Gramsci & Fascism

Antonio Gramsci (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

3,281 words

The following essay was written by Serhiy Zaikovsky, a Ukrainian historian, translator, and writer who was one of the founders of the Plomin publishing house. Born in 1994, Zaikovsky also served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was killed in action on March 24, 2022.

The Statesman, Niccolò Machiavelli’s seminal work, was conceived as something that was intended to codify the laws of politics and the mechanisms of the exercise of power that had not yet been expressed by anyone (since antiquity?) and turn them into clear rules that would be understandable to every prince. In the Ukrainian translation by Anatoly Perepadi, the treatise contains 73 pages. It deals with the beginning of the sixteenth century. But when Antonio Gramsci — who was the founder of the Italian Communist Party, as well as the leading Italian theoretician and practitioner of Marxism and a brilliant journalist and orator — found himself behind bars by the will of fate (and the will of Benito Mussolini), he decided, while looking for salvation and out of boredom, to do exactly as Machiavelli had 400 years before him. He produced 29 densely-packed handwritten notebooks, which in terms of the printed text (we are consulting the classic critical and reconstructed edition published by Einaudi, under the editorship of Valentino Gerratana, in 1975) contain 2,353 pages — without notes, indexes, or other apparatus. It is scary to imagine what our descendants are doomed to face . . .

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Today, mainly thanks to his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci’s work is considered an absolute classic of political thought. He is often respected by almost all the strands of the Left, from orthodox Marxists to neo-Marxist “renegades,” with the exception of the French New Left, because they have their own guru in Louis Althusser. Even in the stifling intellectual atmosphere of the Soviet Union, an edition of Gramsci’s selected works in three volumes was issued at the end of the 1950s. There were also some fictionalized biographies of the great Italian Communist published for Pioneers and Komsomol members. This is in spite of the fact that he wrote about the concept of cultural hegemony, which is absolutely heretical for Marxist-Leninists, as it turns Marx’s teachings upside down, attributing the leading role in social processes to culture, and to intellectuals as its creator. Even the role of the revolutionary class is transferred by Gramsci from the proletariat to the proletarian intellectuals: “Each social group, which arises on the basis of the performance of some of the functions of economic production, at the same time organically creates one or more layers of intellectuals who give this group homogeneity and awareness of their own function not only in the economic sphere, but also socially and politically” (i.e., intellectuals and the organization of cultural activity).

His works were only carefully read in Italy. Films have been made about him, hundreds of books have been published, and conferences are held. This is primarily thanks to his personal contribution toward the creation of the Communist movement in Italy as an organizer and activist (he was likewise a close friend of his successor as party leader, Palmiro Togliatti), and only secondarily to his status as a thinker. During his imprisonment, Gramsci was known primarily as a member of the Italian parliament, a leader of the Communist movement, and a journalist. He refused to publish a collection of his topical journalistic articles while in prison. In the Prison Letters, Gramsci laments that his fame — the exaggerated legend of the leader of the Red opposition in a fascist country — hindered him much more than it helped him, especially when he came face-to-face with the gray reality of the four walls of his prison cell:

I am convinced that even when everything is lost or seems lost, one should calmly return to work, starting from the beginning. I am convinced that one should always rely only on oneself and one’s own strength, not expect anything from anyone, and therefore never be disappointed in anyone. We must strive to do only what we know and can do, and go our own way. Here is my highest moral position: Some consider me the devil, and for some I am almost a saint. But I don’t want to be a martyr or a hero. I consider myself an ordinary person who has his own deep convictions, and who would not trade them for anything in the world.

Desperately looking for salvation from the intellectual degradation that was inevitably approaching, Gramsci carried out his project for two years. He wanted to trace the history of the influence of Italian intellectuals on the social processes of the nineteenth century. Later, after being transferred to solitary confinement and given permission to write (it is interesting that in terms of reading, he was never restricted at all; prison censorship was such in Fascist Italy that political prisoners were provided with access to the daily press as well as the endless communications from his comrades), he began to accumulate the materials that would provide the basis of his research. He constantly revised his outline and gradually expanded the subject matter, adding both American Fordism and literary criticism to its scope. In November 1930, gaining momentum, Gramsci wrote to his wife’s sister, comrade Tania Schucht:

I have focused on three or four main topics, one of which concerns the cosmopolitan function of Italian intellectuals before the eighteenth century, which is later divided into many sections: the Renaissance, Machiavelli, etc. If I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with the necessary material, I think I could write a really interesting book . . . In the meantime, I am taking notes, because reading the relatively small amount of things I have makes me remember that I had read it a long time ago.

The Prison Notebooks were the first — as well as the last — work that he ever conceived, detached from the circumstances of the era, and are thus disinterested and objective. Gramsci was definitely a Communist. He was non-ideological, as he himself said, but a Marxist. Fascinated by the October Revolution, he wrote prophetic things in 1917:

One gets the impression that today the Bolsheviks are a spontaneous expression of biological necessity — they had to take power so that the Russian people would not become victims of a terrible calamity; so that the Russian people, who had engaged in colossal effort for their own survival, would not feel the fangs of a hungry wolf on their throats, and so that Russia does not turn into a huge slaughterhouse of merciless beasts tearing each other to pieces. (“Revolution against Capital”)

Either purposefully or not, this was to ignore the fact that Russia became a slaughterhouse of merciless beasts precisely thanks to the Bolsheviks. But Gramsci is rooted in Russian Communist culture. He visited Moscow as a member of Italy’s Comintern, and while he was receiving treatment in a sanatorium, he met his future wife, Yulia Shucht. She belonged to a social stratum that could be called the new revolutionary nobility: a Bolshevik herself as well as the daughter of a Bolshevik, her sister was also in the party, as was her brother and so on. Gramsci remained unquestionably loyal to Lenin and later Stalin’s line, being the author of the well-known slogan “Trotsky is the whore of fascism” . . .

The Prison Notebooks, if you take into account their orientation and, of course, the conditions of having been written behind bars and thus with the threat of censorship and all the other unpleasant realities, ignore the present. We find few reflections on the situation of the time in which it was written, but there was still a place for Trotsky:

It can be said that Bronstein [Trotsky’s birth name], who outwardly appears to be a “Westerner,” is actually a cosmopolitan and passes superficial judgements on both national as well as European problems. Ilyich [Lenin], on the other hand, was deeply nationalistic, and besides, he clearly understood the situation in the other European countries . . .

Gramsci began to be treated in various clinics starting in 1933, and was not even kept under guard there, until his death in 1937. But he still had to react to the contemporary political situation, and always remained faithful to this orthodoxy.

Objectivity and disinterestedness are biting things, however. Was it not because of this that in France in the 1970s, not least thanks to the neglect of Gramsci’s work by French Left-wing intellectuals, that such a chimera as “Right-wing Gramsciism” became possible? And the main “drummer” of the twentieth century should be see as Pier Paolo Pasolini. Pasolini was a figure who was absolutely alien to everyone, including (first of all) Communists, and besides that, he was nevertheless seen as interesting and sympathetic to everyone, even those who belonged to the neo-fascist camp. He is appreciated by all who have a sense of taste and who can appreciate the sharpness of his thought (we will certainly write about his “Corsair letters” on his difficult relations with politics later).

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History’s mockery of the work of the main Italian Communist, who has been more important to the Italian Communists even than Lenin (or, God forbid, Marx), is eloquently represented in a recent incident: a reprint of the Prison Notebooks is being prepared in France. In April [2022], the country’s presidential elections are to be held, the results of which are by no means a foregone conclusion. There are two Right-wing candidates, the writer Éric Zemmour and the traditional populist candidate Marine Le Pen, who are gaining more and more popularity, while Macron managed to beat everyone else to death . . . A mainstream French weekly, L’Express, has published an article entitled “From Zemmour to Mélenchon: Gramsci, a Practical Guide for Politicians: “We used to read Machiavelli, now we read Gramsci.” Objectivity and disinterestedness.

Some have even considered how Gramsci’s view of the features of the objective laws governing the nature of politics — the acquisition of political power through cultural hegemony; the leading role played by intellectuals and artists in changing, even if indirectly, public opinion in favor of some movement or party — can be seen in the rise of Fascism. The same can be said of the German “Conservative Revolution” or the traditionalist and anti-Semitic cultural consensus in interwar Romania. In general, it can be seen in any country or era that broke free from the shackles of a dominant cultural environment. Tracing this objectivity, the English conservative philosopher Roger Scruton essentially spat in the face of the entire Leftist, anti-fascist Gramsciian tradition, declaring that:

In fact, he [Gramsci] learned the lesson of the Fascists, the lesson of “corporatism,” which is the true source of his theory of “hegemony.” Society, as Gramsci understood it, consists of thousands of small institutions, thousands of associations, and thousands of various patterns of communication and response. To embrace them all and impose a particular point of view on them while preserving the powerful hegemony they contain through the iron discipline of the party leadership: This is the secret of politics.

It was this that brought the Fascists to power, and for the first time since the birth of the modern Italian state, they created a unity of common purpose which gave form and coherence to the mass of their followers, and gave strength and principle to the vanguard party which governed them.

In short, the theory of the Prison Notebooks is really a theory of fascism: a force that preempted Gramsci’s own ambitions by realizing them using someone else’s hands. When in his first article Gramsci described the proletariat as an ideal unity, the fascio, he envisioned in his hopes exactly the form of social order that his rival would later achieve.

The philosophy of praxis — so similar to Mussolini’s “philosophical dynamism” and steeped in Georges Sorel’s apologia for violence — retains its charm for the intellectual precisely because it promises both power over the masses and a mystical identification with them. But this is the promise of Fascism, and if the Left needs to constantly define the fascist as its main enemy, then there is no need to look for explanations anymore. Because what better way to hide one’s intentions than to attribute them to the enemy? (Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left)

What terrible appropriation! Unforgivable! Inadmissible! The regime and the idea that killed Gramsci now claims his intellectual legacy . . . But did Fascism really kill Antonio Gramsci? After all, we know very little about this author.

Did you know, for example, that Gramsci had Albanian origins on his father’s side? In one of the letters, he writes:

. . . I have no race; my father was of Albanian origin (his family had fled from Epirus during the war of 1821, but quickly Italianized). My culture is Italian, however, and I mostly this world; I never felt torn between two worlds. My Albanian origin was not a problem for me, because Francesco Crispi was also an Albanian who received an Italian education in an Albanian boarding school.

Have you seen a full-length photo of him? As a child, Gramsci suffered from bone tuberculosis, and due to complications, he suffered from growth problems. So it was that Antonio Gramsci, the enemy of Fascism and the leader of the main Communist party in Europe, actually looked like a funny circus clown. Of the 150 centimeters of the world proletariat’s most famous political prisoner, more than ten fell on lush hair. This is connected with a series of funny excesses, as described in his letters to Tanya Shucht:

There was one type with us, a stunning specimen of an anarchist-ultra-individualist who called himself “The One” and refused to give information to anyone, especially the police and the authorities in general. “I am the One — period!” This was his answer. Among the crowd of prisoners, “Edyny” recognized among the criminals a guy he knew, a Sicilian (“Edyny” probably came from Naples or its surroundings) who had been arrested for reasons either of a political or a criminal nature. They began to introduce themselves to each other. I was also asked to join in. Here “The One” looked at me carefully and then asked: “Gramsci, Antonio?” “Yes, Antonio,” I answered. “It can’t be,” he objected. “Antonio Gramsci must be a giant, not such a midget.” He said nothing more, retired to a corner, sat down on a device which I dare not describe here, and plunged, like Marius at the ruins of Carthage, into the contemplation of his lost illusions. Later, as long as we were still in the same room, he stubbornly avoided resuming the conversation with me, and when we parted, he left without saying goodbye.

Or:

The leader of the convoy entered, a Brigadier of enormous stature; during the roll call, he stopped at my name and asked if I was a relative of the “famous deputy Gramsci.” I replied that I was Gramsci’s deputy. He looked at me with obvious sympathy, muttering something indistinct. At all the stops afterwards, I heard how he, talking to the people gathered around the prison car, was speaking about me, always calling me “the famous deputy” (I must add that with his help I was given much more bearable shackles). He told me that he had always imagined my appearance to be “cyclopean,” so in this respect he is very disappointed . . .

Gramsci was often very sick. At the age of four he got so sick that the doctors pronounced him dead, and his mother bought him a small children’s coffin . . . In Moscow, he went to a sanatorium due to nervous exhaustion, and so on. He was an unlikely combination: a sickly slob, an Albanian, and the founder of the Italian Communist Party. And yet what he wrote about his first years of imprisonment runs contrary to what all his comrades and comrades were saying as they constantly cultivated the myth of the indomitable martyr of the Fascist dictatorship. The regime festered him, but did not break him. Of this, he writes:

I get up in the morning at 6:30, and take half an hour to rise; I make myself hot coffee . . . then I clean the cell and wash up. At 7:30 I get half a liter of milk, still hot, which I immediately drink. At 8 o’clock I go out into the yard for a two-hour walk. I take a book with me, walk, read, smoke a few cigarettes. At noon I get a free lunch, and from there, in the evening, dinner. I can’t finish everything, although they give much more than in Rome. I go to bed at 7 PM and read until about 11 PM. I receive five daily newspapers during the day: Corriere, Stampa, Popolo d’Italia, Giornale d’Italia, and Sekolo. I signed up for the library and got a double subscription there, so I have the right to eight books a week. I buy a few more magazines, as well as the Milan financial and economic newspaper Il sole. So, I read all the time. I have already read [Fridtjof] Nansen’s book about his polar expedition as well as other books, which I will tell you about later. I haven’t had any health problems, except for a cold in the first days.

Can you imagine if the main opposition figure and an enemy of the regime in the Soviet Union had been given steamed milk and supplied with a variety of daily newspapers while in prison, and that when he got sick he would be transferred to a clinic? They even fed them like those American blacks in the famous anecdote: They are indeed malnourished, not because of hunger, but on the contrary, because they cannot eat such huge portions.

In another letter:

I have managed to arrange myself in such a way that I get a diet that almost satisfies me, and I think I have even become fat. In addition, I have begun to devote a little time to gymnastics, both in the morning and in the afternoon; such indoor gymnastics is hardly very effective, but it is still very useful for me. It goes like this: I try to do exercises that make all the joints, all my muscles work, so I do them systematically and try to increase the number of movements every week. The fact that this is useful is, in my opinion, supported by the fact that during the first few days I felt completely exhausted and could only do one exercise a few times, while now I’ve managed to triple the number of movements and don’t feel any pain afterwards. I think that this innovation also has a good effect on me psychologically, distracting me from meaningless books that were written only to kill time. Maybe it was necessary. . . . A sedentary way of life — and not only behind bars, but also on the outside, dear reader — is very harmful to health, especially if it doesn’t get any better, anyway . . .

In general, from an objective point of view Gramsci could really only thank the Fascists for organizing this ten-year “resort” for him, forcing this restless kid to undertake a grand and eternal project of 2,353 pages (and remember that most of the notebooks were unfinished or only started). As for the Fascists, they didn’t need to read Gramsci at all. The movements around D’Annunzio and Marinetti already knew how to deal with cultural power. But we, their descendants, might need it. Who knows? At least the French insist there is something to learn. And they are rarely wrong.

Well, we will read, and maybe we will translate something from it, and we will share it with you. All the same, a complete Ukrainian translation does not yet exist (only a translation of selected excerpts of 200 pages by the Communist R. Tysa), and most likely there will not be one for a long time.