Table Of ContentThe Dialectic of Position and Maneuver
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Studies in Critical
Social Sciences
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VOLUME 94
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The Dialectic of Position
and Maneuver
Understanding Gramsci’s Military Metaphor
By
Daniel Egan
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Cover illustration: Plate 12 from Jean Errard’s Fortification Réduicte Art and Démonstrée (Paris, 1600).
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction: Marxism and the Military Metaphor 1
2 Gramsci’s Marxism 10
Working Class Organization and Revolutionary Politics 10
Political Relations of Power 19
3 War of Maneuver and War of Position 29
War as Metaphor 32
Analysis of the Metaphor 38
4 Marxism and Insurrection 46
Engels and Insurrection 47
Lenin, Trotsky and Insurrection 49
The Communist International and Insurrection 61
The ‘Gramscian’ Nature of Insurrection 66
5 Soviet Military Doctrine 70
Creating the Red Army 70
Soviet Military Science: Tactics, Operational Art, Strategy 78
Deep Battle and Gramsci’s War of Position 86
6 Marxism and Guerrilla Warfare 89
People’s War 90
The Foco 98
The Gramscian Character of Guerrilla Warfare 105
7 Conclusion: Lessons for Socialist Political Strategy 108
The Dialectic of Position and Maneuver 113
The Gramscian War of Position and Twenty-First Century
Socialism 119
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vi Contents
References 123
Works by Gramsci 123
Secondary Sources on Gramsci 124
Other Works Cited 126
Index 139
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Acknowledgments
Writing is simultaneously an intensely individual act as well as a collective pro-
cess. I have many people to thank for their assistance in this project. I am ap-
preciative of my colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for their
support of this project. I want to especially thank Charlotte Ryan and John
Wooding for their interest in and enthusiasm for the project and for their care-
ful reading of the manuscript, as well as Rose Patton and Debby Friedman for
going above and beyond the call of duty in helping me to track down primary
source material. Elsewhere, Leo Panitch and Laurence Cox expressed interest
in the project and sent me in fruitful directions, Esteve Morera was very gener-
ous with his comments on the manuscript, and Dorothy Holinger and Dana
Skirvin prodded me kindly when I was stalled in my writing. Thanks also go
to David Fasenfest, the editor of the Studies in Critical Social Sciences book
series, and Rosanna Woensdregt at Brill for their support and editorial assis-
tance. In addition, I want to acknowledge the The Public Domain Review (www
.publicdomainreview.org) for the cover illustration (from Jean Errard, Fortifica-
tion Réduicte Art and Démonstrée (Paris, 1600)). Most of all, though, I want to
thank Susan, Daniel and Noa, whose love and encouragement have made all
the difference in the world.
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chapter 1
Introduction: Marxism and the Military Metaphor
Since the publication of his Prison Notebooks, first in Italian in the 1950s and
then in English in the early 1970s, the work of Antonio Gramsci has played a
major role in both critical social theory and radical political strategy. His con-
tributions to social theory have made him one of the most important repre-
sentatives of the neo-Marxist perspective and have served as the foundation
for important developments in the social sciences, ranging from sociology and
political science to geography, anthropology, critical management studies, and
international political economy. The significance of his analysis of the relative
autonomy of political and ideological superstructures from the economic base
of capitalism, however, goes well beyond the left; Peter Thomas, for example,
states that “[a]rguably, Gramsci is today a more popular theorist in mainstream
academic debates than any other thinker from the Marxist tradition, Marx and
Engels themselves not excluded” (Thomas 2010: 199). In addition to Gramsci’s
place within contemporary academic debates, his work has also been an im-
portant resource over the past few decades for left social movements in devel-
oping political strategy (see, for example, Harnecker (2015) and Healey (2012)).
A central element of Gramsci’s social theory is his distinction between ‘war
of maneuver’ and ‘war of position.’ Revolutionary political struggles empha-
sizing direct attacks against the state, with the ultimate goal of seizing state
power, constitute the war of maneuver. The Arab Spring uprisings provide
an excellent contemporary example of the war of maneuver. Contemporary
political struggles in the capitalist core, on the other hand, are more likely to
emphasize a broader, protracted cultural conflict than they are a direct assault
against the state; this is the war of position. The war of position is associated
with Gramsci’s analysis of hegemony, which emphasizes how the power of the
capitalist class is reproduced through a dense network of cultural practices and
institutions which generate consent for its rule among the subordinate classes.
While the state’s exercise of coercive power remains an important bulwark of
capitalist class power, the construction of a consciousness which takes the ex-
isting mode of production as a given – as the best of all possible worlds, as a
permanent and unchangeable feature of human existence, or as one in which
individualized forms of resistance or accommodation are all that are deemed
possible – provides a much deeper, more penetrating form of class power. Any
revolution which does not address the hegemonic foundations of ruling class
power will come to naught. As a result, revolutionary strategy requires more
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2 chapter 1
generalized forms of cultural struggle and the creation of a counter-hegemonic
power, one which offers a ‘common sense’ supportive of a new mode of pro-
duction which can challenge and replace the existing system of hegemonic
power.
The war of position has defined struggles against neoliberal austerity over
the past few decades. The expansion of corporate power has brought with it
intensified class inequality, the erosion of liberal democratic forms of political
accountability, and the growing privatization of the public sphere. A central
element of the neoliberal onslaught has been the assertion that ‘there is no
alternative’ to global monopoly capitalism, one that seemed to be confirmed
by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As such, the struggles of subordi-
nate classes against neoliberal austerity have in large part sought to overcome
this assumption. Occupy Wall Street is an important example of this type of
struggle. Its explicit and uncompromising challenge to the ‘common sense’ of
global capitalism lay not only in the substance of its message but in its method
as well. Through its collective decision making process reflected in the general
assembly, its rotation of tasks, and its community-based p rovision of necessi-
ties such as shelter, food, and medical services, Occupy served as a concrete
expression, albeit in a preliminary and microscopic way, of a solidaristic al-
ternative to the market.1 Given the significance that constructing a new, more
emancipatory ‘common sense’ has played in Occupy and similar movements
throughout the capitalist core, understanding Gramsci’s use of the military
metaphor in discussion of revolutionary political strategy takes on a renewed
urgency. The purpose of this book is to examine critically the nature of this
metaphor: its origins, effectiveness, and limitations.
For Gramsci, the use of the military metaphor in his analysis of revolution-
ary political strategy flowed in part from the significant role that war and mili-
tary matters played in Italian intellectual history, particularly in the work of
Machiavelli (Fontana 1993). Machiavelli took great interest in military matters.
He argued, for example, that rulers should avoid basing their military forces on
the use of mercenaries and instead argued for the creation of a citizens’ militia.
This point was of sufficient importance that he repeated this point in all of
his major works – The Prince (Machiavelli 1950a), The Discourses (Machiavelli
1950b), and The Art of War (Machiavelli 1990). In The Art of War he provided a
detailed blueprint, based on the military forces of ancient Rome, of a strong,
disciplined military organization which could serve as a model for contempo-
rary rulers. In this work he addressed matters ranging from the proper size and
1 For more detail on the connection between Gramsci’s war of position and Occupy, see Rehm-
ann (2013) and Smucker (2014).
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