Gramsci's Pathways

247 Pages·2015·0.948 MB·English

by  Guido Liguori

Gramsci’sPathways
Historical Materialism
Book Series
EditorialBoard
SébastienBudgen(Paris)
SteveEdwards(London)
JuanGrigera(London)
MarcelvanderLinden(Amsterdam)
PeterThomas(London)
volume102
Thetitlespublishedinthisseriesarelistedatbrill.com/hm
Gramsci’s Pathways
By
GuidoLiguori
Translationby
DavidBroder
leiden | boston
FirstpublishedinItalianbyCarocciEditoreas“Sentierigramsciani”,Bibliotecaditestiestudi,Rome,2006.
ThisvolumewaspublishedwiththesupportoftheDept.ofHumanisticStudies–UniversityofCalabria.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Liguori,Guido,author.
[Sentierigramsciani.English]
Gramsci'spathways/byGuidoLiguori;translationbyDavidBroder.
pagescm.–(Historicalmaterialismbookseries;volume102)
"FirstpublishedinItalianbyCarocciEditoreas"Sentierigramsciani",Bibliotecaditestiestudi,Rome,
2006."
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN978-90-04-24519-8(hardback:alk.paper)–ISBN978-90-04-30369-0(e-book)
1.Gramsci,Antonio,1891-1937.2.Gramsci,Antonio,1891-1937.Quadernidelcarcere.I.Title.
HX289.7.G73L55132015
335–dc23
2015022564
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Contents
PrefacetotheEnglishEdition ix
1 TheExtendedState 1
1 TheExtensionoftheConceptoftheState 1
2 TheFirst‘Extension’:PoliticsandEconomics 2
3 TheSecond‘Extension’:PoliticalSocietyandCivilSociety 8
4 StateandClassConsciousness 9
5 DatingTexts 14
6 Notebook6:Definitions 16
7 TheEthicalState 18
8 Statolatry 20
9 UnstableEquilibria 24
2 CivilSociety 26
1 Bobbio’sInterpretation 26
2 CivilSocietyinMarx 28
3 Gramsci’sDialecticalConception 32
4 ‘CivilSociety’inContemporaryDebates 36
5 ANewMarxistTheoryoftheState 40
3 State,Nation,Mundialisation 42
1 MundialisationandGlobalisation 42
2 GramsciandTaylorism 45
3 TheMythofCivilSociety 48
4 StateandNation 49
5 Against‘PassiveRevolution’ 53
4 PartyandMovements 55
1 GramsciandLenin 55
2 Relationswith‘theSubalterns’ 57
3 TheOrdineNuovoYears 60
4 L’OrdineNuovointheNotebooks 62
5 IdeologiesandConceptionsoftheWorld 65
1 FromMarxtoGramsci 65
2 GramsciandMarx(andCroce) 70
3 TheTerm‘Ideology’ 75
vi contents
4 TheFamilyofConcepts 80
5 IdeologyandWill 84
6 GoodSenseandCommonSense 85
1 TwoMeanings 85
2 SpontaneityandBackwardness 89
3 CommonSense,Neoidealism,Misoneism 94
4 MarxismandCommonSense 98
5 CommonSenseandPhilosophy 102
6 TheRe-evaluationof‘GoodSense’ 106
7 TheLastNotebooks 110
8 Conclusions:TheDouble‘ReturntoMarx’ 111
7 Moralityand‘Conformism’ 113
1 MarxandMorality 113
2 Gramsci’sWorld 114
3 UniversalityandHistoricity 115
8 Marx.FromtheManifestototheNotebooks 120
1 From‘WarofMovement’to‘WarofPosition’ 120
2 MarxintheNotebooks 121
3 TheRe-evaluationofIdeologies 122
4 TheNational/InternationalConnection 123
5 PoliticsandtheState 125
6 AgainsttheCommodityForm 127
9 Engels’sPresenceinthePrisonNotebooks 128
1 NegativeJudgements 128
2 Anti-Dühring 133
3 Engels’sAnti-determinism 138
10 Labriola:TheRoleofIdeology 142
1 LabriolaandGramsci 142
2 MarxinLabriola’sFirstEssay 146
3 FromOne‘Essay’toAnother 148
4 FromLabriolatoGramsci 153
11 Togliatti.TheInterpreterand‘Translator’ 156
1 BetweenFascismandStalinism:‘forDemocraticFreedoms’ 156
2 ‘Gramsci’sPolitics’inLiberatedItaly 163
contents vii
3 After’56:The‘TheoristofPolitics’ 171
4 TheFinalChapter:Gramsci,aMan 173
12 HegemonyandItsInterpreters 176
1 After’56:BetweenDictatorshipandDemocracy 176
2 1967:PoliticalandCulturalLeadership 178
3 The1970s:HegemonyandHegemonicApparatus 179
4 1975–6:HegemonyandDemocracy 181
5 1977:TheFormsofHegemony 182
6 Hegemonyand‘Prestige’ 184
7 The1980s:ANon-modernGramsci? 186
8 The1990s:HegemonyandInterdependence 187
9 HegemonyandGlobalisation 189
10 TheWord‘Hegemony’ 190
13 Dewey,GramsciandCornelWest 192
1 MarxismandPragmatism 192
2 TheAmericanPragmatismofthePrisonNotebooks 194
3 GramsciandDewey 195
4 DeweyandMarxism 197
5 West’sGramsci 199
14 TheModernPrince 202
1 AgainstStenterello 202
2 TheMachiavelliQuestion 205
3 TheFourthNotebook:MarxandMachiavelli 209
4 TheEighthNotebook:TheModernPrince 213
5 AJacobinForce 220
References 223
NameIndex 232
SubjectIndex 236

Preface to the English Edition
Themostimportantthemeofthevarious‘pathways’includedinthisvolumeis
thestudyofsomeofthemainconcepts,categoriesandsourcesofinspiration
thatappearinGramsci’swork,andespeciallyinhisPrisonNotebooks.
Apart from a couple of more recent texts (Chapters Four and Fourteen,
whichdidnotappearintheItalianedition[Sentierigramsciani]),mostofthe
chaptersarefromtheearlyyearsofthetwenty-firstcentury.Indeed,theywere
partofacollectivework,theInternationalGramsciSocietyItalia’s‘seminaron
thelexiconoftheQuadernidelcarcere’,1whichbeganin2001andcontinuedfor
overadecade,andwhosemostmature,abundantfruitwaswithoutdoubtthe
Dizionariogramsciano1926–37.2
The ‘seminar on the lexicon of the Quaderni’ came about as a reaction to
thetendency–whichhaslongbeenwidespreadinreadingsofGramsci–to
‘demandtoomuchofthetext’,eventhoughGramscihimselfwarnedagainst
this.Thistendencyoriginatedinthe‘open’characterofthePrisonNotebooks,
whichwerenotesandreflectionspublishedonlyaftertheirauthor’sdeath,and
hadthesame‘dialogical’frameworkashisthinkingitself–almostalwayspro-
ceedinginaninterrogative,exploratory,openmanner,andnotbeingdefinitive
orclosedincharacter.Itmoreoveroriginatedfromthecommixtureoftheory
andpoliticsthatcharacterisedtheNotebooksandwhichinevitably–foralong
time fruitfully – accompanied the reading and interpretation of these texts,
albeitsometimeswiththeunavoidableresultofencouraginghighlypolemical
positionsorpoliticallyorientedattemptstobendthemoutofshapeormake
themone-dimensional.
WestartedoutfromtheconvictionthatitistodaypossibletoreadGramsci
asagreatcontemporaryauthor–notapoliticallyneutralone,butnoronewho
canimmediatelybecompressedintocurrent-daypoliticaldebates.Hencethe
beliefthatnowweneedto‘gobacktothetexts’,to‘his’texts,afteryearsand
yearsofinterpretationsthathadbuiltupalongandsometimesfruitful–but
nowuseless–‘battleofideas’ontopofthem.
Thusarosetheneedfora‘lexiconoftheQuaderni’(anenterprisethathad
never before been attempted in such vast proportions), to constitute a basis
and a web or set of guidelines for understanding this particular ‘work’. So
wetracedoutsomeoftheinterpretativepathwaysthatalsoexistamidstthe
1 Seewww.gramscitalia.itandwww.igsitalia.org.
2 Dizionariogramsciano1926–1937,editedbyGuidoLiguoriandPasqualeVoza,Rome:Carocci.
x preface to the english edition
apparentchaosoftheQuaderni,andwhicharepossibleandperhapsnecessary
forproceedingthroughtheonlyapparentnon-organicityofGramsci’sthought.
WethusbegantorereadGramsci’stextwithphilologicalrigour,inorderto
startoutagainfromwhatGramscihadleftinwriting–andfromthe wayin
which he left it in writing – thus freeing his work of a whole series of dated
readingsthattodayrisksuffocatingitsspiritanditscapacitytobepresentin
today’sworld.Butwedidsofullyawareofthefactthatinterpretingisnotonly
unavoidable,butalsotheonlywaytounderstandatext.Ultimately,theresult
ofthe‘seminarsontheQuaderni’wastheonsetofanew‘Gramscianhermen-
eutics’;eveniftherehadbeensomeexamplesofthisalready(andsomeofthem
wereimportantones)thishermeneuticshadneverpreviously,however,been
generalisedandusedcontinuouslyandinaprogrammaticmanner.
Manyoftheessayscollectedinthisvolumeconformtothis‘hermeneutic’
method. As such, they mainly stick to following Gramsci’s texts, and rarely
allowthemselvestodigressintomoregeneralpolitical-culturalconsiderations.
Andtheyseektotakeaccountofthechronologicalsuccessionofthesetexts,
whilealwaysbearinginmindthatthePrisonNotebooksareadiachronicwork
thatalsoentailscontradictions,recapitulationsandabout-turns.
The chapters that are most directly influenced by the hermeneutic mes-
sagethatIhavementionedareChaptersOne,Two,Three,Four,Five,Sixand
Fourteen.The‘Gramscianterms’examined,here,arethe‘extendedstate’(or
‘integralstate’,asGramsciputitmoreprecisely),‘civilsociety’,‘ideology’,‘con-
ceptionoftheworld’,‘commonsense’,‘goodsense’and‘modernprince’.Other
chaptersaredevotedtoinvestigatingtherelationbetweenGramsciandsome
ofthemain‘authors’withwhomheestablishedasignificantrelation(orwho
establishedonewithhim):MarxandEngels,Machiavelli,LabriolaandTogli-
atti, Cornel West, and the main interpreters of his most important category,
thatofhegemony.
Ihopethatthese‘pathways’andthemethodthattheyindicatecanprovide
ausefulsupporttothedevelopmentofGramscistudiesinEnglish,thistoday
being the most important language after Italian in the international biblio-
graphyontheSardinianMarxisttheorist.