[Marxism] Re: Letter to a High School Gramscian

["DoC" <donaloc@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> In your concluding paragraphs, you pay tribute to Antonio Gramsci who
you quote as saying, "To tell the truth, to arrive together at the
truth, is a...revolutionary act." Now the last thing in the world that I
would want to do is criticize anybody who is pro-Gramsci, but I do have
to remind you that Gramsci was a Marxist-Leninist himself. He was a
founding member of the Italian CP and agreed that a vanguard party was
necessary in order to achieve socialism in Italy. This is often
forgotten since such formulations do not occur in his "Prison
Notebooks", a fact that can be explained by the likelihood that he would
have been tortured or worse if they did appear.

I actually think that the fact that such formulations didn't appear in
his notebooks is more likely because they were almost assumed knowledge.
Gramsci, as you point out, was a founder of the PCI - quite how someone
can warp what he says (crackly as it is at times) to justify (tactical)
support for the Democrats is beyond me. What is missing is any basic
analysis of the class composition of power and how this is maintained
through the superstructure. To use Gramsci to justify avoiding this is a
total misrepresentation of his genius. Gramsci, for me, started where
Lenin left off. Lenin's conception of the state had little room for
internal contradictions - he was describing an objectively revolutionary
moment in time. Gramsci advanced that by seeing other pillars holding
the state up - whether the ideological role of intellectuals or the
ruling classes political and ideological hegemony. He then proceeded (in
all too short a manner) to describe how we set about challenging those
struts in a modern and complex state situation. As we live in today.

Good to see young college students reading Gramsci. That is of
importance.

DoC.

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism