51 On the politics of the ‘third period’ cf. A. Agosti (1979).

A class that is international in character (…) has to “nationalise” itself in

a certain sense. Moreover, this sense is not a very narrow one either, since
before the conditions can be created for an economy that follows a world
plan, it is necessary to pass through multiple phases in which the regional
combinations (of groups of nations) may be of various kinds. (Q14§68,
p.1729; SPN , p. 241)
‘To collaborate in the reconstruction of the world in an economically

unitary fashion’ means to participate in global processes with the aware-
ness that such ‘reconstruction’ will only be made possible by creating
‘the conditions for an economy that follows a world plan’; this means by
moving to a new system for regulating the world economy. But neither
the proletariat nor the bourgeoisie could imagine ‘going it alone’ to
achieve such an objective, and just as the life of the State is based on ‘a
compromise equilibrium’ between antagonist classes, the same principle
had to apply to the world economy. It is therefore realistic to imagine
that its globalization could proceed by means of processes of economic
regionalization and to believe that the working class should support these.
There is today a European cultural consciousness – he writes in March

1931 – and there exists a long list of public statements by intellectuals and
politicians who maintain that a European union is necessary. It is fair to say
that the course of history is heading toward this union and that there are
many material forces that will only be able to develop within this union. If
this union were to come into existence in x years, the word “nationalism”
will have the same archaeological value as “municipalism” today. (Q6§78,
p. 748; PN Vol. 3, p. 61)
It is more than a provisional idea and it lends itself as conclusions

to a number of considerations. In January 1918, while Wilson’s League
of Nations project was beginning to call for the profound reflection on
economic interdependence that we examined at the start of this chapter,
Gramsci still appeared to be sceptical and derisive about the United
States of Europe because its advocates were not founding the proposal
upon a solid economic basis (Gramsci, ‘The League of Nations’).52 In
the early Twenties, he had supported with conviction Lenin’s slogan on
the ‘United Soviet States of Europe’ because he identified the USSR
and the European proletariat as the driving forces behind it (Cf. Paggi
52 On the entire debate in 1918–1919, cf. G. Savant (2008).

78 G. VACCA
1970). With the end of the myth of ‘world revolution’ any Europeanist
perspective seemed to have fallen away; instead in the Notebooks it resur-
faces, based on an analysis of the processes of integration of the world
economy stimulated by ‘Americanism’. I believe it can be said that it was
the dialectic between the United States and Europe that drew Gramsci’s
attention to the processes of economic regionalization as articulations of
the new world economy, of which he was trying to pick up the premoni-
tory signs. Supranational sovereignty is considered a concrete opportunity
for overcoming the contradiction between the ‘cosmopolitanism of the
economy’ and the ‘nationalism of politics’, and therefore also for resolving
the crisis of the State.
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Newspaper and journal articles and transcripts of speeches

by Gramsci (alphabetical order by first keyword, ignoring
definite and indefinite articles and prepositions). Original
Italian title follows after English title. Where there is
an English translation, the source is given after the Italian
reference sources
Active and Operative Neutrality (Neutralità attiva e operante), Il grido del popolo,
31 October 1914, in Scritti giovanili, 3–7.
Against Pessimism (Contro il pessimismo), L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 March 1924, in
CPC, 16–19.
The Armistice and Peace (Armistizio e pace), Avanti!, 11 February 1919, in
NM , 538–541.
The Bourgeois Rout (La disfatta borghese), Avanti!, 19 November 1919, in ON
1919–1920, 323–324.
A Break-Down and a Birth (Vita politica internazionale [i]. Uno sfacelo e una
genesi), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 May 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 3–10.
The Communist Party (Il partito comunista), L’Ordine Nuovo, 4 September
1920, in ON 1919–1920, 651–661; SPW 1919–1920, 330–339 and PPW ,
187–198.
The Events of 2–3 December (Gli avvenimenti del 2–3 dicembre), L’Ordine
Nuovo, 6–13 December 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 350–357 (written jointly
with Palmiro Togliatti).
The Factory Worker (La settimana politica [xviii]. L’operaio di fabbrica),
L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 February 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 432–435.
The Great Illusion (La grande illusione), Avanti!, 24 July 1916, in CT , 446–
448.
The Italian Crisis (La crisi italiana), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 September 1924 (report
to the Central Commttee of the PCI of 13–14 August), in CPC, 28–39; SPW
1921–1926, 255–264.
The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the PCI—The “Lyons Theses”, in CPC,
pp. 488–513; SPW 1921–1926, 340–375.
Italy and the United States (La settimana politica [xi]. Italia e gli Stati Uniti),
L’Ordine Nuovo, 8 November 1919 (written jointly with Palmiro Togliatti),
in ON 1919–1920, pp. 302–305.
The League of Nations (La Lega delle Nazioni), Il grido del popolo, 19 January
1918, in CF , 569–572.
The Mezzogiorno and Fascism (Il Mezzogiorno e il fascismo), L’Ordine Nuovo,
15 March 1924, in CPC, 171–174; PPW , 260–264.
National Unity (La settimana politica [viii]. ‘L’unità nazionale’), L’Ordine
Nuovo, 4 October 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 230–233.
Norman Angell, Il grido del popolo, 23 March 1918, in CF , 773–774.
The New Religion of Humanity (La nuova religione dell’umanità), Il grido del
popolo, 13 July 1918, in NM , 172–177.
The Party’s First Five Years (Cinque anni di vita del partito), L’Unità 14 May
1926, CPC, 89–113; SPW 1921–1926, 379–399.
The Peasants and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (Notes for Il Mondo) (‘I
contadini e la dittatura del proletariat [Noterelle per il Mondo]), L’Unità, 17
September 1926, in CPC, 326–328; SPW 1921–1926, 412–416.
The Populars (La settimana politica [x] I Popolari). L’Ordine Nuovo, 1
November 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 272–274.
The Problem of Power (Il problema del potere), L’Ordine Nuovo, 29 November
1919, in ON 1919–1920, 338–343.
The Programme of L’Ordine Nuovo (Il programma dell’Ordine Nuovo), L’Ordine
Nuovo, 14 and 28 August 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 619–628; PPW , 178–
186.
Readings (Letture), Il Grido del Popolo, 24 November 1917, in CF , 451–455.
Towards a Renewal of the Socialist Party (Per un rinnovamento del partito
socialista), L’Ordine Nuovo, 8 May 1920, ON 1919–1920, 510-517; PPW ,
155–162, and New Left Review I/51, September–October 1968, 51–56.
A Return to Freedom, Avanti!, 26 June 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 105–108.
The Revolution Against “Capital” (La rivoluzione contro il “Capitale”), Avanti!,
24 December 1917, in CF , 513–516; SPW 1910–1921, 34–37 and PPW ,
39–42.
Russia and Europe (La Russia e l’Europa), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 November 1919,
in ON 1919–1920, 267–271.
84 G. VACCA
Russia, a World Power (La Russia, potenza mondiale), L’Ordine Nuovo, 14

August 1920, ON 1919–1920, 616–618.
The Sirens’ Song (‘Il canto delle sirene’), Avanti!, 10 October 1917, in CF ,
382–387.
The Socialists for Tariff Freedom (I socialisti per la libertà doganale), Il grido del
popolo, 20 October 1917, in CF , 402–405.
A Socialist Peace Programme? (Programma socialista di pace?) Il grido del popolo,
2 March 1918, in CF , 694–697.
Some Aspects of the Southern Question (Alcuni temi della quistione merid-
ionale), CPC, 137–158; SPW 1921–1926, 441–462.
The State and Socialism (Lo Stato e il socialismo), L’Ordine Nuovo, 28 June–5
July 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 114–130; PPW , 107–112.
A Study of the Italian Situation (Un esame della situazione italiana), in CPC,
113–124; SPW 1921–1926, 400–407 (Part I) and 408–411 (Part II) and
PPW , 288–300.
The Tasca Report and the Congress of the Turin Chamber of Labour (La
relazione Tasca e il congresso camerale di Torino), 5 June 1920 in ON
1919–1920, 538–542; SPW 1919–1920, 255–259.
Two Revolutions (Due rivoluzioni), L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 July 1920, in ON 1919–
1920, 569–574; PPW, 168–172; SPW , 305–309, and New Left Review I/51
September/October 1968, 45–48.
The Unity of the World (L’unità del mondo), sub-section of Vita politica inter-
nazionale [ii] L’unità del mondo, L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 May 1920, in ON
1919–1920, 19–20.
The War and the Colonies (La guerra e le colonie), Il grido del popolo, 2 April
1916, in CT , 255–258.
In What Direction Is the Soviet Union Developing (In che direzione si sviluppa
l’Unione Soviettista), L’Unità, 10 September 1926, in CPC, 319–323.
Wilson and the Socialists (Wilson e i socialisti), Il grido del popolo, 12 October
1918, in NM , 313–317.
Workers and Peasants, L’Ordine Nuovo, 2 August 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 156–
161; SPW 1910–1920, 83–88.
Workers and Peasants (La settimana politica [xv] Operai e contadini), L’Ordine
Nuovo, 3 January 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 376–378; SPW 1919–1920, 147–
149.
CHAPTER 2
The Nature of Passive Revolution
To the change in the way in which politics is conceived there corresponds

a change in the way history is analysed and in the Notebooks, in order to
go beyond a theory of history as the history of class struggles, Gramsci
introduces the concept of ‘passive revolution’. This expression occurs for
the first time in November 1930, but from the beginning of 1932, as the
drafting of the Special Notebooks proceeds, the concept of ‘passive revo-
lution’ can be considered a historiographical paradigm of the theory of
hegemony. Before examining its concrete applications, we need to attend
to the evolution of the concept as such.
1 Developments of the Concept

of ‘Passive Revolution’
The concept appears in paragraph 57 of Notebook 4, entitled ‘Vincenzo
Cuoco and the passive revolution’:
Vincenzo Cuoco called the revolution that took place in Italy as a reper-
cussion of the Napoleonic wars a passive revolution. The concept of passive
revolution, it seems to me, applies not only to Italy but also to those other
countries that modernize the State through a series of reforms or national
wars without undergoing a political revolution of a radical-Jacobin type.
Examine how Cuoco develops the concepts with regard to Italy. (Q4§57,
p. 504; PN Vol. 2, p. 232)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7_2
86 G. VACCA
Thus initially, the concept concerned only ‘the Age of Restoration’,

but it was immediately also applied to the Risorgimento because, for
Gramsci, that too is part of the cycle of European national wars which
developed as a ‘repercussion of the Napoleonic wars’. In Italy’s case, the
concept is closely linked to that of hegemony since, as we have seen,
Gramsci believed that the salient feature of the Risorgimento was the
Moderates’ ability to exercise lasting and complete leadership over the
democrats, limiting their initiative, decapitating them and absorbing their
cadres (Q8§36, pp. 862–864; PN Vol. 3, pp. 257–259).
It should be noted that already in March–April 1930, when analysing
the Age of Restoration, Gramsci had asked himself whether ‘this “model”
for the formation of modern states [could] repeat itself” in other condi-
tions. The concept of a ‘passive revolution’ was therefore thought of
here to answer a question concerning the relations between the Russian
Revolution and Europe. Gramsci’s response was problematic: it ‘can be
excluded’ he wrote ‘at least as far as its magnitude and large States are
concerned. But the question is of the greatest importance because the
French-European model has created a particular mentality’ (Q1§151,
p. 134; PN Vol. 1, p. 231).1 Thus we have further confirmation of the
fact that, from the start, the research of the Notebooks revolves around
pressing questions regarding Soviet Russia and the policy of the interna-
tional communist movement. It is indispensable to bear in mind the world
context of the concept of ‘passive revolution’ to understand its subse-
quent extensions, since it undergoes an evolution which runs parallel to
that of all the research developed in the Notebooks. In fact in February
1933, re-elaborating the note of April 1930, Gramsci answers that same
question affirmatively, asserting that the repetition of a process of ‘passive
revolution’ such as that of the Age of Restoration cannot be excluded
because ‘at least partially there can be similar developments in the form
of the appearance of programmed economies’ (Q10II§61, p. 1358; SPN ,
p. 115, translation modified).
In paragraph 25 of Notebook 8, entitled Risorgimento, and datable to
January–February 1932, Gramsci compares Cuoco’s formula with Edgar
Quinet’s thesis on the ‘equivalence of revolution-restoration in Italian
history’ and observes that both
1 This paragraph bears the title ‘The historical relation between the modern French
State created by the Revolution and the other modern European States’.
2 THE NATURE OF PASSIVE REVOLUTION 87
… express the historical fact that popular initiative is missing from the
development of Italian history, as well as the fact that “progress” occurs as
the reaction of the dominant classes to the sporadic and incoherent rebel-
liousness of the popular masses – a reaction consisting of “restorations”
that agree to some part of the popular demands. (Q8§25, p. 957; PN
Vol. 3, p. 252)
Hence ‘“progressive restorations”, or “revolutions-restorations” or

even “passive revolutions”’ (loc. cit.) are all possible. The concept assumes
a positive character: in the contemporary era, the ‘popular masses’ cannot
be ignored, even when they appear to be incapable of ‘historical initiative’,
while to conserve power, the ‘dominant classes’ must at least ‘partially’
incorporate their demands. In other words, the dominant classes cannot
continue to govern only by preserving what already exists, but must
become the promoters of innovation. The contents of this innovation
correspond in part to the demands of the ‘popular masses’, and are there-
fore of a ‘progressive’ nature. But this ‘progressive’ character is provided
by the old dominant classes, which thus innovate the form of their
domination by modifying the relations between the governors and the
governed, which also allows the latter to ‘progress’. While maintaining
the original formulation, created to underline absence of initiative of the
popular masses in the Risorgimento, the concept thence extends to the
historical process of the world, and aims at defining its morphology. But
with regard to Italian history, a more perspicuous formulation is achieved
in Notebook 15, datable to 1933, where Gramsci mentions as a hypoth-
esis what the Risorgimento might have been, had the Action Party put
the agrarian reform at the centre of its programme. In that case, he wrote,
‘the equilibrium which resulted from the convergence of the two men’s
activities [of Cavour and of Mazzini] would have been different, (and) the
Italian State would have been constituted on a less retrograde and more
modern basis’ (Q15§11, p. 1767; SPN , p. 108). It seems clear to me that
the evolution of the ‘passive revolution’ concept proceeds hand in hand
with that of the concept of ‘hegemony’ and with a definition of the State
as the framework of ‘a certain compromise equilibrium’ among classes
and social groups (Q13§18, p. 1591 and cf. also Q13§17, p. 1584; SPN ,
pp. 161 and 182 respectively). Therefore the concept not only acquires a
connotation that is shall we say objective, but also a broader general value.
Gramsci wrote in 1933 that ‘one may apply to the concept of passive revo-
lution (…) the interpretative criterion of molecular changes which in fact
88 G. VACCA
progressively modify the pre-existing composition of forces, and hence

become the matrix of new changes’ (Q15§11, p.1767; SPN , p. 109).
Thus formulated, the concept could embrace the entire modern epoch,
but to me it seems to correspond specifically to the characterization of
the period subsequent to 1870 (Q13§7, pp. 1566–1567; SPN , pp. 242–
243). At the level of world history, Gramsci appears to be referring to the
epoch immediately prior and subsequent to World War I, distinguished by
increasing interdependence (Q15§59, p. 1824; SPN , p. 106). So between
1930 and 1933 the elaboration of the concept of ‘passive revolution’
receives its maximum extension, and subsequent his historical specifica-
tions clearly manifest his intention to use it as an interpretive criterion
for post-war world history. The concept must serve to enquire into ‘how
within a given political shell, fundamental social relations change, and new
effective political forces arise and develop, which, with slow but inexorable
pressure, indirectly influence the official forces, which themselves change
without or almost without realizing it’ (Q15§56, pp. 1818–1819). It is
developed more in-depth in his analysis of the Risorgimento, but Gramsci
immediately adds that it is valid as an interpretive criterion ‘of every epoch
characterised by complex historical upheavals (…) in the absence of other
active elements to a dominant extent’ (Q15§62, p. 1827; SPN , p. 114). It
seems clear to me that he is thinking about world history in the Thirties,
given that from 1933, he suggests it should be used as the interpreta-
tive criterion for Americanism (Q10I [Summary] point 9, p. 1209, and
Q10I§9, pp. 1227–1229; FSPN , pp. 338 and 348–350, respectively),
fascism and Stalinism (Q13§27, p. 1619; SPN , p. 219).
It is not superfluous to recall once again that Gramsci is a ‘political
combatant’, not an academic historian, and when he writes about history
or historiography, he does so according to a political programme:
If writing history means making history of the present, the great book of
history is the one which in the present moment helps emerging forces to
become more aware of themselves and hence more concretely active and
effective. (Q19§5, pp. 1983–1984)
Furthermore, precisely in paragraph 62 of Notebook 15, which

summarizes the point of arrival of the development of the passive revolu-
tion concept—not by chance the paragraph is entitled ‘Past and present.
First epilogue’—he perceives the need to warn the reader: the passive
revolution concept contains the ‘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 dialec-
tical one—in other words, presupposes, indeed postulates as necessary, a
vigorous antithesis which can present intransigently all its potentialities
for development’ (Q15§62, p. 1827; SPN , p. 114). Therefore not only
is the submission of subaltern classes reversible, but the elaboration of the
concept has the aim of increasing their awareness of the reasons for their
subjection and preparing their liberation from it. As with the concept
of hegemony, we are in the ambit of a revision of Marxism elaborated
via a reinterpretation of Marx’s philosophy. Indeed the concept of ‘pas-
sive revolution’ is deduced from the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy, and while the concept of ‘hegemony’
is linked to the Marxian theory of ideology, that of ‘passive revolution’
arises out of the two other methodological canons contained in this text:
The concept of “passive revolution” must be rigorously derived from the

two fundamental principles of political science: 1) that no social formation
disappears as long as the productive forces which have developed within it
still find room for further forward movement; 2) that a society does not
set itself tasks for whose solution the necessary conditions have not already
been incubated, etc. (Q15§17, p. 1774; SPN , pp. 106–107)
Yet to apprehend the real extent of the innovation introduced with the
concept of ‘passive revolution’ we need first of all to compare the anal-
ysis of the history of Italy developed in the Notebooks with the outlines
contained in Gramsci’s writings prior to his arrest.
2 Gramsci’s Analysis of the History

of Italy, from the War to His Arrest
Gramsci’s first significant writing regarding the history of Italy is the
article ‘The Mezzogiorno and the War’, published on 10 April 1916
in Il Grido del Popolo. ‘The Mezzogiorno’ writes Gramsci ‘does not
need special laws or any special treatment. It needs a general policy,
both external and internal, inspired by respect of the general needs of
the country, and not by particular political or regional tendencies’. So
from the outset he frames the ‘southern question as a national ques-
tion’. Selecting this dualism as the paradigm of Italian history is not the
prelude to formulating ‘special’ programmes for the Mezzogiorno, but
90 G. VACCA
defines the historical problem of the Italian nation, which despite becoming
a unitary State remains territorially divided into a North and a South.
‘The newly-formed Italy had found in absolutely antithetical conditions
the two stumps of the peninsula that were being unified after more than
a thousand years’, but after Cavour’s policy was abandoned, both the
internal and the external policy of the new State aggravated this dualism:
‘Industrial protectionism raised the cost of living for the Calabrian peasant
without agricultural protectionism (…) being capable of re-establishing
the equilibrium’, while the colonial wars of the previous thirty years had
dissipated the remittances of emigrants, thus aggravating the public debt
problem, a historical legacy of unification. The Mezzogiorno was aban-
doned to great landed estates (latifundia), while industrial development
was concentrated in the North thanks to the ‘colossal profits’ of the war
industry. To govern Italian dualism, Gramsci concluded, it was necessary
first of all to abandon protectionism and secondly, to ‘ensure that the
war for so-called political liberty (…), instead of punishing Germany, too
strong and too well organized industrially to fear any harm, does not
instead strike that part of Italy whose redemption and elevation is always
the subject of so much lip service’ (‘The Mezzogiorno and the War’, CT
228–231).2
Consistent with this approach is his characterization of national polit-
ical forces, both the traditional ones (liberals and socialists), and those
that emerged shortly before or immediately after the war (the national-
ists and the Popular Party). Let us start with the socialists. The historical
function of Italian socialism is described in the article ‘Socialism and Italy’
(CF 350–351), published in Il Grido del Popolo on 22 September 1917.
While the liberal ruling class had made the North—South dualism perma-
nent, socialism had been the one unifying force of the nation, above all
because of its role in the realm of ideas:
Fifty years ago there was no such thing as an ‘Italian people’ – it was just
a rhetorical expression. There was no social unity in Italy then; there was
only a geographical unity. There were just millions of individuals scattered
throughout Italian territory, each leading his own life, each rooted in his
2 More in-depth research is needed on the influence upon this schema of Antonio Labri-
ola’s ‘fourth essay’, Da un secolo all’altro. Considerazioni retrospettive e presagi. Frammento
(From One Century to the Next. Retrospective Considerations and Presages. A Fragment ),
Labriola (1925, pp. 97–128) and of Labriola’s Storia di dieci anni (1975).
own soil, knowing nothing of Italy, speaking only his own local dialect,
and believing the whole world to be circumscribed by his parish boundary.
(…)
Italy has become a political unity, because a part of its populace has
united around an idea, a single programme. And socialism, socialism alone,
was able to provide this idea and this programme. Socialism has meant that
a peasant farmer from Puglia and a worker from Biella have come to speak
the same language; that, in spite of the distance that separates them, they
have come to express themselves in the same way when confronted by the
same problem and to arrive at the same judgement of men and events.
(‘Socialism and Italy’, CF , pp. 350–351; PPW , pp. 28–29)
The origin of the situation described resides in the fact that the bour-
geoisie of the Risorgimento was not an ‘economic class’, as in Great
Britain or the United States, but was weak, fragmented and corpo-
rativist owing to the ‘retarded’ capitalist development of the country.
Whence the authoritarian character of the State and protectionism, the
political projection of the ‘corporativism’ of the national bourgeoisie. In
two highly important articles of 5 and 21 December 1917, ‘Bourgeois
Reformism’ and ‘To Clarify Ideas on Bourgeois Reformism’, Gramsci
turned his attention to the Nationalist Party, founded in 1910, suggesting
a significant comparison with reformist socialism, since they seemed to
be mirror-image manifestations of ‘corporativism’—bourgeois the former
and working class the latter—united in their protectionism. But what was
novel about the nationalists was that they gave the Italian bourgeoisie a
unitary political conscience, in other words, for the first time, a party:
‘The development of nationalism in Italy’ he writes in the first article
‘has marked and continues to mark the rise of the bourgeois class as a
combative, conscious body’. Nevertheless
… the Italian bourgeoisie, in its development, had just reached the corpo-
rativist stage. The nationalists are the paladins of the “rights” of the
bourgeois corporations, which they make coincide with the “rights” of
the nation, just as many reformists identified a single category of workers
with the whole of the proletariat, for whom they tried to obtain benefits.
(‘Bourgeois Reformism’, CF , pp. 470–471)
The economic-corporative limit of the bourgeoisie derived from the

manner in which the unification process took place:
92 G. VACCA
The split between politics and economics is the greatest cause of the confu-
sion and the corruption of behaviour which have characterized the last fifty
years of Italian history. The bourgeoisie has had no backbone, no clear and
rectilinear programmes, because it was not a real class of producers, but an
assembly of shabby politicians
(…)
Economic nationalism—Gramsci concludes—thus performs the same
function in the bourgeois camp as reformism has performed in the prole-
tarian one. (‘To Clarify Ideas on Bourgeois Reformism’, CF , pp. 481–482)
During the post-war crisis Gramsci’s attention was concentrated on

Giolittism and on the eve of the general election of 18 November 1919
he dedicated ferocious articles to Giolitti’s so-called ‘Dronero speech’,
concentrating his fire on Giolitti’s justification of the neutralism with
which the elderly politician was attempting to legitimize his pursuit of
an accord with reformist socialism (‘A Chain of Scoundrels’, and ‘The
Defeat’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 242–245 and 250–253, respectively). Then
between 5 November and 8 November he wrote four articles for the
Piedmont edition of Avanti!, subsequently republished as a single piece
in L’Ordine Nuovo entitled ‘Behind Giolitti’s Scenario’, ON 1919–1920,
pp. 275–294. In the first two he accuses Giolitti, with his transformism,
of having paved the way for interventionist forces and nationalism.
Continuing his analysis, he targets the Giolittian ‘system’ (‘Giolittism’),
highlighting its anachronism, given that post-war Italy had neither the
economic margins nor indeed the international autonomy for reformist
experiments. But what attention must be drawn to is his comparison of
Giolitti and Cavour—a theme much loved by Giolittian propaganda—
because it enables us to begin to bring into focus Gramsci’s thought
on the Risorgimento. The first quality that he acknowledged in Cavour
was that he was a passionate politician: ‘Cavour’s youth was a passionate
youth, so full of idealistic motives as to be comparable without exaggera-
tion to that of his tenacious adversary Giuseppe Mazzini’. The second was
his profound knowledge regarding the capitalist development of his time:
‘all political, financial, economic and agricultural issues became material
for conscientious, continuous study during his entire lifetime, and the
social and political experiences of France and Great Britain found in him
a careful and intelligent observer, with the result that he created a truly
“cosmopolitan” culture for himself’. The latter combined with passionate
intuition: Cavour ‘easily gave into first impressions, he was impulsive (…)
and his first reactions lingered on, because they gave rise to a whole series
of reflections, research, and attempts which subsequently prepared medi-
tated and well-ordered action’. Finally, he underlined the fact that Cavour
‘freely approached parties other than his own, did not retreat from inter-
mediate solutions, nor disdain bargaining with his adversaries, yet in doing
this he was never inspired by a generic desire to gag the opposition, to
wear it down and to achieve senseless and servile unanimity, quite the
opposite. (…) From Cavourian politics the parties exited better defined
and more distinct while no politician of the time was thereby belittled’
(‘Behind Giolitti’s Scenario’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 290–291).
While the liberals and nationalists are accused of corporativism, the
birth of the Italian Popular Party (PPI) was hailed as a great progres-
sive event—as the birth of a ‘national’ party which, flanking the socialists,
favoured the development of the democratic nation with a backbone
provided by big popular parties. A little after Don Luigi Sturzo’s speech
in Milan, which heralded the founding of the PPI,3 Gramsci published a
long article in the Piedmont edtion of Avanti! containing one of the most
lucid and far-sighted analyses of his ‘early writings’. ‘That the Catholics
should constitute a political party’ he writes ‘is the greatest event of Italian
history after the Risorgimento’. The arguments underpinning so signifi-
cant a judgement led to a prediction that the PPI would be able to take
the Liberal Party’s place, thus offering the Italian bourgeoisie a modern
party of government. In the crisis of the liberal State ‘the cadres of the
bourgeois class break formation: domination of the State will be harshly
contested, and it cannot be excluded that the catholic party, thanks to its
powerful national organization concentrated in a few able hands might
achieve a victory in the competition for the lay liberal and conservative
strata of the bourgeoisie, who are corrupt, lack bonds of discipline in
ideas, lack national unity, and constitute a noisy hornet’s nest of lowlife
gangs and private interest cliques’. But even greater attention is deserved
by his evaluation of the historical process that led to the founding of the
PPI: in Gramsci’s opinion the emergence, with the birth of the unitary
State, of the Roman question, had had deleterious consequences:
3 Don Sturzo’s speech on ‘post-war problems’ was made on 17 November of 1918 in

Milan. On the process that rapidly led to the foundation of the PPI on 18 January 1919,
cf. De Rosa (1977, pp. 191–195).
94 G. VACCA
In the development of the new Italian national State a collaboration from

the religious spirit, from the ecclesiastical hierarchy, was absent. Had it
been present, it would have been the only one able to come into contact
with the innumerable individual consciousnesses of a backward and opaque
people, shot through with irrational and capricious drives, absent from any
struggle over ideals and economic issues possessing organic characters of
permanent necessity. Statesmen were tormented with the worry of devising
a compromise with catholicism, of subordinating the still aloof catholic
energies to the liberal State, and of obtaining some collaboration in the
renewal of the mentality of the Italians and of their unification, of giving
rise to or reinforcing national discipline through the religious myth. (The
Italian Catholics’, NM , p. 456)
In this way a reciprocal opportunism arose between Church and State

where the Liberal Party, with neither the will nor the strength to win
direct control over the peasant masses, condemned itself to decomposi-
tion into the particularistic ‘gangs’ and ‘interest cliques’ which Gramsci
had always denounced. No less important was the fact that the Roman
Church, mainly because of the effects of the war, was setting to work on
the authorization of a new catholic party. In the long term, secularization
had corroded the religious ‘myth’, but in the end, it was the war that
disintegrated it. Secularization had given birth to religious Modernism,
which the Church had thought itself capable of extirpating via an act
of authority. But the catholic world had continued to give modern,
economic and associational forms of organization to the rural popula-
tions, thus developing a de facto modernism with a much wider and more
incisive reach than the intellectual movement that the Church had wiped
out. Here, then, in a nutshell is Gramsci’s estimate of the significance of
the birth of the catholic party:
The religious myth, as the widespread consciousness that informs the activ-
ities and organisms of individual and collective life with its values, dissolves
– in Italy as elsewhere – and becomes a given political party. It becomes
laicized, gives up its universality, in order to become the practical will
of a particular stratum of the bourgeoisie which proposes, by conquering
State government, not only the preservation of its general class privileges,
but also the preservation of the particular privileges of its members. (‘The
Italian Catholics’, NM , p. 459)
Starting with this text, the nucleus of his historical judgement on

the Risorgimento comes through as highly articulated: ‘the absence of
Jacobinism’ in the bourgeoisie of the Risorgimento period, denounced
in the Notebooks, links the unsolved ‘peasant question’ to the unsolved
‘religious question’, the latter being divided in Italy into the ‘catholic
question’ and the ‘Vatican question’. At the same time it must be noted
that here, as in the Notebooks, although Gramsci exhibits a shrewd percep-
tion of the Church’s capabilities to ‘adapt’ to the modern world, for
him, revealed religion remains a ‘myth’, destined to be eliminated by the
advance of modernity, and the Church remains an anti-modern force.4
With the changing historical and political conjuncture, his opinion
about the ‘Popular Party’ underwent variations. Thus, around a year later,
when—with the Councils movement—Gramsci appears to be living the
‘actuality’ of a proletarian revolution in Italy and Europe, he published his
most famous article on the catholic movement, ‘I popolari’ (1 November
1919), in which he radicalizes the contrast between catholicism and
modernity. The article was written on the eve of the general election
and was conditioned by the electoral struggle. His historical assessment
is based on the same framework as the previous article, but it lacks
lucidity, becoming so to speak ‘exasperated’. Gramsci goes so far as to
affirm that the foundation of the Popular Party was equivalent to the
Lutheran Reform but represented, as did the Socialist Party, just ‘a neces-
sary phase in the process of the Italian proletariat’s development toward
communism’: it was, then, a conjunctural, transitory phenomenon. This
led him to make two utterly wrong predictions. The first concerns the
fate of political Catholicism as such: ‘Democratic Catholicism does what
socialism cannot not do: it amalgamates, orders, enlivens and commits
suicide’. The second refers to the political phase of the moment and
mechanically reflects the experience of the Russian Revolution: ‘The
Popular Party is to the socialists as Kerenskij is to Lenin’ (‘The Popu-
lars’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 272–274). Gramsci’s analysis resumes a more
thoughtful tone a few months later, when he again deals with the Popular
Party phenomenon in his reflection on the Italian State and in the article
of 11 February 1920, ‘Il potere in Italia’, he predicts that, following the
changes generated by the war, which had definitively subjugated industrial
4 Cfr. E. Fattorini (1999), ‘Gramsci e la storia della chiesa novecentesca’, in Vacca (Ed.),
Gramsci e il Novecento, pp. 145–156; id. (2008), ‘Gramsci e la questione cattolica’, in
Giasi (Ed.), Gramsci nel suo tempo, Vol. I, pp. 361–378.
96 G. VACCA
capitalism to financial capitalism, political Catholicism’s strong presence

in the banking system foreshadowed the Popular Party becoming the
Italian bourgeoisie’s future party of government (‘Power in Italy’, ON
1919–1920, p. 411).
1919 was also the year of the birth of the National Fascist Party and
Gramsci immediately identified its social base as the petty bourgeoisie:
‘The petty and middle bourgeoisie has emerged from the war with its
value enhanced. In the war and by means of the war, the capitalist appa-
ratus of economic and political government has become militarized (…)
To achieve this monstrous construction the State and the minor capitalist
organizations mobilized the petty and middle bourgeoisie’ entrusting
them with ‘the government of masses of men, in the factories, cities,
barracks, in the trenches at the front’ without their having matured the
technical and moral capabilities. After the war, these petty bourgeois
masses had no intention of returning to their previous life, nor did they
wish to renounce the economic and status privileges they had acquired
undeservedly. ‘They wish to continue to govern the masses of men’
and, identifying the impetuous growth of the Socialist Party as the main
obstacle to their ambitions, they turned their violence against the prole-
tariat: ‘they are organizng pogroms against the proletarians, against the
socialists, they are maintaining a regime of terror in the squares and the
streets’ (‘The Events of 2–3 December’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 351–352).5
Alongside the analysis of the political forces he continued his in-depth
study of the structure of society and the State. Thus, returning to a
Southernist approach to the history of Italy, in the article ‘Operai e
contadini’ (‘Workers and Peasants’) of 3 January 1920 he formulates two
fundamental theses: the idea that ‘the Northern bourgeoisie subjugated
southern Italy and the islands [reducing them] to exploitation colonies’;
and the idea, based on the example of the October Revolution, of an
alliance between workers and peasants as the pressure lever for a revolu-
tionary solution of the question (‘Workers and Peasants’, ON 1919–1920,
pp. 377–378; SPW 1910–1920, pp. 147–149). It should be remembered
that in this first reception of the ‘Russian experiment’, the sole protag-
onist of the solution of the problem is the Northern proletariat and the
expectation is that of its ‘dictatorship’.
5 The article analyses popular reaction to the monarchist nationalist paramilitary squads
against the socialist deputies who at the inaugural sitting of the 25th legislature had
demonstrated against the monarchy.
Another important theme is the relation between city and country-

side in the formation of the unitary State. In the article ‘La funzione
storica delle città’, of 17 January 1920, there is in fact a first examination
of the driving forces behind the Risorgimento and the complementary
leading role of Lombardy and Piedmont (‘The Historical Role of the
Cities’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 386–390; SPW 1910–1920, pp. 150–153 and
PPW , pp. 36–140). The analysis is strongly conditioned by his vision of
the Italian revolution as a proletarian revolution, but when the polemic
with Filippo Turati about comparing Parliamentarianism with the regime
of the Soviets6 exploded, Gramsci immediately delved deeper in his anal-
ysis of the unitary State, attributing its classist character to the enormous
imbalances between industry and agriculture at the moment of unification
(‘The Italian State’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 403–408; PPW , pp. 141–145).
Into this schema he inserts his judgement on the role of the Savoyard
monarchy, which with its conquest of Italy had extended to the new State
its traditional vision of power as ‘dynastic conquest’ (‘On the Centenary
of a King’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 461–463); but the first elements of his
subsequent vision of the Risorgimento as an exemplary case of a ‘passive
revolution’ also appear:
The people remained a passive, almost inert spectator, cheered Garibaldi,

did not understand Cavour, waited for the King to solve its problem,
the problem that beset them directly, that is the problem of poverty
and economic and feudal oppression. (…) The new kingdom arose from
the meeting of a dynastic interest with the interest of a shopkeeper class
(…) Unity, which was claimed to have been resolved, was negated in
its premises and was to be constantly contradicted in practice. (…) The
economic activity of the Northern bourgeoisie was put in order organ-
ically and systematically, and even the exploitation of the other parts of
Italy took on a systematic and organic form. (…) The crowning point of
this work was the protectionist tariff barrier which split the country in two
parts. (…) The people, the people who had believed and the people who
had remained a spectator, rebelled, and their rebellion, called brigandage
while in fact it was civil war, was cursed and fought in the name of unity
and the monarchical principle. (‘Monarchical Tradition’, ON 1919–1920,
p. 465)
6 Turati, commenting on a letter by Arturo Labriola in Critica Sociale of 16–31 January

1919, had asserted that the Italian parliamentary State was ‘to the republic of the Soviets
as was the city to the barbaric hordes’.
98 G. VACCA
For ease of exposition we have left to one side the subject of foreign
policy; yet it is perhaps more important than domestic policy because it
is inscribed within a vision of world history that is inspired, as we have
already seen (Chapter 1), by the global interdependence paradigm. The
conditionalities of the international context become ever more binding
for the life of nations and, qualitatively if not quantitatively, foreign
policy assumed a preponderant role in the analysis of the history of Italy.
Between 1919 and 1920 foreign policy was a crucial theme and first of
all, Gramsci turns his attention to the international changes due to the
war. We have already examined the question of the crises of national
sovereignty generated by the formation of the Anglo-American ‘bloc’ and
the consequences for Italy of the strangling of Germany. The other prob-
lems that Gramsci addressed in L’Ordine Nuovo concern the Balkan policy
and relations with Russia, protesting against the nationalistic foreign
policy of the senior ministers Sidney Sonnino and Vittorio Emanuele
Orlando. The Balkan projection of Italy’s foreign policy was inspired by
the ideas of Mazzini: equal international dignity, liberty, independence
and solidarity among all European nations. But it was also justified by the
economic needs of the country and the legitimate objective of exerting an
equilibrating function in the ‘Europe of nations’. The project for a Danu-
bian customs union, supported by France in an anti-German perspective
and opposed by Italy for equally nationalistic reasons, provided him
with the opportunity for the sarcastic article of 18 May 1920, ‘Pietà
per i venturi nipoti’, Gramsci’s criticism is ferocious because, with the
aim of exerting ‘imperialist’ influence in the Danubian and Balkan area,
Orlando’s government had increased the isolation of Italy enshrined in
the Treaty of Versailles. Gramsci observes that by ‘opposing the aspira-
tions of the Danubian peoples to join in a customs union, opposing the
national resurgence of Yugoslavia and Greece, Italy has come to find itself
completely isolated in the Mediterranean area’, while it should have been
making itself the paladin of the rights of the minor nationalities (‘Pity
on the Grandchildren of the Future’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 28–30). The
problem of relations with Russia was more complex. In this case his target
was the Orlando government’s adhesion to the coalition formed by Great
Britain, France, the United States and Japan to suffocate the republic
of the soviets. In June 1919, Orlando had supported recognition of the
counter-revolutionary government of Admiral Kolčak. Gramsci criticized
this decision harshly not only for the ideology underlying it but because
it ran counter to the geostrategic interests of Italy:
It would be in Italy’s vital interest for the Russian government of the

soviets to be consolidated, for the Red Army to demobilize and return
to the work of the fields and factories, for Russia’s grain harvest to reach
the Black Sea and be sold, for the Donbass mineral and coal fields to be
repopulated afresh with workers and for the possibility of raw materials to
be sold in order to reactivate our industries. (‘Kolčak and Orlando’, ON
1919–1920, pp. 95–96)
The problem of relations between Italy and Russia is less about the
Republic of the soviets and more about Russia as a great power, and
can be inscribed within a highly significant vision of relations between
Russia and Europe. Gramsci casts his gaze over the last two centuries and
develops a geopolitical argument centring on two categories—land and
sea. Joining the debate of the time, he sides with those who criticize the
supremacy of the powers that dominate the seas. Here we find the first
elements of the notion of ‘great power’ which, as we have seen, was to be
the basis of his concept of international hegemony; in addition, he asserts
that despite British ‘thalassocracy’, its maritime supremacy, Russia has
been the decisive power for European equilibria since the time of Peter
the Great. Peter had moved ‘the political axis of the North, by shifting
primacy over that northern Mediterranean which is the Baltic Sea, from
the Vasa ships of Sweden to the Romanovs of Russia’. Then, by opposing
Islamic power in the eastern Mediterranean, ‘and in the regions of the
major European rivers’ he had made Russia the dominant economic and
political power of ‘this new line of force, which extends from the Baltic
to the Black Sea’. Gramsci defines this as the ‘the line of internal seas,
which are indeed the vital lungs of the continent’. Since then, Europe
had been dominated ‘by the political and economic activity of the new
social body of modern Russia, and therefore the entire European polit-
ical and economic set-up had not ceased (…) to feel the influence of
this formidable new power, which acted and exerted pressure from the
east’. The validity of this analysis is proven by the decisive events of
European history, from the Seven Years’ War to the Napoleonic wars,
at the conclusion of which Russia had been the true arbiter of Euro-
pean equilibria. But if we look closer, Gramsci continues, this had also
happened in the Great War, since Russia’s function had been decisive both
at its beginning (‘without the Russian alliance, Great Britain would never
have undertaken the struggle’ against Germany), and at its end, since
‘only the Russian collapse determined America’s effective and positive
100 G. VACCA
intervention. And when the armed conflict was over, the Russian Revo-
lution took the place of the war as the decisive element in the present
European situation’. He concludes his analysis with the hypothesis that
the ‘Russian experiment’ might give rise to a historical cycle in Europe
comparable with the Age of Restoration. Observing the influence of the
Russian Revolution on the ‘proletariat of the Two Worlds’ and on Euro-
pean public spirit, Gramsci wrote: ‘Something similar took place in the
spirits of the European middle and cultured classes in reaction to the
events of revolutionary France, which marked the third estate’s attack on
the privileged orders and monarchical absolutism’ (‘Russia and Europe’,
ON 1919–1920, pp. 267–271).
∗ ∗ ∗
On 24 December 1920, the weekly Ordine Nuovo ceased publication.

The Turin edition of Avanti! inherited its masthead and Gramsci took
over as the editor of the new daily newspaper. From 1 January 1921,
when the paper started publishing, until his move to Moscow, the main
theme to which he devoted his attention was the analysis of fascism.
These writings have the merit of framing within a historical perspective a
new political phenomenon which during 1921, the year when the forces
supporting fascism’s taking of power coalesced, was proceeding in an
uncertain and febrile manner. These are real-time analyses, and we limit
ourselves to mentioning the elements that were destined to subsequent
development, but also underwent significant corrections.
The focus on fascism stabilized, in reality, at the end of 1920 and
the analysis of the new ‘political phenomenon’ was immediately grafted
onto the analysis of post-unitary Italy. In the article ‘Cos’è la reazione?’
of 24 November, fascism is considered a political movement which was
attempting to make the permanent use of squadrist violence ‘legal’ and
‘stable’, with the aim of disorganizing and subjugating the proletariat. But
even more significant is his opinion that fascism was grafting itself onto
the history of the unitary State in order to ‘restore’ its character of violent
and brutal ‘class dictatorship’, together with the ‘reactionary’ character it
had assumed ‘ever since the Italian government, after abandoning the
free trade programme of Cavour and of the old Right, [had] become
protectionist and “reformist”’, i.e. a direct expression of the capitalist
bourgeoisie which had been unable to ‘dominate the productive forces’
of the country. Thus his portrayal of ‘Giolittism’ as a more perfected form
of ‘transformism’ and ‘protectionism’ became more radical, with Giolitti

judged to be ‘the typical exponent of Italian reaction’. No less important
was the consideration that fascism was not only an Italian phenomenon
but represented an international tendency created by the fact that capi-
talism was no longer able to control productive forces at the world level.
Gramsci, all things considered, extracts from these phenomena an expla-
nation for the benevolence and open support of the State (magistracy,
army, police and bureaucracy) vis-à-vis the systematic use of squadrist
violence, such that the ‘armed militia’ becomes an ineliminable element of
fascism (‘What Is Reaction?’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 765–767). But this also
explains why Giolitti, instead of combating fascism, attempted to tame it
in order to bring the situation within the framework of the old liberal
order. The result was the cooperation of different forces in disintegrating
the State (‘The Force of the State’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 776–779).7
In analysing this process Gramsci looked for a structural explanation of
the fact, already mentioned, that the social base of fascism was the petty
bourgeoisie, and identified it in the loss of the petty bourgeoisie’s produc-
tive functions and its bureaucratization, as from the last decade of the
1800s. Thus within the social polarization that had developed after the
war the petty bourgeoisie was ‘attempting in all ways to conserve a posi-
tion of historical initiative’ by a ‘monkey-like imitation’ of the working
class; but the only role that it was offered was that of providing an armed
organization of a ‘private’ nature to defend agrarian, financial and indus-
trial capitalism. The fascist movement was thus a reaction against the
proletarian revolution, having deep roots in interventionism. In fact inter-
ventionism had been the first manifestation of petty bourgeoisie’s illusion
of gaining a role of its own by ‘killing off’ the class struggle, dividing
the working class from the peasantry and replacing the ‘socialist idea (…)
with a strange and weird ideological mixture of nationalist imperialism,
“true revolutionism” and “national syndicalism”’. Yet delegating fascism
to defend the capitalist classes made the crisis of the State unsolvable
and the political framework permanently unstable (‘The Monkey-People’,
SF , pp. 9–12).8 Comparison with the nascent fascism in Spain anticipates
the thesis that this form of reaction involves the ‘peripheral’ countries of
7 In this article Gramsci draws attention to the role of D’Annunzio, Giolitti and naturally
of fascism.
8 Gramsci, ‘Il popolo delle scimmie’. The title is a reference to the monkey people
(‘Bandar-log’) of The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, one of his favourite authors.
102 G. VACCA
European capitalism (‘Italy and Spain’, SF , pp. 101–103). In addition,

Gramsci interprets the first manifestations of ‘rassismo’9 as proof that
fascism itself could not be stabilized (‘Elemental Forces’, SF , pp. 150–
151). This theme is investigated more deeply in the article ‘I due fascismi’,
which analyses the dualism between rural and urban fascism, which had
burst upon the scene after Mussolini had shown willingness to collabo-
rate with the Bonomi government; the perception that agrarian capitalism
could not renounce squadrist violence induced Gramsci erroneously to
predict that the fascist party was destined to split (‘Two Fascisms’, SF ,
pp. 297–299; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 63–65). Consequently he underes-
timated Mussolini’s role, considering him an epiphenomenon (‘a will o’
the wisp’) of fascism rather its midwife (‘Reactionary Subversiveness’, SF ,
pp. 204–206; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 46–47; and ‘Between Reality and
Arbitrariness’, SF , pp. 300–302). Finally, underlining agrarian capital-
ism’s domination of finance, he considered rural fascism to be hegemonic,
maintaining that this is fascism’s true nucleus. Fascism is thus character-
ized as an ‘agrarian reaction’ and its need to destroy the legality of the
liberal State leads him to an early identification of its totalitarian vocation.
His analysis is however dynamic, just as the progress of fascism is fluid
within the changing political conjuncture and Mussolini’s manoeuvring.
His tendential equating of fascism with capitalism does not prevent
Gramsci from predicting the sweeping defeat of the Popular Party and
the Giolitti government (‘Legality’, SF , pp. 304–307; ‘The Agrarian
Struggle in Italy’, SF , pp. 311–313; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 66–67). The
next month, in an article ‘Parties and Masses’ of 25 September 1921,
he analyses the ‘constitutional crisis’ of the Socialist Party; the dynamics
of the political struggle in the preceding three-year period; the orien-
tations of the petty bourgeoisie, distributed within all the fundamental
political forces; and attributes importance to the defeat of the Coun-
cils movement, underlining that it had accelerated the gathering of petty
bourgeois ‘officialdom’ under the command of military power. He goes
on to provide an initial outline of the post-war crisis, later to be devel-
oped in the Notebooks as a crisis of the hegemony of the ruling classes,
9 The system of leadership of local fascist squads by a ‘ras’, a word used in Italian from
around the time of Menelik II’s anti-imperialist victory, and borrowed from the Ethiopian
title for a leader or dignitary.
i.e. an ‘organic crisis’ (Q13§23, pp. 1602–1613; SPN , pp. 210–218 [last
part on pp. 167–168]).10
Politically, the broad masses only exist insofar as they are organized within
political parties. The changes of opinion which occur among the masses
under pressure from the determinant economic forces are interpreted
by the parties, which first split into tendencies and then into a multi-
plicity of new organic parties. Through this process of disarticulation,
neo-association, and fusion of homogeneous entities, a more profound and
intimate process of decomposition of democratic society is revealed. This
leads to a definitive alignment of classes in conflict for the preservation or
conquest of State power and power over the productive apparatus. (‘Parties
and Masses’, SF , p. 353; SPW 1921–1926, p. 71)
This initial period of the analysis of fascism concludes with the article
published in La Correspondance Internationale on 20 November 1922,
when Gramsci had already been in Moscow for six months, in which he
comments on the success of the March on Rome. The principal causes
of the advent of fascism are identified in the fusion between industrial
capitalism and agrarian squadrist violence, and in the manner in which
the army was demobilized by Bonomi, who channelled the entire officer
class, discharged with four-fifths of their salaries, towards squadrist orga-
nizations. Fundamental events are the birth of the Confindustria (General
Confederation of Italian Industry) in March 1920, in reaction to the
occupation of factories and to prevent agrarian capitalism from gaining
the upper hand; the return of Giolitti and the formation of a new bloc
between industrial and agrarian capitalism, guaranteed by a reprise of a
policy of compromise with the ‘working-class aristocracies’ alongside the
legitimization of fascist violence (cf. reprint ‘The Mussolini Government’,
International Gramsci Journal, 1(3), 2011, p. 30).11
10 Gramsci gave this paragraph the title ‘Osservazioni su alcuni aspetti della struttura
dei partiti politici nei periodi di crisi organica’ (‘Observations on Certain Aspects of the
Structure of Political Parties in Periods of Organic Crisis’).
11 The original English translation is in International Press Correspondence (Inprecorr)
3(102), 1922: 824 (now republished online as indicated in the text). The Italian version
referred to is a retranslation into Italian from the French (La Correspondance Interna-
tionale, 20 November 1922) as ‘Le origini del gabinetto Mussolini’, SF , pp. 528–30.
There is also an English translation from the Italian, in turn retranslated from the French,
under the title ‘Origins of the Mussolini Cabinet’, SPW 1921–1926, pp. 129–131.
104 G. VACCA
∗ ∗ ∗
Gramsci returned to the analysis of fascism on the eve of his move to

Vienna, in the article ‘Il nostro indirizzo sindacale’ where he focuses
on a further basic element of his approach to fascism: the recognition
that fascism, while violently suppressing organizations that embody the
working class’s political and trade-union autonomy, within firms had
however allowed some of its representational interests to survive, with
the clear aim of incorporating them into the corporativist State (‘Our
Trade-Union Orientation’, CPC 1923–1926, pp. 3–7). But even more
significant seems the correction of a number of earlier opinions about
the responsibility of liberal forces for the coming to power of fascism
and about Mussolini’s political capabilities. Gramsci shifts the burden of
responsibility to the House of Savoy, and to socialist reformism, because
of its subalternity to the industrial bourgeoisie. Instead, he acknowledges
both in Bonomi, and in Nitti and Giolitti an authentic will to combat
fascism: in particular he acknowledges that Giolitti’s government had
an ‘antifascist’ inspiration that was thwarted by the Confindustria and
the Crown (‘Parlamentarismo e fascismo in Italia’, La Correspondance
Internationale, 23 December 1923, in CPC, pp. 517–520).12
During 1924 Gramsci followed the evolution of fascism and the atti-
tude of social and political forces towards it. In an article of his on 3
January, he analyses fascism’s failures up to that point in its attempt to
incorporate the industrial proletariat within fascist union organizations, at
the same time as underlining the importance of this attempt at incorpora-
tion of the proletariat within its own organizations after having destroyed
those of the socialists (‘Fascism: A Letter from Italy’, CPC, pp. 520–
522; International Gramsci Journal, 1(3), p. 31). Two months later, in
the letter of 1 March to Scoccimarro and Togliatti he draws attention to
the ‘bourgeois forces which are not letting themselves be “occupied”’ by
fascism, in part a reflection of the international situation, and underlines
the position of La Stampa, which was continuing to support a Giolit-
tian stance, and that of the Corriere della Sera, oriented towards Nitti
(Gramsci 1992, pp. 257–258; GTW , pp. 240–241). In these attitudes
12 The CPC version is retranslated from the French text published in La Correspondance
Internationale on 28 December 1923; English volumes of International Press Correspon-
dence are incomplete and this article is unfortunately missing from those we have been
able to consult in specialist libraries.
he perceives fascism’s difficulty in uniting the whole of the bourgeoisie

around itself by the use of violence and coercion (‘The Elections’, CPC,
pp. 162–165). He is particularly attentive to detecting the new power
system’s polyarchic structure and to tracking its dynamics. He calls atten-
tion to the Vatican of Pius XI: ‘Fascism, before attempting its coup d’état
had to come to an agreement with it’ but ‘it is said that the Vatican,
though highly interested in fascism’s taking power, sold at a high price’
its support, and as an example cites the rescue of the Banco di Roma
(‘Il Vaticano’, CPC, pp. 523–525).13 In Bonomi’s return to the fray, in
Turati’s rapprochement with Bonomi, and in the support given them by
the press ahead of the election, he sees the persistence of a significant
distinction among the forces gathered around the military General Staff,
and fascism (‘Bonomi and His Friends’, L’Ordine Nuovo, March 1924,
CPC, pp. 169–171). In an article of 15 March 1924, ‘Il Mezzogiorno
e il fascismo’, which we have already analysed (Chapter 1), he points
out that La Stampa and the Corriere della Sera ‘have not allowed them-
selves to be occupied’ by fascism because they represent ‘three categories
of national “institutions”: the ‘general staff of the army, the banks (or
rather the bank – the Banca Commerciale, which exercises an uncontested
monopoly), and the General Confederation of Industry’ (‘The Mezzo-
giorno and Fascism’, L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 March 1924; CPC, p. 172;
PPW , p. 261). On 17 April, commenting on the results of the elec-
tion, he realizes that Mussolini’s victory ‘will have many very notable
consequences. The new Chamber will assume a true and proper char-
acter of a fascist Constituent Assembly, but this means it will legalize
Fascism by reforming the National Constitution and by formally abol-
ishing the democratic liberties’ (‘The Results of the Elections in Italy’,
International Gramsci Journal, 1(3), p. 34).14 Finally having been elected
13 Gramsci’s article ‘The Vatican’, published in March 1924 is missing from the
collections of International Press Correspondence that we have been able to consult.
14 The original English translation, the extract of which is reproduced here verbatim
was first published in International Press Correspondence, 4(25), p. 231 and is somewhat
different from the retranslation from the French of La Correspondance Internationale,
which reads: ‘The new Chamber will seek to assume the nature of a Constituent Assembly,
to create a fascist legality, to abrogate the Statute and the democratic liberties’. Variations
in translation and editorial freedom in this journal lead to different versions of the same
original text transmitted for publication. The ‘Statute’ referred to by Gramsci is the one
granted in 1848 by Carlo Alberto of Savoy, king of Sardinia, which then became the
National Constitution when the unified Kingdom of Italy came into being in 1861.
106 G. VACCA
a deputy for the Veneto constituency, he returned to Italy and set in

motion the task of giving the party a new orientation and a new majority.
On 10 June, the assassination of Matteotti initiated fascism’s worst crisis
and Gramsci, formally party secretary from that Summer, faced his first
and greatest political challenge as leader. Spurred on by the develop-
ments in the Matteotti crisis, he began to systematize his reflection on
fascism and Italian history. Analysing a rapid surge of antifascist senti-
ment in public opinion, he identified the cause of fascism’s permanent
instability in the fact that the petty bourgeoisie fluctuated between the big
bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but at the same time he underlined the
fact that the crisis of fascism could not lead to a lasting democratic solu-
tion because, through its creation of the Voluntary Militia for National
Security (MVSN), fascism had definitively characterized itself as a state
organization ‘of armed forces operating directly on behalf of the capitalist
plutocracy and the landowners’ (‘The Crisis of the Petty Bourgeoisie’,
CPC, p. 27). As the Matteotti crisis progressed, the instability became a
crisis of fascism because ‘it has not merely failed to halt, but has actually
helped to accelerate the crisis of the middle classes initiated after the War’
and in Italy, given the ‘scanty development of industry’ and its ‘regional’
character, ‘not only is the petty bourgeoisie very numerous, but it is also
the only class which is “territorially” national’ (‘The Italian Crisis’, CPC,
p. 29; SPW 1920–1926, p. 256). Yet from Mussolini’s capacity to resist
the Aventine opposition Gramsci also deduced the PNF’s tendency to
emancipate itself from its dependence on big capital and to act according
to a logic of its own, with the sole aim of maintaining its hold on power
through the force of arms (‘The Fall of Fascism’, CPC, pp. 208–210;
SPW 1921–1926, pp. 273–275). After Mussolini’s speech in parliament
of 3 January 1925,15 Gramsci analysed the proposals for the new elec-
toral law, hypothesizing that Mussolini aimed to transform the National
Fascist Party (PNF) into a big conservative party so as to strengthen rela-
tions with the industrialists, and free himself from being conditioned by
the squadrismo movement. Almost all the elements of Gramsci’s analysis
15 A speech in which Mussolini, assumed ‘political, moral and historical responsibility’

for the climate in which the secretary of the reformist socialist party, Giacomo Matteotti,
had been assassinated in June of the previous year. That month, the majority of opposition
deputies withdrew from parliamentary work in protest, forming the ‘Aventine opposition’
referred to in the text.
of fascism that he developed after his return to Italy were initially system-
atized in the sole speech he made in the Chamber of Deputies (16 May
1925), in which he linked the crisis of the middle classes to the phases
that international capitalism was going through. The crisis was character-
ized by a deepening of the ‘general crisis of capitalism’ and harshened
stabilization policies. In Italy, as in Great Britain with the Conservative
government and in Germany with the Hindenburg presidency, the equi-
librium among the forces then in power shifted to favour agrarian reaction
while the middle classes were affected ever more seriously. This situa-
tion favoured the authoritarian turn of European political regimes and
Gramsci interpreted the draft bill on dissolving secret associations as proof
that the more fascism consolidated its power, the more it would incorpo-
rate freemasonry within its ranks; therefore the law’s real function was to
dissolve workers’ organizations (‘Origins and Aims of the Law on Secret
Associations’, CPC, pp. 75–84; Cultural Studies, 2007, 21(4/5), 779–
795). Over the years he had accumulated analytical elements that enabled
the identification of fascism’s tendency to transform itself into a regime.
Thus, in an article in L’Unità on 24 November 1925, he summed up
the evidence and delineated the salient features of a vision of the PNF
that communist tradition would sculpt into the formula of ‘a new type of
party of the bourgeoisie’, indicating in the creation of the corporativist
State the means for organizing and controlling the masses:
Fascism continues with ever greater determination to carry through its plan
of organic unification of all the forces of the bourgeoisie under the control of
a single centre (leadership of the Fascist Party, Grand Council and govern-
ment), and has achieved results in this sense which cannot be doubted.
(…) In the economic field, the plan of unification and centralization is
being accomplished through a series of measures which aim to guarantee
the unchallengeable supremacy of an industrial and land-owning oligarchy,
ensuring its control over the whole economy of the country (restoration
of the duty on grain; unification of banking; changes in mercantile law;
agreements for payment of debts to America, etc.). The second aspect of
fascist policy concerns the repression that is exercised upon the workers,
in order to prevent any kind of organization of their forces and to exclude
them systematically and permanently from any participation in political life.
(‘Elements of the Situation’, CPC, pp. 86; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 306–307)
In this regard Gramsci cites the law on trade unions, the law on associa-
tions, at this point already approved by the Senate, the introduction of the
108 G. VACCA
podestà 16 in rural communes, together with the designation of ‘municipal

consultative bodies’ by the corporations and the exclusion of ‘subversives’
from municipal councils in cities (loc. cit.).
His interpretation, matured over a decade, of the history of Italy
from unification to fascism is then summed up in the congress docu-
ment of the new majority entitled ‘La situazione italiana e i compiti
del PCI’ (‘The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the PCI’), drafted
with Togliatti in August 1925 (known as the Lyon Theses). Since this
is a political document, the analysis is highly simplified, and its salient
points are a Southernist approach and the place of fascism in Italian
history. The key word is ‘compromise’. Unification of the country had
resulted not in a capitalist development that physiologically required the
creation of a national market, but in Piedmont’s ability to exploit ‘fac-
tors of international politics (so-called Risorgimento)’ (SPW 1921–1926,
p. 344). As a consequence, the ‘structure of Italian society’ arose out
of an initial compromise between the industrialists of the North and the
great landowners of the Mezzogiorno, and was conditioned by the appro-
priate economic policy, i.e. protectionism. The only resource the country
had at its disposal in abundance was its agricultural population. Protec-
tionism aimed to exploit it by going to extremes, but this hindered the
spread of industrial development, blocked the Mezzogiorno’s develop-
ment and made permanent the problem of the budget deficit inherited
from the creation of the unitary State. The North–South dualism thus
became permanent and the Mezzogiorno assumed the role of an internal
‘colony’. This made the country’s unity intrinsically precarious and weak-
ened its international standing. The industrialist-landowner ‘compromise’
was of a corporativist character, and acted first for one and then for the
other on the basis of the relative predominance of either industrial or
financial capitalism, but never in the interests of the country. Further,
since industry and agriculture were not in competition with each other,
there was also little chance of any turnover in the ruling classes. However
the principal weakness of the unitary State stemmed from the dominant
classes’ need to prevent permanently any autonomous organization of the
working classes, which imbued the State with a marked authoritarian char-
acter. This happened above all during the Crispi decade, during which ‘the
bourgeoisie boldly tackled the problem of organizing its own dictatorship,
16 The person nominated to substitute the democratically elected council.

and resolved it through a series of political and economic measures which

determined the subsequent history of Italy’. The beginning of a colo-
nialist foreign policy which strengthened the protectionist compromise
between industrialists and landowners, offered the prospect of external-
izing development problems, and restricted ‘the right to vote, so reducing
the electorate to little more than one million voters out of a population
of 30 million’ (‘The Italian Situation’, CPC, p. 493; SPW 1921–1926,
p. 347).
The Vatican’s opposition and its ideological control over the peasant
masses were a fundamental factor in the weakness of the State. Crispi’s
policy ‘prised away’ from the Vatican one part of the forces that ‘it had
gathered around itself, especially the landowners in the Mezzogiorno’.
The competition that ensued induced the Church to modernize17 and
the liberal ruling classes to react by ‘giving themselves a unitary organiza-
tion with an anticlerical programme, in the form of freemasonry’ (loc.
cit.). It was a decade of development, in which for the first time the
‘Southern question’ gave rise to an explosive manifestation in the ‘Fasci
siciliani’ episode.18 Capitalist development and the pressure of the masses
(the PSI was founded in 1892 and the Confederazione Generale del
Lavoro [CGdL] shortly afterwards) assisted Giolittian ‘reformism’ which
however did not solve, indeed worsened the country’s structural prob-
lems—North–South dualism and the lack of mass bases for the State.
Industrial and agrarian concentration sparked a huge growth of the agri-
cultural proletariat and the development of socialism alarmed the Vatican
which, in order ‘not to lose control of the masses’, founded Catholic
Action, abolished the non expedit 19 and supported the Gentiloni pact,
i.e. an agreement with the liberal ruling classes.
This system of compromises and equilibria was overturned by the war,
which generated ‘the greatest economic concentration in the industrial
field’ (‘The Italian Situation’, cit., CPC, p. 494; SPW 1921–1926, p. 348)
and a new subjectivity of the masses. The awakening of the peasant masses
17 An obvious reference to the Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891.
18 The ‘Fasci siciliani di lavoratori’ were Sicilian workers’ organizations that came into
being on a democratic, libertarian and socialist basis mainly among the urban, rural and
sulphur-mining proletariat in the early 1890s.
19 The Vatican, refusing to recognize the unitary Italian State, decreed that it was ‘not
expeditious’ for catholics to vote in national political elections; the ban did not however
extend to local elections.
110 G. VACCA
convinced the Vatican to authorize the birth of the PPI. The situation
seemed to favour a ‘reformist’ solution to the post-war crisis.
But in a poor and disunited country like Italy, the appearance of a

“reformist” solution to the problem of the State inevitably provokes a
disintegration of the cohesion of State and society; for this cannot resist
the shock of the numerous groups into which the ruling classes them-
selves and the intermediate classes fragment. (‘The Italian Situation’, CPC,
pp. 494–495; SPW 1921–1926, p. 349)
In this situation the defeat of the Factory Councils movement in 1919–

1920 favoured the coming of fascism:
The victory of fascism in 1922 must be seen, therefore, not as a victory

won over the revolution, but as a consequence of the defeat suffered by
the revolutionary forces through their own intrinsic weakness. (‘The Italian
Situation’, cit., CPC, p. 495; SPW 1921–1926, p. 349)
Fascism ‘fitted into the framework of traditional Italian ruling-class

polices’, but ‘the fact that it found an ideological and organizational
unity in the military formations in which wartime tradition lives again
(arditismo)’ (…) has allowed fascism to conceive and carry out a plan
of conquest of the State, against the old ruling strata’. ‘The new cate-
gories which are regrouped around fascism however [petty bourgeoisie
and the agrarian capitalism of the post-war Po Valley] derive from their
origin a homogeneity and a common mentality of “nascent capitalism”’,
and this explains fascism’s antiliberal ideology and the replacement of the
old tactic of equilibria and compromises by the ‘project of realizing an
organic unity of all the bourgeoisie’s forces’ (‘The Italian Situation’, CPC,
p. 495; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 349–350). Yet this aggravated the coun-
try’s division, highlighted also by the suppression of the Southern banks,
and generated potential opposition to fascism of the entire Mezzogiorno.
Finally,
All the ideological propaganda and the political and economic activity
of fascism are crowned by its tendency to “imperialism”. This tendency
expresses the need felt by the industrial/landowning ruling classes of Italy
to find outside the national domain the elements to resolve the crisis of
Italian society. It contains the germs of a war which in appearance will
be fought for Italian expansion, but in which fascist Italy will in reality
be an instrument in the hands of one of the imperialist groups which are

striving for world domination. (‘The Italian Situation’, CPC, p. 497; SPW
1921–1926, p. 352)
The analysis of fascism evolved significantly during 1926 in relation

with what the Comintern and Gramsci himself considered an acceleration
of capitalism’s ‘general crisis’, and culminated in the report of 2–3 August
to the party Executive dedicated to an examination of the Italian situation.
As we have already seen (Chapter 1), Gramsci believed that the ‘rela-
tive stabilization’ of capitalism was about to end and he here introduces
a differentiation among capitalist States based on the centre–periphery
paradigm. With Italy classified among the ‘peripheral capitalist’ coun-
tries, the superabundance characteristic of the middle classes increased
fascism’s instability because the crisis of the petty bourgeoisie represented
the epicentre of the ‘general crisis’ of Italian society. The crisis of the
middle classes was precipitating because of the centralization of capitalist
power pursued by fascism and its economic policy. Gramsci’s analysis of
fascism thus becomes more detailed. He introduces the theme of the
external constraint on the Italian economy, which was being asphyxiated
by the policy of allowing the lira to appreciate; this was being pursued
for reasons of international policy (fascist Italy’s prestige in Europe), and
in deference to financial capital, which at this point Gramsci considers
to be the branch of capitalism that was tendentially dominating the
entire economy. Further, he examines the cut-throat conditions for the
American loan, which Mussolini’s government had contracted without
guarantees in order to liquidate the war debt, concluding that Italy has
been turned into an American vassal-State. Further impacts were due to
the block on transoceanic emigration and the collapse of tourism. Gramsci
asked himself whether given such a situation, fascism could take the path
of ‘high politics’: in other words whether, given the scarce impact of
exports in the Italian economy it had the option of going towards indus-
trial development and a strengthening of its production base and domestic
market. This he ruled out, because of the scarcity of raw materials and
the country’s technological backwardness, while increased imports of raw
materials and machinery would create inflationary tensions which Italian
capitalism, based on low wages and low consumption, would not be
able to stand. He then goes on to examine the strategic differentiations
surfacing within fascism, identifying the two fundamental ones as being
the line of the nationalists and the Crown, on the one hand, and that of
112 G. VACCA
the party on the other. Of the former he highlights the plan to liquidate
the PNF or at least to neutralize it, by making fascism coincide with the
State, with Catholic Action acting as its mass base. The corollary of this
strategy was the solution of the ‘Roman question’. The party’s strategy
instead corresponded to pressure from its petty bourgeois base and aimed
to weld the party totally to the State. The upshot of this tendency might
be an exasperation of nationalism and of fascism’s ‘imperialist’ vocation
(‘A Study of the Italian Situation’ [Part I], CPC, pp. 113–120; SPW
1921–1926, pp. 400–411).20
Until the summer of 1926 his analysis of the history of Italy was mainly
based on the materialistic conception of history, that is to say, on a ‘class
analysis’. Moreover, his vision of fascism was determined by his conviction
of its instability. As we saw in the previous chapter, this schema started
to crumble in the essay on the Southern question, but its coordinates
would change profoundly only in the Notebooks, thanks to the introduc-
tion of the concept of ‘passive revolution’, which enabled him to elaborate
an organic vision of Italian history, and to revise many of his previous
opinions.
3 Liberal Italy and Fascism in the Notebooks

In the Prison Notebooks the history of Italy is an integral part of European
history, and so the analysis of the Risorgimento, of liberal Italy and of
fascism proceeds from this ‘nexus’. As we have already seen (Chapter 1),
the study of the history of nineteenth century Italy became one of the
principal themes of Gramsci’s research programme following his arrest.
Whereas prior to the Notebooks his writings provide no overall analysis
of the Risorgimento, in the Notebooks he develops one in a wide-ranging
manner, collecting his results in a ‘special’ notebook (Q19) which gathers
together the results of a more than five-year interaction with Raffaele
Ciasca’s volume, L’origine del ‘Programma per l’opinione nazionale ital-
iana’ del 1847 –48, with Adolfo Omodeo’s L’età del Risorgimento, with
Gioacchino Volpe’s L’Italia in cammino and with Croce’s ‘two histories’:
20 Part I of the preliminary text for Gramsci’s report, A Study of the Italian Situation,
to the PCI Executive Committee of 2–3 August 1926; this part was first published in Lo
Stato Operaio, March 1928 while Part II saw the light only in Rinascita, 14 April 1967.
La Storia d’Italia dal 1871 al 1915 and the Storia d’Europa nel secolo
decimonono.21
The ‘loose notes’ and ‘jottings’ that he made each day soon ended
up in a ‘monographic’ interpretation of the Risorgimento sketched out
in paragraphs 43, 44 and 150 of Q1 (December 1929–May 1930).
These allow us to shed light on the epistemological depth of the ‘passive
revolution’ concept and its heuristic effectiveness.
A first sign of the innovation that sprang from combining the concepts
of ‘hegemony’ and ‘passive revolution’ can be seen in the changes to the
titles and collocation of those notes in the subsequent drafts of Q19 and
Q10. In Q1§43 the heading was ‘Types of Periodicals’. The re-elaborated
parts of Q19§26 are instead entitled ‘The City-Country Relationship
during the Risorgimento and in the National Structure’ (SPN , pp. 90–
102). Even more significant is the difference between the headings of
Q1§44 and of Q19§24: in the first draft the heading was ‘Political Class
Leadership before and after Assuming Government Power’ (PN Vol. 1,
pp. 136–51), in the second ‘The Problem of Political Leadership in the
Formation and Development of the Nation and the Modern State in Italy’
(SPN , pp. 55–84). Finally, Q1§150 was entitled ‘The Conception of the
State from the Standpoint of the Productivity [Function] of the Social
Classes’ (PN Vol. 1, pp. 229–230), while in the subsequent draft, the
text is incorporated into the final paragraph of Q10§61, entitled ‘Mate-
rial for a Critical Essay on Croce’s Two Histories, of Italy and of Europe’
(SPN , pp. 115–118). But before we analyse the variants more closely,
we should observe that these modifications bear witness to a progres-
sively more nuanced historiography compared to his original approach,
which had been faithful to the materialistic conception of history (the class
standpoint). This is not only a symptom of a more detached attitude, of
the progression of thought that is less influenced by an immediate polem-
ical urgency and is aimed at lasting analytical results. It is a sign that the
‘passive revolution’ concept introduces a very real paradigm shift. This is
apparent above all in Q19§24, which contains the point of arrival of his
21 The book by Ciasca, published in 1916, was in Gramsci’s possession before his arrest;
he requested it from Tanja during his preventive arrest on Ustica and second time after he
had started writing the Notebooks, so it was in his possession again; L’Italia in cammino
is among the books that Gramsci had with him in the San Vittore prison; he had the
1931 third edition of Omodeo’s book with him in prison; and had the 1928 edition of
Croce’s Storia d’Italia and the 1932 second edition of Storia d’Europa.
114 G. VACCA
interpretation of the Risorgimento. Different from the first draft, Gramsci

starts from the ‘connection’ between the various political currents of the
Risorgimento and describes their ‘relations with each other’ and ‘their
relations with the homogenous or subordinate social groups existing in
the various historical sections (or sectors) of the national territory’ (SPN ,
pp. 55–56). In other words, he intends to demonstrate that the Risorg-
imento had not been the work of one side alone, but the result of a
struggle and a correlation of forces: the concept of ‘passive revolution’
serves to explain why the moderates and not the democrats got the upper
hand.
As we have seen (Chapter 1), the concept of hegemony presumes that
the subordinate social groups recognize the leadership exercised by the
dominant social groups. This implies a more or less ample degree of
consent guaranteed by the reversibility of the given relations of power.
Gramsci intends to clarify upon which ‘compromise equilibrium’ the
unitary State had been constructed. The independence and the unity of
Italy undoubtedly have a progressive value, but the manner in which the
hegemony of the Moderates was obtained explains the negative aspects of
subsequent Italian political life.
Indeed the ‘gradual but continual absorption (…) of the active
elements produced by allied groups – and even of those which came from
antagonistic groups’, into ‘an ever more extensive ruling class within the
framework established by the Moderates after 1848’ (Q19§24, p. 2011;
SPN , pp. 59 and 58 respectively) had been the origin of ‘transformism’.
But this criticism does not have the recriminatory flavour of a political,
and less still moral, denunciation. Its aim is to highlight the fact that the
supremacy of the moderates had been so crushing as to distort their own
hegemonic function over time, since hegemony had transformed itself
into domination and this had deformed the life of the State and of the
nation. In fact for Gramsci, the exercise of hegemony requires acknowl-
edgement of the adversary’s arguments, otherwise it weakens or loses a
fundamental prerequisite. The fall of the historic Right, Gramsci writes,
meant that reciprocity among the forces in the field was lost and ‘political
leadership became merely an aspect of the function of domination – in
as much as the absorption of the enemies’ élites means their decapita-
tion, and annihilation often for a very long time’ (loc. cit.). But if the
epilogue of the Risorgimento was transformism, Gramsci had no inten-
tion of blaming the Moderates. On the contrary, to them he attributes
the merit of having been capable of removing, with the strength of their
ideas, even the theocratic foundation of Vatican policy, which constituted

the greatest obstacle ‘to the possibility of a unitary Italian State’:
That the liberal movement succeeded in arousing the catholic-liberal force

and managed to get Pius IX to put himself – albeit for a short time – on
the terrain of liberalism (which was enough to disintegrate the political-
ideological apparatus of catholicism and take away its self-confidence) was
the political crowning point of the Risorgimento and one of the most
important points in disentangling the old knots that up to then had
impeded any concrete thought of the possibility of a unitary Italian State.
(Q19§3, p. 1967)22
It would be interesting to investigate to what extent the misunder-

standing of the concept of passive revolution,23 both by his admirers and
his detractors, has contributed to ascribing to Gramsci an interpretation
of the Risorgimento as an ‘agrarian revolution manqué’. I believe that
neglect of that concept delayed comprehension of the fact that Gramsci’s
criticism was directed towards the democrats rather than the Moderates:
‘If in Italy a Jacobin party was not formed, the reasons are to be sought
[…] in the relative weakness of the Italian bourgeoisie and in the different
historical climate in Europe after 1815’. In 1848 the ‘spectre’ of commu-
nism was in the air and the ‘bourgeoisie could not (perhaps) extend its
hegemony further over the great popular strata – which it did succeed in
embracing in France’ (Q19§24, p. 2032; SPN , p. 82). In other words,
the agrarian question was no longer a theme of Jacobin reforms, but an
integral part of proletarian policy. Moreover Austria was taking advan-
tage of the agrarian reform ‘to incite the peasants against the patriotic
landowners’ and therefore ‘the conservative liberals (…) were attempting
only to win the sympathies of the artisans and the few working-class nuclei
in the cities’ (Q19§5, p. 1986).24 But this urban corporative limit was
shared by the democrats; in fact Mazzini was addressing the same social
22 Cf. F. Traniello (2007), Dal Risorgimento al secondo dopoguerra, Bologna: Il Mulino,

pp. 157–178.
23 Cf. G. Vacca, Gramsci interprete del Risorgimento: una presenza controversa (1949–
1967), in Farsi italiani. La costruzione dell’idea di nazione nell’Italia repubblicana, Atti
del Convegno ‘La nazione vissuta, la nazione narrata’, Cortona, 2–4 December 2010: A.
Bini, C. Daniele, S. Pons (Eds.), Milano: Feltrinelli (2011), pp. 67–108.
24 Gramsci also recalls here that ‘the General Association of Workers of Turin numbered
Cavour among its founders’.
116 G. VACCA
base and the only person who intuited the importance of the agrarian
question was Carlo Pisacane (Q19§24, p. 2016; SPN , p. 65).25 Besides,
Gramsci did not think that the democrats, by calling on the peasant
masses to act, would have been able to lead the Risorgimento; instead
he believed—as we have seen in writings from before the Notebooks —that
if they had done so, the ‘compromise’ of the Risorgimento would have
been realized on more advanced bases (Q15§19, p. 1776; cf. Carlucci,
2014, p. 21 and note 119, p. 50).
Therefore the fundamental reasons why the leadership of the Risorg-
imento was firmly in the hands of the Moderates can be obtained from
the way Gramsci interprets their ‘European nexus’, from consideration of
the role played by Piedmont, and lastly from the ideological content of
the Moderates’ hegemony. The Risorgimento took place during the Age
of Restoration. In polemic with Omodeo, Gramsci argues that ‘from a
European viewpoint, it is the age of the French Revolution, not of the
Italian Risorgimento, of laissez-faire liberalism as a general conception
of life and as a new form of State and cultural civilization, and not only
of the “national” aspect of liberalism’ (Q19§2, p. 1961). Re-elaborating
Q1§150 and inserting it into Q10§61, he defines the Age of Restora-
tion as the exemplary cycle of passive revolutions. All the ‘modern States
of continental Europe’ which came into being during that period were
formed ‘by “successive waves” of reform (…) made up of a combination
of social struggles, interventions from above of the enlightened monarchy
type, and national wars – with the latter two phenomena predominating’.
This had allowed the bourgeoisie to ‘to gain power without dramatic
upheavals’, without any need of Jacobin terror, and if it had had to
come to terms with ‘the old feudal classes’, they had been ‘demoted from
their dominant position to a “governing” one’ (Q10II§61, p.1358; SPN ,
p. 115). The Italian Risorgimento was one of the last episodes of the
period; therefore the ruling class could only have been the liberal bour-
geoisie. Moreover, political direction of the unification process had been
in the hands of a State, not a ‘social group’, not the bourgeoisie, but Savo-
yard Piedmont; and this, Gramsci underlines, had given rise to its own
peculiar form of ‘passive revolution’, both because the delegation of lead-
ership to Piedmont was a consequence of the particularistic character of
25 The writings of Marx and Engels were an important influence on Gramsci’s approach:
cfr. F. Giasi, ‘I giudizi di Marx and di Engels sul Risorgimento e la loro fortuna’, in F.
Rocchetti (Ed., 2011), pp. 43–60.
the bourgeoisie existing in the various States of the peninsula, and because
one State’s urge to play the leading role, a State endowed with a dynasty,
an army and a diplomatic corps, had given an authoritarian character to
the ‘historical bloc’ of the Risorgimento: ‘the fact that a State replaces
the local social groups in leading a struggle of renewal […] is one of the
cases in which these groups have the function of “domination” demoted
from their dominant position to a “governing” one without that of
“leadership”: dictatorship without hegemony’ (Q15§59, p. 1823; SPN ,
pp. 105–106). Finally, the Moderates had unchallenged influence over the
democrats since, after 1848, ‘independence and unity’ had become the
shared objectives of all the forces of the Risorgimento, and therefore also
oriented the action of the democratic intellectuals (Q19§20, pp. 2006–
2007). To conclude, ‘[i]n any case Cavour acted eminently as a party
man. Whether in fact his party represented the deepest and most durable
national interests, even if only in the sense of the widest extension which
could be given to the community of interests between the bourgeoisie
and the popular masses, is another question’ (Q19§24, p. 2034; SPN ,
p. 84).
Gramsci warns that the ‘criteria’ ‘for investigating the respective polit-
ical “wisdom”’ of the Moderates and the democrats were obtained from
‘the analysis of certain elements of Italian history after unity’ (Q19§24,
pp. 2023–2024; SPN , p. 74). The need to explore the history of the
Risorgimento in greater depth stems from the need to understand the
origins of fascism better; let us see then how he reassesses the figures
of Crispi and Giolitti. Of Crispi’s period, he no longer limits himself to
criticizing the protectionism and anachronistic colonialism, but justifies
them, because they were consequent on the progressive aim of acceler-
ating the North’s industrial development. Crispi’s characteristic trait was
his unitary ‘obsession’, shared by the greatest Southern intellectuals of
the Risorgimento. Thus the true objective of his exasperated tariff protec-
tionism was the creation of a strong industrial base that could make Italy
more independent of international conditioning. Crispi, writes Gramsci,
‘did not hesitate to plunge the South and the Islands into a terrifying
commercial crisis, so long as he was able to reinforce the industry which
could give the country a real independence and which would expand the
cadres of the dominant social group’; this decision appears to be justified
because ‘it is the policy of manufacturing the manufacturer’, unlike that
of the historic Right which had ‘merely, and timidly, created the general
external conditions for economic development’. Despite the price paid by
118 G. VACCA
the Mezzogiorno, Gramsci recognizes that ‘Crispi gave the new Italian
society a real heave forward: he was the true man of the new bourgeoisie’
(Q19§24, pp. 2017–2018; SPN , p. 67).
In a more reflective vision of the history of Italy, less conditioned
by anti-Giolittian polemics and the struggle against fascism, Gramsci is
thus able historically to justify not only protectionism but also, to some
extent, Crispi’s colonial policy, because although Crispi had been unable
to give land to the peasants, he had involved them in the unification
of the country with the mirage of the colonies. Gramsci’s change of
mind extends to Giolitti, whom he considers to have continued Crispi
with ‘some corrections’ regarding economic and colonial policy (Q19§24,
pp. 2018–2019; SPN , pp. 67–69). His picture of Giolitti appears rather
bland compared with that of Crispi, but the virulence of his post-war
writings gives way to a more balanced judgement.
Crispi’s merits regarding the Mezzogiorno are instead the result of
a heterogenesis of ends. Industrial growth in the North had made the
‘misery’ of the rural masses of the Mezzogiorno incomprehensible to the
urban classes and fed the stereotype of the Southerners’ ‘biological infe-
riority’, which had been popularized by positivist sociology. It was not
the last among the reasons for neoidealist reaction, and for its influence,
which spread rapidly all over the country among the new generations of
a liberal and democratic orientation. With a noteworthy change of posi-
tion compared with ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question’, Gramsci
acknowledges that Croce and Fortunato had the merit of attempting ‘to
pose the Southern Question as a national problem capable of renovating
political and parliamentary life’ (Q19§24, pp. 2022–2023; SPN , p. 72),
and downplays his accusation that they detached the petty bourgeois
intellectuals of the Mezzogiorno from the peasant masses. This outcome
is instead attributed to Giolitti’s policy, which used State machinery to
support ‘ascarism’, that is, Giolitti’s control over the liberal deputies of
the Mezzogiorno, while Croce and Fortunato were blocked by a ‘fetishist
conception of unity’ (Q19§26, pp. 2038–2039; SPN , p. 95). This seems
to us a particularly significant change of opinion: it can be framed within
more general reflection on the centres of political leadership of the
intellectuals: compared with his position in the essay on the ‘Southern
question’, he retrenches the role of ‘great intellectuals’. His change of
opinion is due to the development of the theory of hegemony, which led
him to explain the moderates’ political supremacy in the Risorgimento by
the fact that, unlike the democrats, they were ‘condensed intellectuals’.
Extending this approach to liberal Italy, the function of Croce and Fortu-
nato comes over as organic to Giolitti’s policy and subordinate to his
leadership. Instead, in the essay on the ‘Southern Question’, Croce and
Fortunato were the hegemonic figures of the Giolittian bloc and inas-
much as they were ‘great intellectuals’, they appeared to be superordinate
to it. This representation suffered from the limits of the traditional soci-
ology of the intellectuals, which Gramsci had removed from his research
programme in the Notebooks (Q19§26, p. 2041 and Q19§27, pp. 2046–
2047; SPN , pp. 93 and102–103, respectively).26 In conclusion, his vision
of Risorgimento and post-unitary Italy becomes more balanced. Recon-
sidering the ‘Southern initiative’ both in the Risorgimento and in the
political struggles of unified Italy, Gramsci now asserts that ‘the relative
synchronism and simultaneity’ between the political dynamics of North
and South ‘on the one hand shows the existence ever since 1815 of
a relatively homogeneous politico-economic structure; on the other it
shows how in periods of crisis it is the weakest and most marginal sector
which reacts first’ (Q19§26, p. 2037; SPN , p. 93). The definition of the
‘structure of Italian society’ therefore appears to be much more nuanced
than that outlined in the ‘The Lyon Theses’ and in ‘Some Aspects of the
Southern Question’.
∗ ∗ ∗
The application of the concept of ‘passive revolution’ to fascism is valid,

naturally, for the 1930s: for fascism as a regime, not as a movement.
The idea of its instability, which had dominated the writings of 1923–
1926, had turned out to be wrong and now Gramsci set himself the
task of analysing the corporative State and its totalitarian form. How
fascism succeeded in stabilizing itself did not pose a great problem: a
politico-military movement, which even though initially in the minority,
had managed to neutralize the autonomy of the masses by violent means,
can instal itself stably at the head of a State, at least for a certain period.27
What the application of the concept of ‘passive revolution’ enables us to
26 See also the letter to Tat’jana of 19 March 1927, in Gramsci (with T. Schucht),
Lettere. 1926–1935, op. cit., pp. 61–62; in English: Gramsci, Letters from Prison (1994a)
Vol. 1, pp. 83–84.
27 This theme is dealt with in great detail with a wealth of metaphors and analogies in a
paragraph written in 1933 and entitled Passato e presente. Storia dei 45 cavalieri ungheresi
(Past and Present. Story of the 45 Hungarian knights ); Q15§35, pp. 1788–1789.
120 G. VACCA
understand is whether the corporative State is capable of performing a

‘reformist’ function, or in other words, whether within the armour of
the totalitarian State ‘molecular changes’ are taking place ‘which in fact
progressively modify the pre-existing composition of forces, and hence
become the matrix of new changes’ (Q15§11, p. 1767; SPN , p. 109).
A first reason why fascism may represent a form of ‘passive revolution’
emerges from the ‘Summary’ of Notebook 10, Part I, written between
mid-April and mid-May 1932. Pondering the success of the first Soviet
five-year plan, Gramsci asks himself:
Are we now living through a period of ‘restoration-revolution’ to be put in

order permanently, to be organised ideologically, to be exalted lyrically? Is
Italy to have the same relation to the USSR as the Germany (and Europe)
of Kant and Hegel had with the France of Robespierre and Napoleon?
(Q10I [Summary, point 9], p.1209; FSPN , p. 330)
The implicit comparison between Lenin–Stalin and Robespierre–

Napoleon is worthy of note because, as we shall see, Gramsci considers
Soviet totalitarianism a form of ‘progressive Caesarism’. Returning to
fascism, a little later he formulates a reply as follows:
The ideological hypothesis could be presented in the following terms:

a passive revolution would be constituted by the fact that, through the
legislative intervention of the State and through organisation in corpora-
tions, more or less far-reaching modifications would be introduced into the
economic structure of the country in order to accentuate the ‘production
plan’ element; in other words, stress would be laid on the socialisation
of and co-operation in production, without thereby affecting (or at least
not going beyond regulating and controlling) the individual and group
appropriation of profit. In the concrete framework of Italian social rela-
tions this could be the sole solution for developing the productive forces
of industry under the leadership of the traditional ruling classes, in compe-
tition with the more advanced industrial formations of countries which
have a monopoly over raw materials and have accumulated huge amounts
of capital. (Q10I§9, p. 1228; FSPN , p. 350)
He then extends the concept of ‘passive revolution’ from Italy to

Europe:
This ideology [corporativism: G. V.] would serve as an element of a ‘war of

position’ in the international economic field (whereas free competition and
free trade would here correspond to a war of manoeuvre), just as ‘passive
revolution’ does in the political field. In the Europe of 1789 to 1870
there was a (political) war of manoeuvre during the French Revolution
and a long war of position from 1815 to 1870. In the present era, the
war of manoeuvre took place politically from March 1917 to March 1921,
to be followed by a war of position whose ideological representative for
Europe, as well as its practical one (for Italy), is fascism. (loc. cit.)
It should be borne in mind that the last two dates mark the begin-
ning of the Russian Revolution and the failure of the ‘March Action’
in Germany, and as Gramsci was writing these notes, Hitler was about to
take power. In any case, here Gramsci defines the conceptual frame within
which the analysis of fascism takes place in the Notebooks, and the centre of
his attention is corporativism. At the world level, Gramsci perceives a way
out of the crisis through the growth of American economic power and the
spread of Fordism; his analysis of fascism is therefore connected to that of
‘Americanism’. The passage we have quoted was written at the same time
as, and perhaps as a comment on, the second Ferrara conference28 : corpo-
rativism appears to Gramsci to be the economic policy with which fascism
could guide Italy towards a form of ‘programmed economy’ that would
not upset the fundamental inter-class relations of power and, even though
it did not give rise to any unambiguous and effective policies (Aquarone
2003, Chapters iii and iv; Santomassimo 2006, Chapters iii and vi), he
took it seriously and studied it with attention.
The first considerations on corporativism appear in a note that can be
dated to between December 1929 and February 1930, shortly after the
New York Stock Exchange crash. Gramsci hypothesizes that, through the
then ‘current corporativism’, fascism might realize a way of leading the
masses and the economy that was more unifying and modern than the
28 The second Conference on trade-union and corporativist studies, organized by

Giuseppe Bottai, the Minister for the Corporations, in Ferrara, 5–8 May 1932, passed
into history above all because of the conflict over the theses of the ‘proprietary corpo-
rations’, put forward by Ugo Spirito in his contribution. The most detailed historical
reconstruction is in Santomassimo (2006, Chapter iv, pp. 141–180); but see also I.
Stolzi (2007, pp. 97–200), and A. Gagliardi (2010).
122 G. VACCA
one followed by the ruling classes of the Giolittian era (Q1§43, pp. 35–
36; PN Vol 1, p. 131).29 Q1§135, the first devoted to Americanism,
in which Gramsci begins to analyse precisely in relation to corporatism
also dates from the same period. The idea came from two volumes by
N. Massimo Fovel, Rendita e salario nello Stato sindacale (1928) and
Economia e corporativismo (1929) about which he had learned from
an article by Carlo Pagni, ‘A proposito di un tentativo di teoria pura
del corporativismo’ (in Riforma Sociale, September–October 1929). In
1919 Fovel had tried to collaborate with L’Ordine Nuovo and was now
writing for the Corriere Padano of Ferrara, supporting corporativism as
the ‘premise for the introduction into Italy of the most advanced Amer-
ican systems of production’. In a note of Spring ’31, Gramsci defines him
as ‘that well-known political and economic adventurer’ (Q6§82, p. 754;
FSPN , p. 436), but precisely for this reason he paid particular attention
to his writings, because Fovel might be ‘backed (practically, not only
theoretically) by economic forces which support him and spur him on’
(Q1§135, p. 123; PN Vol. 1, p. 220). It is not easy to specify who they
might have been, but in any case the Corriere Padano was surrounded
by a coterie of supporters of the most dirigiste version of corporativism
and some of them, starting with Giulio Colamarino and Nello Quilici,
who edited the paper, were familiar with the Turin experience of the
Councils as a possible solution for the problems of industrial modern-
ization (Santomassimo 2006, pp. 68–73). ‘What I find interesting in
Fovel’s thesis’ writes Gramsci ‘is his conception of the corporation as an
autonomous industrial-productive bloc destined to resolve in a modern
way the problem of the Italian economic apparatus in an emphatically
capitalist manner, opposing the semi- parasitic elements of society which
take an excessively large cut of surplus value and the so-called “producers
of savings”’. Thus he seems to find in Fovel a supporter of Fordism in
tune with the positions adopted in his scattered notes on Americanism,
later collected in Notebook 22:
29 ‘… the current corporativism, with its consequent diffusion on a national scale’ of the
‘social type’ represented ‘by the trade-union organizers and political parties’, was creating
a link between the masses and the State ‘in a more systematic and consistent way than
the old trade-unionism could have achieved’ thus realizing ‘an instrument of moral and
political unity’ between North and South.
The production of savings should (…) be a function of the productive

bloc itself, through a growth in production at lower costs and through the
creation of greater surplus value, which would allow higher wages and thus
a larger internal market, workers’ savings, and higher profits, and hence
greater direct capitalization within firms – and not through the interme-
diary of the “producers of savings” who, in reality devour surplus value.
(Q1§135, p. 124; PN Vol. 1, p. 221)
Gramsci does not believe that fascism is capable of promoting an

economic policy that is effectively productivist because fascism was
designed to impose permanent downward pressure on wages:
Fovel’s error consists in his failure to take into account the economic func-
tion of the State in Italy and the fact that the corporative regime had its
origins in economic policing, not economic revolution. (loc. cit.)
However, as we have seen, this does not mean corporations cannot

create ‘the conditions in which industrial innovations can be introduced
on a large scale, because workers can neither oppose it nor can they
struggle to be themselves the bearers of this change’. It is therefore neces-
sary to analyse the contrasts that surface in the bourgeois field between
industry and agriculture, financial and industrial capital, and innovative
and stationary industries. The conflict is unlikely to manifest itself in an
open and radical manner because the corporativist system is designed
to safeguard the bloc made up of big capital and the ‘producers of
savings’, not to rationalize and promote industrial development. ‘The
disappearance of rentiers in Italy is a condition of industrial change, not
a consequence’ (Q1§135, p. 126; PN Vol. 1, p. 222), and fascism was
unlikely to adopt an economic policy with this objective. But it could not
be ruled out that, under pressure from the world crisis, it might have
pursued reform policies.
This is why Gramsci devotes a great deal of attention to the debate
on corporativism, which develops with increasing intensity between 1931
and 1934. The reason for his interest in the proponents of ‘integral
corporativism’ is his perception that in Italy the developments of a ‘pro-
grammed economy’ might also take place thanks to an evolution of
the ‘corporative State’. The writings of Ugo Spirito encouraged him
to investigate in greater depth the theoretical foundations of classical
economics (Maccabelli 1998, pp. 73–114), with decisive results, as we
shall see, for the elaboration of the ‘philosophy of praxis’. Observing the
124 G. VACCA
heated exchanges between the theorists of corporativism, mainly jurists

and philosophers, and liberal economists, from ‘syndicalists’ to ‘corpora-
tivists’, he follows the conflicts between the diverse souls of fascism and
notes down possible alternatives to its economic policy. His hypothesis
that a productivist solution to the crisis might emerge from the net of
the corporativist system was not unfounded: Mussolini himself appeared
to be seriously tempted (Santomassimo 2006, pp. 171–175). But when
the crisis overwhelmed the industrial apparatus and the stock market,
fascism took a different path, more traditional and more similar to that
followed by other European countries: by creating the IRI (Istituto per
la Ricostruzione Industriale) and the IMI (Istituto Mobliare Italiano),
and nationalizing the major banks it laid the foundations of a ‘mixed
economy’, and for Gramsci this solution was a significant step towards
a ‘programmed economy’. Furthermore, this not only did not rule out
the possibility of a productivist economic policy, but made it more likely
and necessary. ‘The system whose application the Italian government has
intensified in the last few years’ he wrote between February and March
1934 ‘appears the most organic and rational, at least for a certain group of
countries. But what are its consequences likely to be?’ Even only by guar-
anteeing savings, the State ‘finds itself invested with a primordial function
in the capitalist system’ since ‘it concentrates the savings to be put at the
disposal of private industry and activity, (…) as a medium and long-term
investor’. ‘But once, through unavoidable economic necessity, the State
has assumed this function, can it fail to interest itself in the organisation
of production and exchange?’ Gramsci believes that it will be ‘led neces-
sarily to intervene in order to check whether the investments which have
taken place through State means are properly administered’ (Q22§14,
pp. 2175–2176; SPN , pp. 314–315). It is therefore clear why ‘the theo-
retical discussions about the corporative regime’ which constitutes the
politico-ideological framework within which the ‘Beneduce system’ was
inserted (Ciocca 2015: Chapters i and ii), were so heated, and what
interests were at stake. Gramsci believed that the State would not be
able to limit its action to propping up the existing economic set-up by
just ‘nationalizing the losses’ and rescuing failed banks and ailing indus-
tries: ‘[b]ut control by itself is not sufficient. It is not just a question
of preserving the productive apparatus just as it is at a given moment.
It is a matter of reorganising it in order to develop it in parallel with the
increase in the population and in collective needs’ (loc. cit.). Therefore he
formulates the hypothesis that the problem of an ‘agrarian reform’ and an
‘industrial reform’, which up to this point fascism had managed to avoid,

could be re-opened:
If the State were proposing to impose an economic direction by which the

production of savings ceased to be a “function” of a parasitic class and
became a function of the productive organism itself, such a hypothetical
development would be progressive, and could have its part in a vast design
of integral rationalisation. But for that it would be necessary to promote
both agrarian reform (involving the abolition of landed income of a non-
working class, and its incorporation into the productive organism in the
form of collective savings to be dedicated to reconstruction and further
progress), and an industrial reform. One could thus reduce all income
to the status of technico-industrial functional necessities and no longer
keep them as the juridical consequences of pure property rights. (Q22§14,
pp. 2176–2177; SPN , pp. 314–315)
Fascism’s alternatives for dealing with the crisis obviously involved

not only domestic but also foreign policy. As we have already seen
(Chapter 1), the former for Gramsci is only a ‘combination’ of domestic
and international policy, conditioned in the final analysis by the robustness
of the economy and the ability of the ruling classes to use it to improve
the country’s position in the international hierarchy. This conception is
summarized emblematically in pages written in February 1933 (Q14§68,
pp. 1728–1730; SPN , pp. 240–241). For fascism the alternative lay
between strengthening the tendency to turn Italy into a factor of equi-
librium within the European concert and a policy of colonial expansion,
which might instead overturn this equilibrium. These two lines of action
had been present in fascism since 1923, and while the former presup-
posed a reform of Italian capitalism, capable of backing up fascism’s
European ambitions, the latter brought with it the confirmation of its
fragility and therefore of the country’s international subalternity. As the
reader will recall, the problem had already been focused on in the Lyon
Theses and the colonialist option was now gaining strength. In 1932,
having completed the conquest of Cyrenaica, fascism was accelerating
its preparations for war in Abyssinia. In September that year, quoting a
speech by Lord Balfour at the Washington Conference (23 December
1921), Gramsci annotated the geopolitical reasons why Italy, were there
a war, could only play a subaltern role, no matter which alliance it joined
(Q19§12, pp. 1999–2000). On the previous 4 May and 3 June Dino
126 G. VACCA
Grandi, foreign minister since 1929, had illustrated to the Chamber and
Senate the strategic lines of fascism’s international policy, posing
the Italian question as a world one that had, of necessity, to be solved

alongside the others that constitute the political expression of the general
post-war crisis, which in 1929 deepened to the point of near catastrophe.
These questions were: the French security problem, the German equal
rights problem and the problem of a new set-up for the Danube and Balkan
states. (Q19§6, p. 1989; FSPN , p. 237)
As we have already observed (Chapter 1), in this scenario the ‘Italian

question’ could be summed up as the international legitimization of
a tardy colonialism, motivated by the imbalance between demographic
pressure and domestic resources of the country and by a ‘hardening’ of
international relations because of the closure of the safety valve of emigra-
tion, of the rapid spread of economic nationalism and of the crisis in
international commerce. Gramsci harshly refutes the conceptions used
to attempt to justify fascism’s colonial policy: both the slogan ‘settle-
ment colonies’ and the thesis that they might contribute to solving the
structural weakness of Italian capitalism. ‘There is no example in modern
history’ he writes ‘of colonies being created by merely “peopling” a
region these colonies have never existed. Emigration and colonisation
follow the flow of capital invested in the various countries and not vice
versa’. Moreover the demographic pressure derived not from Italy’s ‘nat-
ural’ poverty, but from its ruling classes’ economic policy, from their
inability to increase national wealth and rationalize the social composi-
tion of the country. At this point, Gramsci lays out the fundamentals of
his vision of Italy’s foreign policy:
National wealth is conditioned by the international division of labour and

by having known how, within the possibilities offered by this division, to
choose the most rational and profitable one for each given country. We
are therefore dealing essentially with the ‘directive capacity’ of the domi-
nant economic class, with its spirit of initiative and organisation. If these
qualities are lacking, and the economic undertaking is essentially based on
sheer exploitation pf the productive and working classes, no international
agreement can heal this situation. (Q19§6, pp. 1990–1991; FSPN , p. 239)
The problem goes back to the unification of the country, which took
place, as we have seen, more under international than domestic pressure
(cf. Q1§150, pp. 132–133; PN Vol. 1, pp. 229–230). Consequently a

‘historical bloc’ formed in which ‘the State (…), where by State we mean
(…) not only the administration of state services, but also the ensemble
of classes which comprise it in the strict sense dominate it (…), cost too
much’. It is not possible to think, he concludes, ‘that, without a change
in these internal relations the situation can change for the better even
though internationally the relations were to change’. But while the discus-
sion on corporativism made the problem of a productivist policy emerge
forcefully, the regime’s macroeconomic policy continued along traditional
lines: ‘the policy towards the national debt (…) continually increases the
weight of “demographic” passivity, just when the active section of the
population is being forced to contract due to unemployment and the
crisis’. From the manner in which Gramsci delineates the ‘Italian ques-
tion’ it can therefore ‘be observed that the projection of the question
onto the international field can represent a political alibi to demonstrate
to the country’s masses’ (Q19§6, pp. 1989–1991; FSPN , pp. 237–239).
In both foreign and domestic policy the element that prevails is that
of demagogy, which is organic to fascism; in the first case this fed the
risk of dangerous adventurism and, in the second, confirmed the spirit of
‘nascent capitalism’ already evidenced in the Lyon Theses. Thus corpo-
rativism does not seem to go beyond the limits set by a clever ‘cultural
policy’ (Santomassimo 2006, pp. 101–105, note 7). However, given the
great crisis, the ruling classes of world capitalism faced the need to go
beyond the contrast between the cosmopolitanism of the economy and
the nationalism of politics; here the more radical theorists of corpora-
tivism, like Ugo Spirito, appear to concur. While the philosophers and
economists are ferociously critical of him, Gramsci takes the idea of ‘inte-
gral corporativism’ seriously as a ‘sign of the times’ regarding both the
Italian and the international situation. In March 1932 he writes:
… the tendency represented by Spirito and other members of his group

is a “sign of the times”. The demand for an economy “based on a plan”
– not just on a national level but on a world scale – is interesting in itself,
even if the justification for it is purely verbal: it is a “sign of the times”.
It is the expression, albeit still “utopian” of the developing conditions that
call for an “economy based on a plan”. (Q8§216, p. 1077; PN Vol. 3,
p. 366 and FSPN , p. 180)
128 G. VACCA
Gramsci’s most optimistic prediction, upon which he bases his polit-

ical hypotheses, is that, thanks to the influence of the United States, the
process of globalization of the world economy will recommence. In that
case there would be development even of its ‘regionalization’ and, as we
have already seen (Chapter 1), Gramsci thought that Europe could be
its most important pole. This hypothesis was present in the international
debate and even the supporters of ‘integral corporativism’ had the ambi-
tion of tracing a path that was valid not only for Italy but also for Europe
(Santomassimo 2006, Chapters iv and v). This raises the question of
whether the concept of ‘passive revolution’ might characterize the world
situation of the Thirties.
4 The ‘Passive Revolution’ in the International

Scenario. America, Europe, Soviet Union
As we have seen, the concept of ‘passive revolution’ extends, in the
end, to ‘every epoch characterised by complex historical upheavals (…)
as a criterion of interpretation, in the absence of other active elements
to a determinate extent’ (Q15§62, p. 1827; SPN , p. 114). I would
therefore have no doubt that Gramsci intended to verify its applicability
to the world situation. To clarify whether he considered the Thirties a
period of global ‘passive revolution’30 we need to analyse the position
of Europe and the Soviet Union vis-à-vis the United States. While the
hegemonic potentialities of the United States sprang from the innova-
tions introduced into production, for Gramsci nevertheless Fordism could
not initiate a new form of civilization, because its aim was to modernize
capitalist production relations, not to change them. In the index to Note-
book 22 he defines it as the ‘ultimate stage in the process of progressive
attempts by industry to overcome the law of the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall’ (Q22§1, point 7; SPN , p. 280). This definition is based
30 I intend in the following pages to correct this thesis, with which previously I was in
agreement. It was put forward in dubitative form by Franco De Felice in a contribution to
the conference ‘Politica e Storia in Gramsci’ in 1977 (Id., ‘Rivoluzione passiva, fascismo,
Americanismo in Gramsci’, esp. pp. 162–163 and 174–175), in Ferri (Ed.) (1979), and
then radicalized by Mario Telò in his contribution, ‘Note sul futuro dell’Occidente and
la teoria delle relazioni internazionali’, at the 1997 conference Gramsci e il Novecento,
in Vacca (Ed.), Gramsci e il Novecento, Vol. I (1999b), pp. 51–74; but I believe I also
contributed to its diffusion with my 1991 essay ‘I “Quaderni” e la politica del 900’,
pp. 67–68 and 71–74.
on study of the third volume of Capital which Gramsci had been able
to read in prison immediately after its publication (Q10II§36, pp. 1281–
1282; FSPN , pp. 430–433), and is therefore founded on further study
of Marx’s theory of relative surplus value as an explanation for so-called
‘technical progress’. Moreover, a detailed study of Capital had helped
him to confute Croce’s thesis on the theoretical unsustainability of the
law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, considered an ‘elliptical
comparison’, and it was precisely the polemic with Croce that sparked
the intuition that ‘Americanism’ could be interpreted as a reaction to
the increasing difficulty for capitalist enterprises to maintain a rate of
exploitation adequate for accumulating profits and competing with other
enterprises (Q7§34, pp. 882–883; PN Vol. 3, p. 184).31 The ‘American
phenomenon’ cannot therefore be compared with the sequence French
Revolution-Napoleonic Wars, which generated the spread of liberal civi-
lization in Europe; it is only an effective but not decisive reaction to the
contradiction between the development of productive forces and capi-
talist relations of production. The fact that Gramsci considers it to be
an ‘ultimate stage’ of the attempts to neutralize the tendency of the rate
of profit to fall, implies that Fordism, even if it should turn out to be
the most effective vehicle for spreading industrialism on a world scale,
could only accelerate the formation of the premises for a new mode
of production. This does not detract from the fact that Fordism is an
extremely progressive phenomenon because it is based on a wider and
more advanced use of scientific rationality in labour processes (Taylorism),
on improving—with productivist aims—the living conditions for workers
(‘high wages’), and on more advanced technical skills of the labour force.
‘The problem arises’, Gramsci writes, of ‘whether the type of industry
and organisation of work and production typical of Ford is rational;
whether, that is, it can and should be generalised, or whether, on the
other hand, we are not dealing with a malignant phenomenon which must
be fought against through trade-union action and through legislation’.
Continuing, he says ‘[i]t seems possible to reply that the Ford method
is rational, that is, that it should be generalised’. In the same paragraph,
entitled ‘High Wages’ (Q22§13, pp. 2171–2175; SPN , pp. 310–313)
he points to the comparison with Europe and the Soviet Union, where
31 Taken up again in the second draft ‘C’ texts Q10II§§41vi and vii; FSPN , pp. 426–
428 and 435–437.
130 G. VACCA
the character of industrialization was extremely coercive and the rational-

ization of work took place via the introduction of Taylorism, but with
entrepreneurial systems in no way comparable with the American model.
The debate on trade unions in the Russia of the early Twenties (Carr
1966, pp. 207–229)32 comes to mind and Gramsci confirms that the
tendency towards the militarization of work, supported by Trotsky in
1921 at the third All-Russian Conference of Trade Unions, carried with
it the risk of Bonapartism and for that reason had rightly been terminated
(Q22§11, p. 2164; SPN , p. 301). But as we have argued elsewhere, the
polemical references directed against Trotsky in the Notebooks seem in
truth to be against Stalin (Vacca 1999a, pp. 218–222) and in the note on
‘High Wages’, as also in other notes in Notebook 22, Gramsci expresses
indirectly the thesis that it should be the responsibility of the communist
movement to promote the spread of Fordism and therefore the Soviet
Union should go beyond forced industrialization which, instead, was in
full swing in the early Thirties. Indeed, he writes, for the ‘Ford method’
to become generalized
…a long process is needed (…), during which a change must take place
in social conditions and in the way of life and the habits of individuals.
This however cannot take place through coercion alone, but only through
tempering compulsion (self-discipline) with persuasion. (Q22§13, p. 2173;
SPN , p. 312)
To this end he also imagines different models of worker representation,

reviving the experience of L’Ordine Nuovo which ‘upheld its own type
of “Americanism” acceptable to the working masses’ (Q22§2, p. 2146;
SPN , p. 286; translation rendered more literal).
The more progressive elements of Fordism concern the regulation of
the economy and the formation of a new social subjectivity which can
develop over the entire area of the industrial countries. Regarding the first
aspect, Americanism and Fordism answer the ‘necessity’ for ‘the passage
from the old economic individualism to the programmed economy’:
In generic terms one could say that Americanism and Fordism

derive from an inherent necessity to achieve the organisation of a
32 On the militarization of the trade unions between war communism and the beginning
of the NEP, cf. E. H. Carr (1966, esp. p. 217).
programmed economy, and that the various problems examined here

should be the links of the chain marking the passage from the old
economic individualism to the programmed economy. (Q22§1, p. 2139;
SPN , p. 279; translation rendered more literal)
A ‘programmed economy’ (‘economia programmatica’) means a regu-

lated economy, not a planned economy.33 The ‘programmed economy’
is an open economy, integrated into the world market and character-
ized by a combination of forces which ‘collaborate in the formation of
an economy based on a world plan’. In other words, it is a premise for
going beyond the conflict between the cosmopolitanism of the economy
and the nationalism of politics. A necessary condition is the development
of an international civil society founded on such widespread advances in
economic and cultural interdependence as to neutralize political nation-
alism and spread democratic capitalism. So what Gramsci is interested
in emphasizing is above all ‘the importance, significance and objective
import of the American phenomenon, which is also the biggest collective
effort to date to create, with unprecedented speed, and with a conscious-
ness of purpose unmatched in history, a new type of worker and of man’
(Q22§11, p. 2165; SPN , p. 302). It is highly significant that, in his
underlining the progressive character, extending across ‘nations or even
continents’, of processes of ‘standardization of ways of thinking and of
behavior’ deriving from the American type of industrialization, Gramsci
should call our attention to the subsequent changes in politics:
Today’s collective man is formed essentially from the bottom up, on

the basis of the position that the collectivity occupies in the world of
production. (Q7§12, p.862; PN , Vol. 3, pp. 164–165 and FSPN , p. 276)
This observation implies a correlation between consumption and

democracy, since Fordism shifts the accumulation of capital from savings
to investment. The change of subjectivity hypothesized by Gramsci
would favour the possibility of shifting the ‘compromise equilibrium’
upon which the State is founded towards conditions that are ever more
favourable to the governed. In other words, ‘Americanism’ sets out more
advanced premises for the development of democracy.
33 On Fordism as a form of regulation of industrial economies cf. Boyer and Mistral

(1985).
132 G. VACCA
The most important economic aspect of Fordism, i.e. the ‘replacement

of the current plutocratic stratum by a new mechanism of accumulation
and distribution of financial capital directly based on industrial produc-
tion’ (Q22§1, p. 2139–2140; SPN , p. 279), emphasizes the role that its
extension could have in Italy (Q22§2, pp. 2142–2145; SPN , pp. 281–
285). But the need to bring financial capital back to being a function of
industrial capital concerned the whole of Europe, where the prevalence
of financial capital was a residue of the compromise between the liberal
bourgeoisie and the old feudal strata. Thus Gramsci sees with favour
the pressure exerted by Americanism on old Europe, although he does
not believe that ‘Americanization’ represents Europe’s future (Q22§15,
pp. 2178–2179; SPN , pp. 316–317).
The ‘American phenomenon’ tended to transform the ‘material bases
of European civilization’, to overwhelm its antiquated form of civilization,
forcing Europe to create a new form of civilization; but it did not per se
constitute a new civilization able to transmit itself to Europe via direct
or indirect influence. In the summary of Notebook 22 Gramsci poses the
question of
… whether Americanism can constitute an historical “epoch”, that is,

whether it can determine a gradual evolution of the same type as the
“passive revolution” examined elsewhere and typical of the last century
or whether on the other hand it does not simply represent the molecular
accumulation of elements destined to produce an “explosion”, that is, an
upheaval on the French pattern. (Q22§1, p. 2140; SPN , p. 279)
The answer comes in paragraph 15, ‘American and European civiliza-

tion’:
In the case of Americanism, we are not dealing with a new type of civil-
isation. This is shown by the fact that nothing has been changed in the
character of and the relationships between fundamental groups. What we
are dealing with is an organic extension and an intensification of Euro-
pean civilisation, which has simply acquired a new coating in the American
climate. (Q22§15, p. 2180; SPN , p. 318)
The rise of a new civilization would be favoured by the spread of

Taylorism and Fordism because they change, it is well to repeat it, ‘the
position occupied by the collectivity in the world of production’ and
this in turn changes the processes of formation of the ‘collective will’.
But the birth of democratic capitalism does not, as such, constitute a

new civilization; at most it lays out the premises for one: ‘It is not from
social groups “condemned” by the new order’ writes Gramsci, referring to
Europe, ‘that reconstruction is to be expected, but from those on whom
is imposed the burden of creating with their own suffering the material
bases of the new order. It is they who “must” find for themselves an “orig-
inal”, and not Americanized, system of living, to turn into “freedom”
what today is “necessity”’ (Q22§15, p. 2179; SPN , p. 317). It seems
obvious that this projection embraces equally the proletariat of western
Europe and that of the USSR, while as regards the United States we may
conclude that even if Fordism constituted the most advanced reaction to
the tendential fall of the rate of profit, it was however not sufficient to lay
the bases for world unification under American leadership. The analysis
thus shifts to Europe and here, as we have seen, the question is posed, in
connection with the Soviet challenge, of whether a phenomenon similar
to that of the ‘passive revolutions’ was taking place. In Europe, under
the blows of the world economic crisis, the appeal of Soviet planning
was very strong and the ‘immanent necessity to achieve the organization
of a programmed economy’ was compelling. But in the given situation
this could only happen under the leadership of the old dominant classes
and for this reason ‘the ideological agent’ of passive revolution would
appear to be fascism: in 1930s Europe, Gramsci could not perceive other
competitors beyond fascism and communism (Telò 1999, pp. 67–68). On
a world scale, however, the USSR was not a force capable of launching
challenges for hegemony. The United States seemed capable of deter-
mining a form of asymmetrical interdependence with Europe which could
be good for Europe by forcing it to modernize; the USSR on the other
hand was now closed in on itself, subaltern even if not subordinate. What
was the form of the overall historical process? It was not characterized by
a world hegemonic constellation, so it cannot be defined using the ‘pas-
sive revolution’ concept. To specify the character of the epoch we must
look more closely at Gramsci’s thinking about the USSR.
∗ ∗ ∗
The international position of the USSR is analysed starting from the

policy of the Comintern. As is known, the United Front tactic had begun
to be abandoned at the fifth Congress of the Communist International
(1924) where the question of the ‘relative stabilization’ of capitalism was
134 G. VACCA
raised and social democracy was defined as being ‘the left wing of fascism’;
it was then abandoned altogether at the sixth Congress (1928) which
declared that social democracy and fascism were identical (the theory of
social fascism) and instituted the ‘class against class’ tactic (Agosti 1976,
pp. 67–97 and 879–931). The Comintern’s strategic change had started
with the rise to power of Stalin, who in 1927 (at the Eighth Plenum of
the International), with the aim of consolidating internal consensus and
his own personal power, had begun to emphasize the risks of a war of
aggression of the Western powers (Di Biagio 2000, pp. 83–102). At the
Sixth Congress Bukharin’s ‘Report on the World Economy’ had provided
the coordinates of the ‘catastrophic’ interpretation of the great crisis and
predicted a ‘new 1914’ (Procacci 1981, pp. 555–557). During the Tenth
Plenum (July 1929) this policy was even imposed on the PCI and from
January 1930 Togliatti started applying it with rigour (Spriano 1969,
pp. 244–261; Agosti 1996, pp. 131–146). Gramsci reacted strongly to
the abandonment of the Lyon strategy and in the Autumn of 1930 initi-
ated a series of ‘conversations’ with his comrades of the Turi ‘collective’,
contesting the analyses and slogans of the new strategy. As we now know,
his aim was to communicate his opinion to the Foreign Centre of the
party (Rossi and Vacca, pp. 75–80) and during the ‘conversations’ with
his comrades a harsh confrontation took place which led to his exclusion
and perhaps to a temporary expulsion (Vacca 2012, pp. 119–126). This
did not induce Gramsci to change his position and, after relations were
resumed, he continued to confirm it, recommending his comrades who
were released from prison because they had served their time, or thanks
to the amnesty of the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome, to let
his thought be known to the party. It cannot be excluded that this was
the situation that induced Togliatti to turn Gramsci into an iconic martyr
of fascism at the Cologne Congress of the PCI (April 1931) in order to
safeguard both him and the party; but it irritated the prisoner intensely
not least because it made his release impracticable (Vacca 2012, pp. 253–
258). In any case, this was the context in which Gramsci, between the
beginning of 1930 and mid-1932 wrote the first notes on the policy of
the Comintern and the USSR. It goes without saying that above all on
these themes his language was ‘Aesopian’ (as Tanja Schucht wrote to her
family), i.e. in code,34 and it needs decoding on the basis of the categories
which form the network of his thoughts.
The first category is ‘economic-corporative’, which applied to a polit-
ical movement indicated its inability—whether because of primitivism or
erroneous policies—to struggle for hegemony. The note from which we
can start is Q6§10, ‘Past and present’, datable to between November and
December 1930 (the months of the disputes at Turi), which we have
already analysed in connection with the crisis of the modern State. The
passage which attention is now drawn to is the one in which Gramsci
considers the crisis of the State to be ‘catastrophic’, because neither the
liberal ruling classes nor the communist movement had a solution: ‘The
regressive and conservative social groups are shrinking back more and
more to their initial economic-corporative phase, while progressive and
the economic-corporative phase’ (Q6§10, p. 690; PN Vol. 3, p. 9). His
view seems unequivocal: the Soviet Union had adopted an unexpansive
political form—as Gramsci had feared four years earlier—and the political
line of the Comintern was economistic: neither were on the terrain of
the struggle for hegemony. Obviously, the cause was the nature of Soviet
power, of which the Comintern was only a projection. But before dealing
in more depth with this point let us look at his assessment of the policy
of the International. The theme is analysed in greater depth in Q13§23,
‘Observations on Certain Aspects of the Structure of Political Parties in
Periods of Organic Crisis’, of January 1933, which in the section we are
considering here is the second draft of Q9§40, dating back to June 1932.
The first observation concerns the slogan ‘class against class’ and ‘the
aversion on principle to compromise’. These are clear manifestations of
‘economism’ because their basis is the conviction of the catastrophic char-
acter of the world crisis. The gravest consequence, says Gramsci, is inertia,
masked by propaganda about an imminent revolution; thus a ‘belief in
a predetermined teleology like that of a religion’ which made ‘political
initiative’ useless.
One point which should be added to the paragraph on economism as an

example of the so-called intransigence theories is the rigid aversion on prin-
ciple to what are termed compromises—and the derivative of this, which
34 On the communication and writing of codes for the Letters and the Notebooks, cf.
Vacca (2012, pp. 105–118).
136 G. VACCA
can be termed “fear of dangers”. It is clear that this aversion on principle

to compromise is closely linked to economism. For the conception upon
which the aversion is based can only be the iron conviction that there
exist objective laws of historical development similar in kind to natural
laws, together with a belief in a predetermined teleology like that of a reli-
gion: since favourable conditions are inevitably going to appear, and since
these, in a rather mysterious way, will bring about palingenetic events, it is
evident that any deliberate initiative tending to predispose and plan these
conditions is not only useless but even harmful. (Q13§23, pp. 1611–1612;
SPN , pp. 167–168)
The corollary to this way of thinking is the reduction of politics to

military action with no given project. ‘Side by side with these fatalistic
beliefs however, there exists the tendency “thereafter” to rely blindly
and indiscriminately on the regulatory virtue of armed conflict’, which
however, without the support of a political plan, is incapable of balancing
destruction and reconstruction: it is thought that ‘the intervention of
will is useful for destruction, not for reconstruction (…). Destruction is
conceived of mechanically, not as destruction/reconstruction’ (Q13§23,
p. 1612; SPN , p. 168). It is unnecessary to produce further examples to
demonstrate that these passages refer to the so-called ‘third period’ policy
of the Comintern: it is absolutely obvious that Gramsci is thinking about
this policy and the ideological presuppositions of Soviet foreign policy (Di
Biagio 2004). The following passage deserves our attention, a passage in
which he explains the foreign policy, identifying as the origin of the reduc-
tion of Soviet politics to brute force the change that had taken place in
the social bases of the State:
An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the

economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies—i.e. to
change the political direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed
if a new, homogeneous politico-economic historical bloc, without internal
contradictions, is to be successfully formed. And, since two “similar” forces
can only be welded into a new organism either through a series of compro-
mises or by force of arms, either by binding them to each other as allies
or by forcibly subordinating one to the other, the question is whether one
has the necessary force, and whether it is “productive” to use it. If the
union of two forces is necessary in order to defeat a third, a recourse to
arms and coercion (even supposing that these are available) can be nothing
more than a methodological hypothesis; the only concrete possibility is
compromise. Force can be employed against enemies, but not against a
part of one’s own side which one wishes rapidly to assimilate, and whose
“good will” and enthusiasm one needs. (Q13§23, pp. 1611–1613; SPN ,
pp. 167–168 [in part])
These words reveal not only his extreme disapproval of the manner
in which the alliance between workers and peasants had been liquidated
and the ‘extermination of the Kulaks as a class’ (cf. Romano 1999) had
been put into operation, but also his opposition to the authoritarian form
assumed by the Soviet State.
In several notes transparently comparing the Soviet and fascist regimes,
Gramsci defines the USSR as a totalitarian State. The definition is
based on the single party system, on the internal regime of the party
and the identification of the party with the State. However he distin-
guishes between ‘progressive’ and ‘reactionary’ totalitarianism, based on
the opposite function of the Soviet Communist Party and the National
Fascist Party:
A totalitarian policy (…) attempts: (1) to ensure that the members of a

particular party find in that one party all the satisfactions that they had
previously found in a multiplicity of organizations, that is, to sever all ties
these members have with extraneous cultural organisms; (2) to destroy all
other organizations or to incorporate them into a system regulated solely
by the party. This occurs: (1) when the party in question is the bearer of
a new culture – this is a progressive phase; (2) when the party in question
wants to prevent another force, bearer of a new culture, from becoming
itself “totalitarian” – this is a regressive and objectively and reactionary
phase. (Q6§136, p. 800; PN Vol. 3, p. 108 and SPN , p. 265)
The distinction is analytical in character and does not entail his

embracing Soviet totalitarianism. The paragraph quoted is from the
summer of 1931 and is followed by paragraph 137, ‘Concept of State’,
in which Gramsci enunciates the conception of the State as the unity
of ‘political society’ and ‘civil society’ which in those same days he had
communicated to Sraffa in his already cited letter to Tanja of 7 September
(Q6§137, p. 801; PN Vol. 3, pp. 108–109).35 This concept expressed
criticism of Lenin’s conception of the State and even more of the form
that the Soviet state had assumed after the end of the New Economic
35 Cf. also Gramsci (with Schucht), Lettere. 1926–1935, p. 791 and LfP Vol. 2, p. 67.
138 G. VACCA
Policy. Indeed, a little earlier, pointing to the change of the social bases of
the Soviet Union, Gramsci had described it as ‘an extreme form of polit-
ical society’ (Q7§28, p. 876; PN Vol. 3, p. 178) and, as is known, this
formula denotes power based on a fracture between those who govern
and the governed, and the authoritarian compression of civil society.
To these judgements must be added the observation that in totalitarian
States the single party no longer has ‘functions that are directly political,
but merely technical ones of propaganda and public order, and moral
and cultural influence’; and since they are mass parties, the masses ‘have
no other political function than a generic loyalty, of a military kind, to
a visible or invisible political centre’ (Q17§37, pp. 1939–1940; SPN ,
pp. 149–150).
It is however true that in Q14§34, ‘Machiavelli. Political Parties and
Policing Functions’, dating to January 1933, Gramsci justifies, in prin-
ciple, the ‘policing functions’ of the Communist Party in the USSR since
they are necessary ‘to keep the dispossessed reactionary forces within the
bounds of legality, and to raise the backward masses to the level of the
new legality’ (Q14§34, pp. 1691–1692; SPN , p. 155). These are observa-
tions of merciless realism if seen in relation to his personal history. From
October 1922 Julija Schucht, who had become his partner, started to
collaborate with the GPU (Gosudarstvennoe Političeskoe Upravlenie), the
intelligence body of the Soviet government, and continued that activity
until the end of 1930, when she was forced to give up work because of
a serious illness. From the outset Gramsci was aware and consented, and
in any case it would have been strange that a functionary of a commu-
nist party, already under consideration for becoming its leader, should not
have justified historically the need for police control in the Soviet State,
even with regard to imself. But when he was writing those notes, his
suspicions were at their peak regarding the possibility that Julija, perhaps
because of the political conditioning she was undergoing, had been an
involuntary accomplice in his failure to be released, even to the point of
writing as much in the tragic letter to Tanja of 27 February 1933.36
In any case, while condemning the policy of the USSR, he attempted
to justify its origin, and from this viewpoint his notes on Soviet Marxism,
the dominant economic culture in the USSR and the role of ideology are
36 Gramsci and Tat’jana Schucht, Lettere. 1926–1935, pp. 1209–1213; in English,

Gramsci (1994a), Vol. 2, pp. 274–278. See also Vacca (2012, Chapters xiii and xiv).
illuminating. In Q8§185, ‘The Economic-Corporative Phase of the State’

(December 1931), he writes:
If it is true that no type of State can avoid passing through a phase of

economic-corporate primitivism, one can deduce that the content of the
political hegemony of the new social group that has founded the new
type of State must be predominantly of an economic order: This would
entail the reorganization of the structure and of the real relations between
people and the sphere of the economy or of production. The superstruc-
tural elements will inevitably be few in number; they will typify struggle
and farsightedness, though the component parts of “plans” will still be
meager. The cultural plan will be mostly negative: a critique of the past
aimed at destruction and erasure of memory. Constructive policy will still
be at the level of “broad outlines”, sketches that could (and should) be
changed at all times in order to be consistent with the structure as it takes
shape. (Q8§185, p. 1053; PN Vol. 3, p. 342)
Probably Gramsci was thinking back to the Proletkult movement, his

membership of which dated to the time of L’Ordine Nuovo 37 ; but he
certainly had before him the book by Fülöp-Miller Il volto del bolsce-
vismo, published by Bompiani in 1930 which, although it stopped at
1926, provided ample information on the way in which the construc-
tion of scientific and literary academies dedicated to promoting prole-
tarian culture had been approached. Furthermore, precisely in 1931 the
Academy of Sciences had become a State organism, controlled by the
party.38 Finally there was the success of the first five-year plan, which
had reached its objectives a year in advance. What did Gramsci mean by
asserting that the Soviet State was in a phase of economic-corporative
primitivism? Before examining the analyses which substantiate this defini-
tion, we need to specify his political position. In Q8§130, ‘Encyclopedic
Notions and Cultural Topics. Statolatry’ (April 1932), he writes:
Some social groups rose to autonomous State life without first having had
an extended period of independent cultural and moral development of their
37 See the letter on Futurism to Trotsky of 8 September 1922, in Gramsci, A., Epis-
tolario I , pp. 248–250. In English GTW , pp. 121–123, and alternative translation in
Gramsci (1994b, pp. 244–246).
38 S. Tagliagambe (1978, Chapters ii and iii), and the documents published on
pp. 261–298; see also D. Kanoussi (2007, pp. 80–82).
140 G. VACCA
own (…). [F]or such social groups a period of statolatry is necessary and
indeed appropriate. Such “statolatry” is nothing other than the normal
form of “State life” or, at least, of initiation into autonomous State life
and into the creation of a “civil society” which it historically could not be
created before the ascent to independent State life. Nevertheless, this kind
of “statolatry” must not be abandoned to itself, it must not become theo-
retical fanaticism or come to be seen as “perpetual”. (Q8§185, p. 1020;
PN Vol. 3, p. 310)
Although his critique of Soviet power is very harsh, Gramsci seems

to believe that it is reformable: his critique seems aimed at ‘theoretical
fanaticism’ and the risk of crystallization of the authoritarian State rather
than at its nature, which, at least for the initial phase of Soviet power, was
historically justified. However it appears clear that he is concerned about
the formation of an autocratic power, whose roots he identifies in the
planning model and the incapacity of the Soviet élite to address the ‘polit-
ical question of the intellectuals’. He concentrates his attention on Soviet
Marxism, as much on the aspect of its economic culture as on the ideology
that inspired the construction of the State. Regarding the first aspect he
takes aim at the Précis d’économie politique by Lapidus and Ostrovityanov,
a manual of political economy which he knew in the translation by Victor
Serge published in Paris in 1927, and which constituted a sort of official
handbook (cf. in English: Lapidus and Ostrovityanov 1929). His obser-
vations are included in ‘Points to Reflect on for a Study of Economics’ in
Q10II and form part of his further study of theoretical economics which
had been suggested to him by the discussions in Italy initiated by Ugo
Spirito. He reproaches the two Soviet economists for having based plan-
ning on the concept of socially necessary labour, ignoring the fact that
Marx had elaborated the concept to make the working class aware of
the fact that labour ‘is first and foremost an “ensemble” and that as an
“ensemble” it determines the fundamental process of economic motion’.
Socially necessary labour is a critical concept, as all Marx’s economic
research is critical; therefore it cannot be taken as the foundation of a
political economy, for which a theory of costs and prices is needed. When
the working class takes power and its historical position has changed, says
Gramsci, it will have to take account of ‘questions of specific utilities
and comparisons between them in order to draw from them initiatives
as regards movement forwards’, and indeed the Soviet government had
instituted ‘competitions’ to raise the productivity of individual labour

(Q10II§23, pp. 1261–1262; FSPN , pp. 169–170).
That the two authors of Précis were not familiar with volume III of
Capital was justified on the basis of the fact that in 1927 it had not yet
been published; but even on the basis of volumes I and II they should
have understood the need to incorporate into Marxist economics the
price theory elaborated by the marginalists (Q10II§23, pp. 1262 and
Q10II§37i, p. 1285; FSPN , pp. 169–170 and 165–166 respectively).
However what worried him most was the ‘dogmatic’ character of the
Précis, because it revealed the way in which scientific life was proceeding
in the Soviet Union. The manual was evidence that only those
… possessed of the herd instinct, who basically could not care less about
the question [under consideration – author’s note] are launched on the
study of economic problems, any scientific development thus being made
impossible.
Gramsci continues in this paragraph, noting that Marx’s thought had

therefore ‘become the monopoly of narrow-minded, jabbering wretches
who, only by reason of the dogmatism of their position, manage to main-
tain a place not in science itself but in the marginal bibliography of
science’ (Q15§45, pp. 1805–1806; FSPN , p. 176).
In the Summer-Autumn of 1931 Gramsci’s reading of an excerpt from
The Economist on Soviet planning and of reports by Prince Mirskij on
the philosophical debate taking place in the USSR, published in the
review Labour Monthly, had induced him to believe that the predominant
economic determinism in Soviet ideology was about to be abandoned
and that the voluntarism of the planning might give rise to a turning
point in intellectual life (Q7§44, p. 892–893 and Q8§205, p. 1064; PN
Vol. 3, pp. 193–194 and FSPN , pp. 270–271; and PN Vol. 3, p. 353,
respectively). But his hopes were soon dashed and from February 1932 he
intensified his criticism of Bukharin’s Manual which, although its author
had been excluded in 1929 from the party’s Political Bureau, continued
to be the basic text of Soviet Marxism. As we shall see later (Chapter 3),
the salient point of Gramsci’s critique concerned the manner in which the
unity of theory and practice was conceptualized, and it involved not only
Bukharin, but also Soviet Marxism in its entirety and thus also Lenin.
In Bukharin’s Manual ‘the exploration and refinement of the concept
of the unity of theory and practice is still only at an early stage: (…)
142 G. VACCA
people speak about theory as a “complement”, an “accessory” of prac-

tice, or as the handmaid of practice’ (Q11§12, p. 1386; SPN , p. 334).
This constitutes the basis of judgement on the USSR as an ‘economic-
corporative phase of the State’. The original hegemonic nucleus of
Leninism, consisting of the alliance between workers and peasants, had
not been developed because the ‘political question of the intellectuals’
had not been addressed. Therefore the creation of a new culture and a
new civilization had never begun, and this explained the closure of the
USSR in upon itself, and its impossibility to play a world hegemonic
role.39 Three years later, the ‘liquidation’ of Trotsky suggested to him
a number of reflections on the ‘hypocrisy of self-criticism’ and on ‘black
parliamentarism’ which constituted a strong opposition to Stalin’s ‘abso-
lutism’, the escalation of which he described as a symptom of insecurity
and instability (Q14§§74–77, pp. 1742–1745; SPN , pp. 254–257 [§§74
and 76]).40
What was then, in Gramsci’s eyes, the world situation? The scenario
of the Thirties is dominated by the great crisis. The only progressive
response appeared to be the spread of American industrialism. But its
expansivity was limited to Europe, where, however Nazism was on the rise
and the decisive struggle seemed that between Bolshevism and fascism.
Hence between the United States and Europe a conflictual fault opened
up which could not give birth to a world hegemonic nucleus. The USSR,
for its part, no longer appeared to be the ‘world power’ launching a new
hegemonic challenge based on the ideals of socialism that Gramsci had
perceived in the first phase of his adherence to communism. Of course,
it was a power not subordinated to any of the capitalist ‘great powers’;
but closed in on itself and enveloped in iron-hard political and economic
forms, it was totally excluded from the challenges of globalization. The
world system could not be classified as a unitary configuration, governed,
as the ‘passive revolution’ concept postulates, by a hegemonic constel-
lation and a certain degree of collaboration among all the actors. The
concept is however valid for a characterization of the United States, Italy
39 The lack of expansivity of the USSR through the inability of the Bolshevik élite
to construct a new type of hegemonic power and the nexus with the theory of the
intellectuals and the conception of Marxism had been a theme for Gramsci immediately
before his arrest: cf. G. Vacca (2012, pp. 23–38).
40 Paragraphs 75 and 77 are not as yet in a standard English translation in English of
the Notebooks.
and the USSR of the Thirties considered singly since, in each of the
three countries, there were ‘molecular changes which in fact progres-
sively modify the pre-existing composition of forces, and hence become
the matrix of new changes’ (Q15§11, p. 1767; SPN , p. 109). In the
same days that he had drawn attention to the ‘catastrophic’ character of
the crisis of the modern State, Gramsci was describing the phenomenon
in another note in even simpler and clearer words. In Q7§12, ‘Man as
Individual and Man as Mass’, which we have already mentioned, he wrote:
The old intellectual and moral leaders of society feel the ground giving
way under their feet; (…) Since the particular form of civilization, culture,
morality that they have represented is decomposing, they shriek at the
death of all civilization, of all culture, of all morality and they demand
that the State take repressive measures, or, secluded from the real process
of history, they constitute themselves into groups of resistance and by so
doing prolong the crisis (…). The representatives of the new order now
in gestation, full of “rationalistic” hatred for the old, are disseminating
utopias and crackpot schemes. (Q7§12, pp. 862–863; PN Vol. 3, p. 165,
and FSPN , p. 276)
The subsequent development of the concept of ‘passive revolution’

seems not to have changed his vision of the overall historical process.
The distinctive trait of the world situation between the two wars is a crisis
of hegemony. As he writes in Q3§34 (p. 311 of the Critical Edition of
the Notebooks; PN Vol. 2, p. 33): ‘The old is dying and the new cannot
be born; in this interregnum morbid phenomena of the most varied kind
come to pass’.
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Gagliardi, A. (2010). Il corporativismo fascista. Rome-Bari: Laterza.
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Giasi, F. (2011). I giudizi di Marx and di Engels sul Risorgimento e la
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Gramsci, A. (1966). Socialismo e fascismo (1921–1922). Turin: Einaudi.
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Gramsci A. (1971b). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare & G.
Nowell-Smith, Eds. and Trans.). London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Gramsci, A. (1975). Quaderni del carcere (V. Gerratana, Ed.). Turin: Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1980). Cronache torinesi (S. Caprioglio, Ed.). Turin: Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1982). La Città futura (1917–18) (S. Caprioglio, Ed.). Turin:
Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1984). Il nostro Marx 1919–1920 (S. Caprioglio, Ed.). Turin:
Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1987). L’Ordine nuovo 1919–1920. Turin: Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1992). Lettere 1908–1926 (A. A. Santucci, Ed.). Turin: Einaudi.

Gramsci A. (1994b). Pre-prison Writings (R. Bellamy, Ed. and V. Cox, Trans.).
Gramsci A. (1995). Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks (D. Boothman,
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Gramsci A. (2007). Prison Notebooks (Vol. 3, J. A. Buttigieg, Ed. and Trans.).
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secolo all’altro. 1897–1903 (2012) (S. Miccolis & A. Salvatorelli, Ed.). Naples:
Bibliopolis.
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posthumous edition. Milan: Il Viandante.
Lapidus, I., & Ostrovityanov, K. (1929). An Outline of Political Economy.
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Turin: Einaudi.
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Carocci.
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Newspaper and other articles by Gramsci arranged

under the English title used in the text. Articles are listed
in alphabetical order according to the first keyword, i.e.
not taking into account the definite and indefinite articles.
The original Italian title is found in parentheses
after the English one, followed by journal and date
of original publication, then where it may be consulted
in volume form in Italian and, where available, in English
The Agrarian Struggle in Italy (La lotta agraria in Italia), L’Ordine Nuovo, 31
August 1921, in SF: ON 1921–1922, 311–313; SPW 1921–1926, 66–67.
Behind Giolitti’s Scenario (Dietro lo scenario del Giolittismo), Avanti!, 5–8
November 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 275–294.
Bonomi and His Friends (Bonomi e i suoi amici), L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 March
1924, in CPC, 169–171.
Bourgeois Reformism (Il riformismo borghese), Avanti!, 5 December 1917, in
CF , 470–472.
On the Centenary of a King (Nel centenario di un re), Avanti!, 13 March 1920,
in ON 1919–1920, 461–463.
A Chain of Scoundrels (Una catena di ribaldi), Avanti!, 13 October 1919, in
ON 1919–1920, 242–245.
To Clarify Ideas on Bourgeois Reformism (Per chiarire le idee sul riformismo
borghese), Avanti!, 11 December 1917, in CF , 481–484.
The Crisis of the Petty Bourgeoisie (La crisi della piccola borghesia), L’Unità, 2
July 1924, in CPC 1923–1926, 25–28.
The Elections (Le elezioni), in L’Ordine Nuovo, third series, Vol. 1(1), March
1924, in CPC 1923–1926, 162–165.
Elemental Forces (Forze elementari), L’Ordine Nuovo, 26 April 1921, in SF. ON
1921–1922, 150–151; SPW 1921–1926, 38–40.
Elements of the Situation (Elementi della situazione), in CPC 1923–1926, 85–88;
SPW 1921–1926, 306–309.
The Events of 2–3 December (Gli avvenimenti del 2–3 dicembre), L’Ordine
nuovo, 6–13 December 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 350–357 (written jointly
with Palmiro Togliatti).
The Fall of Fascism (La caduta del fascismo), L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 November
1924, in CPC 1923–1926, 208–210: SPW 1921–1926, 273–275.
Fascism: A Letter from Italy (Il fallimento del sindacalismo fascista), in CPC,
520–522: International Gramsci Journal, 1(3), March 2001, 31: originally in
International Press Correspondence, 4(1), 3 January 1924.
The Force of the State (La forza dello Stato), Avanti!, 11 December 1920, in
ON 1919–1920, 776–778.
The Historical Role of the City (La settimana in politica [xvi]. La funzione
storica della città), L’Ordine Nuovo, 17 January 1920, in ON 1919–1920,
386–390; SPW 1910–1920, 150–153.
The Italian Catholics (I cattolici italiani), Avanti!, 22 December 1918, in NM ,
455–460.
The Italian Crisis (La crisi italiana), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 September 1924 (report
to the Central Committee of the PCI of 13–14 August), in CPC 1923–1926,
28–39; SPW 1921–1926, 255–264.
The Italian Situation and the Tasks of the PCI (La situazione italiana e i compiti
del PCI), Part I, in CPC 1923–1926, 488–498; SPW 1921–1926, 340–375.
The Italian State (Lo Stato italiano), L’Ordine Nuovo, 7 February 1920, in ON
1919–1920, 403–408; PPW , 141–145.
Italy and Spain (Italia e Spagna), L’Ordine Nuovo, 11 March 1921, in SF. ON
1921–1922, 101–103.
148 G. VACCA
Kolčak and Orlando (Kolciak e Orlando), L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 June 1919, in ON

1919–1920, 95–97.
Legality (Legalità), L’Ordine Nuovo, 28 August 1921, in SF: ON 1921–1922,
304–307.
The Mezzogiorno and Fascism (Il mezzogiorno e il fascismo), L’Ordine Nuovo,
15 March 1924, in CPC 1923–1926, 171–175; PPW , 260–264.
The Mezzogiorno and the War (Il Mezzogiorno e la Guerra), Il Grido del Popolo,
10 April 1916, in CT , 228–231.
Monarchical Tradition (Tradizione monarchica), Avanti!, 14 March 1920, in ON
1919–1920, 464–466.
The Monkey-People (Il popolo delle scimmie), L’Ordine Nuovo, 2 January 1921,
in SF: ON 1921–1922, 9–12.
The Mussolini Government (Le origini del gabinetto Mussolini, 20 November
1922, retranslated into Italian from the French translation), SF: ON 1921–
1922, 528–530: International Press Correspondence (Inprecorr), 3(102), 824:
republished online in the International Gramsci Journal, 1(3), March 2011,
30.
Origins and Aims of the Law on Secret Associations (Origini e scopi della legge
sulle associazioni segrete), in CPC 1923–1926, 75–84: in Cultural Studies,
2007, 21(4/5), 779–795. http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals, https://doi.
org/10.1080/09502380701322158.
Our Trade-Union Orientation (Il nostro indirizzo sindacale.), in Lo Stato operaio,
18 ottobre 1923, Vol. 1(8), in CPC 1923–1926, 3–7.
Parlamentarismo e fascismo in Italia, in La Correspondance Internationale, 28
December 1923, retranslated into Italian in CPC 1923–1926 (Turin: Einaudi,
1978), 517–520.
Parties and Masses (I partiti e la massa), L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 September 1921,
in SF: ON 1921–1922, 353–356; SPW 1921–1926, pp. 71-74.
Pity on the Grandchildren of the Future (Pietà per i venturi nipoti), Avanti!, 18
May 1919, ON 1919–1920, 28–30.
The Populars (I popolari), L’Ordine nuovo, 1 November 1919, in ON 1919–
1920, 272–274.
Power in Italy (Il potere in Italia), Avanti!, 11 February 1920, in ON 1919–
1920, 409–412.
Reactionary Subversiveness (Sovversismo reazionario), L’Ordine nuovo, 22 June
1921, in SF: ON 1921–1922, 204-206; SPW 1921–1926, 46–47.
Between Reality and Arbitrariness (Tra realtà e arbitrio), L’Ordine nuovo, 26
August 1921, in SF: ON 1921–1922, 300–302.
The Results of the Elections in Italy (‘Le elezioni in Italia’), in CPC 1923–
1926, 525–527: International Press Correspondence, 4(25), 231, reprinted in
International Gramsci Journal, 1(3) (March 2001), 34.
The Rout (La disfatta), L’Ordine nuovo, 18 October 1919, in ON 1919–1920,

250–253.
Russia and Europe (La Russia e l’Europa), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 November 1919,
in ON 1919–1920, 267–271.
Socialism and Italy (Il Socialismo e l’Italia), Il Grido del Popolo, 22 September
1917, in CF , 350–351.
A Study of the Italian Situation [Part I], (Un esame della situazione I), in CPC
1923–1926, 113–120; SPW 1921–1926, 400–411.
The Two Fascisms (I due fascismi), L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 August 1921, in SF: ON
1921–1922, 297–299; SPW 1921–1926, 63–65.
Il Vaticano, La Correspondance Internationale, 12 March 1924, in CPC 1923–
1926, 523–525.
What Is Reaction? (Cos’è la reazione?), Avanti!, 24 November 1920, in ON
1919–1920, 765–767.
Workers and Peasants (La settimana in politica [xv]. Operai e contadini), L’Or-
dine nuovo, 3 January 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 376–378; SPW 1910–1920,
147–149.
CHAPTER 3
From Historical Materialism to the Philosophy

of Praxis: Foundations for a Processual Theory
of the Subject
Did Gramsci have an original conception of twentieth-century socialism?

In my view there are valid reasons to claim this. In the Prison Note-
books his thought is characterized by the claim that there is an inseparable
link between socialist transformation and the process generating a new
rationality. As a starting point, however, we may take the Ordine Nuovo
writings, where that conception is anticipated in the way in which he
brings together production and politics.1
1 The Turin Factory Council Movement

The first reason regards the vision of the ‘general crisis’ of capitalism,
a founding category for the Communist International, which initially
counted among its adherents even the party of which Gramsci was then
a member, namely the Italian Socialist Party. For Gramsci the origin of
the ‘crisis’ lay in the war, which had destroyed the network of interna-
tional interdependencies thanks to which capitalism was performing the
progressive role of world economic unification:
The war has irremediably ruptured the global equilibrium of capitalist

production. Before the war, a dense network of commercial relations was
1 My reading of Gramsci’s writings in the weekly L’Ordine Nuovo owes much to Franco
De Felice (1971).

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7_3
152 G. VACCA
being constructed in the world; economically the world had become a

living organism with a rapid blood circulation (…) [In destroying] the
conditions of existence of the liberal economy, [the war] is destroying the
conditions of existence of capitalism. (‘Italy and the United States’, ON
1919–1920, pp. 303–304)
The crisis consists in the impossibility for the bourgeoisie to recon-

struct the unity of the world market since, following the war, a hierarchy
of overwhelming power had been installed which caused ‘the death of the
State’:
The myth created in the war – world unity in the League of Nations – has
been realized in the ways and forms in which it could be realized under a
regime of private and national property: in the global monopoly exercised
and exploited by the English-speaking world. The economic and political
life of States is under the close control of Anglo-American capitalism (…)
This is the death of the State, which exists in so far as it is sovereign
and independent; national capitalism is reduced to a vassal status (…) The
world is ‘unified’ in the sense that a global hierarchy has been created
which disciplines and controls the whole world in an authoritarian fashion.
(‘The Unity of the World’, ON 1919–1920, p. 20)
The epoch-making nature of the crisis is determined by the unsustain-

ability of such a situation faced with the growing subjectivity of the peoples
that the war had generated:
One might say that, in this period of the life of the world, there no longer
exists any individual person undisturbed by political anxiety, in other words
there is no one who does not understand and does not feel how the destiny
of every single individual is linked to the form of the national State, to the
form of the international equilibrium within which States are coordinated
and subordinated. (‘A Breakdown and a Birth’, ON 1919–1920, p. 3)
In the analytical declension of the revolutionary nature of the era that

began with the war, the accent falls on the fracture between the masses and
the institutions. This in turn gives birth to the crisis of the old productive
order, shown in the impossibility of self -reproduction:
The period of history we are passing through is a revolutionary period

because the traditional institutions for the government of the human
masses, institutions which were linked to the old modes of production and
3 FROM HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TO THE PHILOSOPHY … 153
exchange, have lost any significance and useful function they might have
had. The centre of gravity of the whole society has been removed to a new
field: the institutions have been left as mere shells, devoid of any histor-
ical substance, or animating spirit. The bourgeois class no longer governs
its vital interests through parliament. The working class is trying out new
avenues in search of its institution of government, outside the trade union;
it has found that institution of its government in the Factory Council and
system of Councils. (‘Proletarian Unity’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 439–440;
SPW 1919–1920, pp. 174–175)
The crisis is therefore a well-defined historical and political

phenomenon, not an inevitable catastrophe having its origins in the
‘nature’ of capitalism. In his report on the Turin factory council move-
ment, sent to the Executive Committee of the Third International in July
1920, Gramsci underlines one aspect in particular:
For the first time in history, there was an example of a proletariat which
engaged in struggle for control over production, without being driven into
action through hunger or unemployment. Furthermore, it was not just a
minority, a vanguard of the working class which undertook the struggle,
but the entire mass of the workers of Turin took to the field and brought
the struggle, heedless of privations and sacrifices, right to the end. (‘The
Turin Factory Council Movement’, ON 1991–1920, pp. 599–600)2
The determining element in the crisis is, then, the change in subjec-
tivity which regards as much productive forces as social relations and
institutions. And Gramsci was not loath, in polemics with Angelo Tasca,
to emphasize that for the Ordine Nuovo group the recognition of changes
generated by the development of finance capital and by the war consti-
tuted one of the most important conditions for the industrial independence
of the working class, a condition which consisted in the fact that the
2 [The version quoted (from L’Ordine Nuovo, 14 March 1921) differs somewhat from
the one that Gramsci sent to the Comintern journal Communist International (no. 14.
1920), which in SPW 1919–1920 is retranslated from other non-English languages of the
journal. The wording used here is taken from the abridged translation (by M. Carley,
Marxists Internet Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1921/03/turin_
councils.htm) of the later newspaper article. Gramsci’s original manuscript is available
online in its full Italian transcription (‘Il movimento comunista a Torino’) and English
translation from the Italian (‘The Turin Communist Movement’) in the International
Gramsci Journal, 2(2), 2017, here pp. 17 and 40 respectively—trans. note.]
154 G. VACCA
transformations of capitalism had made the role of capitalists redundant.

The industrial workers could therefore observe empirically the progres-
sive weakening of capitalist appropriation and assume ‘the initiative over
production’:
In the imperialist phase of the historical evolution of the bourgeois class,

the industrial power of each factory is divorced from the factory and
is concentrated in a trust, a monopoly, a bank, the State bureaucracy.
Industrial power does not have to answer for what it does and becomes
more autocratic, ruthless, and arbitrary. But the worker, freed from the
boss’s subjection, and from the servile spirit generated by a hierarchy
(…) achieves priceless gains in terms of autonomy and initiative. In the
factory the working class has become a given ‘instrument of production’
(…): [Each worker] is a cog in the division-of-labour machine (…). If
the worker achieves a clear consciousness of this given necessity that he
represents, and builds upon it a representative apparatus that has all the
hallmarks of a State (…) [The working class] begins a new history, the era
of workers’ States that must coalesce to form a communist society. (‘The
Factory Council’, ON 1919–1920, p. 535; SPW 1910–1920, pp. 262–263
and New Left Review, I/51, pp. 33–34)
The ‘actuality’ of the revolution has its origin in the fact that indus-
trialism and capitalism tend to separate from each other and new social
hierarchies, a new system of relations between the rulers and the ruled,
between the governors and the governed, may be constructed (‘The
Factory Worker’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 432–435).
The analysis of the ‘morbid’ phenomena generated by finance capital in
the ‘demographic composition’ and organization of the State is also very
detailed, but it is of use to draw attention to the fact that, in Gramsci’s
view, in order to respond to the needs of an extreme centralization and of
an unheard-of productive effort, the war had accelerated and intensified
the split between industrialism and capitalism. The change in subjectivity
had extended far beyond the direct producers: on the one hand it had
involved the ‘intellectuals of production’ and, on the other, it had radically
changed the historical position of the peasant masses. The former had
undergone a progressive assimilation with the workers:
The figure of the technician too has changed. His relations with the
industrialist have been completely transformed. He is no longer a trusted
employee, an agent of capitalist interests: since the worker can do without
the technician for a great number of jobs, the technician becomes redun-
dant as a disciplinary agent. The technician too, is reduced to the status
of a producer, linked to the capitalist via the naked and savage relationship
of exploited to exploiter. (‘The Instruments of Labour’, ON 1919–1920,
pp. 414–415; SPW 1910–1920, p. 164)
As for the peasants, the war had dragged them out of the country-
side and brought them into contact with the world of industry. It had
connected them to the working class and made them aware of their role in
the State, transforming them into an active mass which would no longer
be disposed to return to the old social and political conditions.
Four years of the trenches and of exploitation of his blood have radi-
cally changed the peasant psychology (…). The peasants came to see the
State in all its complex grandeur, in its measureless power, in its intricate
construction. They came to see the world no longer as something infinitely
vast like the universe and small as the village bell-tower, but as a concrete
reality consisting of States and peoples, social strengths and weaknesses,
armies and machines, wealth and poverty. Links of solidarity were forged
which otherwise would have taken decades of historical experience and
intermittent struggles to form. Within four years, in the mud and blood
of the trenches, a spiritual world emerged that was avid to form itself into
permanent and dynamic social structures and institutions. (‘Workers and
Peasants’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 157–158; SPW 1910–1920, pp. 84–85)
The breakdown in the world market, the oppressive nature of Anglo-

Saxon domination and the alteration in mass subjectivity put the prole-
tarian revolution on the agenda:
During the war and as a result of the necessities of the war, the Italian
State took over regulation of the production and distribution of material
goods as one of its functions. A sort of industrial and commercial trust
has been set up, a sort of concentration of the means of production and
exchange, an equalization of the conditions of exploitation of the prole-
tarian and semi-proletarian masses – which have had their revolutionary
effect. (‘Workers and Peasants’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 156; SPW 1910–1920,
p. 83)
The revolution is ‘imposed’ not ‘proposed’, since it succeeds ‘only

in so far as it advances and promotes the expansion and systematiza-
tion of proletarian and communist forces’ formed within capitalist society
156 G. VACCA
and is able to build a new order of production and distribution (‘Two

Revolutions’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 569–570; PPW , pp. 168–169, SPW
1919–1920, p. 305, and New Left Review I/51, p. 45). On the surface
it appears that we are dealing with the basic concepts of Marx’s theory
of revolutions, reintroduced by the Bolsheviks, but we shall soon see that
this is not the case. The link between production and politics is a partic-
ular feature of the Ordine Nuovo experience and concerns the search
for a way that differed from the Russian Revolution and the European
insurgencies of 1919–1920.
Let us begin with an examination of Gramsci’s conception of the
Council as the institutional nucleus of a workers’ State:
Since all sectors of the labour process are represented in the Council, in
proportion to the contribution each craft and each labour sector makes to
the manufacture of the object the factory is producing for the collectivity
(…) [i]ts raison d’être lies in the labour process, in industrial production,
i.e. in something permanent. It does not lie in wages or class divisions,
i.e. in something transitory and, moreover, the very thing we are trying to
supersede.
Therefore, he continues, the ‘Factory Council is the model of the

proletarian State’ (‘Unions and Councils’, ON 1919–1920, p. 238; SPW
1910–1920, p. 100 and New Left Review I/51, pp. 36–37). His opinion
is that in this way the risks both of a ‘trade-union State’ of a corpora-
tive nature and of a defeat such as that suffered by the council republics
in Bavaria and Hungary may be avoided. The link between production
and politics tried out by the Turin factory council movement thus leads
him to assert that the ‘two-stage revolution’ defined by the conquest of
State power and successively by its use to ‘subject’ the economy in an
authoritarian fashion is anachronistic:
the experience of revolutions [the European ones of 1919-1920] has

shown that, since Russia, all other two-stage revolutions have failed and
the failure of the second revolution has plunged the working classes into
a state of prostration and demoralization. This has allowed the bourgeois
class to reorganize in strength and begin a systematic extermination of the
communist vanguards trying to regroup. (‘Two Revolutions’, ON 1919–
1920, p. 572; SPW 1919–1920, p. 308, PPW , p. 171, and NLR I/51,
p. 47)
The conviction that, after the October Revolution, it became necessary

to develop a new protagonist of proletarian revolution dates back, then, to
the times of L’Ordine Nuovo. If the political revolution and the reorgani-
zation of the economy are separated logically or chronologically into two
different moments, the revolutionary process is interrupted, laying the
road open to reaction. The council revolutions of 1919–1920 had repro-
posed the asynchrony between politics and economics of the ‘Russian
experiment’ and had therefore failed. In Russia this had not happened,
thanks to quite exceptional conditions, such as the extreme backward-
ness of the country, the international situation created by the war and
the collapse of the Tsarist Empire. Gramsci saw instead in the European
revolutions the lack of a conception of politics that was appropriate for the
transformations that the proletariat should have been able to introduce in
the sphere of production. He wrote that in Germany
… social democracy (…) effected the paradox of violently forcing the

process of the German proletarian revolution into the form of its own
organization, believing that it was thereby dominating history. It created its
own Councils, by fiat, and made sure its own men should have a majority
on them. It shackled and domesticated the revolution. Today it has lost
all contact with historical reality, save for the beating of Noske’s fist on
the workers’ nape, and the revolutionary process pursues its own uncon-
trolled and still mysterious course, to well up again from unknown depths
of violence and pain. (‘The Party and the Revolution’, L’ON 1919–1920,
p. 368; SPW 1910–1920, p. 143, and New Left Review I/51, pp. 42–43)
More generally, in Austria and Germany, in Bavaria, in Ukraine, in

Hungary, the revolution as a destructive process was not accompanied
by the revolution as a constructive process, and it was because of this that
these revolutions failed:
The presence of these external conditions – a communist party, the destruc-

tion of the bourgeois State, powerful trade union organizations and an
armed proletariat – was not sufficient to compensate for the absence of
another condition: the existence of productive forces tending towards
development and growth, a conscious movement on the part of the prole-
tarian masses to substantiate their political power with economic power,
and a determination on the part of these proletarian masses to introduce
proletarian order into the factory, to make the factory the basic unit of the
new State, to build the new State as an expression of the industrial relations
158 G. VACCA
of the factory system. (‘Two Revolutions’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 570–571;

SPW 1910–1920, pp. 306–307, PPW , p. 170, and New Left Review I/51,
p. 46)
In conclusion, then, ‘the revolution is not a thaumaturgical act, but

a dialectical process of historical development’ (‘The Development of
the Revolution’, ON 1919–1920, p. 207; SPW 1910–1920, p. 92) in
which the proletariat’s conquest of the power of initiative over industry
is the first step of a transformation destined to occupy an entire historical
period. Communist society can be conceived only as a ‘natural’ forma-
tion, merged with the instruments of production and with the network of
exchange; and the revolution can be founded only by recognizing the ‘his-
torical necessity’ of this formation. The revolutionary process is therefore
resolved into a ‘spontaneous’ movement of the working masses generated
by the contradictions that strike at collective human life under a regime
of capitalist property. Gramsci’s sarcasm and polemics against any form
of ‘spontaneity’ are well-known. But in this case ‘spontaneous’ stands
for ‘organic’, meaning not something lacking in form but capable of
being organized in institutions in which productive functions and political
functions blend coherently. These organizations are the Factory Councils
which at one and the same time, through a unitary dialectical develop-
ment, can realize the destruction of the old productive apparatus and its
substitution by a new order:
The revolution as the conquest of social power on the part of the prole-
tariat can only be conceived as a dialectical process, in which political power
makes possible industrial power and industrial power makes possible polit-
ical power. The soviet is the instrument of revolutionary struggle that
provides for the autonomous development of the communist economic
organization (…) The Factory Council, as an expression of the autonomy
of the producer in the industrial sphere and as the basis for communist
economic organization, is the instrument for the final struggle to the death
with the capitalist order. (‘Two Revolutions’, ON 1919–1920, p. 573; SPW
1910–1920, p. 308, PPW , pp. 171–172 and New Left Review I/51, p. 46)
It seems obvious to me that in these reflections there are all the

elements for the successive critique of the ‘permanent revolution’. But,
returning to 1919–1920, the link between production and politics leads
to another specific aspect of Gramsci’s thought: the conception of the party.
The nature of the communist party stems directly from that of the prole-
tarian revolution. The protagonist of the process is the mass of producers,
which has reached a level of ‘industrial autonomy’ and ‘historical initia-
tive’ such as to be able to shape a new economic and State order. It is
a mass in fusion which in the course of the process acquires a new ‘psy-
chology’, recognizing and asserting itself as part of a whole constituted
concretely by a new ‘power of initiative over production’. The party is
therefore configured as the mind of the process which, on the one hand,
can carry out a leading role putting itself in a dialectical relation with the
mass and avoiding crystallization in the bureaucratic apparatuses of the
new State and, on the other, working continuously to foster the political
conditions of the process itself.
Under the first of these aspects, ‘the party remains the superior hier-
archy of this irresistible mass movement’ on condition that it does not
attempt to ‘fix in mechanical forms of immediate power an apparatus
governing the masses in movement’ (‘The Party and the Revolution’,
ON 1919–1920, p. 370; New Left Review I/51, pp. 43–44, and SPW
1910–1920, p. 144).3
Under the other aspect,
In so far as it can shape reality, the party must create conditions in which
there will not be two revolutions, but in which the revolution against
the bourgeois State will find organized forces capable of beginning the
transformation of the national productive apparatus from an instrument of
plutocratic oppression to an instrument of communist liberation. (‘Two
Revolutions’, ON 1919–1920, pp. 573–574; SPW 1910–1920, p. 309, and
New Left Review I/51, p. 48)
In order to lead the proletarian revolution, the party must be ‘the

instrument and historical form of the process of inner liberation through
which the worker is transformed from executor to initiator, from mass to
leader and guide, from pure brawn to brain and a will’ (‘The Commu-
nist Party’ ON 1919–1920, p. 652; PPW , p. 191, and SPW 1910–1920,
3 [The New Left Review translation quoted here follows more exactly the Italian
wording—trans. note.]
160 G. VACCA
p. 333).4 But the single moments of the process cannot be foreseen in

advance since they are an original creation of the mass in action:
Who can imagine and foresee what the immediate consequences will be,
when the countless multitudes who today have no will and power finally
make their entry into the arena of historical destruction and creation? (…)
They will find everything that exists mysteriously hostile and will seek to
destroy it utterly. But it is the very immensity of the revolution, its quality
of being unforeseeable, its boundless freedom, that makes it impossible to
hazard so much as a single definitive hypothesis on what feelings, passions,
initiatives and virtues are being moulded in such an incandescent furnace.
(‘The Communist Party’ ON 1919–1920, p. 652; PPW , p. 188, and SPW
1910–1920, p. 331)
The party can guide the revolutionary process to the extent that it
assumes a mass character and follows the principle at the basis of the
proletarian revolution: the progressive formation of a ‘will of the protag-
onists’ among the ‘producers’, of an attitude of ‘initiators’ and ‘leaders’.
In carrying out its role as guide, then, it strives for a general modification
of the relations between leaders and led, and for the creation of new ways
of life.
2 The Research Programme of the Notebooks

Despite the limits of an experience that was limited both in time and to a
small part of the industrial proletariat of the era, as was the Turin Factory
Council movement (cf. Spriano 1975), the subjects singled out in 1919–
1920 were destined to come again to the fore in the research carried out
in the Prison Notebooks. But between the experience of L’Ordine Nuovo
and the Notebooks historical events of a decisive importance intervened:
the defeat of the workers’ movement and the advent of fascism in Italy;
the failure of the revolution in Germany and the crisis of the Bolshevik
leadership; the coming to power of Stalin, the ‘revolution from above’
and the radical shift in policy of the Comintern; the world economic crisis
and the self-imposed isolation of the USSR; the failure of the Weimar
Republic. These events pushed Gramsci into a thoroughgoing reappraisal
4 [Here we prefer the literal ‘will’ of the PPW translation to the one of ‘purpose’ in
SPW 1919–1920, given the prominence that the concept of ‘will’ has acquired in Gramsci’s
prison writings: see also below in this chapter—trans. note.]
of the perspectives for socialism through an analysis of Marx’s work which

up to then he had not developed (cf. Izzo 2009, pp. 23–74; Rapone
2011a, pp. 974–991).5 The three series of the Notes on Philosophy, written
between May 1930 and May 1932 define the programmatic horizon and
conceptual laboratory of the Prison Notebooks. That their most important
contribution to contemporary thought was the conception of politics as
the struggle for hegemony was perceived right from their first appearance;
on the other hand, the perception of the close connection with the philos-
ophy of praxis—which in Gramsci’s conception becomes a theory of the
constitution of historical subjectivity—was much slower in arriving. The
road was long due to the ways in which the Notebooks were published
and due to the lexis with which he developed his own original revision of
Marxism.
The language of the Prison Notebooks constituted a problem from the
very first edition. Their editor, Felice Platone, was at pains to point out
that, in order to get round the prison censor, Gramsci had frequent
recourse to metaphors and cryptic expressions that had to be deciphered.
Then, in the preface to Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto
Croce, which as is known inaugurated the first edition of the Notebooks,
a glossary was included in which it was asserted that Gramsci had used
the expression ‘philosophy of praxis’ instead of ‘historical materialism’
to avoid ‘arousing the suspicions of the censorship’, but that the two
referred to the same thing. In the index of subject matters of the crit-
ical edition of the Notebooks, published 27 years later, the two entries are
instead separated and at the end of the entry ‘philosophy of praxis’ we
read that
… under the entry “historical materialism” the expression “philosophy of

praxis”, used in the “C texts” [i.e. the second draft texts – trans. note]
has been included, when in the corresponding “A texts” [i.e. the first draft
texts – trans. note] the term “historical materialism” is found. (Gramsci
1975, p. 3197)
The ‘C texts’ constitute the Special Notebooks that Gramsci began

to write in mid-1932, transferring, reworking and grouping together
5 Both Izzo’s and Rapone’s essays give a periodization of Gramsci’s political thought;
Rapone’s covers in detail the 1914–1920 period.
162 G. VACCA
according to monographic criteria the notes contained in the Miscella-

neous Notebooks. In writing the notes Gramsci was faced not only with
the problem of evading the censorship, but that of creating a lexis
that corresponded to the developments of his thought. This may be
easily demonstrated by following through the transformation of the main
subject of the Notebooks from its original formulation of the ‘relations
between structure and superstructures’ (‘Notes on Philosophy’, Q4§38
[end of 1929–February 1930], pp. 455–65; PN Vol. 2, pp. 177–188)
to the final question ‘how does the historical movement arise on the
structural base?’ (Q11§22, p. 1422; SPN , p. 431), in other words ‘how
permanent collective wills are in fact formed’ (Q8§195, p. 1057; PN Vol
3, p. 346, and SPN , p. 194). The substitution of the expression ‘histor-
ical materialism’ by ‘philosophy of praxis’ corresponds to the change in
the fundamental problem of the subject.
The ‘philosophy of praxis’ developed in the Notebooks cannot be
considered as merely a reworking of Antonio Labriola’s ‘materialist
conception of history’—even though Gramsci argued that it was necessary
to bring his thought ‘back into circulation’ in order to ‘make his way of
posing the philosophical problem predominant’ (Q11§70, p. 1509; SPN ,
p. 388)–and even more so the ‘philosophy of revolution’ as promulgated
between the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1919, in other words
in the period of the first assimilation of the ‘philosophy of Marx’ (Paggi
1974, 1984).6 As already mentioned, Gramsci was induced to approach
Marx’s thought in a more systematic way by the October Revolution
and by his first acquaintance with the writings of the ‘Bolsheviks’ who
had re-asserted its ‘normative’ value in the light of their own experi-
ence. Before this ‘encounter’, because of the positivistic deformations
of Marxism predominant in Italian socialism and in the Second Inter-
national, Gramsci had not declared himself a ‘Marxist’ (Rapone 2011b,
pp. 261 et seq.; Salvadori 1970, pp. 213 et seq.). But even when he began
to declare himself as such, the first mention of the ‘philosophy of praxis’
6 The interpretation of Gramsci’s thought as a ‘philosophy of the revolution’ was argued

most of all by Leonardo Paggi on the basis of a reading en bloc of his writings—the ‘early
writings’ and the Prison Notebooks —which considered these latter as an ‘autobiographical’
re-working of his political and cultural experience in the 1916–1926 period. Systematically
argued in Paggi’s ‘La teoria generale del marxismo in Gramsci’ (Paggi 1974), this thesis
was underlined, albeit with significant variants, as Appendix II to the same author’s 1984
volume Le strategie del potere in Gramsci, under the title ‘From Lenin to Marx’ (‘Da
Lenin a Marx’).
appeared in a transcription of the theoretical nucleus of Labriola’s essays.

It is the well-known passage in polemic with Balbino Giuliano carried
out in the pages of Piero Gobetti’s review, Energie nove [New Energies],
in February 1919. In this polemic, in evoking ‘praxis’ as the ‘continual
bringing into line of the empirical individual with spiritual universality’,
Gramsci defines ‘the doctrine of historical materialism (…) [as] the critical
organization of knowledge on the basis of the historical necessities that
give substance to the process of development of human society’ (‘State
and Sovereignty’, NM , p. 521).
In order to characterize Gramsci’s assimilation of Marx, the starting
point is ‘The Revolution Against “Capital”’ where, starting from the
lesson of the ‘Russian maximalists’, he spells out a ‘philosophy of revo-
lution’ founded on the conviction that their wrench from history had its
origin in their ability to forge a ‘collective popular will’ (‘The Revolution
Against “Capital”’, CF , p. 514; SPW 1919–1920, p. 35 and PPW , p. 40).
The influence of Labriola may instead be documented beginning with the
polemic with Claudio Treves on the Russian Revolution, in which the
references to the Holy Family (‘Critical Criticism’, CF , pp. 554–8; PPW ,
pp. 43–46) announce in advance the importance that this text would
then assume in the Notebooks as regards the ‘translatability of scientific
and philosophical languages’. But, while in the years that passed between
the October Revolution and 1922, the subject onto which an ‘organized
collective will’ (Q8§180, p. 1050; PN Vol. 3, p. 338)7 was to be grafted
was already given, and was no other—in the wake of Labriola (Vacca
2016)—than the modern proletariat generated on an ever vaster scale
by the developments in the mode of capitalist production, in the Note-
books, however, and specifically as from 1932, Gramsci would pose the
subject problematically. Between 1917 and 1922 the historical horizon
of his thought was marked by the ‘actuality of the revolution’ but when,
between 1923 and 1924 he began the translation ‘into Italian historical
language’ of the ‘tactic of the United Front’, it would be difficult to argue
that he was still thinking and acting in this perspective. From the procla-
mation of ‘peaceful coexistence’ to the start of the New Economic Policy
and thence to the launching of the ‘United Front tactic’ it was Lenin who
was to consider the ‘war of movement’ as finished following the defeat
of the Red Army in Poland. Neither can one inscribe into the ‘actuality
7 [By an oversight the word “will” is omitted from the PN translation—trans. note.]
164 G. VACCA
of the revolution’ the passage to the accumulation, country by country,

of revolutionary forces entrusted to the ‘United Front tactic’. As seen
in Chapter 1, in 1926, in going further into the problem of the ‘hege-
mony of the proletariat’ in Italy, Gramsci set in motion a revision of the
basic schemes of ‘historical materialism’ (Vacca 2012, pp. 23–27). Then,
when—three years later—he formulated the research programme of the
Notebooks, the perception of the international situation was so different
as compared with 1926, and so discordant with the ‘turn’ imposed by
Stalin on the construction of socialism in the USSR and the Commu-
nist International,8 that Gramsci would assume as an overall horizon for
his research a revision of Marxism from the foundations.9 I would argue
however that the ‘philosophy of praxis’ cannot be considered either as
taking up again Labriola’s thought, or as an updating of the ‘philos-
ophy of revolution’. In the research programme of the Notebooks Gramsci
allows the ‘actuality of the revolution’ to drop, and sets up a wholly
new ‘plan of work’ in order to define with what conceptualization of the
historical period—the one that opened between the end of the 1920s
and the beginning of the 1930s—the perspective of communism could
be reformulated.
On the other hand, modern philosophical thought is entirely imbued
with the problem of the subject and one cannot properly speak of a philos-
ophy of Gramsci’s before his research took on a systematic nature, that is
before the writing of the Prison Notebooks. The Notebooks are character-
ized above all by the elaboration of a new lexis and, as from September
1930, Gramsci shows a full awareness of this as when in a note entitled
‘Apropos of the appellation of “historical materialism”’ he transcribed a
passage from a letter of Pietro Giordani to Charlotte Bonaparte, in which
the former quotes a thought that Napoleon expressed on the occasion of
his visit to the Academy of Sciences of Bologna (1805) where he is said
to have pronounced the words
8 As Silvio Pons (2012) has amply demonstrated, after Stalin’s advent to power ‘the
construction of socialism in one country’ presupposes abandoning the perspective of a
‘world revolution’. This does detract from the fact that the growth of the international
communist movement constituted a basic resource for Soviet ‘power’, and the spectre of
world revolution therefore not only survived in international communism but continued
at length to feed its rhetoric.
9 In this regard Q4§3, entitled ‘Two Aspects of Marxism’, is fundamental and will be
the subject of analysis later on.
I believe that, when something really new is discovered in the sciences, one
must adopt an entirely new term for it so that the idea remains precise and
clear. If you give new meaning to an old term – no matter how strongly
you profess that the old idea attached to the term has nothing in common
with the idea newly assigned to it – human minds can never be expected to
refrain entirely from thinking that there is some resemblance or connection
between the old idea and the new one. This confuses science and leads to
useless controversies. (Q4§34, pp. 452–453; PN Vol. 2, p. 174)
The new lexis chosen by Gramsci for the revision of Marxism is the
‘philosophy of praxis’ and it is not by chance that the above passage is
taken up again two years later, without variation, in concluding paragraph
27 of Notebook 11, entitled ‘The Concept of “Orthodoxy”’, dedicated to
posing the subject of the philosophical autonomy of Marxism (Q11§27,
pp. 1434–1438; partially in SPN , pp. 462–465).10
3 ‘A Heresy of the Religion of Liberty’

The first series of the ‘Notes on Philosophy’, written between May and
November 1930, start from a radical critique of ‘official Marxism’:
Marxism had two tasks: to combat modern ideologies in their most refined
form; and to enlighten the minds of the popular masses, whose culture was
medieval. This second task, which was fundamental, has absorbed all its
strength, not only “quantitatively” but also “qualitatively”. For “didactic”
reasons, Marxism became mixed with a form of culture that was some-
what superior to the popular mentality but inadequate to combat the other
ideologies of the educated classes; yet, at its inception, Marxism actually
superseded the highest cultural manifestation of the time, classical German
philosophy. What has emerged is a “Marxism” in “combination” (…) inad-
equate for creating a broad cultural movement that embraces the whole of
man, whatever his age or his social conditions, and that brings about the
moral unification of society. (Q4§3, pp. 422–423; PN Vol. 2, p. 141)
The ‘combination’ regarded above all the positivist scientism that

characterized Soviet Marxism, whose main texts, Historical Materialism:
10 [This is a ‘C’ text, identical in Gramsci’s wording to the ‘A’ text: see SPN ,
p. 452 footnote 99 for a partial translation with slightly alternative wording to the PN
translation—trans. note.]
166 G. VACCA
A System of Sociology by Bukharin, and the An Outline of Political

Economy by Lapidus and Ostrovityanov (Bukharin 1926; Lapidus and
Ostrovityanov 1929) are subject, as we have seen, to Gramsci’s harsh
criticism (Q15§45, pp. 1805–1806; FSPN , p. 176). But in general the
target of his criticism is ‘economism’ which includes various philosophies
of action influenced in their turn by Marxism (Bergson, Sorel, pragmatism
and anarcho-syndicalism, of which the highest expression is considered to
be Rosa Luxemburg). In particular, syndicalism for Gramsci shares the
same theoretical error as free-trade liberalism, confusing the ‘method-
ological’ distinction of State and civil society with an ‘organic’ distinction
(Q4§38, p. 460; PN Vol. 2, p. 182). The attitude of the philosophy
of praxis towards idealism and especially towards Benedetto Croce is, on
the other hand, different. After having read the first chapters of Croce’s
History of Europe, Gramsci stated that Croce was a ‘leader of world
culture’ (Gramsci-Schucht, pp. 975–976; Gramsci LfP Vol. 2, p. 164),11
adopting his philosophy as the necessary standard of comparison for the
regeneration of Marxism:
… just as the philosophy of praxis was the translation of Hegelianism into

historicist language, so Croce’s is to a quite notable extent the retransla-
tion into speculative language of the realist historicism of the philosophy of
praxis. (…) Croce’s philosophical conception has to be adapted in the way
Hegel’s was by the first theorists of the philosophy of praxis. This is the
sole historically fruitful way of carrying through an adequate renewal of the
philosophy of praxis, of raising this conception – which due to the necessi-
ties of day-to-day practical life has been getting ‘vulgarised’ – to the heights
it must reach for the solution of the more complex tasks demanded by the
current development of the struggle. That is to say it must be elevated to
the level of creating a new integral culture …. (Q10I§11, p. 1233; FSPN ,
p. 355)
Putting this succinctly, one may say that in his turn Gramsci, over-
turning Croce’s ‘reduction’ of Marxism to a methodological ‘canon of
historical research’12 proposes doing likewise with the ‘ethico-political’
11 Letter to Tat’jana of 18 April 1932.

12 [The term “canon”, referred to historical research or interpretation and often with
the adjective ‘empirical’ attached to it, is found frequently in the key special Notebooks 10
(on Croce) and 11 (largely a critique of Bukharin), as well, on a number of occasions, as
in the preparatory ‘A’ texts, especially Q4—trans. note.]
conception of history. The reply to the question ‘How does the historical
movement arise on the structural base?’ is evinced from the general prin-
ciples outlined in the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy, which we may here fruitfully recall:
1. Society does not set itself problems for whose solution the necessary
and sufficient conditions have not already been realized
2. No form of society disappears before having exhausted all its
possibilities of development
3. Men acquire consciousness of the conflicts of their time on the
terrain of ideologies
From these principles it follows that the ‘fundamental problem’ of

Marxism is simply that of the specification of the problem of liberty
that Gramsci evokes with the term catharsis: ‘the term “catharsis” can be
employed to indicate the passage from the purely economic (or egoistic-
passional) to the ethico-political moment’ (Q10II§6, p. 1244; SPN ,
p. 366).
But the ‘philosophy of praxis’ is located at the antipodes of the ‘phi-
losophy of liberty’ of Croce. Gramsci defines the ‘philosophy of praxis’ as
a ‘“heresy” of the religion of liberty’ (Q10I§13 Notes, p. 1238; FSPN ,
p. 361) since it aims at subverting the crystallized relationships between
‘intellectuals’ and the ‘simple’ starting from a different conception of the
individual. The basic reason why he maintains that Croce ‘at the present
time represents the worldwide moment of classical German philosophy’
(Q10I§11, p. 1234; FSPN , p. 356) is found in the ‘intellectual and moral
reform’ that he promoted vis-à-vis the catholic religion at the start of
the twentieth century, and which the philosophy of praxis must not lose
(Gramsci-Schucht, p. 764; LfP Vol. 2, p. 56).13 Indeed, by elevating
liberalism to a new form of ‘religion’ Croce had arrived at the identifi-
cation of philosophy, ideology and politics that constitutes a postulate of
the philosophy of praxis. However if, as much for Croce as for Gramsci,
every ‘philosophy with a conformant ethic’ is a ‘religion’, Croce’s ‘religion
of liberty’ remains limited to the intellectual groupings and fossilizes their
scission from the people-nation. ‘In one of his books Croce has written
something to the effect that “One cannot deprive the man in the street
13 Letter of Gramsci’s of 17 August 1931 to his sister-in-law, Tat’jana.

168 G. VACCA
of religion without immediately substituting it with something that satis-

fies the same needs for which religion was born and still persists”. There
is some truth in this assertion – Gramsci comments – but does it not
contain a confession of the impotence of idealist philosophy for becoming
an integral (and rational) world outlook?’ (Q10II§41i, p. 1294; FSPN ,
p. 408)14 :
For Croce a religion is any concept of the world that puts itself forward
as an ethic. But has this happened for “liberty”? Liberty was a religion
for a limited number of intellectuals but among the masses it took on
the appearance of one of the elements constituting an ideological meld or
amalgam, whose main constituent was the old-style catholic religion and
of which another important – if not decisive – element, from the secular
point of view, was one’s “fatherland”. (Q10I§10, p. 1230; FSPN , p. 352)
The ‘popular’ religion that liberalism substituted for Catholicism or,

rather, combined with it, was, then, that of ‘“patriotism” and nation-
alism’ (Q10II§13, note 4, p. 1237; FSPN , p. 359—emphasis added
[G.V.]). The ‘philosophy of praxis’ intended on the other hand to be
the ‘great reform of modern times, it is an intellectual and moral reform
which carries out on a national scale what liberalism only managed to do
for restricted strata (ceti) of the population’ (Q10II§41i, p.1292; FSPN ,
p. 406). At the philosophical level Gramsci’s critique strikes most of all at
the whole of methodological individualism.
The struggle against individualism is one against a particular type of indi-

vidualism with a particular social content, and, to be precise, against
economic individualism in a period in which this has become anachro-
nistic and anti-historical (though it is not to be forgotten – Gramsci adds
– that it was historically necessary and represented a stage of progressive
development). (Q9§23, p. 1111; FSPN , p. 270)
For the philosophy of praxis this is a fundamental aspect of the struggle

for hegemony. Liberal individualism is founded on the naturalistic notion
of the homo oeconomicus. In actual reality, the formation of the indi-
vidual is the result of a cultural development which is reached through
14 Gramsci paraphrases opinions of Croce’s expressed in the latter’s History of Europe

in the Nineteenth Century, trans. H. Furst, New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1934; here
p. 25.
the liberation of the individual consciousness from the external influences

that block it. These originate from the fact that individual conscious-
ness, initially corresponding to ‘common sense’, appears as a field of ideal
forces, heterogeneous, mutually antagonistic and in tension, and only by
resolving these antinomies can the sphere of liberty be attained. ‘The
active man-in-the-mass has a practical activity, but has no clear theo-
retical consciousness of his practical activity, which nonetheless involves
understanding the world in so far as it transforms it. His theoretical
consciousness can indeed be historically in opposition to his activity’
(Q11§12, p. 1385; SPN , p. 333) because it chains him to ‘a specific
social group’ which influences the direction of his will up to the point of
paralysing it. These considerations, with which Gramsci even interpreted
the causes of depression in his far-off wife (Vacca 2012, pp. 167–175),
led him to conclude that individual liberty coincides with the conscious
choice of the ‘hegemonic force’ of which he was part:
Critical understanding of self takes place (…) through a struggle of political

“hegemonies” and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then
in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher
level of one’s own conception of reality. Consciousness of being part of
a particular hegemonic force (that is to say, political consciousness) is the
first stage towards a further progressive self-consciousness in which theory
and practice will finally be one. (Q11§12, p. 1385; SPN , p. 333)
At the philosophical level Gramsci unites freedom with necessity,

rather than with authority, since authority is only the crystallization of
specific relations of force. To clarify the concept one may start from its
anthropological foundation:
The basic innovation introduced by the philosophy of praxis into the

science of politics and of history is the demonstration that there is no
abstract “human nature”, fixed and immutable (…), but that human nature
is the totality of historically determined social relations, hence an historical
fact which can, within certain limits, be ascertained with the methods of
philology and criticism. (Q13§20, pp. 1598–1599; SPN , p. 133)
At the socio-historical level, instead, the formation of the ‘collec-

tive man’ is the task of the ‘modern Prince’ and postulates, as we shall
better see later on, a strict coherence between ‘economic reform’ and
‘intellectual and moral reform’.
170 G. VACCA
Can there be cultural reform, and can there be a civil improvement of

the depressed strata of society be improved in the civil sector – Gramsci
asks himself – without a previous economic reform and a change in their
position in the social and economic fields? Intellectual and moral reform
has to be linked with a programme of economic reform – indeed the
programme of economic reform is precisely the concrete form in which
every intellectual and moral reform presents itself. (Q13§1, p. 1561; SPN ,
p. 133)15
The philosophy of praxis is therefore ‘a new conception intimately

fused with a political programme and a conception of history that
the people recognizes as the expression of its absolute necessities’.
(Q10II§41i, p. 1295; FSPN , p. 409)
4 Economism and Scientism

To the formulation of the question of freedom as just described, there
correspond the theory of the ‘historically determinate abstraction’ as
the gnoseological paradigm of Marxism, and the critique of scientism as
corresponding philosophically to what in political theory is economism.
The former of these has its origin in the meaning that Gramsci attributes
to the primacy of politics. This concept means that historical knowledge is
really only attained when one arrives at determining situations on the basis
of their relations of force and thus defining, for each of the forces in play,
conditions and possibilities, necessities and liberties as the results of the
political struggle (Q13§17, pp. 1578–1579; SPN , pp. 175–185).16 The
primacy of politics evokes the determining incidence of social reproduction
given that, if capital is a social relation of production, the presupposition
of the relations of production is their reproducibility. Capital is not only
the motive force of modern economic development, but also a historical
formation that, in order to fulfil its functions, must see the reproduc-
tion of the whole of the relations of production on which the production
of commodities is founded. It almost goes without saying that, if men
become conscious of structural conflicts on the terrain of ideologies, there
are to be included among the resources to be reproduced above all the
15 [Translation adjusted to follow more closely Gramsci’s original—trans. note.]

16 The English heading of this paragraph, following the original Italian, is ‘Analysis of
Situations: Relations of Force’.
‘intellectual and moral’ ones, in other words values, culture, the ideolo-
gies that give symbolic form to the relations between the dominant and
the dominated, the leaders and the led. In short, the asserting of the
primacy of politics contains the nucleus of a critical theory of social repro-
duction. Fundamental, then, to the philosophical autonomy of Marxism
is the concept of ‘determinate market’:
How did the founder of the philosophy of praxis arrive at the concept
of regularity and necessity in historical development? (…) Concept and
fact of determinate market: i.e. the scientific discovery that specific deci-
sive and permanent forces have risen historically and that the operation
of these forces presents itself with a certain “automatism” which allows a
measure of “predictability” and certainty for the future of those individual
initiatives which accept these forces after having discerned and scientifi-
cally established their nature. “Determinate market” is therefore equivalent
to “determinate relation of social forces in a determinate structure of the
productive apparatus”, this relationship being guaranteed (that is, rendered
permanent) by a determinate political, moral and juridical superstructure.
(Q11§52, p. 1477; SPN , p. 401)17
As is known, Gramsci draws the concept of ‘determinate market’ from

the thought of David Ricardo, considering classical economy a histor-
ical social science because he is aware of the extra-economic origin of its
subject matter. The discovery has a philosophical value, since it implic-
itly contains a new conception of ‘necessity’ and ‘freedom’, a conception
that is translatable into other scientific languages (linguaggi) and had
already been ‘translated’ by the ‘philosophy of praxis, which has univer-
salised Ricardo’s discoveries, extending them in an adequate fashion to the
whole of history and thus drawing from them, in an original form, a new
conception of the world’ (Q10II§9, p. 1247; SPN , p. 401). However,
between Ricardo and Marx, between ‘pure economy’ and ‘critical econ-
omy’ there is a fundamental difference. While the former fixes historical
determinations of the market with the aim of isolating their ‘automa-
tisms’ and then investigates them as though they were ‘eternal’, the latter
17 [There is a lack of standardization of translation terminology between ‘determined’

and ‘determinate’, as applied to ‘market’, and a subtle distinction in meaning; we here
follow both FSPN (by one of the present translators) and Section 8.5 of The Gramscian
Moment by Peter D. Thomas in opting for the latter and modifying the SPN wording—
trans. note.]
172 G. VACCA
on the other hand assumes as the object of investigation and critique not
only the economic consequences of determinate relations of force but
also the historical conditions that generate them. The critique sets off
from the conditioned and moves to the conditioning situation, assuming
as historical problem the reproduction of the prerequisites of production:
The “critique” of political economy starts from the concept of the historical
character of the “determinate market” and of its “automatism”; (…) the
critique analyses in a realistic way the relations of forces determining the
market, it analyses in depth their contradictions, evaluates the possibilities
of modification connected with the appearance and strengthening of new
elements and puts forward the “transitory” and “replaceable” nature of
the science being criticized; it studies it as life but also as death and finds
at its heart the elements that will dissolve it and supersede it without fail,
and it puts forward the “inheritor”, the heir presumptive who must yet
give manifest proof of his vitality. (Q11§52, p. 1478; SPN , p. 411)
The principle of historical determination is extended to a criterion

of investigation of any social analysis and therefore is a gnoseological
paradigm. For a science that proposes to answer the question ‘how does
the historical movement arise on the structural base?’, there then arises
the problem of determining historically all the abstractions used:
Abstraction will always be the abstraction of a historically determinate

category, seen in fact as a category and not as multiple individuality.
Homo oeconomicus, too, is historically determinate albeit as an ensemble
remaining indeterminate: he is a determinate abstraction (…). A determi-
nate market in pure economics is an arbitrary abstraction, having a purely
conventional value for the scope of a pedantic and conventional analysis.
A determinate market for critical economy, on the other hand, will be
the ensemble of concrete economic activities of a particular social form,
assumed according to the laws governing their uniformity, i.e. ‘abstracted’
but without this abstraction ceasing to be historically determined. One
abstracts the individual multiplicity of the economic agents of modern
society when one speaks of capitalists, but in point of fact the abstrac-
tion lies within the historical domain of a capitalist economy and not of a
generic economic activity that in its categories abstracts all the economic
agents who have ever appeared in world history, reducing them generi-
cally and indeterminately to biological man. (Q10II§32, pp. 1276–1277;
FSPN , p. 172)
The theoretical form of Marxism distinguishes it from all other sciences

both because it constructs its object in a different way, and because
it poses this object in relation to a protagonist who is not the ‘indi-
vidual philosopher’, nor the scientific community as such, but a collective
subject generated by the development of determined antagonisms and
distinguished by determinate finalities.
The problem is thus posed of clarifying the position of Marxism as
compared with the dominant conceptions of science. This is of paramount
importance since it regards the conception of the productive forces, of which
the sciences are the most highly evolved and dynamic part, and it is
not by chance that Gramsci discusses this most of all in Notebook 11,
in the notes dedicated to the critique of Bukharin’s Popular Manual
[Historical Materialism]. In the Marxism of the Second International
the materialist conception of history had taken as its model the paradigm
of the natural sciences. This position had been taken over into Soviet
Marxism through Plekhanov and even through Lenin (Q3§31, p. 309
and Q11§12, p. 1386; PN Vol. 2, pp. 30–31, and SPN , p. 334, respec-
tively). The salient point in Gramsci’s critique of Bukharin is the assertion
that Marxism cannot passively accept the concepts of laws and predictions
that attain in the natural sciences.
In the first place he criticizes the reduction of scientificity to the models of
the natural sciences, and in the second place he rejects the idea that one
can extract from the different sciences a scientific method valid in itself
and applicable universally in mechanical fashion:
[I]t is the concept itself of “science”, as it emerges from the Popular

Manual, which requires to be critically destroyed. It is taken root and
branch from the natural sciences, as if these were the only sciences or
science par excellence, as decreed by positivism. (…). It has to be estab-
lished that every research has its own specific method and constructs
its own specific science, and that the method has developed and been
elaborated together with the development and elaboration of this specific
research and science and forms with them a single whole. To think that one
can advance the progress of a work of scientific research by applying to it a
standard method, chosen because it has given good results in another field
of research to which it was naturally suited, is a strange delusion which has
little to do with science. (Q11§15, p. 1404; SPN , pp. 438–439)
This does not mean that there is no common denominator for the
empirical sciences, but that this is conceivable only as a ‘generic and
174 G. VACCA
universal methodology’, of no heuristic use in any direct and specific

way. It constitutes the accumulated heritage of experience, experiment
and techniques that define the culture of scientists. We are dealing with
an ensemble of attitudes that connect the history of science to the history
of society:
The most generic and universal methodology is nothing more than formal
or mathematical logic, i.e. the ensemble of those abstract instruments of
thought that have continuously been discovered, improved and refined
throughout the history of philosophy and culture. (Q6§180, p. 826; PN
Vol. 3, p. 131 and FSPN , p. 296)
The methodological problem of science must therefore be posed

historically, in order to specify both the features common to the sciences,
and the traits that distinguish each of them, together with the elements of
a cultural, instrumental and ideological nature that link them to overall
historical development. From the historical stance, the development of
the sciences is consubstantial with the development of capitalism since
‘the scientific experience (esperienza) is the first cell of the new method
of work, of the new form of active union between man and nature’. Under
this aspect historical materialism, too, developed on a par with the sciences
as the ‘consummation (…) of the experimental (sperimentale) method’.
(Q4§47, p. 473 and Q11§34, p. 1449; PN Vol. 2, p. 197 and SPN,
p. 446, respectively)18
The most important effect of the development of the sciences is to have
produced as much the unification of a significant part of humankind (the
international scientific community, which constitutes the most advanced
part), as the method that may favour its integral unification. The first result
is born from the unceasing struggle to know reality, which runs through
the entire history of the sciences:
Scientific work has two facets: one is tirelessly rectifying the method of
knowledge, and it rectifies or reinforces the organs of sensation; the other
applies this method and these increasingly refined organs in order to
establish what is fundamentally present in the sensations as opposed to
what is arbitrary and transitory. Thus one establishes what is common
18 The two quotations come from the ‘A’ and ‘C’ texts covering the same argument;
‘esperienza’ in the original Italian covers both ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’—trans. note.
to all humans, what all humans can see and feel in the same manner,
provided that they all adhere to the scientific conditions of verification.
(…). (Q4§41, p. 466–467; PN Vol. 2, p. 189)
But in order for scientific rationality to be extended to the entire

human species, one must take account of the fact that ‘this process of
historical unification takes place through the disappearance of the internal
contradictions which tear apart human society’.
Up to now experimental science has been (has offered) the terrain on

which a determinate cultural unity has reached its furthest extension. This
has been the element of knowledge that has contributed most to rendering
the “spirit” uniform and making it become more universal. (Q11§17,
p. 1416; SPN , p. 446)19
But, also in order for it to bring its work to full fruition, it must
be incorporated into the process of the political unification of humankind,
which constitutes the mission of communism and Marxism. It therefore
becomes necessary to examine the position of the sciences as the object
of analysis of the philosophy of praxis.
Gramsci poses the problem through a discussion of the concept of
‘matter’ present in Bukharin’s Popular Manual, by defining identity
and difference of method and contents in historical materialism and in
the natural sciences. While in the individual sciences ‘matter’ is consid-
ered in relation to its dynamic, physical, chemical, etc. particularities,
Marxism takes into consideration the properties that show up as the
product of the activity of the sciences. Thus it considers those properties
‘only to the extent that they become a “productive economic element”.
Matter as such therefore is not our subject but how it is socially and
historically organised for production, and natural science should be seen
correspondingly as essentially an historical category, a human relation’
(Q11§30, p. 1442; SPN , pp. 465–466). Marxism takes the sciences into
consideration only in that they are ‘material forces of production’:
In reality the philosophy of praxis does not study a machine in order to

know about and to establish the atomic structure of its materials or the
19 The translation has been adjusted to bring it more into line with Gramsci’s original—
trans. note.
176 G. VACCA
physical, chemical and mechanical properties of its natural components

(which is the business of the exact sciences and of technology) but only in
so far as it is a moment of the material forces of production, is an object
of property of particular social forces, and expresses a social relation which
in turn corresponds to a particular historical period.
But the productive forces are not separate from the social relations of
production, and therefore their theory consists in the acknowledgment of
the antagonisms that run through them and of the forms of consciousness
that condition their dynamics:
The ensemble of the material forces of production is at the same time a

crystallization of all past history and the basis of present and future history:
it is both a document and an active and actual propulsive force. But the
concept of activity applied to forces of this kind must not be confused
or even compared with activity in either the physical or the metaphysical
sense. (Q11§30, p. 1443; SPN , p. 466)
The productive forces, which may be classified and investigated by the

individual sciences, are as much the result of the historical process as they
are the presupposition of its further development. Their ‘variability’ is
intimately linked with the ways in which they may be converted into
effective forces of development. But this passage from quantity to quality
happens through political and social struggle and cannot be consid-
ered equivalent to an evolutionary process. This is the salient point of
Gramsci’s critique of positivistic sociologies and the reason why Marxism
cannot be reduced to a sociology.
This does not mean that the passage from quantity to quality may not
be the object of a specific form of knowledge:
The philosophy of praxis is realised through the concrete study of past

history and through present activity to construct new history. But a theory
of history and politics can be made, for even if the facts are always unique
and changeable in the flux of movement of history, the concepts can be
theorised. Otherwise one would not even be able to tell what movement
is, or the dialectic, and one would fall back into a new form of nominalism.
(Q11§26; p. 1433; SPN , p. 427)
It is therefore necessary to define the conditions that make this form of

knowledge possible, but Gramsci limits himself to establishing its political
conditions, since the modalities and contents of knowledge, united to

collective action, cannot be anticipated by the ‘individual thinker’. Here
there comes into play the difference between the concept of prediction of
the natural sciences and that of the philosophy of praxis:
[In historical action] one can “scientifically” foresee only the struggle, but
not the concrete moments of the struggle, which cannot but be the results
of opposing forces in continuous movement, which are never reducible to
fixed quantities since within them quantity is continually becoming quality.
In reality one can “foresee” to the extent that one acts, to the extent
that one applies a voluntary effort and therefore contributes concretely
to creating the result “foreseen”. Prediction reveals itself thus not as a
scientific act of knowledge, but as the abstract expression of the effort
made, the practical way of creating a collective will. (Q11§15, pp. 1403–
1404; SPN , p. 438)
One may add that this type of knowledge, inseparable from the action
of a collective subject, is part of political action:
The nature of the philosophy of praxis is in particular that of being a mass

conception, a mass culture, that of a mass that acts in a unitary fashion,
i.e. one that has norms of conduct that are not only universal in idea, but
“generalised” in social reality. And the activity of the “individual” philoso-
pher cannot therefore be conceived except in terms of this social unity,
i.e. also as political activity, in terms of political leadership. (Q10II§31i,
p. 1271; FSPN , p. 385)
The theoretical position of Marxism is inseparable from the political

goals of the historical movement of which it is part. These goals may
be summarized in the aim of raising ‘the simple’ to ‘a higher concep-
tion of life (…) in order to construct an intellectual-moral bloc which can
make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only
of small intellectual groups’ (Q11§12, pp. 1384–1385; SPN , pp. 332–
333). This is the historical content that corresponds to the theoretical
postulate of the unity of theory and practice. The point is particularly
sensitive. As we have seen, in the critique of Soviet Marxism Gramsci had
denounced the reduction of theory to a ‘handmaid’ of practice, consid-
ering it a manifestation not only of its philosophical primitiveness, but
also of the incapacity of Soviet power to pose adequately the ‘political
178 G. VACCA
question of the intellectuals’. On the solution to this problem there thus

depends the possibility of a different conception of socialism.
5 Socialism as the Process

Generating a New Rationality
The theory of the intellectuals, around which the entire reflection
contained in the Prison Notebooks is concentrated, has first of all a histo-
riographical basis. The intellectuals are not always the same, do not
carry out crystallized and unchangeable functions, and above all are not
‘autonomous’, as instead they consider themselves to be as a consequence
of an important historical continuity of their strata (ceti). The history of
the intellectuals is marked in particular by the history of economic forms,
from the Middle Ages to the modern era:
Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an

essential function in the world of economic production, creates together
with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give
it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the
economic but also in the social and political fields. (Q12§1, p. 1513, SPN ,
p. 5)
For the modern proletariat the creation of its own ‘organic intellec-
tuals’ is posed on both the economic terrain and the political terrain.
Under the first aspect, the sphere of industrial production is paramount,
and at this point Gramsci calls to mind the Ordine Nuovo experience,
indicating this as an exemplary case of such a creation. But, passing on to
the political terrain, the problem of the creation of the proletariat’s own
intellectuals is the problem of the party:
The political party, for all groups [i.e. social groups – G.V.], is precisely the
mechanism which carries out in civil society the same function as the State
carries out, more synthetically and over a larger scale, in political society. In
other words it is responsible for welding together the organic intellectuals
of a given group – the dominant one – and the traditional intellectuals. The
party carries out this function in strict dependence on its basic function,
which is that of elaborating its own component parts – those elements
of a social group which has been born and developed as an “economic”
group – and of turning them into qualified political intellectuals, leaders
[dirigenti] and organisers of all the activities and functions inherent in
the organic development of an integral society, both civil and political.

(Q12§1, p. 1522, SPN , pp. 15–16)20
The creation of ‘organic intellectuals’ and the ‘assimilation’ of the

‘traditional intellectuals’ are two moments of the self-same process. The
‘traditional intellectuals’ embody the most widespread functions in a given
society, and are in their turn born from a process of ‘assimilation’ of
the intellectuals inherited from previous social formations. The proletariat
cannot attract to its field and assimilate to its own goals the intellectual
groups of a capitalist society just as they are. These latter ‘experience
through an ‘esprit de corps ’ their uninterrupted historical continuity and
their special qualification’, putting ‘themselves forward as autonomous
and independent of the dominant social group’ (Q12§1, p. 1515; SPN ,
p. 7). However, this does not mean that they cannot be ‘attracted’ by
the proletariat, on condition that this latter is able to produce within the
traditional intellectuals a rupture of the esprit de corps, and to foster a
thoroughgoing transformation both of technical contents and of the ideal
framework of their knowledge. From the asserted unity of production and
politics, and from its corollaries in terms of the theory of the intellectuals,
the concept of the party is then born as the ‘the proclaimer and organiser
of an intellectual and moral reform’.
The main criticism levelled against this conception is that of its
supposed totalitarian nature, and the most frequent quotation in this
respect is taken from the first paragraph of Notebook 13, where Gramsci
claims that
The modern Prince, as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of

intellectual and moral relations, in that its development means precisely
that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or as wicked,
only in so far as it has as its point of reference the modern Prince itself,
and helps to strengthen or to oppose it. In men’s consciences, the Prince
takes the place of the divinity or the categorical imperative, and becomes
the basis for a modern laicism and for a complete laicisation of all aspects
of life and of all customary relationships. (Q13§1, pp. 1560–1561; SPN ,
p. 133)
20 [Note that here as in the next quotation, the translation “qualified / qualification”
might, as in many contexts, be rendered more exactly as “skilled / skill”—trans. note.]
180 G. VACCA
One sees, quite evidently a particular (and more acute) method way
of structurally describing the processes of laicization of modern societies
that has nothing to do with totalitarianism. For the moment, delaying
a broader treatment until Chapter 4, it is worth noting here that the
sense of these statements cannot but locate the ‘modern Prince’ at the
centre of the ‘intellectual and moral reform’ that characterizes the transi-
tion to socialism as conceived by Gramsci; it is therefore of use to clarify
the contents of this by now celebrated, and almost always misunder-
stood formula. The passage quoted above cannot be isolated from the
two statements, already met with, which precede it. The first is Gramsci’s
rhetorical question ‘can there be cultural reform, and can there be a civil
improvement of the depressed strata of society be improved in the civil
sector without a previous economic reform and a change in their position
in the social and economic fields?’. The second is that ‘intellectual and
moral reform has to be linked with a programme of economic reform
– indeed the programme of economic reform is precisely the concrete
form in which every intellectual and moral reform presents itself’ (loc.
cit.). ‘Intellectual and moral reform’ thus is a metaphor, borrowed from
Ernest Renan, to emphasize that socialism is a process of historical tran-
sition in which, starting from the sphere of production and permeating
every sphere of society and of the State, the entire network of relations
between the dominant and the dominated, between the leaders and the
led, is transformed. This requires that, in the concrete manifestations of
life, there should be a change in the mode of being both of the ‘intellec-
tuals’ and of the ‘simple’. Putting this another way, a new ‘common sense’
should be formed that promotes their unity, constituted by an uninter-
rupted communicative and representative circuit. The unity between a
programme of the economic, the political and the cultural can be guar-
anteed only by a ‘general vision of the world’, by a ‘philosophy with a
conformant moral’, in other words by the diffusion of a shared and stable
way of thinking, whose ‘proclaimer’ is the political party. This is the sense
in which Gramsci states that in human consciousness, the ‘Prince takes the
place of the divinity or the categorical imperative’.
One should stress – he writes – the importance and significance which, in

the modern world, political parties have in the elaboration and diffusion of
conceptions of the world, because essentially what they do is to work out
the ethics and the politics corresponding to these conceptions and act as
it were as their historical “laboratory”. (Q11§12, p. 1287; SPN , p. 335)
We may observe that, in posing the question in this way, it becomes

difficult to define the limits of the field of action of the political party
and we may also add that this perhaps leads Gramsci to exaggerate their
mission. It is however a fact that in modern societies, any political project
turns out to be effective if there corresponds to this a coherent economic
programme and a coherent cultural programme. And it is a proven fact
that this coherence is given by the ‘visions of the world’ that inspire them,
whose centre of irradiation are the parties, if for party one understands not
only a given functional organization—the political party as understood
in sociology—but a centre of elaboration and diffusion of a political,
economic and cultural programme capable of changing or influencing the
situation.
On the other hand, we may say that for Gramsci, the parties constitute
‘the private “fabric” of the State’ and are part of ‘civil society’ (Q1§47,
p. 56 and Q6§24, p. 703; PN Vol.1, p. 153 and PN Vol. 3, pp. 20–21,
with also FSPN , pp. 75–76 for the latter). As we have seen in the previous
chapters, he refuses the identification between Party and State. How are
we to understand, then, the statement that ‘the modern Prince, as it
develops, revolutionizes the whole system of intellectual and moral rela-
tions’? It is of use to return briefly to Gramsci’s critique of sociology. In
refusing the ‘reduction of the philosophy of praxis to a sociology’ Gramsci
observes that the law of statistics ‘can be employed in the science and art
of politics only so long as the great masses of the population remain (or at
least are reputed to remain) essentially passive’ (Q11§25, p. 1429; SPN ,
p. 428.). But after the birth of the big modern parties this ‘law’ became
anachronistic. The ‘modern Prince’ belongs to a precisely determined era:
the one that was born as a result of the great war, in which there was a
morphological change in subjectivity caused by the mobilization of the
masses and their entry into ‘big history’. In this situation ‘political action
tends precisely to rouse the masses from passivity’: ‘human awareness
replaces naturalistic “spontaneity”’ and the political parties become the
protagonists of the struggle for hegemony:
With the extension of mass parties and their organic coalescence with the
intimate (economic-productive) life of the masses themselves, the process
whereby popular feeling is standardized ceases to be mechanical and casual
(that is produced by the conditioning of environmental factors and the
like) and becomes conscious and critical. Knowledge and a judgment of
the importance of this feeling on the part of the leaders is no longer the
182 G. VACCA
product of hunches backed up by the identification of statistical laws, which

leaders then translate into ideas and words-as-force. (This is the rational
and intellectual way and is all too often fallacious.) Rather it is acquired by
the collective organism through “active and conscious co-participation”,
through “compassionality”, through experience of immediate particulars,
through a system which one could call ‘living philology’. In this way a
close link is formed between great mass, party and leading group; and the
whole complex, thus articulated, can move together as “collective-man”.
(Q11§25, p. 1430; SPN , p. 429)
No one can fail to see that Gramsci does nothing other than theoret-
ically elaborate the experience of the mass parties, already very advanced
in the first decades of the twentieth century, rejecting the theory of
charisma of Max Weber and Robert Michels, and anticipating the modes
of existence and meaning of the ‘party democracies’ that would come
to characterize the life of western Europe in the ‘thirty glorious years’
that succeeded World War Two. For a communist party, the emergence
of the masses from passivity is equivalent to their development of human
awareness in the government of the economy and of society according to
determinate goals, synthesized in the mission to collaborate in the histor-
ical and political unification of humankind. The first step is the ‘fusion’
within it of intellectuals and ‘the simple’, in order to foster new relations
between intellectuals and people in society. This implies a radical change
in the function and role of the intellectuals, and only in this sense does
the task of the party have a ‘totalitarian’ nature:
The parties recruit individuals out of the working mass, and the selection
is made on practical and theoretical criteria at the same time. The relation
between theory and practice becomes even closer the more the conception
is vitally and radically innovatory and opposed to old ways of thinking. For
this reason one can say that the parties are the elaborators of new integral
and totalitarian intelligentsias [intellettualità totalitarie] and the crucibles
where the unification of theory and practice, understood as a real historical
process, takes place. (Q11§12, p. 1387; SPN , p. 335)21
21 [The translators of SPN correctly add here that the use of totalitarie ‘is to be
understood not in its modern sense but as meaning simultaneously ‘unified’ or “all
absorbing”’—trans. note.]
If one purges the term ‘totalitarian’ of the negative emotive nature that
it assumed after the experience of fascism, Nazism and Soviet commu-
nism, if one gets rid of the ‘passionality’ with which it was charged during
the ‘age of extremes’, one may soberly admit that the political party, espe-
cially one that aims at the formation of a new type of society, cannot
absolve its task and cannot even be born and last without being inspired
by a general vision of the world, without a general theory of history
and politics, and without extreme coherence between theory and prac-
tice, programmes and behaviour. We are dealing, no more and no less,
with the rendering rigorous of processes that are a natural corollary of
the birth of mass parties, in so far as their advent in itself brings about
a profound modification in the modus operandi of the mentality of the
‘educated’ and the ‘simple’. The birth of these parties reveals a change
in the relations between intellectuals and masses, a change in common
sense.
Different from the process of transition to bourgeois society, in
which—as Gramsci underlines—the archetype of the ‘organic intellectual’
is the capitalist entrepreneur (Q12§1, p. 1513; SPN , pp. 5–6),22 in the
transition to socialism there appear different types of ‘organic intellectu-
als’. In complex societies the elaboration of ‘organic intellectuals’ involves
the whole of their functions incorporated into productive and cognitive
roles. But the task of the ‘modern Prince’ is not that of dictating the
contents of this molecular and unpredictable process of transformation.
That task is allotted to the protagonists of the process, who are the direct
producers and the ‘intellectuals as a mass’, while the communist party has
the task of promoting and orienting it so as to arrive at the formation
of a new ‘historical bloc’. This concept is frequently confused with that
22 The ‘capitalist entrepreneur’ is the archetype of the modern intellectual not only
because he ‘creates alongside himself the industrial technician, the specialist in political
economy, the organisers of a new culture, of a new legal system, etc.’ but also because
‘he must have a certain technical capacity, not only in the limited sphere of his activity
and initiative but in other spheres as well, at least in those which are closest to economic
production. He must be an organiser of masses of men; he must be an organiser of the
“confidence” of investors in his business, of the customers for his product, etc. If not all
entrepreneurs, at least an élite amongst them must have the capacity to be an organiser
of society in general, including all its complex organism of services, right up to the state
organism, because of the need to create the conditions most favourable to the expansion
of their own class’.
184 G. VACCA
of a ‘social bloc’, which instead designates the ensemble of forces neces-

sary for attaining determinate conjunctural political goals: governmental
conquest, the realization of a shared programme and so on. But as we
have seen in Chapter 2, the concept of ‘historical bloc’ designates the
fusion between structure and superstructures, which marks the birth of a
new State. In the Notebooks, the classic example is the formation of the
‘Risorgimental historical bloc’ analysed in paragraph 61 of Notebook 10
(‘The State According to the Productive Function of the Social Classes’,
pp. 1359 et seq.; SPN , pp. 114–118) and in the already-mentioned
Q19§24 (pp. 2010–2024; SPN , pp. 55–84). The concept is developed
to designate the formation of the national market and its ‘fusion’ with a
specific type of State in order to make its set-up permanent, its compro-
mise between social groups and classes stable, and the dominant class’s
hegemony solid. Putting this very briefly indeed, a determinate type of
‘fusion’ between State and market. The process thus includes establishing
over time a specific system of relations between ‘intellectuals’ and ‘the
simple’, rulers and ruled, leaders and led, in other words the ‘constitution
in a material sense’ of the State, which comprises the economy, politics,
culture and history in a specific synthesis. The formation of a new ‘histor-
ical bloc’ is founded on the possibility of changing this form radically, by
overturning the paradigm that supports it. The point of attack cannot but
be the status of the intellectuals. We are dealing with a general change in
leading roles and, within the perspective of socialism, the salient point is
the dissolution of the corporative ideology of the intellectual strata (ceti).
Under this aspect, the notion of ‘historical bloc’ is nothing other than
another version of ‘intellectual and moral reform’, inspired mainly by the
welding together of intellectuals and people-nation:
The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without
understanding and even more without feeling and being impassioned (not
only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge): in other
words that the intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a pure pedant)
if distinct and separate from the people-nation, that is, without feeling
the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and there-
fore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation
and connecting them dialectically to the laws of history and to a supe-
rior conception of the world, scientifically and coherently elaborated—i.e.
knowledge. One cannot make politics-history without this passion, without
this sentimental connection between intellectuals and people-nation. In
the absence of such a nexus the relations between the intellectual and
the people-nation are, or are reduced to, relationships of a purely bureau-

cratic and formal order; the intellectuals become a caste, or a priesthood
(…). 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
ruled, leaders [dirigenti] and led, and can the shared life be realized which
alone is a social force—with the creation of the ‘historical bloc’. (Q11§67,
pp. 1505–1506; SPN , p. 418)
The distinctive feature of socialist society lies, then, in the different

forms of corporativism both of the intellectuals and of ‘the simple’, i.e.
in the re-elaboration of all the crystallized forms of relationship between
the rulers and the ruled, the intellectuals and the masses. In other words,
it lies in the integral historicization of the economy and politics, with an
indissoluble interweaving between them. The ‘first element’ of the science
and ‘art’ of politics is that ‘there do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led’.
The whole science and art of politics is based on this primordial and (in
certain general conditions) irreducible fact. However
In the formation of leaders, one premise is fundamental: is it the inten-

tion that there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to
create the conditions in which this division is no longer necessary? In other
words, is the initial premise the perpetual division of the human race, or the
belief that this division is only an historical fact, corresponding to certain
conditions? (Q15§4, p. 1752; SPN , p. 144)
6 The Constitution of the Political Subject

The years in which Gramsci was writing the Prison Notebooks were domi-
nated by the dissolution of liberal civilization. His reflection thus centred
around the crisis of the State. Initially perceived as a crisis of parliamen-
tarism (Q1§48, pp. 58–59; PN Vol. 1, pp. 155–156), at the end of 1930
it was theorized as the crisis of the national State:
The modern world is currently experiencing a phenomenon similar to the

split between the “spiritual” and the “temporal” in the Middle Ages (…).
Regressive and conservative social groupings are shrinking back more and
186 G. VACCA
more to their initial economic-corporative phase, while progressive and

the economic-corporative phase. The traditional intellectuals are detaching
themselves from the social grouping to which they have hitherto given the
highest, most comprehensive, and therefore the widest and most perfect,
consciousness of the modern State. Their detachment is in fact an act of
incalculable historical significance; they are signalling and sanctioning the
crisis of the State in its decisive form. (Q6§10, pp. 690–691; PN Vol. 3,
pp. 8–9)
In January 1932, Gramsci dated the origin of the crisis back to the
great war, but by June 1933 he was considering the war itself as a
consequence of the crisis generated by the growing initiative of the
masses organized within the European States, who as from the end of
the nineteenth century had disrupted the equilibria of bourgeois society
(Q15§59ii, p. 1824; SPN , p. 106).
The different periodization represents the outcome of the elaboration
of a general theory of crises which he arrived at in February 1933 by
observing the developments of the crisis of 1929. Among the salient
points of his theory there stand out the repudiation of the doctrine of
the ‘inevitability of war’ propounded by the ‘official Marxism’ of both the
Second and the Third International. As we have already seen (Chapter 1),
for Gramsci war is not the unavoidable consequence of capitalism or impe-
rialism, but is caused by the specific political choices made by the ruling
classes, such as protectionism and nationalism. The explanation of the war
and the crises may be summarized, then, in the incapacity or the refusal of
the ruling classes to resolve the ever more strident asymmetries between
the cosmopolitan nature of the economy and nationalism in politics, tran-
scending the horizon of the national State as the hegemonic subject of the
political sphere (Q15§5, pp. 1755–1756; FSPN , pp. 219–220).
It is of use to emphasize that, in posing the subject of supranationality
(Rapone 2011b, pp. 189–258), Gramsci is here elaborating theoreti-
cally an interpretation of the origin of the great war that he had already
advanced in 1916–1918. Then, the question of supranationality came to
him as the alternative between the League of Nations put forward by
Woodrow Wilson and the world revolution prefigured by Lenin. Now the
problem was formulated in different terms: world history was now char-
acterized by the intensification of economic ‘cosmopolitanism’ as much
as it was by political nationalism, and the question of the equipollence of
politics and economics was put forward as a problem of the government

of increasing interdependencies and their still more stringent asymme-
tries. The economic unification of humankind (which appears ever less a
utopia) could only be envisaged in stages, and the aim, which seemed ever
more concrete, was that of promoting the regionalization of the world
economy:
There is today a European cultural consciousness, and there exists a long

list of public statements by intellectuals and politicians who maintain that
a European union is necessary. It is fair to say that the course of history
is heading towards this union and that there are many material forces that
will only be able to develop within this union. If this union were to come
into existence in X years, the word “nationalism” will have the same arche-
ological value as “municipalism” has today. (Q6§78, p. 748; PN Vol. 3,
pp. 60–61, and FSPN , p. 119)
But rather than a real and proper profession of Europeanism, Gram-

sci’s reflection is directed to a revision of the perspectives of communism.
He does not see forces in the European bourgeoisie capable of prevailing
over the nationalisms then becoming rife and assigns to the proletariat
the mission of constructing supranationality. If you will, this is a re-
elaboration of the watchword ‘Soviet United States of Europe’ of the
early 1920s in a gradualist key, aimed at reformulating the national-
international nexus in the programmes of the European communist
parties. Indeed in the note devoted to commenting on Stalin’s ‘Inter-
view with the First American Workers’ Delegation’ in 1927, after having
emphasized the concept that the terrain of the struggle for hegemony is
the national territory, he adds
A class that is international in character has [the proletariat – G.V.] – in as

much as it guides social strata which are narrowly national (intellectuals),
and indeed frequently even less than national: particularistic and munici-
palistic (the peasants) – to “nationalise” itself in a certain sense. Moreover,
this sense is not a very narrow one either, since before the conditions can
be created for an economy that follows a world plan, it is necessary to pass
through multiple phases in which the regional combinations (of groups of
nations) may be of various kinds. (Q14§68, p. 1729; SPN , p. 241)
The support given to the perspective of European supranationality

dates to March 1931. In February 1933 he also expressed himself in
188 G. VACCA
favour of economic regionalization, and presupposed a generalization of

the concept of ‘passive revolution’, which we have already dealt with
(Chapter 2). His reflection on the national-international nexus concludes
in the proposal, dating to November 1932, for a ‘modern form of
cosmopolitanism’, with ‘humanity-as-labour’ as protagonist. It may be
said that here lies the high-point of Gramsci’s revision of the policies of
the Comintern in assigning to the working classes the task of collabo-
rating ‘in the economic reconstruction of the world in a unitary fashion’
(Q19§5, p. 1988; FSPN , p. 253).23 The concept of a ‘modern form of
cosmopolitanism’ refers to the Italian ‘tradition’ and, as we have seen,
seems clearly be directed towards replacing the concept of internation-
alism. This poses the need to reformulate the question of the political
subject, which we shall deal with more at length in Chapter 4, but here it
is of use to introduce in advance the philosophical core of the problem.
The question originates from the ever more critical reflection on the
structure-superstructure coupling which, as we have seen, he finishes by
abandoning (cf. G. Cospito 2016): at first (‘Notes on Philosophy I ’, written
in October 1930) Gramsci considers the ‘relations between structure and
superstructures (to be) the crucial problem of historical materialism’ and
tries to bend the principles of Marx’s 1859 Preface to a non-deterministic
‘historical methodology’(Q4§38, pp. 457 et seq.; PN Vol. 2, pp. 179 et
seq.)24 ; in February 1932 (‘Notes on Philosophy III ’) he takes up again the
‘proposition that “society does not set itself problems for whose solution
the material preconditions do not already exist”’ and makes the following
comment:
This problem immediately raises that of the formation of a collective will,

which depends immediately on this proposition. In analyzing critically what
this proposition means, it is important to study how permanent collective
wills are in fact formed and how these wills set themselves concrete goals
that are both immediate and intermediate – in other words how they set
themselves a collective course of action. This has to do with processes of
23 [In English, this long paragraph of Q19 is excerpted and not yet translated in its
entirety—trans. note.]
24 The initial phrase defining the relations between structure and superstructures as the
crucial problem of historical materialism is found on p. 455 of the Quaderni and p. 177
of the PN English translation.
development that are more or less long; sudden, “synthetic” explosions are
rare. (Q8§195, p. 1057; PN Vol. 3, p. 346)25
The rejection of the structure-superstructure coupling coincides with

the beginning of the drafting of Notebook 12. It therefore seems to us
that, having abandoned the previous attempts to give a non-deterministic
answer to the problem of the formation of a ‘collective will’, Gramsci
detaches himself from the first part of the 1859 Preface too, and trans-
lates the problem of historical causation into that of the unification of
theory and practice. This latter however is not then formulated as a philo-
sophical problem but rather as the historical problem of the creation of a
determinate type of intellectuals:
the unity of theory and practice is not (…) a matter of mechanical fact, but
a part of the historical process (…). A human mass does not “distinguish”
itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest
sense, organising itself; and there is no organisation without intellectuals,
that is without organisers and leaders, in other words, without the theo-
retical aspect of the theory-practice nexus being distinguished concretely
by the existence of a group [strato] of people “specialised” in conceptual
and philosophical elaboration of ideas. (Q11§12, pp. 1385–1386; SPN ,
pp. 333–334)
In the modern world the protagonists of this creation are the political
parties (Q11§12, p. 1387; SPN , p. 335). Gramsci’s conception of the
political party is not sociological but historico-philosophical. The task of
the party is in fact to promote the unity of theory and practice by selecting
the leading strata (ceti) of the different social groups. The concept of
‘party’ is closely connected with that of ‘collective will’ of which it consti-
tutes, rather, a function; we are not however dealing with separate entities
but with two moments of a processual conception of the subject as the result
of multiple interactions between intellectuals and the masses. Indeed the
functions of the political party may also be absolved by other protago-
nists, as for example newspapers or great, particularly active, intellectual
figures such as Benedetto Croce was in Italy (Q1§116, p. 104; PN Vol. 1,
pp. 200–202). Gramsci defines the party as a ‘complex element of society
in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has to
25 The translation is here integrated to include the phrase at the end of the first sentence,
possibly not thought necessary in the original translation.
190 G. VACCA
some extent asserted itself in action’ (Q13§1, p. 1558; SPN , p. 129). The
fundamental role of the political party is, then, to foster the development
of a collective will that is capable of unifying the people-nation (Q13§33,
p. 1630; SPN , pp. 150–151).
We have already mentioned the national function of the political party
in regard to the ‘modern form of cosmopolitanism’; here it is worth
specifying the way in which the party has to operate to foster the best
combination of national and international factors in the life of the State.
Its action
consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of

form and on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in
apparent uniformity, in order to organize and interconnect closely that
which is similar, but in such a way that the organizing and the intercon-
necting appear to be a practical and “inductive” necessity, experimental,
and not the result of a rationalistic, deductive, abstract process—i.e. one
typical of pure intellectuals (or pure asses).
The ‘modern Prince’ is thus a national-international political subject

by definition:
This continuous effort to separate out the “international” and “unitary”

element in national and local reality is true concrete political action,
the sole activity productive of historical progress. It requires an organic
unity between theory and practice, between intellectual strata and popular
masses, between rulers and ruled. (Q13§36, p. 1635; SPN , pp. 189–190)
The philosophy of praxis culminates in a theory of the constitution

of political subjects founded gnoseologically on the concept of hege-
mony and historiographically on that of passive revolution. Gramsci puts it
forward as the ‘crowning point of this entire movement of intellectual and
moral reform’ of the modern era, corresponding to the ‘nexus Protestant
Reformation plus French Revolution (…) made dialectical in the contrast
between popular culture and high culture (…) a philosophy which is also
politics, and a politics which is also philosophy’ (Q16§9, p. 1860; SPN ,
p. 395).
References
Bukharin, N. I. (1926). Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology. London:
Allen and Unwin.
Cospito, G. (2011). Il ritmo del pensiero. Naples: Bibliopolis.
Cospito, G. (2016). The Rhythm of Thought in Gramsci: A Diachronic Inter-
pretation of Prison Notebooks. Leiden and Boston: Brill; Chicago: Haymarket
(Original Cospito, 2011).
Croce, B. (1934). History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century (H. Furst, Trans.).
New York: Harcourt and Brace.
De Felice, F. (1971). Serrati, Bordiga, Gramsci e il problema della rivoluzione in
Italia 1919–1920. Bari: De Donato.
Gramsci, A. (1948). Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce (F.
Platone). Turin: Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1977). Selections from Political Writings 1910–1920 (Q. Hoare, Ed.
and J. Mathews, Trans.). London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Gramsci, A. (1984). Il nostro Marx (1919–1920) (S. Caprioglio, Ed.). Turin:
Einaudi.
Gramsci, A. (1987). L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920 (V. Gerratana & A. A. Santucci,
Gramsci, A. (1994b). Pre-prison Writings (R. Bellamy, Ed. and V. Cox Trans.).
Gramsci, A., & Schucht, T. (1997). Lettere. 1926–1935 (A. Natoli & C. Daniele,
Izzo, F. (2009). Democrazia e cosmopolitismo in Antonio Gramsci. Rome:
Carocci.
Izzo, I Marx di Gramsci (Gramsci’s Marxes). In id., Democrazia e cosmopolitismo
in Antonio Gramsci, Rome: Carocci.
Lapidus, I. A. & Ostrovityanov, K. V. (1929). Précis d’économie politique
(L’économie politique et la théorie de l’économie sovietique) (V. Serge, Trans.).
Paris: Editions sociales internationales. English translation: An Outline of
Political Economy (London: Martin Lawrence).
Marx, K. (1976). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (S. W.
Ryazanskaya, Trans.). In Marx-Engels Collected Work (Vol. 29).
Paggi, L. (1974). La teoria generale del marxismo in Gramsci. In Annali
Feltrinelli xv 1973 (pp. 1319–1370). Milan: Feltrinelli.
Paggi, L. (1984). Da Lenin a Marx. In Le strategie del potere in Gramsci
(pp. 427–498). Rome: Editori Riuniti.
192 G. VACCA
Platone, F. (1946). Relazione sui “Quaderni del carcere”. Per una storia degli
intellettuali italiani. Rinascita, III (4), 81–90.
Pons, S. (2012). La rivoluzione globale. Storia del comunismo (1917–1991). Turin:
Einaudi.
Rapone, L. (2011a). Gramsci giovane: la critica e le interpretazioni. Studi Storici,
52(4), 974–991.
Rapone, L. (2011b). Cinque anni che paiono secoli. Antonio Gramsci dal
socialismo al comunismo. Rome: Carocci.
Salvadori, M. L. (1970). Gramsci e il problema storico della democrazia. Turin:
Einaudi.
Spriano, P. (1975). The Occupation of the Factories (G. A. Williams Trans.).
London: Pluto. Original: Spriano, P. (1964). L’Occupazione delle fabbriche.
Turin: Einaudi.
Thomas, P. D. (2010). The Gramscian Moment. Chicago: Haymarket.
Vacca, G. (2012). Vita e Pensieri di Antonio Gramsci 1926–1937 . Turin: Einaudi.
Vacca, G. (2016). Il Marx di Croce e quello di Gentile. In Croce e Gentile. La
cultura italiana e l’Europa. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Newspaper and journal articles and transcripts of speeches

by Gramsci (listed in alphabetical order by first keyword,
ignoring definite and indefinite articles and prepositions).
The original Italian title follows after the English title.
Where there is an English translation, the source is given
after the Italian reference sources
A Break-Down and a Birth (Vita politica internazionale [i]. Uno sfacelo e una
genesi), L’Ordine Nuovo, 1 May 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 3–10.
The Communist Party (Il Partito Comunista), L’Ordine Nuovo, 4 September
1920 and 9 October 1920 (Parts I and II, respectively), in ON 1919–1920,
651–661; PPW , 187–197, and SPW 1910–1920, 330–339.
Critical Criticism (La critica critica), Il Grido del popolo, 12 January 1918, in CF ,
554–558; PPW , 43–46.
The Development of the Revolution (Lo sviluppo della rivoluzione), L’Ordine
Nuovo, 13 September 1919, in ON 1919–1920, 203–207; SPW 1910–1920,
89–93.
The Factory Council (Il consiglio di fabbrica), L’Ordine Nuovo, 5 June 1920, in
ON 1919–1920, 532–536; SPW 1910–1920, 260–264, and alternative transla-
tions in New Left Review I/51, September–October 1968, 33–34 and PPW ,
151–154.
The Factory Council, L’Ordine Nuovo, 5 June 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 532–
537: SPW 1910–1920, 260–264 and New Left Review, I/51, 1968, 31–35.
The Factory Worker (La settimana politica [xviii]. L’operaio di fabbrica),

L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 February 1920, ON 1919–1920, 432–435.
The Instruments of Labour (Lo strumento del lavoro), L’Ordine Nuovo, 14
February 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 413–416; SPW 1910–1920, 162–166.
Italy and the United States (La settimana politica [xi]. Italia e gli Stati Uniti),
L’Ordine Nuovo, 8 November 1919 (written jointly with Palmiro Togliatti);
ON 1919–1920, 302–305.
Il movimento comunista a Torino, Internazionale comunista 14 (1920), in
International Gramsci Journal, 2(2), 2017, 17–39.
The Party and the Revolution, L’Ordine Nuovo, 27 December 1919, in ON
1919–1920, 365–372; New Left Review I/51, pp. 42–45, and SPW 1910–
1920, 142–146.
Proletarian Unity (L’Unità proletaria), L’Ordine Nuovo, 28 February–6 March
1920, in ON 1919–1920, 438–443; SPW 19191–1920, 173–178.
The Revolution Against “Capital” (La rivoluzione contro il “Capitale”), Avanti!,
24 December 1917, in CF , 513–516; SPW 1910-1921, 34–37 and PPW ,
39–42.
State and Sovereignty (Stato e sovranità), Energie Nove I(7–8), 1–28 February
1919, in NM , Turin: Einaudi, 518–523.
The Turin Communist Movement, Internazionale Comunista 14 (1920); English
translation of Gramsci’s original manuscript in International Gramsci Journal,
2(2), 2017, 40–51.
The Turin Factory Councils Movement (Il movimento torinese dei consigli di
fabbrica), L’Ordine Nuovo, 14 March 1921, in ON 1919–1920, 596–611:
SPW 1919–1920, 310–320.
Two Revolutions (Due rivoluzioni), L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 July 1920, in ON 1919–
1920, 569–574; PPW , 168–172, SPW , 305–309, and New Left Review I/51
September/October 1968, 45–48.
Unions and Councils (Sindacati e consigli), L’Ordine nuovo, 11 October 1919,
in ON 1919–1920, 236–241; SPW 1910–1920, 98–102 and New Left Review
I/51, 35–38.
The Unity of the World [Vita politica internazionale [ii] L’unità del mondo],
L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 May 1920, in ON 1919–1920, 19–20.
Workers and Peasants (Operai e contadini), L’Ordine Nuovo, 2 August 1919, in
ON 1919–1920, 156–161; SPW 1910–1920, 83–88.
CHAPTER 4
Hegemony and Democracy
If a survey were to be carried out regarding the figure of Gramsci, prob-

ably most people interviewed would reply that he was the theorist of
hegemony, in that he placed the greatest importance on the consent of the
ruled. This judgment originates from an interpretation of his thought due
to Norberto Bobbio who, after the death of Togliatti, had a long-standing
influence on the reading of Gramsci, not just in Italy but on the interna-
tional cultural scene. I am here referring to his paper on ‘The Concept
of Civil Society in Gramsci’, which dominated events at the international
conference on Gramsci in Cagliari in 1967.1
Gramsci was not one of Bobbio’s authors. One certainly cannot say
of Gramsci’s presence in Bobbio’s research what he said of Marx in his
1984 ‘Congedo’, or ‘Valediction’, to his favourite authors—that he had
‘read and re-read many works of Marx, especially the historical and philo-
sophical ones’ but had not ‘studied Marx as [he had] the other [classical]
1 The proceedings of the conference ‘Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea’ [‘Gramsci

and Contemporary Culture’] were published by Editori Riuniti (Ed. P. Rossi) in 1969.
Regarding the nature of the conference, cf. F. Izzo (2000, pp. 201–212). In the Appendix
to the present volume we draw attention to the influence of Bobbio’s essay on Gramsci
studies in Italy; as regards international culture see, for example, two recent volumes in
the series Studi gramsciani nel mondo (Gramsci Studies throughout the World): Kanoussi,
Schirru and Vacca (Eds.), Gramsci in America Latina, and Boothman, Giasi and Vacca
(Eds.), Gramsci in Gran Bretagna, 2011 and 2015 respectively.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7_4
196 G. VACCA
authors listed’ (Bonanate and Bovero 1986, pp. 246–247).2 Testimony

to his interest in Gramsci may however be seen in his writings of the
early 1950s, where he was careful to distinguish the then only recently
published Notebooks from the canons of Marxism-Leninism (Bobbio
1955, pp. 125, 245, 259). How much importance he then attributed to
the Cagliari speech is then documented in the essays published in 1985
in Stato, governo, società, in which he emphasizes that it was precisely by a
thoroughgoing reading of the subject in Gramsci (as well as in Marx and
Hegel) that he had re-worked the State-civil society dichotomy, making
it a pivot of his ‘general theory of politics’ (Bobbio 1985, p. vii).
The nub of the Cagliari speech is the derivation of Gramsci’s concept
of hegemony from the notion of ‘civil society’ as contained in the Note-
books. Bobbio writes: ‘[t]o reconstruct Gramsci’s political thought the
key concept – the one which forms the necessary starting point – is
that of civil society’. Different from Marx, ‘civil society in Gramsci does
not belong to the structural moment but to the superstructural moment ’
(Bobbio 1988, p. 82). His source is indicated as Hegel’s Philosophy of
Right and, paraphrasing Marx, Bobbio goes on to say
it would be tempting to say that for Gramsci civil society comprises

not ‘the whole complex of material relations’ but the whole complex of
ideological-cultural relations; not really ‘the whole complex of commercial
and industrial life’ but the whole complex of spiritual and intellectual life.
(Bobbio 1988, p. 83)
For Gramsci too, Bobbio observes, as for Marx, it is not the State but
civil society that is ‘the true focus and the theatre of all history’ (Marx
and Engels 1976, p. 50). Taken by itself the observation would not have
particular importance since for any Marxist thinker the history of the State
is part of the history of society. But, in Gramsci, according to Bobbio,
by changing the sphere of the relations that belong to civil society, the
‘active and positive moment of historical development (…) is superstruc-
tural’ (Bobbio 1988, p. 83) and in the sphere of the superstructures ‘the
relation between institutions and ideologies, though remaining within
2 Bobbio had earlier (p. 246) listed in a bibliography he had prepared for the conference
in his honour a first group of authors comprising Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant and
Hegel, followed by a second group of more modern ones—Cattaneo, Pareto, Croce,
Weber and Kelsen, saying he was uncertain whether or not to put Marx among the
classical authors.
4 HEGEMONY AND DEMOCRACY 197
a framework of a reciprocal action, is inverted: the ideologies become

the primary moment of history and the institutions the secondary one’
(Bobbio 1988, p. 88).3
It is beyond doubt that ‘ideologies’ have a greater weight for Gramsci
than for any other Marxist thinker, but to claim that they ‘become the
primary moment of history’ is equivalent to taking his thought back into
the conceptual framework of the ‘philosophy of the spirit’ of Benedetto
Croce. It is true that Bobbio applies to Gramsci’s thought a dichotomic
paradigm (structure/superstructure) which, as we have seen, Gramsci
explicitly rejects in his Notebooks. The ‘distinction between political society
and civil society’ Gramsci writes, is ‘methodological’ not ‘organic’. ‘In
actual reality civil society and State are one and the same’. This is one of
the best-known passages in Notebook 13, elsewhere Gramsci enters into
polemics with liberalism since, by considering as ‘organic’ what ought to
be a ‘methodological’ distinction, it contraposes the market to the State,
ignoring the fact ‘that laissez-faire too is a form of State “regulation”,
introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means’ (Q13§18,
p. 1590; SPN , p. 160). Furthermore, for Gramsci, even the distinction
between structure and superstructure is of a ‘methodological’ nature, so
much so that the ‘architectural metaphor’ at a certain date gives way to
other conceptualizations.
Gramscian studies based on a diachronic reading of the Notebooks have
for quite some time now shown that the ‘philosophy of praxis’ contains a
theory of knowledge and an analytic of history which delineate in an orig-
inal fashion the theory of hegemony. This originates a thinking in which
the distinction between structure and superstructure is ‘only a metaphor
to provide an encouragement to further methodological and philosophical
research’ (Q10I§13, note 5; FSPN , p. 360). As already seen in Chapter 3,
Gramsci’s ‘philosophy of praxis’ aims at responding to the question ‘how
does the historical movement arise on the structural base?’ (Q11§22,
p. 1422; SPN , p. 431), and hence to elaborate a theory of the constitu-
tion of political subjects. But if Gramsci is approached with the intention
of using his thought to derive classifications of collective or individual
3 [Cf. the Italian text regarding civil society in Marx, in Hegel and in Gramsci in
Bobbio’s collected essays on Gramsci (Bobbio 1991, pp. 42–55); the translation published
in (Bobbio 1988) is modified to reinstate the Hegelian term ‘moment’ and uses Bobbio’s
1967 original (including Bobbio’s emphasis), rather than a slightly modified later one—
trans. note.]
198 G. VACCA
action, the sense of his research escapes us. This sense lies instead in the
assumption that ‘the concrete analyses of the relations of force’, which are
the heart of political science ‘cannot and must not be an end in themselves
(…), but acquire significance only if they serve to justify a particular prac-
tical activity, or initiative of will’ (Q13§17, p. 1588; SPN , p. 185). For
Bobbio instead, ‘knowing’ and ‘willing’ belong to two separate spheres
and the method of political science is that of the natural sciences (Bobbio
1985, Chapter 1). It is from here, I believe, that his misunderstanding of
Gramsci’s concepts is born.
To understand Gramsci’s thought, the point of departure is the theory
of hegemony, not the conception of ‘civil society’. But it is only in a
conception of politics that starts from the crisis of the State, and which is
able to explain the expansion of the State beyond the conventional sphere
of the institutions that the definition of the State—as the unity of polit-
ical society and civil society—assumes all its significance. In Gramsci, then,
the conception of ‘civil society’ is part of the theory of hegemony and not
vice versa. By inverting this logico-historical nexus, through the concept
of ‘civil society’ Bobbio erases its originality. Everything is then reduced
to recognizing that Gramsci gave great importance to the problem of
consent. It is true that in the exercise of power the problem of consent
functions as a dividing line; but if the whole of Gramsci’s political reflec-
tion were to reduce to this, the Notebooks would be of little value and
those who maintain that there is a ‘totalitarian’ nature to his thought
would in part be correct.4
1 The Legacy of Liberalism

The density of the concept of hegemony emerges from the way in which
Gramsci analyses the dissolution of liberal civilization. ‘Political democ-
racy – Gramsci writes – tends towards a coincidence of the rulers and
the ruled’ (Q12§3, p. 1547; SPN , p. 40). Its basis cannot therefore
be the exercise of ‘“direct domination” or command that is expressed
through the State and “juridical” government’. It is necessary instead to
perform a function of leadership, of a guide of society, which is shared
4 This characterized the debate, initiated by Bobbio a decade after the Cagliari confer-
ence (see the Quaderni di Mondoperaio, n. 7, 1977), in which the interventions of Lucio
Colletti, Ernesto Galli della Loggia and Massimo L. Salvadori were distinguished by the
attempt to demonstrate the ‘totalitarian’ nature of Gramsci’s thought.
to differing degrees by the ruled (Q12§1, pp. 1518–1519; SPN , p. 12).

This is created when the dominant groups arrive at the awareness ‘that
one’s own corporative interests, in their present and future development,
transcend the corporative limits of the purely economic class, and can and
must become the interests of other subordinate groups too’. Gramsci goes
on ‘[t]his is the most purely political phase’ in which a class or a bloc of
allied social forces succeeds in making prevail, among its own interests,
those which in part can be shared by contraposed social groups, thereby
putting them ‘on a “universal” plane, and thus creating the hegemony of
a fundamental social group over a series of subordinate groups’ (Q13§17,
p. 1584; SPN , pp. 181–182).
These concepts are appropriate for societies in which ‘nobody is unor-
ganized and without a party’ (Q6§136, p. 800; PN Vol. 3, p. 107 and
SPN , p. 264), in which therefore politics is based on representation. In
Gramsci’s view it therefore follows that the State must base itself on a
‘democratic compromise’ that allows a circulation and turnover between
rulers and ruled, otherwise it cannot carry out its function:
It is true that the State is seen as the organ of one particular group,
destined to create favourable conditions for the latter’s maximum expan-
sion. But the development and expansion of the particular group are
conceived of, and presented, as being the motor force of a universal expan-
sion, of a development of all the “national” energies. In other words, the
dominant group is coordinated concretely with the general interests of the
subordinate groups, and the life of the State is conceived of as a contin-
uous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria (on the
juridical plane) between the interests of the fundamental group and those
of the subordinate groups – equilibria in which the interests of the domi-
nant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, i.e. stopping short of
narrowly corporative economic interest. (QdC, Q13§17, p. 1584; SPN ,
p. 182)
The democratic state is based on ‘the parliamentary regime’: ‘The

“normal” exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parlia-
mentary regime – writes Gramsci – is characterized by the combination
of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force
predominating excessively over consent. Indeed, the attempt is always
made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of
the majority’. The war had however precipitated the crisis of the liberal
200 G. VACCA
State: ‘In the period following the World War, cracks opened up every-
where in the hegemonic apparatus, and the exercise of hegemony became
permanently difficult and aleatory’ (Q13§37, p. 1638; SPN , p. 80, note
49 [emphasis added—G.V.]). What was the origin of the crisis? Gramsci
has it date back to the Great War, analysing its sources in an original
manner. As we have been at pains to point out more than once, he
does not share either Lenin’s view of imperialism as ‘the highest stage
of capitalism’ or the historical vision of the communist movement that
justified its mission with the theory of the ‘general crisis of capitalism’.
Gramsci instead develops a politico-historical interpretation of the origins
of the war. With the creation of a ‘world economy’ in the last decades of
the nineteenth century, political history had begun to be marked by the
growing contrast between the ‘cosmopolitanism of economic life’ and the
‘nationalism of the life of the State’. The war had been generated by the
incapacity of the ruling classes to bring the latter into line with the former
and to ensure that the beneficial effects of the ‘cosmopolitanism’ of the
economy were propagated through the promotion of ever more advanced
forms of world unification. The ‘order of Versailles’ had brought back that
contrast, aggravating the situation.
How had the characteristics of politics changed? Since when had they
begun to change and for what reasons? Gramsci argues that the whole
of the period after the French Revolution must be reconsidered and
locates the morphological change of politics in the passage to the ‘epoch
of imperialism’. But he proposes a non-conventional vision of this. In
the period that goes from the French Revolution to 1870 the European
liberal-democratic élites had had the experience of Jacobinism as their
model, re-worked ‘scientifically’ in the ‘political concept of the so-called
“permanent revolution”’ (Q13§7, p. 1566; SPN , p. 242). The ‘formula’
had ‘found its juridical constitutional “completion” in the parliamentary
regime. The latter, in the period in which “private” energies in society
were most plentiful, realized the permanent hegemony of the urban class
over the entire population in the Hegelian form of government with
permanently organised consent’ (Q13§37, p. 1636; SPN , p. 80, note 49).
It was possible for the exercise of hegemony to be consolidated since the
dominant class was able to renew and expand the conditions of its domi-
nation: ‘The economic base for industrial and commercial development
was continually enlarged and reinforced. Those social elements which
were most highly endowed with energy and spirit of enterprise rose from
the lower classes to the ruling classes. The entire society was in a contin-
uous process of formation and dissolution, followed by more complex
formations with richer potentialities’. But this ‘lasted until the epoch of
imperialism and culminated in the world war’ (loc. cit.).5 The golden
era of the ‘parliamentary regime’ presupposed a ‘historical context’ which
began to dissolve around 1870: ‘In the period after 1870, with the
colonial expansion of Europe, all these elements change’. The reasons
for this change are of both an internal and an international order: ‘the
internal and international organisational relations of the State become
more complex and massive’. In the internal life of the State we have
the formation of ‘massive structures of the modem democracies, both
as State organisations, and as complexes of associations in civil life’; in
international relations the change consists in a greater dependency ‘of the
national economies [on] the economic relations of the world market’, that
is to say there is a growth of various aspects of interdependence which
characterize the development of an effectively world economy (Q13§7,
pp. 1566–1567; SPN , p. 243).6
The post-World War I crisis was a ‘crisis of the ruling class’s hegemony’
(Q13§23, pp. 1602–1603; SPN , p. 210) and of ‘the massive structure of
the modern democracies’ (Q13§7, p. 1567; SPN , p. 243): the rupture
of an equilibrium between rulers and ruled that could not be rebuilt
on the old bases and was manifested as the crisis of a fossilized political
nomenclature:
At a certain point in their historical lives, social groups become detached

from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in
that particular organisational form, with the particular men who consti-
tute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognized by their class
(or fraction of a class) as its expression. (Q13§23, pp. 1602–1603; SPN ,
p. 210)7
5 [The first part of the quotation is integrated to bring the English into line with the
original—trans. note.]
6 [The wording ‘civil life’, following the Italian ‘vita civile’, here replaces that of ‘civil
society’ of the SPN translation—trans. note.]
7 [Translation modified to replace the SPN gloss “classes” with “groups”, corresponding
to Gramsci’s original—trans. note.]
202 G. VACCA
But, Gramsci asks himself how, in the first place, do there arise ‘these
situations of conflict between ‘represented and representatives’ [which]
reverberate out from the terrain of the parties (…) throughout the State
organism?’ (loc. cit.). The response is ‘to be sought in civil society’ and
therein ‘one cannot do without studying’ the developments of ‘the trade-
union phenomenon’. This expression does not refer solely to the diffusion
of ‘organizations of special interest’ but also to the emergence of ‘newly
formed social elements, which previously had no say in affairs and, by
the sole fact of uniting together, modify the political structure of soci-
ety’ (Q15§47, p. 1808). And in a note penned only a little later,8 he
brings together in the ‘trade-union phenomenon’ the whole develop-
ment of democratic life of the three pre-war decades. This is an ensemble
of processes that the war had accelerated and intensified, which were
destined, more than the war itself, to ‘mark a watershed’ since thanks
to these processes the peoples’ subjectivity had become a permanent fact
lodged within them and, beyond a certain extent, not subject to coercion
(Q15§59, p. 1824; SPN , p. 106).
The crisis is generally ‘presented’ as a ‘crisis of the principle of authority
[and] dissolution of the parliamentary regime’. These are in Gramsci’s
view the ‘most trivial’ representations (Q13§37, p. 1638) since they
ignore the fundamental aspect, namely that the crisis [of power] ‘is also
widespread [and] will bring about a new, more secure and stable “hege-
mony”’ (Q1§76, p. 84; PN Vol. 1, p. 181); but they are ‘trivial’ above all
because they describe ‘only the “theatrical” manifestations on the terrain
of parliament and political government’ (Q13§37, p. 1638).9 They do
not however see the phenomenon of deeper historical importance, gener-
ated by the underlying changes in world structure (i.e. by the increasing
contrast between the cosmopolitanism of the economy and the nation-
alism of politics). Gramsci thus poses at the centre of his analysis the crisis
of the nation-State which we analysed in Chapter 1 (Q6§10, pp. 690–691;
SPN , pp. 270–271).
8 For the dating of the paragraphs in the Notebook, readers are referred to Gianni
Francioni, L’officina gramsciana (1984) which, taking as its starting point Gerratana’s
chronological edition, goes into greater depth as regards the chronology itself; see,
furthermore, Vacca (2011).
9 [The whole of Q13§37 is not in a standard English translation; here see PN Vol. 1,
p. 156 for the first draft (‘A’ text) which differs from the later ‘C’ text in the use of
‘common’ for ‘trivial’ and ‘central’ for ‘“theatrical”’—trans. note.]
The crisis of the modern State is the most significant manifestation of

the decline of the bourgeoisie through the exhaustion of its expansive
capacities. As we have seen, Gramsci singles out Hegel as the highest
theoretical expression of bourgeois civilization because of his conception
of the ‘ethical or cultural State’, according to which
… one of its most important functions is to raise the great mass of the
population to a certain cultural and moral level, (…). [Hegel’s concep-
tion] belonged to a period when the widespread growth of the bourgeoisie
might have seemed limitless, and therefore one could affirm its ethical and
universal character: the entire human race will be bourgeois. (Q8§179,
p. 1049; PN Vol. 3, p. 338)
The explosion onto the scene of the First World War demonstrated on
the other hand that ‘when things come to a standstill [of the development
of the hegemonic capacities of the bourgeoisie] there is a return to the
concept of the State as pure force’:
The bourgeois class is “saturated”: it has not only stopped growing, it is

breaking down; not only has it stopped assimilating new elements, but it is
losing a part of itself (or at least the losses are much more numerous than
the assimilations). (Q8§2, p. 937; PN Vol. 3, p. 234)
It therefore seems to me obvious that with his concept of hegemony

Gramsci intends to elaborate, theoretically above all, the whole historical
development of liberalism. He has a positive vision of it which takes on
concrete form in the evolution of the State from an instrument of domi-
nance to the ‘ethical State’ which does not limit itself to safeguarding the
life of the citizens but fosters their culture and well-being. For Gramsci
the contemporary State
… is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which

the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages
to win the active consent of those over whom it rules. (Q15§10, p. 1765;
SPN , p. 244)
It intervenes in civil society through the instrument of coercion, but

also those of education and a code of legal reward. His ‘ideal type’ is
the ‘minimal State’ (Q6§88, pp. 763–764; PN Vol. 3, pp. 75–76, and
204 G. VACCA
SPN , pp. 262–263), a State which is the regulator of the economy which
operates indirectly on it by intervening in the organization of society:
the State must be conceived of as an “educator”, in as much as it tends

precisely to create a new type or level of civilisation. (…) [It] is an instru-
ment of “rationalisation”, of acceleration and of Taylorisation. It operates
according to a plan, urges, incites, solicits, and “punishes”. (Q13§10,
pp. 1570–1571; SPN , p. 247)
A ‘maxim of government’ that is valid not only for the civilizing

mission of the State, but also for its power reads as follows: ‘if in fact the
dominant classes [exploit] the popular masses to the extreme limit of their
strength (that is reduce them to a mere vegetative biological state)’ this
means that they ‘have failed to move beyond the economic-corporative
stage’ and that ‘one cannot speak of the power of the State but only
of the camouflaging of power’ (Q6§75, p. 743; PN Vol. 3, pp. 56–
57). The most significant aspect of Gramsci’s attitude towards liberal
civilization is the relation between the State and ‘individuals’. Whatever
the dominant social group, its task is ‘to construct within the shell of
political society a complex and well-articulated civil society in which the
individual governs himself, provided that his self-government does not
enter into conflict with political society, but becomes, rather, its normal
continuation, its organic complement’ (Q8§130, p. 1020; PN Vol. 3,
p. 310, and SPN , p. 268). The basic instruments through which the
‘self-government’ of the citizens may be realized are the trade unions
and parties,10 and, in order to understand how they constitute the physi-
ology of modern societies, it is not enough to conceive of democracy only
10 Perhaps the most significant passage on this score is devoted to the dialectic between
complexity and (the necessity for) organization. This is contained in Q6§109 (pp. 780–
781), a paragraph entitled ‘Past and Present. The Individual and the State’, where Gramsci
writes: ‘How the economic situation has changed to the “detriment” of the old liberalism:
Is it true that very individual citizen knows his own affairs better than anyone else in
today’s environment? Is it true that meritocracy prevails under the present circumstances?
The “individual citizen”: insofar as he cannot know (and, most important, cannot control)
the general conditions in which business is conducted given the size of the world market
and its complexity, in reality he does not know his own affairs, either – the need for big
industrial organizations, etc.’ (PN Vol. 3, p. 90 and FSPN p. 247; the italicized words
here seen are taken from the FSPN translation to integrate the PN one for a phrase
inadvertently omitted—trans. note).
under the technico-procedural aspect, but one must also have a realist-
historical notion that may be ‘extracted’ only in relation to the concept
of hegemony:
Among the many meanings of democracy, the most realistic and concrete
one, in my view, is that which can be brought into relief through the
connection between democracy and the concept of hegemony. In the hege-
monic system, there is democracy between the leading group and the
groups that are led to the extent that the development of the economy
and thus the legislation which is a development of that expression favours
the molecular transition from the groups that are led to the leading group.
(Q8§190, p. 1056; PN Vol. 3, p. 145, and SPN , note 5 to pp. 56–57)
It seems to me there can be no ambiguity regarding these concepts.

They have nothing to do with the contraposition between ‘formal democ-
racy’ and ‘real democracy’ of the Marxist vulgate, but rather re-elaborate
the experience of the bourgeoisie in the era of its expansion.11 Neither can
one gloss over the debt towards liberal thought and in particular towards
élitism (Mangoni 1976; Sola 2001).12 Can one say, as maintained by the
‘Cassandras of Mondoperaio’ in the 1970s13 that Gramsci’s democracy
excludes pluralism or that it is repugnant to him? It is either an idle ques-
tion or one that has been posed badly. For Gramsci the modern State and
the political science that is created with it arise when there has already
been formed a pluralism of classes and social groups which, in order to
develop must be territorially unified. The basis of the nation-State is the
modern ‘division of labour’ between the city and the countryside. And,
unless one has a restricted and formal notion of pluralism, one cannot
but share Gramsci’s interpretation of Machiavelli according to which the
‘Florentine secretary’ posed the question of unifying city and country-
side, and the unification could only come about through the hegemony
11 Above all else, the whole of modern public law. Indeed, Gramsci writes ‘the revo-
lution that the bourgeois class brought about in the concept of law and therefore in
the function of the State consists primarily in the will to conformism (hence the ethical
character of law and the State)’ (Q8§2, p. 937; PN Vol. 3, p. 234).
12 For the link between hegemony and pluralism at the origins of modernity, cf. Gramsci
(1997), Pensare la democrazia. Antologia dei “Quaderni del carcere” (Ed. M. Montanari).
13 Cf. footnote 3, above [‘Cassandras’ was the term used by the Mondoperaio authors
as a self-description—trans. note].
206 G. VACCA
of the ‘urban forces’. But the city can lead the countryside only by real-
izing a balanced exchange with it and fostering its economic development.
For this reason, Gramsci observes acutely that Machiavelli anticipates in
politics the thought in economics of the physiocrats (Q8§162, pp. 1038–
1039; PN Vol. 3, pp. 326–327, and FSPN , pp. 163–164). If then we
go on to the contemporary era, there cannot be any doubt regarding his
thought: the concept of democracy is contraposed to that of dictatorship:
The modern State substitutes for the mechanical bloc of social groups
their subordination to the active hegemony of the directive and dominant
group, hence abolishes certain autonomies, which nevertheless are reborn
in other forms, as parties, trade unions, cultural associations. The contem-
porary dictatorships legally abolish these new forms of autonomy as well,
and strive to incorporate them within State activity: the legal centralisation
of the entire national life in the hands of the dominant group becomes
“totalitarian”. (Q25§4, p. 2287; SPN , pp. 53–54 footnote 4)
This theme leads into the study of the totalitarian regimes present in
Europe between the two world wars: fascism, Stalinism and Nazism. But
Gramsci cannot be aligned with the theorists of ‘totalitarianism’. All three
of these regimes are based on a single party and on the identification with
the State, but they are contraposed and in order to understand them one
cannot limit oneself to cataloguing their institutional analogies. Gramsci
considers the fascist regimes to be ‘regressive’ and the Soviet State to
be ‘progressive’ (Q6§136, p. 800; PN Vol. 3, pp. 107–108, and SPN ,
pp. 264–265); he does not however approve of the general structure.
For Gramsci, dictatorship, whatever the ruling class, is the expression
of a hegemonic incapacity, and represents a ‘primordial’ form of politics
corresponding to an ‘economic-corporative’ stage of the ruling group
and is not only pathological but also necessarily transitory. It is of use
in this context to quote a note on the ‘actualism’ of Giovanni Gentile.
In Gramsci’s view, the difference between Gentile’s thought and Croce’s
philosophy is that while the latter ‘wants to maintain a distinction between
civil society and political society’, Gentile on the other hand dissolves the
former within the latter since for him ‘history is entirely history of the
State’. Apparently this represents an advantage for Gentile’s actualism,
since ‘“unity in the act” allows Gentile to recognize as “history” that
which for Croce is “antihistory”’, in other words fascism. But, if ‘it is
impossible to distinguish political society from civil society’, the notion of
the State becomes impoverished: only the State exists and. of course. [it
is] the State-as-government, etc.’ ‘Hegemony and dictatorship [become]
indistinguishable, force is no different from consent ’. There thus comes
about a regression of the ‘ethical phase’ to the ‘[economic]-corporative
phase’ of politics (Q6§10, p. 691; PN Vol. 3, pp. 9–10 and SPN , p. 271).
‘Totalitarianism’ is born from a State of exception and thus cannot
constitute a rule of life of the State. In this State of exception the ‘single
party’ carries out the functions normally attributed to the Head of State
(Q13§21, p. 1601; SPN , pp. 147–148): it functions as an ‘element that
balances the various interests’ in conflict, ‘[w]ith the difference however
that in terms of traditional constitutional law the political party juridically
neither rules nor governs: it has “de facto power”, it exercises the hege-
monic function, and hence the function of balancing various interests in
“civil society”’, which obviously no totalitarian State can suppress. Civil
society ‘is in fact so intertwined with political society that all citizens feel
instead that the party rules and governs’. Under this aspect, the ‘totali-
tarianisms’ are identical and for them the assertion is valid that ‘it is not
possible to create a constitutional law of the traditional type based on this
reality which is in continuous movement’ (Q5§127, p. 662; PN Vol. 2,
p. 382).
In the totalitarian State even the (totalitarian) party ends up by losing
its political function. ‘Is political action (in the strict sense) necessary –
Gramsci wonders in a late note in Notebook 1714 – for one to be able
to speak of a “political party”?’. His reply is obviously in the affirmative,
and refers back to the ‘normal’ situation of democratic regimes. ‘In coun-
tries where there is a single, totalitarian governing party’ its functions are
‘no longer directly political, but merely technical ones of propaganda and
public order, and moral and cultural influence’. Gramsci further notes that
in the parties that govern them, the predominance of ‘cultural functions’
gives rise to ‘political language becom[ing] jargon’, which deadens the
perception of reality: ‘political questions are disguised as cultural ones,
and as such become insoluble’ (Q17§37, p. 1940; SPN , p. 149).
Hence there is no hegemony without democracy, nor can there be
democracy if the ‘“normal” exercise of hegemony’ is interrupted or begins
to crumble. The presupposition of democracy is pluralism of modern
societies (not only of social groups but of their economic and political
14 In its reference to totalitarian mass parties this paragraph (Q17§37, p. 1939) should
also be borne in mind in the consideration of the experience of Nazism.
208 G. VACCA
organizations too). The development of subjectivity from the ‘economic-

corporative’ to the ‘ethico-political’ presupposes the articulation between
‘political society’ and ‘civil society’. Political action itself is representation,
not only decision, and is made by communication between the rulers and
the ruled, the leaders and the led.
2 Crisis and Critics of Democracy

Gramsci cannot, then, be assimilated to the critics of democracy, nor be
considered hostile or indifferent to democracy, as almost all the commu-
nist movement was in the course of its brief history. Gramsci’s criticism is
not levelled against parliamentary democracy, but aims instead at making
the representative principle more articulated and free from economic
conditioning. Although he is obviously critical of the limits of liberal
parliamentarism (a restricted electoral suffrage, ‘property qualification’),
he defends parliamentary democracy. In a note written in 1932, written
polemically against the journal Critica Fascista, he writes: ‘One of the
most banal commonplaces which get repeated against the elective system
of forming State organs is the following: that in it numbers decide every-
thing’, a position against which his retorts ‘[b]ut the fact is that it is not
true, in any sense, that numbers decide everything, nor that the opinions
of all electors are of “exactly” equal weight. Numbers (…) are simply an
instrumental value, giving a measure and a relation and nothing more’.
The votes measure ‘the effectiveness, and the expansive and persuasive
capacity, of the opinions of a few individuals, the active minorities, the
élites, the avant-gardes, etc.—i.e. their rationality, historicity or concrete
functionality (…). The counting of “votes” is the final ceremony of a long
process’ (Q13§30, pp. 1624–1625; SPN , pp. 192–193).
Representative democracy presupposes modern ‘civil society’ and the
‘normal’ functioning of ‘public opinion’.15 ‘What is called ‘“public opin-
ion” – Gramsci writes – is tightly connected to political hegemony; in
other words, it is the point of contact between “civil society” and “polit-
ical society”, between consent and force’ (Q7§83, p. 914; PN Vol. 3,
p. 213). And perhaps this note is enough to clarify unambiguously the
relation between hegemony and democracy. But it is no other than a
15 For the concept of ‘public sphere’ cf. Habermas (1992); original 1962 and Italian
translation 1971; see also Williams (1961).
terrain of struggle, of conflicts and of initiative, like any other sphere of

modern societies:
Public opinion is the political content of the public’s political will that
can be dissentient; therefore, there is a struggle for the monopoly of the
organs of public opinion – newspapers, political parties, parliament – so
that only one force will mold public opinion and hence the political will
of the nation, while reducing the dissenters to individual and disconnected
specks of dust. (Q7§83, p. 915; PN Vol. 3, p. 213)
In this dissentient and discordant ‘public political will’, some ideas

impose themselves on others through the organs of ‘public opinion’
and are diffused throughout the whole of society, competing to shape
the consent of the ruled. In this way the coherence between prevalent
interests and shared values, which is a condition for the unity of the
dominant groups is asserted. This unity is founded on the correspon-
dence between the economic, political and cultural programmes that these
groups pursue, giving an overall direction to the whole of society. This is
hegemony, which therefore presupposes democracy (pluralism, the parlia-
mentary regime, the expansion of the various forms of representation,
unions, parties, etc.), and gives it strength and sinew.
In complex societies the exercise of the leadership function is fulfilled
through ‘the ideological structure of a dominant class’ which, Gramsci
goes on to say, is ‘material organization meant to preserve, defend,
and develop the theoretical or ideological “front”. Its most notable and
dynamic part is the press in general’. This is the ‘system’ of ‘trenches’
and ‘fortifications’ which Gramsci had singled out as long ago as 1924
as the main difference between East and West.16 But the emphasis on
the ‘power’ of the dominant class does not change the way in which the
subaltern classes must struggle to obtain their ends. ‘What can an innova-
tive class set against the formidable complex of trenches and fortifications
of the dominant class?’ Gramsci’s answer is ‘[t]he “spirit of cleavage” –
that is, the progressive acquisition of one’s historical identity’. Whatever
the power of the dominant classes may be, if their dominance is exer-
cised in a democratic State that possibility is not excluded but, rather, it
16 Cf. Gramsci’s letter from Vienna to Togliatti, Terracini (Urbani) and others of 9
February 1924 in Togliatti (1961, p. 197) (Gramsci GTW , p. 227, and SPW 1921–1926,
p. 199).
210 G. VACCA
constitutes the fundamental condition for developing the ‘consciousness

of one’s historical identity’ on the part of the subaltern classes since this
cannot be constituted except by developing a ‘complex ideological work,
the first condition of which is an exact knowledge of the field that must
be cleared of its element of human mass’ (Q3§49, p. 333; PN Vol. 2,
p. 53)17 ; hegemony is fought through political initiative and the demo-
cratic State is the ‘normal’ terrain of struggle between the contenders.
‘Subalternity’ is not so much a social condition as, rather, the (reversible)
exclusion from the sphere of freedom and responsibility imposed through
cultural instruments more than through force.
As confirmation of what we have been saying we may recall the way
in which Gramsci judges the liberal and conservative critics of democracy.
In the polemic against Critica fascista cited above, he draws attention to
how the criticism of the representative principle formulated by this review
was of an ‘oligarchic’ and not an ‘élitist’ origin. But the ‘rightist’ critics
of democracy on whom he dwells more at length are precisely the ‘éli-
tists’ Gaetano Mosca and Robert Michels, whose dependence on Croce
is underlined by Gramsci. The subject is of particular interest because
the trait common to both of them is their aversion to the political party
which, for Gramsci instead, is the main protagonist of democracy and
its eventual developments. He reproves Mosca for not dealing ‘with the
problem of the “political party” in its entirety’, for factiousness and for
his conservative spirit, with the result that he was unable to give a precise
definition of the concept of ‘political class’ which in Gramsci’s view ‘has
to be placed alongside Pareto’s concept of the élite’ (Q8§24, p. 956 and
Q13§6, p. 1565; PN Vol 3, p. 252, and SPN , p. 6 footnote, respectively).
On Michels however Gramsci gives a more articulated analysis. Here he
underlines the derivation of Michels’ writings from Max Weber’s political
sociology, which in turn is subject to the criticism both of its restricted
notion of politics as pure force (and of parties as associations that aim at
power for power’s sake and for the advantages that they can gain for their
affiliates and clientele) and of the tendency to reduce the party’s directive
function to the charisma of the leaders themselves (Q2§75, pp. 230–231;
PN Vol. 1, p. 318). Gramsci rejects the so-called ‘iron law of oligarchy’
17 [Here, in reference to ‘trenches and fortifications’, we prefer the literal ‘dominant

class’ for the PN translation of ‘ruling class’ since ruler(s )/ruling tends to be used where
Gramsci’s Italian has governante(i)—trans. note.]
and the notion of the ‘charismatic party’, considering them to be anachro-

nistic and as political-polemical formulas, not scientific concepts (Q2§75,
pp. 236–237; PN Vol. 1, pp. 323–324). The point of greatest interest
is the denial that political sociology is a valid replacement for what up to
the nineteenth century had been ‘the science and art of politics’ based on
the dialectical relationship between science and action, knowledge and
will. The development of mass parties, Gramsci writes, brings it back
to an honored position since it makes the very idea of ‘laws’ of society
constructed on statistical bases inoperative (Q11§25, pp. 1429–1430;
SPN , pp. 428–429).
But it is above all Croce who receives Gramsci’s pungent criticism
both because his philosophy had had an enormous influence and because
Croce’s criticism of democracy had ended up in the refusal of the polit-
ical party, thereby revealing the innermost reasons underlying his moral
philosophy. Croce is assimilated to ‘German historicism’ in so far as his
conception of politics as a ‘passion’ was influenced by the Weberian theory
of charisma. This influence is shown even more directly in the concep-
tion of the political party since, as Gramsci observes, ‘Croce reduces the
political act to the activity of the individual “party leaders”. So they can
satisfy their own passion they construct for themselves, in the parties,
the instruments appropriate to ensuring victory’ (Q10II§41v, p. 1309;
FSPN , p. 391).
There are different aspects of the critique of politics-as-passion. First
of all it brings to the fore the ‘irrationalistic’ nature of Croce’s philos-
ophy. The concept of politics-as-passion stems from the ‘subsumption
of history under the general category of art’18 and is bound up with
the denial ‘of the “predictability” of social facts’. But ‘[i]f social facts
cannot be predicted, and the very concept of prediction is meaningless,
then the irrational cannot but be dominant, and any organization of
men must be anti-historical, a “prejudice”’. The practical consequences
of this theory are basically quite ‘trivial’ since ‘[t]he only thing left to
do’ would be ‘to resolve each individual, practical problem posed by the
movement of history as it comes up, and with extemporaneous criteria;
opportunism [would be] the only possible political line’ (Q13§1, p. 1557;
SPN , pp. 127–128 footnote). Furthermore, it is contradictory because
18 [Croce’s first published essay (1893), defining much of his subsequent output was the
paper read before the Pontanian Academy in Naples, ‘La storia ridotta sotto il concetto
generale dell’arte’ (‘History subsumed under the general concept of art’)—trans. note.]
212 G. VACCA
politics involves collective ‘permanent’ actors and therefore cannot be

only ‘passion’. The contradictory nature of Croce’s thesis is shown clearly
by the comparison between parties and the mode of being and working
of armies, and with the role of ‘diplomacy’. Armies as much as diplo-
macy are organizations that have a rational order, and which function
through plans and given objectives in a way that is anything but passional
(Q10II41v, pp. 1307–1310; FSPN , pp. 389–392). Hence the hidden
meaning of Croce’s thesis cannot be other than the reduction of politics
to a ‘will to power’, to pure ‘force’, thereby confirming that ‘Crocean
philosophy’ is ‘the matrix for Gentile’s “actualism”’ (Q10I§7, p. 1223;
FSPN , p. 344).
Croce’s article on ‘The Party as Judgment and as Prejudice’, published
in 1912 on the eve of the first elections on an enlarged suffrage in a
climate of fierce criticism of democracy, is the most frequent reference
point for Gramsci’s own criticism. His hypothesis is that the conception
of politics-as-passion has its origin in the fact that Croce, who had come
towards politics ‘in a serious way by becoming interested in the political
action of the subaltern classes’, had been conditioned by the way in which
they acted. Since indeed the subaltern classes had been forced ‘onto the
defensive’, as a norm they lacked ‘historical initiative’ and the capacity for
hegemony. However, even for Croce ‘political science must explain […]
not only the action of one side, but also the action of the other side’
and under this aspect his vision is indirect confirmation that the political
struggle is the struggle for hegemony:
If one makes a careful examination of this Crocean concept of “passion”

devised in order to provide politics with a theoretical justification, one
sees that in its turn it can only be justified by the concept of permanent
struggle, for which ‘initiative’ is always ‘impassioned’ since the struggle is
uncertain and one is continually on the attack not only to avoid being
beaten but also to hold down the adversary which “could win” if not
continually persuaded that he is the weaker, i.e. continually defeated.
(Q10II§56, p. 1349; FSPN , p. 392)
But if ‘passion’ is but one aspect of the struggle for hegemony,19 is the
reduction of the whole of politics to ‘passion’ a ‘disinterested’ theoretical
error or is it born from a contingent practical conditioning? In actual fact,
Gramsci notes, Croce’s conception is directed against the subaltern classes
since only they have the ‘need’, in order to conquer power, for ‘per-
manent’ voluntary organizations (parties, trade unions, etc.); the ruling
classes, instead, already have in their hands the State, the market and
‘hegemonic apparatuses’. They have all the armament necessary for exer-
cising power and therefore for them ‘political initiative’ can even be only
of an ‘individual’ and ‘molecular’ nature.20 Croce, like all the upholders of
‘politics-as-power’ argues that the subaltern classes should never be trans-
formed into ruling classes and, if they intend to do this, they represent
a serious threat to society. The locus where this aspect of his philosophy
is most evident is the conception of the different role played by ideolo-
gies for the élite and for the mass. Indeed, as Gramsci observes, ‘political
19 Although Gramsci rejects the identification of ‘passion’ with politics, he does however
recognize an essential value in Croce’s concept. The ‘reduction’ operated by Croce ‘runs
into difficulties when it comes to explaining and justifying permanent political formations,
such as the parties and, even more so, the national armies and General Staffs, since
it is impossible to conceive of a permanently organized passion that does not become
rationality and deliberate reflection – in other words, that ceases to be passion’. Hence
the solution to the problem ‘can be found only in the identification of politics and
economics’. Expressed in other words, Croce’s ‘passion’ is to be understood as ‘interest’.
The ‘translation’ of Croce’s thesis into Gramsci’s language brings the problem back to
the dialectic between the ‘economic-corporative’ and the ‘ethico-political’ and. in this,
‘passion’ occupies an essential role as the mainspring which leads to the transcendence
of the economic-corporative interest given that it introduces disinterest into the action,
which can go as far as the sacrifice of one’s life. Indeed, if politics, in so far as it is rational
calculation and utilitarian action, is identified with economics, it is however distinct from it
by the intervention of passion’: ‘it is possible to speak of economics and politics separately.
One can speak of “political passion”, that it is an unmediated impulse toward action that
is born on the “permanent and organic” terrain of economic life but goes beyond it,
bringing into play emotions and aspirations in whose incandescent atmosphere even the
calculations of individual human life will follow laws different from those of individual
profit, etc.’ (Q8§132, p. 1022; PN Vol. 3, p. 312, and SPN , pp. 139–140). What
specifies politics is therefore its ethical nature, its intrinsic relation on the one hand with
economics and, on the other, even stronger, with ethics. The latter ‘supersedes’ the former
and introduces a universalistic tension into political action.
20 This subject is clarified in an exemplary manner in the analysis of the action of the
‘Moderates’ and ‘democrats’ in the Italian Risorgimento (Q19§24, pp. 2011–2013; SPN ,
pp. 59–61.)
214 G. VACCA
ideologies’ in Croce’s view are nothing other than ‘practical construc-

tions, instruments of political leadership’. In the ‘philosophy of distincts’,
politics is a purely instrumental practice and thus even the ideas that
justify it are pure instruments of struggle. Gramsci therefore concludes
‘one might say [according to Croce] that ideologies for the governed are
mere illusions, a deception they are subject to, whereas for the governors
they constitute a willed and conscious deception’ (Q10II§41xii, p. 1319;
FSPN , p. 395).
The instrumental conception of ‘political ideologies’ provides the link
between the ‘right’ and ‘left’ critics of democracy and hinges around
the figure of Sorel. He constitutes the main vehicle by which Croce’s
influence made itself felt in the socialist movement through which Croce
managed to become ‘the intellectual leader of the turn-of-the-century
revisionism’.21 Gramsci criticizes Sorel’s ‘theory of myths’ while at the
same time recognizing that he had the merit of having created an effec-
tive criterion of analysis regarding some of the aspects of the political
action of the workers’ movement. But the Sorelian ‘myth’ is nothing
other than ‘Croce’s “passion” studied in a more concrete manner’ since
it also includes ‘what Croce calls “religion”, i.e. a conception of the
world with a conformant ethic’ (Q10II§41v, p. 1308; FSPN , p. 390).
For Sorel the incarnation of the myth is trade union action: not the trade
union as the ‘organisation of a collective will’ but its ‘practical action,
was to have been the general strike’. As a ‘political ideology’ Sorelianism
remains stops short of the problems of hegemony, it is subaltern since
trade union action as conceived by him is an activity ‘of a negative and
preliminary kind, […] which does not envisage an “active and construc-
tive” phase of its own’ (Q13§1, pp. 1556–1557; SPN , p. 127). Sorel
is the highest expression of the retreat of the French intellectuals into
anti-politics after the ‘national defeat’ of Sedan and the ‘popular’ defeat
of the Paris Commune. The ‘popular blood-letting of 1871 severed the
umbilical cord between the “new people” and the tradition of 1793’ and
21 This judgment is found in various places scattered through the Prison Letters and
Notebooks. For the Letters, see Gramsci’s of 18 April 1932 and Tanja’s of 5 July 1932; for
the April letter, see Gramsci (1994a, Vol. 2, p. 164), while Tanja’s is in Gramsci-Schucht
(1997, pp. 1041–1042). For references in the Notebooks, on the other hand, see Q10I
Sommario [Summary], p. 1207 and Q10I§2, pp. 1213–1214 in Gramsci (1975); FSPN ,
pp. 328 and 335 respectively.
created an ‘anti-Jacobinism—sectarian, mean and anti-historical’ whose

champion was Sorel (Q11§66, Note I, p. 1498; FSPN , p. 459).
A salient point of Gramsci’s criticism is the clarification of Sorel’s
dependency on the thought of Croce. In ‘[t]heoretical syndicalism […]
the transformation of the subordinate group into a dominant one is
excluded’ and this therefore hinders ‘the independence and autonomy
of the subaltern group which it claims to represent’ sacrificing it ‘to
the intellectual hegemony of the ruling group’. This theoretical syndi-
calism is ‘merely an aspect of laissez-faire liberalism’ and in fact this form
of ‘economism’ stems from a literal reading of the distinction between
‘political society’ and ‘civil society’ as if they were two separate spheres
of human activity. This is precisely the liberal conception of the rela-
tion between ‘political society’ and ‘civil society’, a conception according
to which ‘a distinction between political society and civil society […] is
made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely
methodological’. The subalternity of theoretical syndicalism’ to liberalism
is made manifest in the inability to understand that ‘laissez-faire too is a
form of State “regulation”, introduced and maintained by legislative and
coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and
not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts’ (Q13§18,
pp. 1589–1590; SPN , p. 160).
It is however very significant that for Gramsci the ‘radical “liberalism”
(or theory of spontaneity)’ of Sorel ‘hinders any conservative consequence
to his opinions’ and maintains ‘a constant tendency of popular radicalism’
(Q17§20, p. 1923). These judgments stem from the open and dialogic
approach adopted by Gramsci towards liberalism which, as we shall see,
exerted a positive influence on his conception of parties (in the relation
between spontaneity and leadership) and his development of a political
programme for a post-fascist Italy. In any case, the salient point of his
critique of syndicalism is his attribution to it of ‘economism’, a criticism
which is also valid for the ‘left’ critics of democracy. Among the adher-
ents of revolutionary socialism, his foremost target is Rosa Luxemburg,
whose ‘“economistic” and spontaneist prejudice’ is based on the theory
of the ‘collapse of capitalism’: Gramsci is very harsh in his judgment of
her conception of the ‘general strike’: it was a ‘form of iron economic
determinism, with the aggravating factor that it was conceived of as oper-
ating with lightning speed in time and in space. It was thus out and out
historical mysticism’ (Q13§24, pp. 1613–1615; SPN , p. 233). And to
this position of Rosa Luxemburg’s, he assimilates that of the permanent
216 G. VACCA
revolution of Trotsky,22 who in Gramsci’s view can be ‘considered the

political theorist of frontal assault, at a time when it could only lead to
defeat’ (Q6§138, pp. 801–802; PN Vol. 3, p. 109, and SPN , p. 238). The
error in his case is caused by ‘an inaccurate understanding of the nature of
the State’ which in its integral meaning cannot be reduced to pure force
but is ‘political society + civil society, that is, hegemony protected by the
armor of coercion’ (Q6§155, pp. 810–811, and Q6§88, pp. 763–764;
PN Vol. 3, pp. 75 and 117, and SPN , pp. 239 and 263, respectively).
As we saw in Chapter 2, there are good reasons for supposing that
the real target in the criticism of Trotsky is Stalin.23 One can there-
fore complete the examination of the ‘left’ critics of democracy by
re-examining the salient features of Gramsci’s critique of Stalinism. The
critique of Soviet communism pervades the contents of the Notebooks and
I think that, if one reconstituted in detail Gramsci’s research programme,
it would turn out to be its driving force. As we have drawn attention
to several times, Gramsci considered the USSR to be a ‘primordial’,
‘economic-corporative’ form of workers’ State; and, taking back in hand
the central motif of the criticism of the joint opposition expressed in his
letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of
October 1926, he considers as an evident manifestation of ‘economism’
the leading group’s lack of understanding that, in order to give leader-
ship to the whole of society it was necessary for them to ‘make sacrifices
of an economic-corporative kind’, and should instead think that ‘the
concrete posing of the problem of hegemony should be interpreted as
a fact subordinating the hegemonic group’ (Q13§18, p. 1591; SPN ,
p. 161).24
22 ‘Bronstein’s theory can be compared to that of certain French syndicalists on the

general strike, and to Rosa’s theory’ (Q7§16, pp. 866–867; PN Vol. 3, p. 169, and
SPN , p. 238).
23 The hypothesis that I put forward in 1988 (L’URSS staliniana nei “Quaderni del
carcere” ), expressed in condensed form in my 1999 Appuntamenti con Gramsci (pp. 31–
32), is shared by Francesco Benvenuti and Silvio Pons who have reconstructed a wide-
ranging map of the notes in the Notebooks devoted to an analysis of the USSR; cf. F.
Benvenuti and S. Pons (1999) ‘L’Unione Sovietica nei Quaderni’ in G. Vacca (Ed.) 1999,
pp. 93–124.
24 Q13§18, p. 1591; in English SPN op. 161. [The SPN translation is here modified
to have ‘the hegemonic group’ rather than ‘the group seeking hegemony’, bringing the
English into line with the original Italian—trans. note]. The passage from the letter 14
October 1926 letter to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, to
The ‘peasant war’ had therefore fatal consequences for the Soviet State
and demonstrated that Stalin’s ruling group had a military conception
of politics. Gramsci emphasized above all its anachronism given that in
the era of the ‘war of position’ the military element in the real and
proper sense had a secondary and uncertain role, the power of arms
being eminently dissuasive (Q13§24, pp. 1615–1616; SPN , pp. 235–
236). But the militarization of politics also brings out another side of
‘economism’ to which we have already drawn attention. This regards the
‘so-called intransigence theories’ characterized by the ‘rigid aversion on
principle to what are termed compromises – and the derivative of this,
which can be termed “fear of dangers”’. That the ‘aversion on principle to
compromise is closely linked to economism’ is in his view clear ‘[f]or the
conception upon which the aversion is based can only be the iron convic-
tion that there exist objective laws of historical development similar in
kind to natural laws’. This therefore involves ‘a belief in a predetermined
teleology like that of a religion’ which nullifies ‘any deliberate initiative
tending to predispose and plan these conditions [for success]’ (Q13§23,
pp. 1611–1612; SPN , pp. 167–168).
Apparently the criticism of the ‘so-called intransigence theories’ is
retrospective in so far as it refers to the conceptions of Bordiga, which
Gramsci had already defeated between 1924 and 1926. But it is known
that in the ‘Third Period turn’ of 1930, he recognized a regression of the
whole communist movement to those positions. The target of his criticism
was therefore Stalin. Militarization concerned both the domestic policy of
the USSR and the Comintern, now firmly in Stalin’s grasp. Gramsci refers
to the PCI but probably has the German situation in mind. The 1930
‘turn’, the ‘class against class’ policy (Agosti 1976, Vol. III) is consid-
ered as the cause of ‘collective disasters’ and ‘useless sacrifices’ (Q15§4,
p. 1753; SPN , p. 240): a line based on a mistaken analysis of the Italian
situation (Q15§35, pp. 1788–1789) which originated from the ‘political
which Gramsci here makes reference, reads as follows ‘it has never been seen in history
that a dominant class, in its entirety, has been subject to living conditions that were lower
than given elements and strata of the subjected and dominated class […] And yet the
proletariat cannot become the dominant class if, through the sacrifice of its corporative
interests, it does not transcend this contradiction, it cannot maintain its hegemony and its
dictatorship if, even when it has become dominant, it does not sacrifice these immediate
interests for its general and permanent class interests’ (P. Togliatti 1961, pp. 129–130;
GTW , pp. 374–375, the emphasis being shown there belonging to the original manuscript
letter; see also SPW 1921–1926, p. 431 and PPW , p. 311).
218 G. VACCA
Cadornism’ (Q13§24, p. 1616; SPN , p. 235) which then reigned in the

International (Q15§4, p. 1753; SPN , p. 240).25 At the base of all this
was the deterioration of the internal regime of the Soviet Party, which
had degenerated into ‘bureaucratic centralism’ and ‘fetishism’ through
a ‘deterministic and mechanical conception of history’ that ‘had wide
currency’ and was ‘bound up with the passivity of the great popular
masses’ traditional in Russia and temporarily imposed in the West too
(Q15§13, pp. 1769–1771; FSPN , pp. 14–16, and cf. SPN , p. 187, note
83). Gramsci however did not limit himself to a criticism of the USSR’s
renunciation of an international policy to which the communist parties
could link their national policies, but indicated that at the base of ‘Soviet
isolationism’ (Di Biagio 2004) lay a conception of the State founded on
power politics. Although this was justifiable for defensive reasons, it gener-
ated solely attendisme and passivity; the initiative expected was to arrive
from Russia, which in other words was an ‘anachronistic and anti-natural
form of “Napoleonism”’, an offspring of the ‘old mechanicism’ (Q14§68,
pp. 1728–1730; SPN , pp. 240–241). Most of all this represented a
blow struck at the theoretical autonomy of the communist movement.
The ‘organic crisis’ which had begun with the war thus developed as a
‘struggle between “two conformisms”’, i.e. between two general concep-
tions of the world and of history, without these being resolved, and if in
the ‘old intellectual and moral leaders of society’ this was the cause of
‘reactionary and conservative tendencies’, the ‘representatives of the new
order now in gestation […], full of “rationalistic” hatred for the old, are
disseminating utopias and crackpot schemes’ (Q7§12, pp. 862–863; PN
Vol. 3, pp. 164–166).
3 ‘The Modern Prince’

The focus of Gramsci’s thought is therefore to be found in the way of
conceiving the relation between theory and practice. ‘In the most recent
developments of the philosophy of praxis’ Gramsci writes, alluding to
25 Luigi Cadorna was the general held responsible for the catastrophic defeat of Italian
army forces at Caporetto in the World War I. An authoritarian who, once he had decided
on a plan, adhered to it and expected his men do so unquestioningly, despite a real
situation that might give contrary indications. His name is used metaphorically by Gramsci
to describe leaders who expect their followers to carry out plans worked out in advance,
whatever the reality or the cost.
Stalin26 ‘people speak about theory as a “complement” or an “acces-

sory” of practice, or as the handmaid of practice’. This strikes him as
an evident manifestation of the hegemonic incapacity of power in the
Soviet Union. As we have already said, when Gramsci speaks of hege-
mony he always means struggle of hegemonies. His starting point for
the conquest of intellectual, personal or collective autonomy, is always
a form of consciousness, contradictory since it is conditioned by different
influences. ‘Critical understanding of self takes place therefore through
a struggle of political “hegemonies” and of opposing directions, first in
the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive
at the working out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality’
(Q11§12, pp. 1385–1386; SPN , pp. 333–334).
Given these premises, the political party has a fundamental role. Not
the party of the working class, but the party in general, that ‘complex
element of society in which a recognized collective will, has already begun
to take on concrete form, and has to some extent asserted itself in action’;
hence an organism that historical development ‘has already provided’ and
which constitutes ‘the first cell in which there come together germs of a
collective will tending to become universal and total’ (Q13§1, p. 1558;
SPN , p. 129). The concept is taken from the observation of contem-
porary societies and of the way in which the leading roles and overall
political direction are formed within them. The principles just recalled do
not form a normative for the ‘revolutionary party’ but are the generaliza-
tion of a given historical experience: that of complex societies in which
parties are the protagonists in the struggle for hegemony. The exem-
plary experience of hegemony realized by a party is, as we have seen,
the action of the ‘Moderates’ in the Risorgimento which had conditioned
Italian political life right up to the Great War (Q19§24, pp. 2010–2014;
SPN , pp. 55–62). On the other hand, over the more than six decades that
have passed since the first international conference on Gramsci, we have
already also seen what importance he attached to the development of mass
parties in Europe. In contemporary societies the parties have attained this
development and exercised such an important role that the crisis itself
of the State is shown up through the fact that ‘social groups become
26 Gramsci here refers to the positions maintained by Stalin in the philosophical debate
in the Soviet Communist Party in 1930–1931. He had read (and appreciated) a summary
in D. P. Mirsky [Mirskij], ‘The Philosophical Discussion in the CPSU in 1930–31’ in The
Labour Monthly, October 1931.
220 G. VACCA
detached from their traditional parties’ (Q13§23, pp. 1603–1604; SPN ,

pp. 210–211).27
The crisis following the First World War had demonstrated that the
working class had not yet learned the lesson. How can a party be created
that elevates the working class to being the ruling class? The reference
point is Lenin, whom Gramsci contraposes not only to Trotsky but also
to Bukharin and Stalin. Lenin, however, is only a starting point, valid
because he demonstrated in practice what politics is as the struggle for
hegemony, but did not elaborate the concept. The theory of hegemony
was still entirely to be developed and the political parties could be its
interpreters only under certain conditions, not by the simple fact of their
existence and being a ‘nomenclature’ for one class or the other. Lenin
remains for Gramsci a point of reference since, by basing the programme
of Russian social democracy on the alliance between workers and peas-
ants, and forging the party as the ‘organism’ of that alliance, he brought
into being a new national ‘hegemonic apparatus’ (Q10II§12, pp. 1249–
1250; SPN , p. 365), thereby also providing an answer to ‘revisionism’.
With the thesis that ‘the movement is everything and the aim is nothing’
Bernstein had (indirectly) placed the accent on the need for the ‘ends’ of
the proletariat to be immanent in its political action (Q15§26, pp. 1898–
1899).28 It should be noted that ‘revisionism’ is the only pre-First World
War current of socialism that Gramsci does not accuse of ‘economism’;
its weakness lay in its renunciation of the autonomous development of a
programme of reforms that would also include the State and therefore in
limiting its action to the ‘resistance and conservation’ of the movement—
in other words a form of ‘passivity’. Lenin had on the other hand resolved
the problem concretely and Gramsci therefore attributes ‘an affirmation of
epistemological […] value’ to the ‘theoretical-practical principle of hege-
mony’, comparable to that of the principles of the philosophy of praxis
put forward by Marx in the 1859 Preface (Q10II§12, pp. 1249–1250;
SPN , p. 365).
But, with one voice, Gramsci’s critics claim that his ‘ideal type’ of party
is quite evidently ‘totalitarian’. They refer to what is perhaps the most
27 [The quotation here follows the original Italian wording by using “groups” instead
of SPN ’s gloss of “classes”—trans. note].
28 [Bernstein’s words are cited by Gramsci in the form given here—trans. note.]
celebrated passage from Notebook 13, which it is of use to quote here in

its entirety:
The modern Prince, as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of

intellectual and moral relations, in that its development means precisely
that any given act is seen as useful or harmful, as virtuous or as wicked,
only in so far as it has as its point of reference the modern Prince itself, and
helps to strengthen or to oppose it. In men’s consciences, the Prince takes
the place of the divinity or the categorical imperative, and becomes the
basis for a modern laicism and for a complete laicisation of all aspects of
life and of all customary relationships. (Q13§1, p. 1561; SPN , p. 133)29
In my view the meaning of this passage cannot be understood in isola-

tion from the ‘system’ of the ‘philosophy of praxis’, that is from the
context of the epistemology and the analytic of hegemony developed
in the Notebooks (Vacca 1991, pp. 5–116).30 Certainly, there is here an
emphasis that may sound excessive to us, but the tasks that he assigns to
the parties regard the ‘development of a national-popular collective will’
(of which the modern Prince is at one and the same time the organizer
and active promoter) and the promotion of an ‘intellectual and moral
reform’ (Q13§1, p. 1561; SPN , p. 133). It is therefore of use to go
further into the meaning of these formulas. We shall deal with the former
in the pages that follow and the latter in the next section.
To give life to a ‘national-popular collective will’ the immanent task
that the party must propose is that of its own intellectual autonomy and
that of the social groups represented. In other words, it must above all
propose a philosophical task.31 ‘In the modern world’ the parties have
a great importance in the ‘elaboration and diffusion of conceptions of
the world, because essentially what they do is to work out the ethics
and the politics corresponding to these conceptions and act as it were as
their historical “laboratory”’ for different Weltanschauungen (Q11§12,
29 [What in SPN appears as “conscience” could also be rendered “consciousness”—

trans. note]
30 I have sought to reconstruct the basic lines of this in my 1991 essay ‘I “Quaderni”
e la politica del ’900’—G. V.
31 The relation that Gramsci established with the thought of Antonio Labriola is essen-
tial for clarifying this subject (Q11§70, pp. 1507–1509; SPN , pp. 386–388). On this
question I refer readers to my 1983 essay ‘Il marxismo e la questione degli intellettuali.
Da Kautsky a Lukács e da Labriola a Gramsci’—G. V.
222 G. VACCA
p. 1387; SPN , p. 335). This does not mean that political action must
stem from a philosophical system but, if the parties do not have their own
theory of history and politics, they cannot develop. The basic question, I
repeat, is ‘How does the historical movement arise on the structural base?’
(Q11§22, p. 1422; SPN , p. 431). That is to say, how does the constitu-
tion of the hegemonic subjects and in particular the parties come about?
The principles indicated in the ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy are insufficient, but from the ‘reflection on these two
principles, one can move on to develop a whole series of further principles
of historical methodology’ (Q13§17, pp. 1578–1579; SPN , p. 177). In
Gramsci’s view the philosophy of praxis and the theory of hegemony can
only develop through a permanent juxtaposition with liberalism. The idea
is not new, but rather a principle of the Marxist tradition according to
which ‘It is affirmed that the philosophy of praxis was born on the terrain
of the highest development of culture in the first half of the nineteenth
century, this culture being represented by classical German philosophy,
English classical economy and French political literature and practice’.
Thus, ‘[t]hese three cultural moments are at the origin of the philosophy
of praxis’ (Q10II§9, p. 1246; SPN , p. 399).32 But Gramsci draws atten-
tion to the risk of dissolving this philosophy into the genealogy of its
sources, making it subaltern to other philosophies. According to Gramsci
this happened with Lenin and probably, when he sheds doubt on this
formula, he has in mind Lenin’s Three Sources and Three Component Parts
of Marxism (Q11§27, pp. 1436–1437; SPN , pp. 464–465).
As was already noted in Chapter 3, for Gramsci the fundamental inno-
vation in the philosophy of praxis consisted in the fact that Marx had
singled out what was also the ‘epistemological value’ of the Ricardian
concepts of the ‘law of tendency’, the ‘homo oeconomicus’ and the
‘determinate market’, and had thus ‘universalised Ricardo’s discoveries,
extending them in an adequate fashion to the whole of history’. In other
words he had drawn from this principles ‘a new “immanence”’ and a ‘new
concept of “necessity” and of freedom’. The claim that ‘the philosophy of
praxis equals Hegel plus David Ricardo’ (Q10II§9, pp. 1246–1247; SPN ,
pp. 400–401) implies a new interpretation of Hegelian philosophy and of
32 [The SPN translation is here modified twice to read “economy” rather than “eco-
nomics”—the latter being a later nineteenth century positivistic interpretation of the
science, alien to the Marxist tradition—and to reinstate “moment” rather than SPN ’s
“movement”, a distinction between the two being made by Gramsci—trans. note.]
the heuristic value of classical economy. As regards Hegel, Gramsci refers

to the ‘spirit of the world that becomes reality in this or that country’ and
interprets it as ‘a way of drawing attention by “metaphor” or image’ to the
fact that modern history is world history; thus the way of ‘thinking history
solely as “national history” in whatever moment of historical develop-
ment’ has ‘always been “conventional”’ (Q10II§61, p. 1359).33 More in
general the Hegelian concept of ‘spirit’ lies in the intuition, albeit ‘spec-
ulative’, of the question of the ‘cultural unification of the human race’ by
a philosophical elaboration of the results of ‘experimental science’ which
constitutes the ‘terrain on which a cultural unity of this kind has [up to
now] reached its furthest extension’ (Q11§17, p. 1416; SPN , pp. 445–
446). These are concrete contents in the conception of the world as the
history of liberty, which however cannot be reduced to the history of liber-
alism (Q10I§10, pp. 1229–1232; FSPN , pp. 351–354). But in order to
develop a new principle of ‘immanence’, the Ricardian economy is even
more important since its fundamental concepts
… are connected (…) to the development of the bourgeoisie as a “concrete

world class” and to the subsequent formation of a world market which was
already sufficiently “dense” in complex movements for it to be possible to
isolate and study necessary laws of regularity. (It should be said that these
are laws of tendency which are not laws in the naturalistic sense or that
of speculative determinism, but in a “historicist” sense, valid, that is, to
the extent that there exists the “determinate market” or in other words an
environment which is organically alive and interconnected in its movements
of development. (Q10II§9, pp. 1247–1248; SPN ,, p. 401)
Proceeding therefore in the polemic against the dissolution of the

philosophy of praxis into the genealogy of its sources, Gramsci claims
that for the philosophy of praxis the fundamental concept of classical
economy is not the theory of value, but that of ‘determinate market’
since Ricardo ‘was also “philosophically” important and ha[d] suggested
a way of thinking and intuiting history and life’ (Q11§52, p. 1479; SPN ,
p. 412). This consists essentially in the
33 [The wordings quoted in these lines in inverted commas are included by Gramsci in
a bracketed addition in the margin of Q10II§61 and unfortunately not included in the
English translation (SPN , pp. 114–116) of the rest of this paragraph—trans. note.]
224 G. VACCA
… scientific discovery that specific decisive and permanent forces have

risen historically and that the operation of these forces presents itself with
a certain “automatism” which allows a measure of “predictability” (…)
“Determinate market” is therefore equivalent to “determinate relation of
social forces in a determinate structure of the productive apparatus”, this
relationship being guaranteed (that is, rendered permanent) by a determi-
nate political, moral and juridical superstructure. (Q11§52, p. 1477; SPN ,
p. 410)
In Gramsci’s lexis this means a determinate ‘historical bloc’, a certain

combination of State and market (Q10II§41vi, pp. 1310–1311; FSPN ,
pp. 426–428), a weld between ‘structure and superstructures’ that has
been realized in practice. The epistemological value of Ricardo’s discovery
is, as we have seen, resolved into the fundamental concepts of the
analytic of hegemony—‘passive revolution’, ‘war of position’ and ‘histor-
ical bloc’—which allow us to elaborate ‘political science’ as the ‘analysis
of situations, relations of force’, and therefore respond in concrete terms
to the question ‘how does the historical movement arise on the structural
base?’. The philosophy of praxis ‘in that it is science, is useful both to the
rulers and the ruled for their mutual understanding ’ (Q13§33, p. 1689;
emphasis added—G.V.).
Despite the extraordinary changes that came about in the first decades
of the twentieth century, the historical background for Gramsci’s reflec-
tions was still that of Marx’s research, and therefore the philosophy of
praxis not only had to develop in a constant juxtaposition with liber-
alism but also had the task of translating its own universalism into
concrete historical language. It intended to be a philosophy of liberty
for humankind, unified not only culturally but also in its ‘material’ condi-
tions of life. It is the ‘heir [who] continues its predecessor’s activity, but
does so “in practice”’ since from the idealistic concept of the ‘spirit’ it has
deduced ‘an active will, capable of transforming the world’ (Q10II§31i,
p. 1271; FSPN , p. 385). The philosophy of praxis, as we have seen, is
‘a “heresy” of the religion of liberty’ (Q10I§13 note 8, p. 1238; FSPN ,
p. 361).
But in what way does the ‘heir continue its predecessor’? Who in the
historical situation of the 1930s could incarnate the ‘heresy of the religion
of liberty’? It could be incarnated only in ‘national-popular collective will’
capable of changing the nature of the development of a given country. It
is a ‘struggle between two hegemonic principles’ (‘between two “reli-

gions”’) (Q10I§13 note 4, p. 1236; FSPN , p. 359), in which the one
able to address the problems of ‘national development’ in a more ‘use-
ful’ manner is destined to prevail. The struggle regards above all else the
concept of nation, intimately linked with in the modern era with that of
development (Q19§3, p. 1969). In fact, the unity of the nation forged
by the State is most of all the creation of a national market. Since this
comes about on the basis of capitalist development, national unification
can be realized through the initiative of already sufficiently developed
capitalist groupings, or otherwise through ‘the combination of [national]
progressive forces which in themselves are scanty and inadequate (though
with immense potential, since they represent their country’s future)
with an international situation favourable to their expansion and victory’
(Q10II§61, p. 1360; SPN , p. 116).
If the unity of the nation is conditioned by the intertwining of inter-
national political and economic relations, if the concept of nation is
inseparable from that of development, the nation is a plural historical
creation which changes according to the combination of internal and
international factors which the forces in the field succeed in making
prevail. The nation is the territorial unit of different social groups
which propose different combinations of the national-international nexus.
Gramsci thus delineates—most of all in Notebook 19—the historical frame-
work of the bourgeois revolutions in Europe, taking note of the unitary
nature of the process in its national variations34 and in this way establishes
the terrain for the struggle for hegemony which was also valid for his own
time.
The struggle to make one or the other form of national interest prevail
defines the concrete contents of hegemony. Gramsci therefore introduces
34 This variation, Gramsci writes, ‘in the actual process whereby the same historical
development manifests itself in different countries [has] to be related not only to the
differing combinations of internal relations within the different nations, but also to the
differing international relations’, going on to state that ‘international relations are usually
underestimated in this kind of research’ (Q19§24, p. 2033; SPN , p. 84). Gramsci also says
in an even clearer way—in his critique of Adolfo Omodeo’s Età del risorgimento italiano
(1931)—that the fulcrum of world historical processes is the national-international nexus:
‘National personality (…) is a mere abstraction if it is considered outside the international
context. National personality expresses a “distinct” of the international complex and is
therefore bound to international relations’ (Q19§2, p. 1962).
226 G. VACCA
into his programme a clearly liberal option, linking it to the ‘rational-

isation of the demographic composition’ (cf. Q22§1 and §2, p. 2140;
SPN , p. 280) of the country and to a productivist perspective. These
choices are consistent with the analysis of the crisis (as a consequence
of the contrast between the cosmopolitan nature of the economy and the
nationalism of politics) and with the struggle against the autarky to which
fascism tended. In polemic with Dino Grandi, as we have seen, he ques-
tions whether ‘the individual low rate of national income [is] due to (…)
a particular choice of political direction’. And again rhetorically he asks
‘[i]s it therefore possible to think that without a change in these internal
relations the situation could change for the better even though interna-
tionally the relations were to improve?’ (Q19§6, pp. 1990–1991; FSPN ,
p. 238). ‘An effective political force for “free trade”’ can therefore only
be the expression of a ‘bloc among the popular classes under the hege-
mony of the historically most advanced one’ (Q8§72, p. 983; PN Vol.
3, p. 276) and its task is ‘to collaborate in the economic reconstruction
of the world in a unitary fashion’ (Q19§5, p. 1988; FSPN , p. 253). In
the Italy of the early 1930s this meant breaking up the ‘agrarian bloc’
and breaking the alliance between the northern industrialists and the
southern landowners. The necessary condition for realizing this aim was
the construction of a party capable of bringing up to a ‘certain level of
historico-political culture’ the ‘social groups which have [already] attained
an adequate development in the field of industrial production’ so that ‘the
great mass of peasant farmers [could burst] simultaneously into political
life’ (Q13§1, pp. 1560–1561; SPN , p. 132). The passage on the ‘modern
Prince’ which we have taken as starting point concludes this reflection and
its emphasis mirrors the radical nature of the task that Gramsci assigned to
the communist Party in Italy, while his conception of the political party in
general does not come over in a similar fashion as charged with totalitarian
drives.
As already seen, the political party is a ‘complex element of society’,
in other words it forms part of ‘civil society’, which, although intimately
linked to ‘political society’, is however the ‘theatre of all history’. ‘This
organism’ produced ‘by historical development’ constitutes the ‘first cell
in which there come together germs of a collective will’ (Q13§1, p. 1558;
SPN , p. 129). What relationship between parties and State shapes the
statement that they must tend ‘to become universal and total’? Gram-
sci’s answer is that ‘the parties may be considered as the schools of State
life’ since they educate (should educate) to the ‘spirit of the State’; but
they are different in principle from the State since they are voluntary
organizations whose specific functions are the development of ‘political
orientation’, the fostering of a ‘collective will’ that supports it, and the
selection of the ruling classes. These functions are exercised in civil society
rather than in the State
If the State represents the coercive and punitive force of a country’s

juridical order, the parties – representing the spontaneous adherence of
an élite to such regulation, considered as a type of collective society that
the entire mass must be educated to adhere to – must show in their specific
interior life that they have assimilated as principles of moral conduct those
rules that in the State are legal obligations. Within the parties, necessity has
already become freedom …. (Q7§90, pp. 919–920; PN Vol. 3, p. 217,
and SPN , p. 267)
The argument clearly refers to parliamentary regimes, but the party

must be distinct from the State even in totalitarian regimes since ‘par-
liamentarism’—that is the idea of political representation—cannot be
eliminated without suppressing the economic form that produces it.35
Neither can the functions of the parties be confounded with that of the
government which, when it acts like a party (Gramsci quotes the example
of Italian ‘transformism’), hinders or deforms the development of democ-
racy and thus does not act as a ‘national factor’ (Q3§119, p. 387; PN Vol.
2, pp. 105–106).
Altogether, the party is ‘part of a whole’ (Q7§99, p. 926; PN Vol.
2, p. 223)—civil society and political society taken together—and must
remain so. The tendentially ‘universal and total’ nature of the ‘germs
of a collective will’ that begin ‘to take form’ in it indicate that it tends
to lead (direct, influence) every other ‘organism’ of civil society, not to
subordinate this organism in hierarchical fashion to it. In this respect, the
relationship between party and trade union is very significant. Gramsci
is critical both of the Labourist formula of an ‘alliance pact’ between
party and union, and of that of the ‘transmission belt’ that dates to the
1908 Stuttgart Congress of the SPD. He refuses the idea that the ‘unions
must be subordinate to the Party’. ‘The question – he writes – must be
formulated as follows’:
35 On this question Gramsci’s observations regarding ‘“black” parliamentarism’ (Q14§§

74 and 76, pp. 1742–1744; SPN , pp. 254–257) are quite significant.
228 G. VACCA
every member of the party, no matter what place or office he might occupy,
remains a member of the party and subordinated to its leadership. There
cannot be subordination between trade union and party; if the union
has voluntarily chosen a member of the party to be its leader, it means
that the union [freely] chooses the directions of the party and therefore
freely accepts (indeed desires) the party’s [political – G.V.] control over its
officials. (Q3§42, p. 321; PN Vol. 2, p. 42)
How, then, is the definition of the parties as ‘nomenclature of classes’

to be understood? Here we may profitably return to the relationship
between State and ‘classes’. For Gramsci, the State is not the instru-
ment of domination of one class but the territorial organization of the
community which takes shape from the ensemble of the ‘complex super-
structures’, through which the hegemony of one part is exerted over the
whole of the nation, and hegemony is always the result of a struggle, it
presupposes a plurality of subjects that are fighting for the political lead-
ership of the country and in principle is in contention and reversible. The
party fosters the ‘formation of a national-popular collective will’ but is not
identified with it. Therefore, ‘if it is true that the parties are nothing other
than the nomenclature of classes, it is also true that the parties are not
merely mechanical and passive expressions of the classes themselves but
react energetically with the classes to develop them, solidify them, univer-
salize them’ (Q3§119, p. 387; PN Vol. 2, p. 105). They are in other
words the fundamental ‘organism’ through which the classes supersede
their ‘primordial’, ‘economic-corporative’ state and form new intellectual
élites who extend new visions of politics and history. The one party, one
class scheme expresses a limiting idea that is useful for understanding
why, in modern societies, it is the parties and not other associations who
elaborate the specifically political leading roles, but it is not the premise
for a sociology of political parties.36 The formula of parties as the ‘nomen-
clature of classes’ thus brings to the fore the ideal typology of a state of
exception, the situations which take place when political systems disinte-
grate, the social groups go back to their ‘economic-corporative phase’ or
alternatively ‘decisive’ situations in the struggle for power come about,
as for example civil war, for which it is appropriate to use exclusively the
36 The critique of the sociology of the political party is carried out mainly in Notebook
12 (Q12§§15 and 25, pp. 1403–1404 and 1429–1430 respectively; SPN , pp. 437–439
and 429–430 respectively), but in a slightly later note, datable to February 1933 (Q14§29,
pp. 1687–1688), Gramsci again takes up the descriptive value.
coupling enemy-friend. In the philosophy of praxis the relations between

the fundamental classes are antagonistic but cannot be reduced to the
enemy-friend relationship since capital is a social relation: bourgeoisie and
proletariat are interdependent and classes cannot be suppressed, like an
enemy is suppressed in war. However ‘in the decisive turning points’,
when the struggle for power becomes incandescent, ‘the theoretical truth
that every class has a single party is demonstrated (…) by the fact that
various groupings, each of which had up till then presented itself as an
“independent” party, come together to form a united bloc’ (Q15§6,
p. 1760; SPN , p. 157). The ‘decisive moments’ are not resolved militarily,
but through a ‘new national-popular collective will’ that prevails and is
able to reconstruct the physiology of the political system, consisting of
its ‘normal’ functioning, which is composed by a struggle for hegemony
that breaks up the old equilibria and creates new ones.
Although there may be some sociological residue in Gramsci’s lexis
the concept of party does not form part of a sociology of classes but of
the theory of ‘collective will’. To understand the Gramscian notion of the
political party we have to go back to the basic principles of the philosophy
of praxis and specifically to the methodological criterion by which ‘society
does not set itself problems for whose solution the material preconditions
do not already exist’. Gramsci goes on straight away to state that ‘the
proposition immediately raises the problem of the formation of a collec-
tive will: in analyzing critically what this proposition means, it is important
to study how permanent collective wills are in fact formed’. ‘This is an
issue that in modern times is expressed in terms of party or coalition of
kindred parties: how a party is initially formed, how its organizational
strength and social influence grow, etc.’. The parties are the result of
‘longer or shorter processes’ of formation of ‘molecular’ and ‘capillary’
‘collective wills’. They are part of this and when they are capable they
make them ‘permanent’ by orienting and guiding them. They are nothing
more than the organisms through which cohesive relationships of repre-
sentation between rulers and ruled, leaders and led are formed (Q8§195,
pp. 1057–1058; PN Vol 3, p. 346). The parties work on possible alterna-
tives of national development, on the different combinations of internal
and international factors of development, on the national-international
nexus. In this patient work they select and centralize the economic, intel-
lectual and moral energies of the country. One may then accept Togliatti’s
claim that ‘Gramsci’s prince’ is not to be understood so much as a specific
form of organization as much, instead, as ‘the advanced consciousness of
230 G. VACCA
humanity, which wishes to assert itself as leader of the whole process of

history’ (‘Rileggendo L’Ordine Nuovo’, Togliatti 2001, pp. 303–304). As
is known, the formula into which Togliatti translated Gramsci’s concep-
tion of the party is that of the collective intellectual. I think we may
share his affirmation that Gramsci’s conception of the party tended to
be ‘a complete theory of politics’ that was original and different from
‘Leninism’ (Togliatti 1979, p. 155; 2001, p. 207).
4 Europe After Fascism

But, Togliatti says, Gramsci is not a ‘scientist of politics’, he is ‘an active
politician’ (cf. Q13§17, p. 1577; SPN , p. 172) who is seeking to develop
a new theory of politics conducive to the creation of a new society. As
Norberto Bobbio emphasized in the Mondoperaio debate in 1977, he
operated in a Europe tendentially dominated by fascism, in which the
problem of overthrowing it was posed to all antifascists. Gramsci was
however a communist who, as well as combatting fascism, was fighting
for the advent of a new society and therefore, in Bobbio’s view, could not
be a democrat. This affirmation does not stand up to objective scrutiny.
For Gramsci the ‘revolution’ is a process of ‘destruction’ and ‘reconstruc-
tion’ that, if not simultaneous, is in any case, conceived of in a unitary
fashion (Q13§23, pp. 1602–1603; SPN , p. 168; emphasis added—G.V.).
The nexus between destruction and reconstruction evokes the concept of
reform rather than that of revolution, a concept that is stronger (denser,
more complex and potentially of greater innovation) which corresponds
much better to the theory of hegemony. The Notebooks are pervaded with
this awareness and the whole subject of ‘intellectual and moral reform’
is the proof of this. To say then that Gramsci could not have in his
programme the creation of a democratic State is simply a gratuitous
assertion.
In Gramsci’s thought, analysis and project, theory and strategy go hand
in hand. As we have seen the theory of hegemony moves from the histor-
ical experience of liberalism in the age of its apogee. To delineate the
new society of which Gramsci is thinking, it is of use to go back to his
analyses of the crisis of the ‘parliamentary regime’ and examine how he
seeks a solution capable of collecting and assessing its legacy. The masses
whom the war had made irrupt into State life, ‘put forward demands
which taken together, albeit not organically formulated, add up to a
revolution’ (Q13§23, pp. 1602–1603; SPN , p. 210; emphasis added—

G.V.). But bringing them together, selecting them, translating them into
a programme of new economic and State set-ups does not lead to the
destruction of the ‘parliamentary regime’, but rather its radical reform
and the creation of new parties, representative of the new ‘situation’ and
of the ‘new relations of force’.
The critique of ‘parliamentarism’ accepted by Gramsci is that of Webe-
rian origin, which identifies as its limit its ineptitude regarding control
over the burgeoning bureaucratization of society and the State.
The point is to establish whether the representative and party system,

instead of being a suitable mechanism for choosing elected functionaries
to integrate and balance the appointed civil servants and prevent them
from becoming ossified, has become a hindrance and a mechanism which
operates in the reverse direction— and, if so, for what reasons. (Q14§49,
p. 1708; SPN , p. 254)
Gramsci goes on to add that in this respect ‘it must be allowed that
parliamentarism has become inefficient and even harmful’. But the reme-
dies are, on the one hand, that of ‘modifying the training of technical
political personnel, completing their culture in accordance with the new
necessities’ (Q12§1, p. 1532; SPN , p. 28) and, on the other, that of
bringing the State officials, including those at the summits of the bureau-
cratic apparatuses, up to the needs of social complexity, by using different
criteria of election. The model is British self-government which is not
however easy to export to other European countries, since ‘each type of
society has its own way of posing or solving the problem of bureaucracy;
each one is different’. ‘[I]n non-Anglo-Saxon countries’ self-government
may be realized by challenging the ‘centralism of the higher echelons’ of
the bureaucracy with the expansion of ‘institutions that are controlled
directly from below’ (Q8§55, p. 974; PN Vol. 3, p. 268).37 ‘It has
to be considered whether parliamentarism and representative system are
synonymous, and whether a different solution is not possible – both for
parliamentarism and for the bureaucratic system – with a new type of
representative system’ (Q14§49, SPN , p. 254).
The new State that Gramsci is thinking of must conform to the ‘great
transformation’ that was underway in Europe between the two wars and
37 [Cf. also the extracts from this paragraph in SPN , p. 186, note 32—trans. note.]
232 G. VACCA
is linked to the predictions that he was formulating on the future of

Europe. As seen, Gramsci foresaw that the new industrialism in America
(Taylorism and Fordism) would spread in Europe, causing a profound
transformation (Q22§15, pp. 2178–2179; SPN , pp. 316–317). Gramsci’s
favouring of an ‘Americanization’ of Europe is born from his foreseeing
that Taylorism and Fordism would cut down to size the importance of
finance capital and parasitic landed income, causing a ‘rationalisation of
the demographic composition’ and destroying the economic bases of
economic nationalism and Statism (Q22§2, pp. 2140 et seq.; cf. SPN ,
pp. 280 et seq.). The ‘Americanization’ imposes on the new European
national economies a productivist perspective, of interest as much to the
bourgeoisie as it is to the industrial proletariat, but we are not in the
presence of an economy like that of the United States, something that
in any case would have been impossible. The social progressive groups
‘had’ therefore to ‘find for themselves an “original”, and not American-
ized, system of living, to turn into “freedom” what today is “necessity”’
(Q22§15, p. 2179; SPN , p. 317). These are not far-off predictions, since
America was already ‘forcing Europe’ into a rapid transformation, percep-
tible even in Italy, where, through the creation of a ‘mixed economy’ and
the corporative State, things were proceeding ‘by very slow and almost
imperceptible stages to modify the social structure’ (Q22§6, p. 2158;
SPN , p. 294).
The nub of Fordism lies in a new form of regulation of the economy
(Boyer and Mistral 1978), based on the antagonistic cooperation between
industrial bourgeoisie and working class with the scope of increasing
the productivity and competitiveness of the national economies. The
crucial problem regards the ‘environment’ necessary for the spread of
‘Americanism’:
Americanisation requires a particular environment, a particular social struc-

ture (or at least a determined intention to create it) and a certain type of
State. This State is the liberal State, not in the sense of free-trade liber-
alism or of effective political liberty, but in the more fundamental sense of
free initiative and of economic individualism which, with its own means,
on the level of “civil society”, through historical development, itself arrives
at a regime of industrial concentration and monopoly. (Q22§6, p. 2157;
SPN , p. 293)
Gramsci, then, foresaw a new stage of liberal democracy after fascism.

In the 1930s the relations between State and market in Europe were
changing. The creation of the ‘mixed economy’, economic policies that
afterwards would be called Keynesianism, the conception of accumula-
tion as a ‘role of the public sphere’ was spreading everywhere. The drive
towards the creation of a ‘programmed economy’ was general. But the
adaptation of European ‘social structures’ to ‘Americanism’ could not
take place without a change in the functions of the State (Q22§14,
pp. 2175–2178; SPN , pp. 313–316). What type of society did Gramsci
hope for or foresee? For what type was he fighting? He claims that
after fascism ‘the return to traditional “parliamentarism”’ would not
be possible; indeed if we take account of the transformations that had
come about in the organization of the masses and the government of
the economy, that ‘return to traditional “parliamentarism” would be an
anti-historical regression, since even where this “functions” publicly’, i.e.
in the liberal States, ‘the effective parliamentarism is the “black” one’
(Q14§74, p. 1743; SPN , p. 255). To clarify the meaning of this expres-
sion it is useful to refer to the notes on the ‘crisis of the parliamentary
regime’. With the organization of the masses and the impetuous growth
of their subjectivity, the old liberal order had disappeared for ever. The
State could no longer be the organ of domination of the possessing
classes, and neither could the market remain the instrument of indirect
government of the masses through their dispersion. In the liberal State the
capitalist bourgeoisie ‘had its trade union in parliament, while the wage
earners could not coalesce and bring to bear the force given by the collec-
tivity to each single individual’ (Q10II§41vi, p. 1311; FSPN , p. 427).
This is a situation that could not be recreated. The economic situation had
moreover induced the industrialists as much as the wage earners to come
together freely to the stage of organizing their representation monopo-
listically. In Europe, after fascism, the most probable solution would be
that of a new corporativism, ‘not in the ancien régime sense, but in the
modern sense of the word, in which the “corporation” cannot have closed
and exclusivistic limits as was the case in the past’: a ‘corporativism of
“social function” without hereditary or any other restriction’ (Q14§74,
p. 1743; SPN , pp. 255–256). For the future of Italy and the transforma-
tion of Europe Gramsci therefore foresaw and hoped for the development
of a ‘societal corporativism’ and ‘corporative pluralism’ (Cf. Q10II§41vi,
p. 1311; FSPN , pp. 426–428, esp. p. 427.). In this perspective he also
sees the possibility of transcending the difficulties of parliamentarism,
234 G. VACCA
enriching the criteria of representation and rendering them more complex

through other forms of ‘electionism’ linked to the expansion of industrial
democracy (Q13§30, pp. 1625–1626; SPN , pp. 192–194).
The protagonists of ‘societal corporativism’, bringing with it an expan-
sion of hegemony (Q14§74, p. 1743; SPN , p. 255), would be the new
parties. Post-liberal and post-fascist democracy would be a party democ-
racy. ‘The principle once posed that [in every State] there are leaders and
led, rulers and ruled, (…) parties have up till now been the most effec-
tive way of developing leaders and the capacity of leadership’ (Q15§4,
p. 1753; SPN , p. 146).38 Already in the liberal State, with the exten-
sion of the suffrage, the development of political orientation was ever
more shifted towards ‘civil society’. In the ‘normal functioning of national
political life’ this development was the task of the parties which ‘were the
organisms that in civil society elaborated not only the political orientations
but educated and put forward the people supposedly able to apply them’.
That the parties, because of the disintegration of the parliamentary regime
had become inept and unable to fulfil this role, had ‘not annulled the task
of doing such, neither ha[d] it shown a new road towards the solution’
(Q15§48, p. 1809). To ‘corporativist pluralism’ there thus corresponded
the ‘democracy of the parties’. But evidently they had to undergo a
profound transformation.
Gramsci thought first and foremost of the creation of new communist
parties. Since the mission of the ‘modern Prince’ was to give rise to a
‘new collective will’, with the extension of industrialism of the American
type his ‘reference point’ could only be the ‘world of production, labor’
and its orientation could only be strictly productivist (Q7§12, p. 863;
PN Vol. 3, p. 165, and FSPN , p. 276). The new ‘collective will’ did not
however regard solely the working class but society as a whole, since not
only the worker but today’s ‘collective man is formed essentially from the
bottom up, on the basis of the position that the collectivity occupies in
the world of production’ (Q7§12, p. 862; PN Vol. 3, p. 165, and FSPN ,
p. 277). It therefore penetrates the whole life of the nation and must be
a ‘national-popular collective will’.
For a detailed analysis of these concepts it is of use to return to the
situation that had been created in Italy by the general election held imme-
diately after the end of the First World War. For a ‘national-popular
38 [Translation integrated with the words ‘the capacity of’, not included in the SPN
text—trans. note.]
collective will’ to be expressed, free elections of universal suffrage are

necessary, as is the existence of parties rooted in the whole territory
of the nation, which have homogeneous programmes, and are repre-
sentative—each for its own part—of the territorial unity of the nation.
These conditions allow the wills of the citizens to be synchronized by
fusing them in a ‘collective will’: a plural will as regards the solution of
the problems of the country, but a will formed in relation to a shared
political agenda. In the 1919 election the ‘unifying factors’ were excep-
tional because they had been generated by the war. But, looking at it
more closely, the exceptionality concerns their genesis, not the contents
in which these elements had been developed. Gramsci goes on to say that
‘the war was a unifying factor of the highest degree in that it gave the
great masses the consciousness of the importance that the construction
of the government apparatus has for the destiny of each and every single
individual, while at the same time it posed a series of concrete questions –
general and particular – which reflected national-popular unity’ (Q19§19,
p. 2005). In ‘normal’ conditions the development of these contents is a
pre-eminent function of the parties (Q7§90, pp. 919–920 and Q15§4,
pp. 1754–1755; PN Vol. 3, p. 217, and SPN , pp. 146–147). To regard
hegemony and democracy as antithetical is therefore a non-sense.
It is true that Gramsci has a strongly ‘interventionist’ conception of the
State on account of which, as already seen, he does not hesitate to rework
in his own terms the notion of the ‘ethical State’. But the instrument
with which the ethical State functions is the law, Gramsci’s concep-
tion of which reflects the ‘democratic utopia of the eighteenth century’
according to which ‘all citizens (…) must freely accept the conformity set
down by the law (…) in that they can become members of the ruling
class’(Q6§78, p. 773; PN Vol. 3, p. 84). This is the conception of the
nascent bourgeoisie, which had a mobile and open idea of society and
classes, beginning with the notion of itself as an ‘organism in continuous
movement, capable of absorbing the whole of society, assimilating it to
its cultural and economic level’ (Q8§2, p. 937; PN Vol. 3, p. 234). The
sphere of intervention of the law is ‘civil society’ and it is not foreseen
that among the functions of the State there should be ‘interference in the
economy’. Gramsci leans towards a ‘“juridical” continuity’ (of the State)
not ‘of the Byzantine-Napoleonic type (that is a code conceived as perma-
nent, but of the Roman-Anglo-Saxon kind, whose essential characteristic
consists in its method, which is realistic, always in touch with concrete life
in perpetual development’ (Q6§84, p. 757; PN Vol. 3, p. 69, and SPN ,
236 G. VACCA
p. 196). It is therefore apparently paradoxical for him to indicate as the

best realization of an ‘ethical State’ the State as veilleur de nuit, the State
as ‘night-watchman’, and for him to consider it the most appropriate State
form to favour the formation of a ‘regulated society’ (Q6§88, p. 764;
PN Vol. 3, pp. 75–76, and SPN , p. 263); even the most penetrating
‘interventionism’ must not interfere with the physiological articulation of
the relations between ‘political society’ and ‘civil society’, and hence the
function of the State must always and only be regulatory.
5 Epilogue
Between hegemony and democracy there is therefore a reciprocal implica-
tion, so much so that in Gramsci’s view the theory of democracy can only
be fully developed within a conception of politics as hegemony. Here we
refer to the above-mentioned Notebook 8, paragraph 191 (Gramsci 1975,
p. 1056) entitled precisely ‘Hegemony and Democracy’, in which—as
seen—he writes that ‘among the many meanings of democracy, the most
realistic and concrete one’ may be determined in connection ‘with the
concept of hegemony’ since there exists ‘democracy between the leading
group and the groups that are led to the extent that the development of
the economy and thus the legislation (…) favors the molecular transition
from the groups that are led to the leading group’ (PN Vol. 3, p. 345).
Up to what limit may social ‘mobility’ be extended? This is a problem
that subjects democracies to a radical tension:
But democracy, by definition, cannot mean merely that an unskilled worker

can become skilled. It must mean that every “citizen” can “govern” and
that society places him, even if only abstractly, in a general condition to
achieve this. Political democracy tends [therefore] towards a coincidence of
the rulers and the ruled (in the sense of government with the consent of
the governed), ensuring for each non-ruler a free training in the skills and
general technical preparation necessary to that end. (Q12§2, pp. 1547–
1548; SPN , pp. 40–41 [emphasis added—G.V.])
This has been the line of tendency of all European democracies since
the Second World War. Gramsci however poses not only the problem of
the ‘coincidence of the rulers and the ruled’, but that of creating the
conditions in which the ‘necessity’ of the division of humanity into rulers
and rules may be superseded.
The first element is that there really do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and
led. The entire science and art of politics are based on this primordial,
and (given certain general conditions) irreducible fact. [But] (…) in the
formation of leaders, one premiss is fundamental: is it the intention that
there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to create the
conditions in which this division is no longer necessary? In other words, is
the initial premiss the perpetual division of the human race, or the belief that
this division is only an historical fact, corresponding to certain conditions?
(Q15§4, p. 1752; SPN , p. 144)
He therefore adopts the ‘democratic utopia of the eighteenth century’

and singles out as premise for a unification of humankind, more advanced
than the one fostered by liberalism, the creation of the conditions
‘for an economy that follows a world plan’ (Q14§68, p. 1729; SPN ,
p. 241). The problem was posed at the end of the Second World
War, by generating a world structure that favoured the processes of
economic regionalization and the construction of supranationality. But to
liberal universalism Gramsci contraposed a communist universalism and
in this perspective took in hand Marx’s ‘withering away of the State’:
‘In a theory that conceives of the State as inherently liable to wither
away and dissolve into regulated society (…) [i]t is possible to imagine
the State-coercion element withering away gradually, as the increasingly
conspicuous elements of regulated society (…) assert themselves’. The
process implies overcoming the contrast between the cosmopolitanism
of the economy and nationalism in politics, and brings to the fore the
concept of regulation as a criterion of organization as much for economic
life as for State life:
In the theory of State → regulated society (from a phase in which State

equals government to a phase in which State is identified with civil society),
there must be a transition phase of State as night watchman, that is, of a
coercive organization that will protect the development of those elements
of regulated society that are continually on the rise and, precisely because
they are on the rise they will gradually reduce the State’s authoritarian and
coercive interventions. (Q6§88, p. 764; PN Vol. 3, pp. 75–76; cf. also
SPN , p. 263)
The link between the conception of ‘civil society’ as the ‘theatre of all
history’ and the theory of politics as the struggle for hegemony indicates the
perspective in which the idée-force of the ‘withering away of the State’ can
238 G. VACCA
become history in action. It is the proletariat, the ‘heir of classical German

philosophy’, which links up to the ‘democratic utopia of the eighteenth
century’ (Q6§98, p. 773; PN Vol. 3, p. 84) and ‘carries it through’. ‘This
is not to say that one should think’ Gramsci warns ‘of a new “liberalism”,
even if the beginning of an era of organic freedom were at hand’ (Q6§88,
p. 764; PN Vol. 3, p. 76).
We are dealing with an idée-force not with a definite political project.39
The philosophy of praxis cannot but have a processual vision of the institu-
tions, not because it is indifferent to political and juridical ‘technique’, but
because it considers even the institutions from a historical viewpoint. If
you wish, this is a radicalization of the historicism of the Enlightenment,40
which thought and proposed to act very much in the long term. This was
a perspective in which the contraposition between ethics and politics may
be eliminated by superseding the nation-State since their separation, based
on ‘reasons of State’ gradually becomes superfluous as the ‘new progres-
sive social groupings’ make their conception of politics felt as ‘a process
that will culminate in a morality’; in other words they should create such
a unity of humanity in which ‘politics and hence morality as well are
both superseded’ (Q6§79, p. 750; PN Vol. 3, p. 63). This perspective
regards the conception of the party too, since ‘it is obvious that the party
which proposes to put an end to class divisions will only achieve complete
self-fulfilment when it ceases to exist because classes, and therefore their
expressions, no longer exist’ (Q14§70, pp. 1732–1733; SPN , p. 152).
Bobbio’s judgment on the utopian nature of Gramsci’s thought must
therefore be overturned. As we have seen, Gramsci re-elaborates the
utopia of the Enlightenment by basing it on the existence of a world
market that is ever more ‘intense’ and interdependent. Its ‘utopia’ is
therefore based on the idées-forces that are historically justifiable in a very
long but not indefinite time dimension. The unification of humanity is a
real possibility for which capitalism has laid the premises. But that goal
does not generate an idea of an undifferentiated world. The perspective
39 On the concept of idée-force as an key for interpreting Gramsci’s ‘utopianism’, see

Nicola De Domenico’s article on D. P. Mirskij, The Philosophical Discussion in the C.P.S.U.
in 1929–30: De Domenico (1991, pp. 25–26). On the origin of the idée-force in ‘Sore-
lianism’ (especially in Sorel’s critique of La philosophie de Socrate by Alfred Fouillet), cf.
Gervasoni (1977, pp. 26 et seq).
40 On the historicist nature of the ‘philosophy of the Enlightenment’, in so far as it had
a political programme to which it conformed, cf. Gramsci Q8§195, p. 1058 (PN Vol. 3,
pp. 346–347, and SPN , pp. 194–195) and Q11§62, pp. 1488–1489 (SPN , pp. 406–407).
in Gramsci’s mind is that of a world of nations, which unifies since within

them, new social groups spring up, ‘interested’ in providing national
development with a cosmopolitan perspective:
the point of departure is “national” – and it is from this point of depar-

ture that one must begin. Yet the perspective is international and cannot
be otherwise. Consequently, it is necessary to study accurately the combi-
nation of national forces which the international class will have to lead
and develop, in accordance with the international perspective and direc-
tives. The leading class is in fact only such if it accurately interprets this
combination – of which it is itself a component and precisely as such is
able to give the movement a certain direction, within certain perspectives.
(Q14§68, p. 1729; SPN , p. 240)
Communist universalism, different from that of liberalism, sets off from

the unification of the people-nation in ‘civil society’, not only in the State.
This is possible only in a perspective in which the world order is regulated
according to the principles of interdependence and reciprocity.41 The basic
difference between communist universalism and liberal universalism lies
in the fact that the former, following the ‘democratic utopia of the eigh-
teenth century’ foresees a ‘necessary’ relationship between the progress
of democracy as a State set-up and the creation of a supranational democ-
racy.42 Gramsci, certainly, is not a theoretician of democracy in the sense
in which political science or the philosophy of law now understand it, but
it is difficult to deny that he singled out the fundamental problems of the
democracy of our times and indicated a perspective for their resolution.
41 The thesis of the incoercibly ‘anarchic’ nature of the international order, stemming
from so-called ‘political realism’ is argued by Norberto Bobbio but effectively challenged
in a review article by Luigi Bonanate (1979) and again by Bonanate (1992). On this
question, I refer readers to my essay ‘Tertium non datur. Norberto Bobbio e il dilemma
della liberaldemocrazia’, in Vacca (1994).
42 Cf. paragraph 61 of Notebook 10, pp. 1358–1361 (partially in SPN , op. cit.,
pp. 114–118), devoted in the main to the ‘conception of the State according to the
productive function of the social classes’ and the critique of the book Età del Risorgimento
by Adolfo Omodeo in Q19§3, pp. 1961–1963.
240 G. VACCA
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CHAPTER 5
Afterword
1 Gramsci Studies in Italy

In a brilliant monograph on the role of linguistics in Gramsci’s thought,
Alessandro Carlucci wrote that 2007 marked the beginning of new devel-
opments in Gramsci studies ‘especially in Italy’ (Carlucci 2013, p. xii).
Carlucci attributes particular importance to the five volumes then issued
of the National Edition of the Writings of Antonio Gramsci which began
that year with the publication of the Translation Notebooks, until then
unpublished (Gramsci 2007a). His observation seems well-founded since
the undertaking of a new integral Critical Edition of Gramsci’s writings,
begun laboriously in the 1990s, has contributed both to the formation
of a new generation of scholars, and to a thoroughgoing renewal of the
way of studying Gramsci. It is however useful to bear in mind the contri-
bution, beginning in 2001, made by the seminars on the lexis of the
Notebooks organized by the Italian section of the International Gramsci
Society, seminars whose participants include a number of people now
collaborating with the National Edition.1 The new season of Gramsci
studies has given rise to a growing number of books, essays and jour-
nalistic articles which it is difficult to assess. In the revised and amplified
version of his Gramsci conteso, Guido Liguori gives a broad, balanced and
1 They have published both significant individual contributions, such as those of

F. Frosini (2003) and R. Finelli (2006), as well as a first collective volume edited by
G. Liguori and P. Voza, the Dizionario gramsciano 1926–1937 (2007).

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7_5
244 G. VACCA
accurate run-down of the picture, even when he is dealing with literature

of dubious value (Liguori 2012). Here, instead, I should like to pause
for a moment just on a number of Italian authors who, in my view, have
introduced significant innovations into Gramsci research.
The volumes in question are in fact few as compared with the number
published over the last decade, but I have chosen them because they
share the most suitable criteria for the advancement of knowledge of
Gramsci, meaning a diachronic analysis of the prison writings and the
reconstruction of his biography. These publications have made a decisive
contribution towards eliminating the most serious distortions of Gramsci
studies in the recent and more distant past, introduced by dissociating his
life from his thought.2 In other words, they are historiographical works
that have in common the awareness that Gramsci was ‘a theorist of politics
but above all […] he was a practical politician, that is to say a combat-
ant’ and that it is ‘in politics that one must seek the unity of [his] life:
the departure point and the arrival point’ (Togliatti 1979, p. 161; 2014a,
p. 1121).3 The authors with whom we shall deal also share the conviction
that Gramsci’s figure ‘transcends the historical vicissitudes’ of the Italian
Communist Party and represents ‘a nexus, both of thought, and of action,
in which all the problems of our time are present and are intertwined’
(Togliatti 2014a, pp. 1188–1189).4
In these few pages of the Afterword, it would be impossible to recon-
struct their background. It is however of use to recall some of the
moments of a long work of interpretation without which the project
of the National Edition would not even have been born. Immediately
after the publication of the Critical Edition of the Notebooks in 1975, a
diachronic study began to produce new researches rendering ever more
unusable almost all the preceding literature on Gramsci. To give a résumé
of what this literature had produced up to then, we may quote a passage
from the Storia d’Italia (History of Italy) published in that very same
year by Einaudi. Drawing his conclusion from twenty-five years of study,
Alberto Asor Rosa wrote:
2 For a detailed discussion of this subject, I refer readers to my Vita e pensiero di

Antonio Gramsci 1926–1937 (Vacca 2012).
3 Translation modified; contribution ‘Leninism in the Theory and Practice of Gramsci’
during the first International Conference on Gramsci in ‘Studi gramsciani’ (Togliatti et al.
1958).
4 ‘Gramsci, un uomo’, review of Ferrata and Gallo (1964).
5 AFTERWORD 245
Gramsci found the ‘historical bloc’ in Georges Sorel, the theorization of

the permanent distinction between rulers and ruled in Mosca and Pareto,
the concept of intellectual and moral reform in the entire Italian idealist
tradition from De Sanctis to Croce and Gentile (…); the relationship
between force and consent, Machiavelli’s figure of the Centaur, in Mosca
and Croce; the concept of ethico-political history, politics as passion, and
many other things in Croce; several elements of suggestion regarding the
theory of the modern political party in Michels; the free-trade sympathies
in Einaudi and in the other theorists of free exchange. And again, one
must recognize that his Marxism is strongly dependent on this tradition
of Italian bourgeois thought. No one would dare to argue that Gramsci
was an attentive and continual reader of Das Capital (…) The self-same
convinced reprisal of the definition of Marxism as philosophy of praxis
reveals Gramsci’s deep relationship with this previous tradition. One may
indeed quite justifiably say that he here rescues and takes up the most
authentic part of Antonio Labriola’s thought. But without a shadow of
doubt, he returns to him by-passing through the idealist re-reading that
he had enacted for Croce and Gentile, in what is however a process of
constant theoretical reversal, which constitutes a great part of his activity
as a thinker. (Asor Rosa 1975, pp. 1556–1557)
At nearly half a century’s distance from this piece, I believe that, while
allowing for exaggerations in this author’s cultural position,5 it faithfully
reflects a trait common to Gramsci studies in the period preceding the
Critical Edition of the Notebooks, that is to say the prevalent inclination
to dissolve Gramsci’s thought in the genealogy of his sources following
an inveterate combinatory custom of an academic type.
The thematic edition of 1948–1951 did not impede a diachronic
reading of the Notebooks but made it very difficult and to the best of my
knowledge it was only Franco De Felice who succeeded in so doing (De
5 Asor Rosa’s reading of Gramsci retraced the lines of Mario Tronti’s essay ‘Tra mate-
rialismo dialettico e filosofia della praxis: Gramsci e Labriola’ (Tronti 1959), a valid link
between criticism, originating from Galvano della Volpe, of ‘Crocio-Gramscism’ and the
elaboration of the philosophical bases of workerism. Together with the essay by Emilio
Agazzi (1959), ‘Filosofia della praxis e filosofia dello spirito’, Tronti’s essay constituted the
most clearly philosophical contribution in the volume edited by Alberto Caracciolo and
Gianni Scalia (1959) La città futura., whose aim was to offer an alternative to the direc-
tion mapped out by Palmiro Togliatti in the First International Conference of Gramsci
Studies, in January 1958.
246 G. VACCA
Felice 1972b).6 The Critical Edition instead clearly solicited a compar-

ison between the first drafts of the notes and their successive versions,
thereby creating the conditions for bringing out the conceptual frame-
work of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis. A fundamental element here has
been the refinement of the criteria of dating of the Notebooks by Gianni
Francioni,7 while his in-depth analysis of the concept of ‘passive revo-
lution’ changed the interpretation of the theory of hegemony.8 But the
period leading up to the National Edition began in 1989, not just because
that year marked the end of ‘actually existing socialism’ and that of the
PCI, but also because of a number of concomitant events specifically
regarding Gramscian studies.9 The first was the conference on ‘Gramsci
in the world’ held at Formia, 25–29 October 1989 (Righi and Aricó
1995) which saw the participation of several translators and publishers
of Gramsci’s writings coming from the world’s main linguistic areas. That
conference gave an impetus to the organization of international studies
6 In this pioneering essay, Franco De Felice revolutionized the perception of the research
programme followed in the Notebooks (De Felice 1972b).
7 See Francioni (1979), a contribution elaborated on in his 1984 volume that outlined
the results of his philological research (Francioni 1984). Francioni also took seriously into
consideration Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s Gramsci et l’État (1975; in English 1980)
which, although coming out slightly before the Critical Edition of the Notebooks (1975),
was able to use it, and demonstrated the untenability of the interpretation of the Grams-
cian conception of both ‘civil society’ and ‘hegemony’ as put forward by Norberto Bobbio
in one of the main speeches at the 1967 Cagliari International Congress of Gramscian
Studies (Rossi 1969, Vol. I, pp. 75–100), for an English version of which see Bobbio
(1988); cf. also the Gramscian conception of hegemony as argued by Perry Anderson
(1976 and, in Italian, Anderson 1978).
8 To quote only a few of the essays of that period, I recall here F. De Felice (1977) and
L. Mangoni (1977), both in conference proceedings edited by Franco Ferri (1977, Vol.
I, pp. 391–438 and pp. 161–220 respectively), while that of M. R. Romagnuolo (1987–
1988, pp. 123–166) put an end to the interchangeability of the two terms, demonstrating
that from the middle of 1932 onward, with the expression ‘philosophy of praxis’, Gramsci
intended to stress the originality of his own thought.
9 From the 1980s, I limit myself to recalling the essay by M. Ciliberto (1982 [19801 ]),
La fabbrica dei Quaderni. Gramsci e Vico, which compared the various drafts of the notes
devoted to this subject; to a volume of mine, which analysed the category of ‘world
history’ in the Notebooks, singling out the paradigm of the theory of hegemony within
the national-international nexus (Vacca 1985); and to Luisa Mangoni’s contribution at
the Gramsci studies conference of 1987, which shed light on the importance of the
‘Catholic question’ following the concordats in Germany and Italy, regarding as much the
developments of Gramsci’s interpretation of fascism as the elaboration of the theory of
hegemony (Mangoni 1987).
5 AFTERWORD 247
on Gramsci by launching John Cammett’s Bibliography (Cammett 1989)

and giving birth to the International Gramsci Society. The second was
Aldo Natoli’s study of the letters between Gramsci and Tat’jana (Tanja)
Schucht. Although Tanja’s letters had been in the possession of the
Fondazione Istituto Gramsci from the 1970s, they had never been care-
fully examined, given that her figure had been considered inessential for
the biography of the ‘prisoner’. Natoli’s research, published the year after-
wards in his volume Antigone e il prigioniero. Tania Schucht lotta per
la vita di Gramsci (Natoli 1990) put an end to this deplorable silence
by bringing to light the figure of a woman of great intellectual merits
and strong moral temperament who had sacrificed over ten years of her
life for Gramsci. ‘In actual fact’, Piero Sraffa wrote to her as soon as
he had received the news of Gramsci’s death, ‘it is only through your
dedication and through the more than fraternal assistance that you have
given uninterruptedly that he was able to survive all these years’ (Sraffa
1991, p. 180).10 But the importance of Tanja in the life of the pris-
oner began to be perceived fully the year after Natoli’s volume came out,
through the publication of two other sets of letters: those of Tanja to the
Schucht family (together with some to Gramsci’s family) and the ones
from, and some also to, Piero Sraffa. The first set of letters was part
of the family papers, while the second was donated to the Foundation
by Sraffa in 1974. Although Tanja’s ‘Russian’ letters stopped in 1934
and her letters to Sraffa were used partially and then only in note, taken
together the three books played a fundamental role in reorienting Gramsci
studies. First of all they helped the work of Chiara Daniele who published
Gramsci and Tanja’s entire correspondence, accompanying it with an
impressive critical apparatus (Gramsci 1997). In the second place, they
turned out to be indispensable for the reconstruction of events regarding
the publication of the Letters and the Notebooks, which was brought to
completion a few years later (Daniele 2005). The progression of studies
that we have sketched out here would not have been possible without
the recommencement of research by the Gramsci Institute Foundation at
the Comintern Archives in Moscow, starting in 1988. This was motivated
most of all by the perspective of a National Edition, and, although this
work has not yet been brought to its conclusion, it has contributed to
filling in fundamental gaps in our knowledge of Gramsci’s biography for
10 Letter of 27 April 1937.

248 G. VACCA
the 1922–1937 period (cf. Daniele 1999; Rossi and Vacca 2007; Vacca
2012, 2014).11 Taken as a whole, the research begun in 1988–1989 and
the results obtained in over fifteen years of work have confirmed the
criteria that lay behind the National Edition (cf. Cospito 2010; Vacca
2011) and favoured the maturing of a new season of Gramsci studies.
If we return to considering our starting point, the work of Alessandro
Carlucci, it is of use to recall that 2007, the seventieth anniversary of
Gramsci’s death, saw the start not only of the National Edition of his
writings, but the Foundation bearing his name devoted the traditional
ten-yearly conference to the subject of ‘Gramsci in his time’. The confer-
ence proposed a political and intellectual reconstruction of Gramsci’s
biography, and called into the arena contributions not only from students
of his thought but students of political history, of economic history,
of cultural history and of linguistics, all with the aim of restoring the
different contexts. The choral and polyphonic nature of the research
presented does not allow us here to summarize the results, but it is suffi-
cient to leaf through the contents of the two volumes to realize how the
framework of Gramsci studies has changed: if we go back to the cata-
logue compiled by Asor Rosa in 1975 (op. cit.), we can easily see how,
for each subject matter, we no longer proceed by suggestion, assonance
and analogy (Gramsci’s Sorelianism, Bergsonism, Croceanism, etc.); the
different contributions bring sources, comparisons and combinations into
the reconstruction of a historical individuality, to the formation of a
culture and a character that outlines the uniqueness and unitary nature
of the figure of Gramsci (cf. Giasi 2008a).
Among the most significant results of the previous research, there was
first of all the possibility of separating Gramsci’s thought out into distinct
and well-characterized periods. The majority of these researches were
dedicated to a diachronic reading of the Notebooks and, by reconstructing
the lexis, the semantic shifts and the progressive refinement of his basic
categories, brought to light the formation of an original, open but system-
atic, thought which could not be read in continuity with the preceding
period. In its turn Gramsci’s thought between 1914 and 1926 no longer
lent itself to being looked at teleologically with the aim of defining real
11 The basic points regard the differences with the Comintern, the break with the PCI
and Gramsci’s suspicions about the failure to free him; among the references given here
in the text I draw attention to my introductory essay to Daniele (1999).
5 AFTERWORD 249
or assumed anticipations of the Notebooks. As long ago as 1958, Togli-

atti had warned against the risk of people treating ‘Gramsci’s work, and
especially the contents of the Notebooks, by doing their best to set pieces
artificially together virtually—if not quite—as though they were intent on
producing (…) a manual, of the perfect communist thinker and man of
action’ and had suggested as a criterion of historicization the search for
the nexuses between ‘the concrete moments of his activity’ and ‘each of
his general doctrinal definitions and statements’ (Togliatti 1979, p. 162;
2014a, p. 1122). In other words he had suggested linking the study of
the thought of Gramsci to a reconstruction of the events of Italian and
world history, which Gramsci had come to grips with from his youth up
to his death. If, in the readings of the Notebooks, this advice had already
led to innovatory results (cf. also Vacca 1991), the first monograph on
the ‘young Gramsci’ that kept rigorously to these criteria was Leonardo
Rapone’s volume Five Years that Seem like Centuries. Antonio Gramsci
from Socialism to Communism (1914–1919) (Rapone 2012). Forty years
on from Leonardo Paggi’s pioneering volume (Paggi 1970), the tele-
ological reading of the ‘early writings’ and the emphasis on cultural
genealogies had an anachronistic and at times misleading sound to it.
Rapone instead follows a distinctively historiographical approach which
could perhaps be synthesized as such: given that Gramsci’s membership
of the Socialist Party as from 1913 was experienced as a choice to give
an order to his intellectual and moral formation, what are the sources on
which this choice fed and how do they characterize the socialist ideal? In
the second place, until October 1917, when Gramsci became secretary
of the Turin section of the Socialist Party (PSI) and in effect took over
the editorship of the Grido del Popolo newspaper, his formation had been
more that of an intellectual than that of a political activist; and neither was
this characteristic to change in any substantial way right up to his partic-
ipation in the Turin Factory Council movement, on the eve of which
Rapone’s volume finishes. I would thus say that its distinctive feature
is the reconstruction of the formation of an intellectual who, between
Autumn 1917 and April 1919, gradually became a ‘professional revolu-
tionary’, but whose basic activity was journalism. There is no one unaware
of the peculiarity of the interweaving between the aspects of Gramsci’s
political biography and his intellectual formation in an itinerary centred
around his socialist engagement, in a period in which, however, his voca-
tion and destiny were not as yet decided. This criterion allows Rapone to
250 G. VACCA
filter the sources that flow profusely into his formation, allowing the origi-
nality of the ‘translations’ and the combinations in which Gramsci reworks
them in developing his own thought. If the Marxian matrix of the nexus
between laissez-faire liberalism and ‘intransigent socialism’ has already for
some time been clear,12 the complete reconstruction that Rapone makes
of the ‘doctrine of war’ is totally new. This is a crucial theme in Gram-
sci’s formation, both for its influence that his reflection on the Great War
had in the succeeding developments of his thought, and because it lay at
the base of a way of analysing history founded on the dynamics of inter-
national relations. But it is of use to draw attention to the originality of
Gramsci’s position in the panorama of European socialism for the absence
from his thought both of a theory of imperialism and of the thesis of
the inevitability of war. In Gramsci’s analysis of capitalism from the end
of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Great War, together
with the Marx of the Manifesto and Capital, there is the liberal thought
à la Hobson and Norman Angell rather than the Marxism of Kautsky,
Hilferding or Jaurès. The accomplishment of a world economy for him
constituted the infrastructure of a global and interdependent world in
which the task of the socialists was that of challenging capitalism and fully
completing its mission since the more capitalist relations of production
were extended the faster the conditions would be created for the advent
of the International. War therefore was not the inevitable consequence of
imperialist capitalism but had its origin—as he would emphasize in the
Notebooks —in the contrast between the cosmopolitanism of the economy
and the nationalism of politics (Q15§5, pp. 1755–1759; FSPN , pp. 219–
223). Expressed in other words, it was the consequence of economic
protectionism and political nationalism, stemming from the ‘economic-
corporative’ regression of the European ruling classes and the incapacity
to bring together the ‘spaces’ of politics and those of the economy.
We cannot take account here of all the innovatory aspects of Rapone’s
volume but we should draw attention to the fact that chapter on the
war, with its pre-publication version in Studi storici (Rapone 2007), gave
rise to various contributions at the 2007 conference on ‘Gramsci in his
time’ (see above). Among these, there was that of Roberto Gualtieri who,
adopting the paradigm of international history, brought out the influence
of Capital on Gramsci’s thought from the ‘early writings’ to those of
12 To Paggi’s book cited above, we may add F. De Felice (1972a), M. L. Salvadori

(1973), and D. Losurdo (1997).
5 AFTERWORD 251
the Notebooks, and proposed, on sound foundations, a separation of his

biography in three periods, only for the second of which (1920–1926)
may one speak of an adhesion to the strategy of the Comintern (Gualtieri
2007). The position of Gramsci vis-à-vis Bolshevism before his arrest was
focused on in the contributions at the same conference by Anna Di Biagio
(2008) and Silvio Pons (2008).
The periodization referred to has been confirmed by the most accurate
analysis currently available of the presence of Marx in Gramsci’s thought,
Francesca Izzo’s ‘I Marx di Gramsci’. This research, too, was occasioned
by the 2007 Conference13 and argues why, up to the October Revo-
lution, Marx was not one of Gramsci’s fundamental authors. Over the
succeeding three years and in the first years of the PCI’s life, he furthered
his knowledge of Marx for essentially polemical reasons, stemming from
the necessity to combat economic determinism, as much that of posi-
tivist socialism as that of Bordiga’s ‘abstentionism’. This deepening of
Gramsci’s approach was non-systematic and conditioned by the needs of
immediate political struggle, of which we must however draw attention
to his reading, in 1918, of The Holy Family, a text that was fundamental
for the development of the ‘philosophy of praxis’ in the Prison Notebooks
(Rapone 2012, pp. 267–280).14 But it was only in the pages devoted
to the ‘translatability of languages’, elaborated on in the Notebooks and
taking as a starting point The Holy Family, that Gramsci succeeded in
liberating the ‘philosophy of praxis’ not only from economic determinism
but also from the sociological reductionism in which ‘historical materi-
alism’ had remained embroiled (Izzo 2008, pp. 568–576). Light had
been shed on the importance of the concept of ‘translatability’ in the ‘sys-
tem’ of the Notebooks some years previously by Dora Kanoussi (Kanoussi
2000), and Francesca Izzo went further into its influence on the frame-
work of the ‘philosophy of praxis’. In a succeeding volume, indeed, the
latter author analysed the ways in which Gramsci had dealt with the crisis
of the modern subject. The spread of nineteenth-century industrialism
was eroding the bases of territorial sovereignty and there was a rising need
13 But to give an exact picture of Gramsci’s 1926 position, it is also of use to recall
Francesco Giasi’s essay ‘I comunisti torinesi e l’egemonia del proletariato nella rivoluzione
italiana. Appunti sulle fonti di “Alcuni temi della quistione meridionale” di Gramsci’, in
A. D’Orsi (2008, pp. 147–186).
14 On the nexus between the Russian Revolution and Gramsci’s more detailed inquiry
into Marx, one should also see Rapone (2012, pp. 267–280).
252 G. VACCA
to re-elaborate internationalism in a ‘cosmopolitanism of a new type’. The

historicization of the political thought of Gramsci was thus linked up to
the crisis of the nation-State and anchored to the constellation of those
thinkers who, in the first half of the twentieth century had raised the
question of the possibility of a supranational sovereignty (Izzo 2009b).
The systematic study of Marx, begun in 1930 in prison at Turi, is
the response to several motives of a theoretical and politico-historical
order. Three and a half years after his removal from the political struggle,
Gramsci found himself faced with new epoch-making historical factors
such as Soviet isolationism and the ‘territorialization’ of socialism, the
sterilization of the Comintern, the consolidation of fascism and the explo-
sion of the 1929 crisis. And underlying all was the bankruptcy of ‘official
Marxism’ and the lack of plausible interpretations of the ‘great transfor-
mation’. The revision of Marxism through a ‘return to Marx’’ which,
between May 1930 and May 1932 (referring here to the three series of
Notes on Philosophy of Notebooks 4, 7 and 8) established the bases for
the Special Notebooks, are evidence that the progressive differentiation
of the ‘philosophy of praxis’ from ‘historical materialism’ was becoming
the ‘guiding thread’ that ran through the prisoner’s researches.15 But, in
order to proceed step by step and analyse the concepts of his ‘revision’,
it is of use to look at Giuseppe Cospito’s volume, which brings together
the results of twenty-five years of philological research on this question
(Cospito 2011; in English Cospito 2016). By analysing Gramsci’s lexical
innovations and the shifts in his categories, Cospito reconstructs the
itinerary that leads Gramsci to dismantle the ‘structure-superstructure’
coupling and finally replace it with the concept of ‘relations of force’. For
a brief mention of the importance of this ‘discovery’, suffice it to recall
the evolution of the queries posed by Gramsci regarding the 1859 Preface
to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, the starting point
for his re-reading of Marx. In October 1930, in the first of his series of
Notes on Philosophy, Gramsci writes that ‘the crucial problem of histor-
ical materialism’ is that of defining the relationship between structure and
superstructures (Q4§38, p. 455; PN Vol. 2, 1992, p. 176); in February
15 In those years, amongst the ex-‘Ordinovisti’, it was not only Gramsci who proposed
a revision of Marxism by returning to Marx. Between 1930 and 1934, Angelo Tasca, too,
starting from the same problems but arriving at different conclusions, was involved in a
re-reading of the works of Marx and Engels. Cf. G. Berti (1968), A. Tasca (1934), and
D. Bidussa (1987, pp. 81–119).
5 AFTERWORD 253
1932 on the other hand, in the third series, he asserts that the problem
pose by Marx in the Preface was that of finding out ‘how (…) collec-
tive wills are in fact formed’ (Q8§195, p. 1057; PN Vol. 3, p. 346).
The change in the problem indicates the distance between the begin-
ning of a revision of Marxism that still assumes the subject as a given
and the point of arrival which, instead, considers the subject as a process
which requires a theory of its constitution. The guiding thread of Cospi-
to’s research is the progressive liberation of Gramsci’s thought from all
forms of determinism, up to the point of dismantling the ‘architectural
metaphor’ of base and superstructure, while—as regards the concept of
‘historical bloc’—his merit is that of having shown its marginal and provi-
sional presence, and finally its disappearance after the middle of 1932
(Cospito 2011, pp. 218–225; 2016, pp. 162–167), with however the
reservation that its abandonment regards solely its theoretical use, while
it remains in operation as a historiographical category. For example the
paragraphs in the Notes on Philosophy and Notebooks 9 and 19 devoted
to the Risorgimento in Italy revolve around the thesis that the hege-
mony of the ‘Moderates’, who led the movement, gave birth to a fusion
between a national—dualistic and asymmetrical—market, and a corre-
sponding form of State which crystallized the relations of force between
social groups, transforming the hegemony of the victors into a lasting
domination. There is no one here blind to the appropriateness in this case
of the concept of a ‘historical bloc’ of the Risorgimento. But it is useful to
recall that from the Spring of 1932, deepening the Marxian concept of the
‘translatability of languages’ (economic, political, philosophical) Gramsci
had worked out as an alternative to the various applications of the ‘archi-
tectural metaphor’ the concept of ‘regulation’. Cospito takes this as a cue
in reconstructing Gramsci’s critique of the ‘command economy’, of the
despotic nature and the cultural primitivism of the USSR of the 1930s
(Cospito 2011, pp. 127–182; 2016, pp. 91–132).
The concept of ‘regulation’ is a very wide-ranging one and leads us
directly into the heart of the ‘philosophy of praxis’. As we know, Gramsci
was stimulated to deepen the understanding of the concepts of classical
political economy by his study of fascist corporativism and the disputes
given rise to by the theorists of the ‘proprietary corporation’ (Macca-
belli 1998, 2008). A second-hand knowledge of the Principles of David
Ricardo led him to formulate the hypothesis that the concepts of ‘deter-
minate market’, ‘law of tendency’ and ‘homo oeconomicus’ [‘economic
man’], categorizing the historical conditions that made the postulates
254 G. VACCA
of ‘pure economy’ plausible, had also had a decisive influence not only
on the critique of political economy but on Marx’s philosophy. Starting
off from these notes of April–May 1932 (Q10II§9, pp. 1246–1248,
Q10II§32, pp. 1276–1278, and Q11§52, pp. 1477–1478 [Autumn
1932]; SPN , pp. 399–402, FSPN , pp. 170–71, and SPN , pp. 410–412,
respectively),16 in which Gramsci concludes that the notion of ‘deter-
minate market’ implies a general theory of consciousness founded on
the concept of ‘determinate abstraction’, Fabio Frosini concentrated his
reflection on Gramsci’s translation of the Marxian concept of ‘material-
ism’ into that of ‘immanence’ and makes it the Leitmotiv of his research
(Frosini 2010). Frosini’s is the most organic work on Gramsci’s ‘phi-
losophy of praxis’ currently available. The phrase lends itself to various
misinterpretations both through the difficulty of distinguishing ‘praxis’
as used by Gramsci from its use, for example, by Labriola or Mondolfo,
and because ‘praxis’ may also mean ‘action’, ‘act’ or ‘experience’, and
if one does not shed light on the specificity of Gramsci’s thought it is
difficult to challenge the tendencies to dissolve it in the genealogy of its
sources, real or presumed as may be. From Frosini’s reconstruction it
clearly emerges that for Gramsci praxis is equivalent to politics, but in the
historical period immediately following the Great War and the October
Revolution, in which the modern political subject—the State—entered
into crisis, and neither the traditional riling classes nor the working class
movement were able to resolve it, the foundation of the new political
subject could not be entrusted to ‘particular sciences’: it was a specifically
philosophical problem. Frosini poses it by looking closely at the existing
Italian and international literature that emerged from the publication of
the Critical Edition of the Prison Notebooks onward and offers us a work
that in many aspects constitutes the crowning achievement of the research
we have dealt with up to now.
The identification of praxis with politics does not make this latter
into the object of a philosophy; it instead postulates the equation
between politics and philosophy. Equation, however, is does not mean
identification, but translatability, in a historically determinate era and
environment, namely those of capitalist modernity. In the philosophy
of praxis, the principle of truth is therefore the political effectiveness of
its postulates. But that does not mean that the philosophy of praxis is
16 See also the letter to Tanja of 30 May 1932: Gramsci (1994, pp. 177–179).
5 AFTERWORD 255
a philosophy of action: for Gramsci the relationship between theory and

practice is not solely a philosophical problem but also and above all a
historical problem. It is, he says, the problem of the creation of determi-
nate types of intellectuals capable of guaranteeing the coherence between
an economic programme, a political project and a system of values. As
we saw in Chapter 1, this thesis presupposes the criteria developed in
Notebook 1217 for the historicization of the intellectual groups. These
criteria are born from the fundamental principle in Marx’s philosophy,
defined by Gramsci as the reality of ideologies, deducing this from the
1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
For Gramsci this principle contains in a nutshell the theory of poli-
tics as the struggle for hegemony. Indeed the struggle for hegemony
would not be possible without the creation of categories of intellectuals
(entrepreneurs, philosophers, legal experts, economists, organizational
theorists, in general ‘functionaries of the superstructures’) who develop
its contents at a technical level. Thus, the unity of theory and practice
has nothing to do with the identity of thought and action, and neither is
it resolved into a ‘philosophy of action’; instead it poses the problem of
developing a way of thinking in which the analytical categories are also
ones of strategy. For example, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony contains
both a theory of history and a political strategy.18
When Gramsci writes that in order to develop the philosophical
autonomy of Marxism one must re-do in respect of Croce the ‘opera-
tion’ that Marx carried out on Hegel, he is indicating in the ‘philosophy
of distincts’ the most resistant ideological crystallization of the fracture
between subject and object, intellectuals and people-nation. For that
reason, he considers Croce the theorist of the ‘passive revolution’ of
the twentieth century, in so far as Croce recognizes that the socialist
17 [Editorially headed in the Critical Edition of the Notebooks ‘Appunti e note sparse per
un gruppo di saggi sulla storia degli intellettuali’ (‘Notes and Loose Jottings for a Group
of Essays on the History of the Intellectuals’). Notebook 12 is found in English translation
(editorially rearranged) in the sections of SPN , pp. 5–23, headed ‘The Intellectuals. The
Formation of the Intellectuals’, and pp. 26–43 by ‘On Education’. The remainder of
Notebook 12 is found in FSPN (pp. 145–147) in a note on ‘Universities and Academies’
which, in Gramsci’s original, follows after the SPN sub-section that finishes on p. 33—
trans. note.]
18 As is known, the most representative passages on this are Q19§24, pp. 2010–2034,
and Q19§26, pp. 2035–2046 (SPN , pp. 55–84 and 90–102 respectively), devoted to the
Italian Risorgimento.
256 G. VACCA
movement represents a new historical subject, but seeks to insert it in

a subaltern condition within the hegemonic system of liberalism, denying
it the legitimation to contest the bourgeoisie’s leadership of the State.
The interpretation of Gramsci put forward by Bobbio, too, is framed
as a new project of ‘passive revolution’. If Croce’s project was founded
on the reduction of Marxism to a methodological canon of historical
research, to reduce Gramsci to a ‘theorist of civil society’ has the effect
of circumscribing the struggle for hegemony to a competition for elec-
toral consensus, ignoring at a philosophical level the dialectical interaction
(the interdependence) between ‘political society’ and ‘civil society’.19 The
dominance of Bobbio’s interpretation remained unchallenged in Gram-
scian studies until a diachronic reading of the Notebooks showed that,
as its background, the concept of hegemony was rooted in the crisis
of the nation-State and had as its object the foundation of new forms
of sovereignty. It cannot therefore be limited to the ‘national territory’
but is founded instead on the rivalry between different combinations of
internal and international politics. Politics as the struggle for hegemony
therefore goes beyond the sphere of the State and acquires a global char-
acter, whose outcome cannot be predetermined. Frosini indicates in this
the distinctive trait of Gramsci’s ‘translation’ of Marx’s theory of ‘perma-
nent revolution’, namely the core of a ‘constituentist’ vision of politics
that incorporates and at the same time transcends the procedural and
institutional dimension of democracy.
The publication of the Translation Notebooks made obvious the super-
ficiality of the long-held conviction that Gramsci had devoted an impor-
tant part of his energies to translation exercises only to pass the time,
deepen his linguistic knowledge and ‘keep his hand in’. And yet it would
have sufficed to reflect on the writings of Marx that he translated to realize
the correlation between the texts selected and the foundations of the ‘phi-
losophy of praxis’ which he was developing. However, if the researches
that I have been dealing with share the idea that the ‘translatability of
languages’ is the fundamental concept for understanding the philosophy
of praxis (the ‘rhythm of thought as it develops’ in the Notebooks ) this
is also due to the understanding of how far his original linguistic inter-
ests had influenced his formation. The first monograph on this was, as
19 On this subject the fundamental pages of the Notebooks are those dealing with the
critique of economism (Q13§18, pp. 1589–1597; SPN , pp. 158–167).
5 AFTERWORD 257
we know, that of Franco Lo Piparo, published in1979 with the author-

itative commendation of Tullio De Mauro (Lo Piparo 1979). However,
it took its place in a cultural context dominated by the conviction that
one had to completely dissociate Gramsci’s intellectual biography from
his political biography in order to ‘liberate his thought’,20 and this was
not of any help. Lo Piparo’s research was vitiated by a preconceived
thesis and by an arbitrary analogical methodology: in his view Gram-
sci’s concept of hegemony had its origin in linguistics, not politics, since
if it could not be denied that Gramsci had borrowed the term from
the language of the Bolsheviks, it could however be demonstrated that
its contents (‘supremacy’, ‘prestige’ and other similar terns) had been
developed by the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century
European neolinguistics that had formed his mind.21
I have made mention of Lo Piparo’s book not only because, despite its
failings, it has had the merit of drawing attention to the subject by exer-
cising a lasting influence of Gramsci studies, but also because the book
by Alessandro Carlucci, to which I would like to return in conclusion,
is the point of arrival of an antithetical line of research to that of Lo
Piparo, developed in the process of forging the appropriate hermeneutic
instruments for understanding Gramsci. On this line of research, I should
like here to recall a number of publications by Giancarlo Schirru who,
by making use of a detailed knowledge of Gramsci, of contemporary
glottology and of the history of communism, has put back on the right
track the problem of the relationship between Gramsci’s political thought
and his linguistic training (Schirru 1999, 2008a, b, 2011, 2016; see also
Boothman 2004).22 Schirru has in particular demonstrated how Gram-
sci’s youthful interest in linguistics had a clearly political interest since
the linguistic discussions at the turn of the twentieth century, in which
Gramsci’s teacher Matteo Bartoli was involved, were intimately linked to
20 Readers are referred to the Cagliari conference of 1967 (Rossi 1969), on which see
Izzo (2009a, pp. 192–194).
21 It is not by chance that Lo Piparo operated within the reading of Gramsci that
Bobbio had proposed ten years beforehand (Bobbio 1969, pp. 75–100; 1988, pp. 73–
100) and did not take into account either the political biography or the historical events
in which Gramsci’s thought had had its origin.
22 Through his illuminating Introduction Schirru put his researches to fruitful use in
editing Gramsci’s transcription of the Notes on Glottology 1912–1913 of Matteo Bartoli:
see Schirru (2016).
258 G. VACCA
the problems of nationality, a subject which engaged liberalism as much as

social democracy around the time of the First World War. Further, Schirru
has documented Gramsci’s participation, during his stay in Moscow, in
the linguistic reform that accompanied the birth of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics. Carlucci’s book constituted, under many aspects, a
confirmation and development of Schirru’s researches. That the problem
of the ‘translatability of languages’ had been imposed on Gramsci during
his stay in Moscow (May 1922–November 1923) had been clear for some
time. The problem had been raised by Lenin in concluding the Fourth
Congress of the International (1922). Gramsci assumed it explicitly in
June 1923 when he faced the task of ‘translating into national histor-
ical language’ the watchword of the ‘workers’ and peasants’ government’
launched by the Comintern at its Third Enlarged Executive (Plenum)
(Vacca pp. 90–108 in Daniele 1999). On the other hand the ‘trans-
latability of languages’ joins up conceptually with the paradigm of the
differential analysis enunciated as from 1921 to justify both the ‘Rus-
sian experiment’ and the tactics of the Comintern. If one ignores this
context it is not possible to understand Gramsci’s adopting the concept
of hegemony from the language of the International, the successive devel-
opment undergone and the role that it took on in the framework of the
‘philosophy of praxis’ (Vacca 2014; Vacca, pp. 5–114 in Daniele 1999).
But among the distinctive features of Carlucci’s book there is above all
the broadening of the direct and indirect knowledge that Gramsci had
of the debate on the linguistic policy of the Soviet government in 1922–
1923, occasioned by the nationality problems in the construction of the
federative Union. His reconstruction has been favoured by the publica-
tion of the first volumes of the Epistolario (Correspondence) which allow
us to know much more than before regarding Gramsci’s stay in Moscow
(Gramsci 2009 and Gramsci 2011; cf. GTW 2014).
Carlucci’s research is based on two premises: the linguistic sensi-
tivity and the political thought of Gramsci. These are two aspects that
continually interact in his biography, from the years at university to the
Prison Notebooks. This interaction demonstrates that in order to under-
stand Gramsci’s political thought, it is impossible to leave to one side
his linguistic studies; in particular this includes the ‘linguistic’ origin of
the dialectic between multiplicity and unification persuasively proposed
by Carlucci as a key to reading the concept of hegemony. A special merit
of his monograph is, then, the way in which he reformulated three nodal
questions for the political, intellectual and human biography of Gramsci:
5 AFTERWORD 259
the importance of his Sardinian origins, the influence of Italian and Euro-
pean glottology in his formation, and the encounter with Lenin’s thought
and with Bolshevism. These are not only three periods but three aspects
of Gramsci’s biography which characterize its entire itinerary.
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Index
A Bini, Annalisa, 115

Adoratskij, Vladimir Viktorovič, 49 Bismarck, Otto von, 62
Agazzi, Emilio, 245 Bobbio, Norberto, xi, xv, 195–198,
Agosti, Aldo, 76, 134, 217 230, 238, 239, 246, 256, 257
Amendola, Giovanni, 20, 21, 23, 24 Bonanate, Luigi, 196, 239
Anderson, Perry, 48, 246 Bonaparte, Charlotte, 164
Angell, Norman, 3, 250 Bonaparte, Napoléon, 164
Antonini, Francesca, 49 Bonomi, Ivanoe, 102–105
Aponte, Salvatore, 71 Boothman, Derek, 195, 257
Aquarone, Alberto, 121 Bordiga, Amadeo, 12, 13, 217, 251
Aricó, José, 48 Bottai, Giuseppe, 121
Asor Rosa, Alberto, 244, 245, 248 Bovero, Michelangelo, 196
Boyer, Robert, 131, 232
Briand, Aristide, 24
B Buci-Glucksmann, Christine, 53, 246
Badoglio, Pietro, 24 Bukharin, Nikolaj Ivanovič, 34, 134,
Balfour, Arthur James, 125 141, 166, 173, 175, 220
Bartoli, Matteo Giulio, 257 Burzio, Filippo, 64
Bellamy, Richard, xxiv Buttigieg, Joseph A., xxiii
Beneduce, Alberto, 124
Benvenuti, Francesco, 216
Bergson, Henri, 2, 166 C
Bernstein, Eduard, 220 Cadorna, Luigi, 24, 218
Berti, Giuseppe, 252 Cammett, John M., x, 247
Bidussa, David, 252 Caracciolo, Alberto, 245
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 265
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7
266 INDEX
Carley, Michael, 153 Di Biagio, Anna, 16, 17, 28, 76, 134,
Carlo Alberto di Savoia (King of 136, 218, 251
Sardinia), 105 D’Orsi, Angelo, 251
Carlucci, Alessandro, 45, 116, 243,
248, 257, 258
Cattaneo, Carlo, 196 E
Cavour, Camillo Benso (Conte di), Engels, Friedrich, 15, 49, 116, 196,
87, 90, 92, 93, 97, 100, 115, 252
117
Cervesato, Arnaldo, 3
Chiarante, Giuseppe, x F
Churchill, Winston, 73 Fattorini, Emma, 95
Ciasca, Raffaele, 112, 113 Ferrata, Giansiro, 244
Ciliberto, Michele, xiv, xxi, 246 Ferri, Franco, 128, 246
Ciocca, Pierluigi, 124 Finck, Franz Nikolaus, 40
Clausewitz, Carl von, 62 Finelli, Roberto, 243
Coen, Federico, xi Fiocco, Gianluca, xii
Colamarino, Giulio, 122 Foch, Ferdinand, 6
Colletti, Lucio, 198 Fortunato, Giustino, 29, 30, 118, 119
Cospito, Giuseppe, xiv, 188, 248, Fouillet, Alfred, 238
252, 253 Fovel, Nino Massimo, 122, 123
Cox, Virginia, xxiv Francioni, Giovanni, xiv, 37, 53, 202,
Crispi, Francesco, 108, 109, 117, 118 246
Croce, Benedetto, xv, 2, 29, 30, Frosini, Fabio, xiv, 59, 243, 254, 256
43–45, 49, 69, 112, 113, 118, Fülöp-Miller, René, 139
119, 129, 166–168, 189, 196, Furst, Henry, 168
197, 206, 210–215, 245, 255,
256
Cuoco, Vincenzo, 85, 86
G
Gagliardi, Alessio, 121
D Galli della Loggia, Ernesto, 198
Daniele, Chiara, xiii, 33–35, 115, 247, Gallo, Niccolò, 244
248, 258 Gangale, Giuseppe, 30
D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 66, 101 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 51, 97
De Domenico, Nicola, 238 Garin, Eugenio, 45
De Felice, Franco, 128, 151, 245, Gentile, Giovanni, 206, 212, 245
246, 250 Gentiloni, Vincenzo Ottorino, 109
della Volpe, Gaetano, 245 Gerratana, Valentino, 45, 202
De Mauro, Tullio, 257 Gervasoni, Marco, 238
De Nicola, Enrico, 23 Giasi, Francesco, x, xiii, 31, 53, 95,
De Rosa, Gabriele, 93 116, 195, 248, 251
De Sanctis, Francesco, 245 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 75
INDEX 267
Giolitti, Giovanni, 92, 93, 101–104, Lenin (Uljanov), Vladimir Il’ič, 8,

117–119 15–17, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36,
Giordani, Pietro, 164 45–47, 56, 57, 72, 73, 77, 95,
Girardon, Mario, 2, 3 120, 137, 141, 162, 163, 173,
Gobetti, Piero, 30, 163 186, 200, 220, 222, 258, 259
Gorbačëv, Mikhail Sergeevič, xii Leonetti, Alfonso, 19, 20
Gramsci, Gennaro, 42 Leo XIII (Vincenzo Pecci), Pope, 109
Grandi, Dino, 74, 126, 226 Liguori, Guido, xxi, 243, 244
Grieco, Ruggero, 41 Lisa, Athos, 58
Gualtieri, Roberto, 2, 38, 250, 251 Lloyd George, David, 6
Locke, John, 196
Lo Piparo, Franco, 48, 257
H Losurdo, Domenico, 2, 250
Habermas, Jürgen, 208 Ludwig, Emil, 62
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 44, Lukács, Georg (György), 221
166, 196, 197, 203, 222, 223, Luxemburg, Rosa, 166, 215
255
Hitler, Adolf, 71, 121 M
Hoare, Quintin, xxiv Maccabelli, Terenzio, 123, 253
Hobbes, Thomas, 196 Macis, Enrico, 37
Maitan, Livio, 71
Mangoni, Luisa, 205, 246
I Marx, Karl, xi, xv, 2, 4, 15, 49,
Izzo, Francesca, xiv, 59, 161, 195, 52, 53, 56, 89, 116, 129, 140,
251, 252, 257 141, 156, 161–163, 171, 188,
195–197, 220, 222, 224, 237,
250–256
K Mathews, John, xxiv
Kanoussi, Dora, 139, 195, 251 Matteotti, Giacomo, 18, 20, 22, 106
Kant, Immanuel, 120, 196 Mayer, Gustav, 49
Kautsky, Karl, 250 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 75, 87, 92, 98,
Kelsen, Hans, 196 115
Kerenskij, Aleksandr Fëdorovič, 95 Menelik II (Emperor of Ethiopia),
Kipling, Rudyard, 101 102
Kolčak, Aleksandr Vasil’evič, 98 Michels, Roberto (Robert), 182, 210,
245
Mirskij (Mirsky), Dmitri Petrovič (also
L Svjatopolk-Mirskij), 141, 219,
Labriola, Antonio, 2, 90, 162, 221, 238
245 Mistral, Jacques, 131, 232
Labriola, Arturo, 97 Mondolfo, Rodolfo, 254
Lapidus, Iosif Abramovič, 140, 166 Montanari, Marcello, xiv, 205
268 INDEX
Mosca, Gaetano, 34, 210, 245 R

Mussolini, Benito, 15, 23, 38, 39, 66, Ragionieri, Ernesto, 19
74, 102–106, 111, 124 Rapone, Leonardo, 1, 2, 45, 161,
Musté, Marcello, x 162, 186, 249–251
Renan, Ernest (Joseph-Ernest), 180
Ricardo, David, 171, 222–224, 253
N Righi, Maria Luisa, x
Natoli, Aldo, 247 Robespierre, Maximilien, 120
Nitti, Francesco Saverio, 104 Rocchetti, Francesco, 116
Noske, Gustav, 157 Romagnuolo, Maria Rosaria, 246
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, xxiv Romano, Andrea, 76, 137
Rossi, Angelo, 40–42, 248
Rossi, Paolo, 195, 246, 257
O
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 196
Omodeo, Adolfo, 112, 113, 116,
225, 239
Orlando, Vittorio Emanuele, 23, 98,
S
99
Salvadori, Massimo L., 48, 162, 198,
Ostrovitjanov (Ostrovityanov),
250
Konstantin Vasil’evič, 140, 166
Salvemini, Gaetano, 2
Santomassimo, Gianpasquale, 74, 121,
P 122, 124, 127, 128
Paggi, Leonardo, 2, 15, 18, 77, 162, Savant, Giovanna, 77
249, 250 Scalia, Gianni, 245
Pagni, Carlo, 122 Schirru, Giancarlo, 38, 45, 195, 257,
Pareto, Vilfredo, 196, 210, 245 258
Pascoli, Giovanni, 38 Schucht, Julija (Jul’ka), 138
Pellicani, Luciano, 48 Schucht, Tat’jana (Tatiana, Tanja),
Peter (Pëtr) ‘the Great’ (Tsar), 99 xiii, xxii, 37–41, 43, 119, 134,
Pirandello, Luigi, 40 137, 138, 166, 167, 247
Pius XI (Achille Ratti), Pope, 105 Scoccimarro, Mauro, 14, 18–20, 104
Plekhanov, Georgij Valentinovič, 28, Serge, Victor, 140
173 Sola, Giorgio, 205
Poincaré, Raymond, 24 Somai, Giovanni, 15, 18
Pons, Silvio, 17, 28, 34, 46, 115, Sorel, Georges, 2, 166, 214, 215,
164, 216, 251 238, 245
Procacci, Giuliano, 46, 134 Spirito, Ugo, 121, 123, 127, 140
Spriano, Paolo, 22, 134, 160
Sraffa, Piero, xiii, xxii, 37, 38, 40, 41,
Q 43, 44, 137, 247
Quilici, Nello, 122 Stalin (Džugašvili), Iosif Vissaronovič,
Quinet, Edgar, 86 25, 33, 35, 46, 53, 71, 72, 76,
INDEX 269
120, 130, 134, 142, 160, 164, V

187, 216, 217, 219, 220 Vacca, Giuseppe, x–xiii, xxi, 14, 20,
Stolzi, Irene, 121 25, 31, 34, 37, 40–42, 53, 74,
Sturzo, Luigi, 93 95, 115, 128, 130, 134, 135,
138, 142, 163, 164, 169, 195,
216, 221, 239, 244, 246, 248,
249, 258
T Vittorio Emanuele II, 51
Tagliagambe, Silvano, 139 Volpe, Gioacchino, 112
Tamburrano, Giuseppe, 48 Voza, Pasquale, 243
Tasca, Angelo, 5, 20, 153, 252
Telò, Mario, 128, 133
W
Terracini, Umberto, 15, 17, 18, 209
Weber, Max, 182, 196, 210
Thomas, Peter D., 171
Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 62
Togliatti, Palmiro, ix, xxii, 41, 245
Williams, Raymond, 208
Traniello, Francesco, 115
Wilson, Woodrow, 4–6, 11, 63, 77,
Treves, Claudio, 163 186
Tronti, Mario, 245
Trotsky (Bronštejn), Lev Davidovič,
15, 32, 46, 47, 71, 130, 139, Z
142, 216, 220 Zinov’ev (Apfelbaum), Grigorij
Turati, Filippo, 97, 105 Evseevič, 15, 17

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MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS

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ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic)

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15. Michael Brie, Rediscovering Lenin: Dialectics of Revolution and Metaphysics

Adriana Petra, Intellectuals and Communist Culture: Itineraries, Problems and

Antonio Gramsci’s thought has influenced the political choices I have

As is borne out by the online Bibliografia Gramsciana,1 from the

The crisis of democracy, the subject of discussion in the whole of the

been cradled. Rather than abandoning the theoretical heritage of Gramsci,

4 I refer readers to my contribution ‘I Quaderni e la politica del Novecento’ in G. Vacca

Work was thus begun on the National Edition 5 of Gramsci’s writings,

I have therefore oriented my research mainly towards their reconstruc-

of ‘passive revolution’ may be applied to experiences successive to those

Rome, Italy Giuseppe Vacca

Togliatti, P. (2014). La politica nel pensiero e nell’azione. Scritti e discorsi 1917–

1 The Concept of Hegemony 1

2 The Nature of Passive Revolution 85

4 The ‘Passive Revolution’ in the International Scenario.

3 From Historical Materialism to the Philosophy

4 Hegemony and Democracy 195

Italian Publications in Volume

English-Language Volumes of Gramsci’s Writings

The Concept of Hegemony

1 ‘Historical Breaks’: The Great

© The Author(s) 2021 1

since it intended, via the class struggle, to accelerate the achievement of

2007). To Labriola’s influence can also be ascribed the observation that

bourgeoisie not only anticipates the contrast between the cosmopoli-

of supranationality as the main highway for bringing political spaces into

The League of Nations is the capitalist Cosmopolis, with a citizenship

Has capitalistic society become differentiated to the extent that, in its

the national State is dead, becoming a sphere of influence, a monopoly in

Gramsci’s period of communist militancy was beginning, but never-

Before the war, a dense network of commercial relations had begun to

This network had represented a great manifestation of the capitalist

3 Cf. here Chapter 3, pp. 151–193.

as the Western world’ (‘The Revolution against “Capital”’, CF , p. 515;

These analyses underpin an ever more convinced adherence to Bolshe-

In spite of this initial attempt at differential analysis, the consolidation

It is no surprise that the concept of hegemony should appear for

2 The Problem of the Revolution in Italy

breaking point, obliged Gramsci to overcome all ‘inertia’.4 Immediately

In this way Gramsci initiated a mid-period reflection on the ‘translation

As a title I propose L’Unità pure and simple, which will be significant

The victory of fascism, its peculiarity of being a popular movement

7 Letter of Gramsci to Scoccimarro of 5 January 1924.

transitory watchwords to enable it to be transformed into a proletarian

In central and western Europe, the development of capitalism has created

Only by participating in a European and world revolution can the Italian

With the Lyon Congress, the characterization of the proletarian revolu-

Do we make an alliance with the maximalists for a sovietist government,

The tactic of the United Front implied a struggle for hegemony

13 Letter of Gramsci from Vienna to Togliatti, Scoccimarro and Leonetti of 21 March

in these terms, the struggle between social democracy and communism

We were - it must be said - overtaken by events. Without wanting to

But already in his letter to Scoccimarro, Leonetti and Togliatti of 21

guidelines. I have, for example, read Amendola’s speech, which seems to

Thus the ‘translation into Italian historical language’ of the watchword

[O]ur party does not have an immediate programme, based on perspectives

A few weeks later, general elections sealed the victory of fascism

Assembly presupposed a crisis of fascism through the detachment from

He then goes on to consider the alternatives to fascism ventilated by

The communist party’s action was supposed to insinuate itself into