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Gramsci’s plan

If Kant’s four questions form the basic architecture of philosophy, Gramsci’s plan is the thread followed within this set philosophical order. Gramsci thought in the “Prison Notebooks” about a series of plans for ordering his explorations of the philosophy, history, and culture of Italy and Europe.⁶² Gramsci’s plan will be understood here as one that Gramsci did not set forth in this way, but which does justice to the passages in the “Prison Notebooks” that can be identified as the philosophy of praxis.

Forever …

Gramsci wanted to work out something “for eternity” in prison, following a fixed plan: Gramsci gave his work in prison a special character. By his own admission, he wrote “for eternity” (in the original German). In a letter to his niece Julia Schucht of March 19, 1927, he formulated his intentions as follows: “I am obsessed with the idea that one must accomplish something that is ‘for eternity’ (“für ewig” German in the original, the translator) – to use that complex Goethean term. (…) In short, I want to occupy myself intensively and systematically, according to a firmly defined plan, with a certain object that will occupy me completely and give direction to my inner life.”⁶³ Gramsci wrote in prison so as not to lose his inner equilibrium, and he did so following a firmly outlined plan. He described his efforts with the German phrase “für ewig.” The claim to write “for eternity” is unusual. In order to get to the bottom of the meaning of “für ewig,” the path to be followed here is not via Goethe, but via Hegel. In Hegel, “für ewig” had a very specific meaning, which can help to understand what Gramsci wanted to imply by it. Hegel used the term “eternal” in his lectures on the philosophy of history. For Hegel, human history was essentially an unfolding of man’s reason across different forms of consciousness. He distinguished in history the ephemeral and the eternal. Hegel clarified this conception by his distinction between the writing of history and the philosophy of history. “History, however, narrates such things as have been at one time, but have disappeared at another and have been displaced by other things. (…) and inasmuch as history is this, to present to us only a series of past figures of knowledge, truth is not to be found in it; for truth is not a past.”⁶⁴

Thought, which is essentially thought, is in and for itself, is eternal: Hegel thus did not only want to write history, not only to record something temporary, but he wanted to approach history in a philosophical way. For philosophy is to recognize “that which is imperishable, eternal, in and for itself; its goal is truth.”⁶⁵ A thought that expresses a necessary determination of reason, that is, that grasps the movement of reason in human society free from temporally bound contingencies and incidentals, is eternal and will endure through the generations. “Thought, which is essentially thought, is in and of itself, is eternal.”⁶⁶ It is only in the light of this interpretation that it becomes possible to classify the expression “for eternity” appropriately, to get a first idea of the direction, depth, and scope of Gramsci’s explorations. Related to Kant’s first question in the variant “What can I know about human history?”, “forever” means that the great epochal upheavals in human history must be investigated by the means of philosophy. Gramsci’s claim to write “for eternity,” that is, to produce not only ephemeral figures of knowledge, also explains why the “Prison Notebooks” should still be relevant today.

Gramsci’s plan is to be understood as a philosophical effort consisting of four parts: The reconstruction of Marx’s philosophy, the critique of Soviet philosophy and its precursors, the conceptualization of the hegemony of the bourgeois class, and the process of emancipation of the subaltern classes within this hegemony. The presentation of Gramsci’s thought along these four themes contains at the same time the core of his philosophy of praxis.

The reconstruction of Marx’s philosophy

Gramsci’s Guiding Principles: The leitmotif, the new synthesis, and the renewal of philosophy. In the “Prison Notebooks,” Gramsci made a series of proposals on how to reconstruct Marx’s philosophy. The method Gramsci recommended consisted of three elements, through which it should become recognizable in the result that the Marxian philosophical design has the status of original and independent philosophy. These three elements are, first, the elaboration of Karl Marx’s philosophical leitmotif, second, the presentation of the philosophical synthesis created by Marx, and third, the way in which Marx fundamentally renewed the conception of philosophy. Starting from these guidelines, the reconstruction of Marx’s philosophy was carried out based on Marx’s writings as well as on the joint works with Engels in the years 1842 to 1848, i.e. up to the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”. The insights gained were additionally compared with the later philosophically oriented passages in various writings of Marx. On this basis, the path back to Kant and the Enlightenment as well as to Hegel and his dialectics was taken to be able to undertake a substantial reconstruction of the Kant-Hegel-Marx line of philosophical development and to illuminate the legacy of classical German philosophy in Marx’s philosophy. Gramsci’s references were of decisive importance in the interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy: in the “Prison Notebooks” Gramsci referred to dialectics as epistemology and as the core substance of historiography. Moreover, Gramsci attributed to dialectics the function of initiating a new stage in the worldwide development of thought, that is, a fundamental transformation of the everyday mind of the bourgeois epoch.

The critique of Soviet philosophy and its precursors

One of the most important problems Gramsci dealt with in the “Prison Notebooks” was the question of how to form a lasting collective will of wage workers and set a line of collective action with concrete goals. A condition for this, according to his philosophy of praxis, was “a ‘dramatic’ account of the attempts made through the centuries to awaken this will, and of the causes of the successive failures.”⁶⁷ For Gramsci, the self-critical reappraisal of the great defeats of the workers’ movement in Germany and Italy from 1917 to 1921 constituted a necessary precondition for a new, historically significant attempt by wage workers to overcome bourgeois society. Gramsci saw one cause for the defeats in the prevailing Marxist philosophy and especially that, which had prevailed in Russia and later in the still young Soviet Union.

The line of development of Soviet philosophy began with Engels’ statements about the importance of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach: Gramsci dealt intensively with Marx’s “10 Theses on Feuerbach” from 1845 in the “Prison Notebooks. In it, Marx subjected Feuerbach’s positions to a sharp critique based on Hegelian philosophy. The philosophy that became the state with the Soviet Union in 1922 took its starting point with a completely different interpretation of Feuerbach’s meaning for Marx and Engels. The relevant formulation, given by Engels in 1886 and used again and again in this context, was: “To Feuerbach, who after all in some respects forms a middle link between Hegel’s philosophy and our conception, we have never returned.”⁶⁸ Marx and Engels are said to have arrived at their materialist philosophy via Feuerbach’s critique of Hegel. Accordingly, Lenin will write in 1908: We invoke Ludwig Feuerbach, “who, as is known (…), was a materialist and through whom, as is well known, Marx and Engels came from Hegel’s idealism to their materialist philosophy.”⁶⁹ Thus, the Kant-Hegel line receded into the background and the line of development represented by Feuerbach came to the fore. At the beginning of this line was the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677). Spinoza was a republican free spirit who had lived in the Dutch Republics in the 16th century. Because Spinoza’s philosophy is important for an understanding of philosophical materialism in the Soviet Union, it is presented in the following chapter on “Kant and the Enlightenment.” Feuerbach’s philosophy, which launched a materialist current opposed to Kant and Hegel, was given an influential scientific worldview in the second half of the 19th century by the German naturalist and Darwinist Ernst Haeckel. Following the philosophical works of Friedrich Engels, party theorists Karl Kautsky of Germany and Georgi Plekhanov of Russia pieced together from these elements what became known as orthodox Marxism. Lenin elaborated a philosophy based on the works of Engels, Kautsky, Plekhanov, and Haeckel, which was later called Marxism-Leninism. Following the critical treatment of this line of development, it becomes clear that Marx’s philosophy and Soviet philosophy gave different and mutually incompatible answers to all 4 Kantian questions. The entire Soviet philosophy was not only incompatible with Marx’s leitmotif – the economic emancipation of the proletariat – but was sharply opposed to it. It led into a philosophical abyss in which the murderous Stalinist practice was already prefigured.

Gramsci’s intellectual opponent in the “Prison Notebooks” was the Russian party theorist Nicolai Bukharin, who was executed by the Stalin regime in 1938: Stalin is mentioned briefly only a few times in the “Prison Notebooks.” Gramsci did not elaborate on the content of his positions. Stalin’s writing “On Dialectical and Historical Materialism,” with which he decisively shaped philosophy in the Soviet Union for the next 20 years and beyond, did not appear until 1938, that is, after Gramsci’s death. Gramsci, however, dealt in many passages with the philosophical positions of the Russian social democrats Plekhanov and Lenin, but especially with those of Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938). Bolshevik Nicolai Bukharin participated in the October Revolution of 1917 and became the leading theoretician – along with Lenin and Trotsky – of the CPSU in the early 1920s. Bukharin was a member of the CPSU Politburo and editor of Pravda. He fell out with Stalin in 1929 over the forced collectivization of Russian peasants and was executed by the Stalin regime in 1938. In the “Prison Notebooks,” Gramsci conducted a critique of the Soviet party and state philosophy based on the writings of Bukharin. Bukharin had already developed in his books the most important elements of later Soviet philosophy under Stalin.

The hegemony of the bourgeois class

The third effort Gramsci undertook in the “Prison Notebooks” was a determination of the basic features of the new forms of bourgeois rule that began to emerge in Europe in the last quarter of the 19th century. As a defensive measure against the growing strength of the social-democratic workers’ movement, Bismarck began to establish welfare-state institutions in the form of accident, health and pension insurance as early as the 1980s. Engels called this process a “revolution from above,” Gramsci a “passive revolution.” At the beginning of the 20th century, a transformation of the industrial organization began in Europe. The new forms of factory organization came from the United States and became known as Taylorism and Fordism. In the course of the implementation of this new type of work, industrial labor was continuously scientifically analyzed and oriented towards the assembly line, the core of the modern industrial manufacturing process. Referring to this, Gramsci conjectured in the “Prison Notebooks” whether Americanism could bring about a new phase of European industrialism on the model of American industry. While the bourgeoisie in Britain and the U.S., as Marx had written in the “Communist Manifesto,” had won exclusive political rule “since the production of great industry and the world market in the modern representative state,”⁷⁰ the late-feudal monarchical regimes continued to exist in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. At the end of World War I, democratic republics with universal suffrage were won in these states. In this form of government, the modern form of rule of the bourgeois class is realized. Gramsci’s attention was directed to this form of rule linked to a democratic consensus when he attempted to determine the historical perspectives of bourgeois society. Universal suffrage, the emergence of a plural press and of parties, associations, and unions, the election of representatives of the state from the chancellor or president down to the mayor by the legislature or by direct vote-all these required profound changes in the relationship between the governed and the governed. The new industrial forms of organization and the emergence of “modern representative states” in Europe were also associated with a fundamental transformation of the everyday mind, in which religion and feudal authorities still played an important role in Gramsci’s day.

Hegemony is the economic, political, and philosophical leadership of society by the bourgeoisie in the democratic republic: Gramsci examined these novel developments in the “Prison Notebooks” and tried to conceptualize them. He brings the changes in the form of bourgeois rule after the collapse of the monarchies and the spread of the American model of capitalism in Europe to the concept of hegemony. Hegemony means that the bourgeoisie is capable of continuously leading the entire society into new productive, political and cultural worlds in the core industrial processes – in the relationship between wage labor and capital – as well as in politics – in the relationship between the governed and the governed. In this process, moderate, innovative, and progressive forces are absorbed, while other oppositional, non-integratable forces are pushed aside. In the democratic republic, bourgeois hegemony is permanently dependent on the maintenance of political consensus among the governed by various groups of intellectuals. Breaches in consensus can lead to temporary political crises, but these can be overcome by reformist efforts and a concomitant renewal of consensus. A profound historical crisis of bourgeois hegemony, Gramsci argued, would only emerge when the limits of the bourgeois mode of production became evident in everyday minds worldwide. The progressive leadership function of the bourgeoisie in the industrial core areas could then be exhausted and challenged by an internationally operating working class, as well as replaced under certain circumstances.

The economic emancipation of the working class

Gramsci took up Marx’s philosophical leitmotif: To the economic emancipation of the working class. The 4th thematic area in Gramsci’s plan consists in the actualization of Marx’s philosophical leitmotif, determined in the reconstruction of his philosophy as the economic emancipation of the working class. In his early writings, Marx distinguished between political emancipation – the project of the Enlightenment – and the economic emancipation of the working class. The two together, Marx argued, only produced general human emancipation. In 1844 Marx wrote, “that the emancipation of society from private property, etc., from bondage, expresses itself in the political form of the emancipation of the workers, not as if it were only a question of their emancipation, but because in their emancipation the generally human is contained. But this is contained in it because all human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all servitude relations are only modifications and consequences of this relation.”⁷¹ In the “Communist Manifesto,” Marx laid out how these social servitude relations could be overcome. Sixteen years later, in the “Provisional Statutes of the International Workingmen’s Association,” he formulated “that the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself,” and “that the economic emancipation of the working class is therefore the great ultimate end to which every political movement, as a means, is to be subordinated …”⁷² Gramsci drew on this philosophical leitmotif of Marx’s in his early writings. The Italian factory councils movement gave him the opportunity to incorporate the idea of the economic emancipation of the working class into his political practice. Thus, starting in 1919, he tried to keep the council movement in Italy free from the stranglehold of the socialist party, as well as from that of the trade unions. “Trade-union action thus proves itself absolutely incapable, in its own sphere and with its own means, of leading the proletariat to its emancipation and of achieving the high and universal goal which it had initially set itself.”⁷³ After the founding of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia in November 1917, Gramsci, in his confrontation with anarchist forces, insisted “that the existence of the socialist state is an essential link in the chain of efforts which the proletariat must undertake for its emancipation, for its freedom.”⁷⁴

Gramsci’s writings on the Italian factory councils movement from 1917 to 1921 and the Prison Notebooks must be must be understood in their inner connection: The starting point in Gramsci’s political life was the deep crisis of the Italian economy at the end of World War I. From Gramsci’s writings in the years 1917 to 1921 emerges the picture of a workers’ movement, independent of the Communist Party, which, transcending all party-political, religious and national boundaries, began to establish control over the industrial production apparatus. It was precisely for this purpose that the factory councils were established in Turin. Based on this process, the workers’ movement was to try to form alliances with the peasants and various groups of intellectuals (lawyers, teachers, journalists, etc.) in order to grow into an economically based leadership role within the framework of the democratic republic. The attempt to define a self-determined way out of the crisis ended in defeat, which was sealed when Mussolini came to power in 1922. In the “Prison Notebooks,” Gramsci wrote about the Italian factory councils movement only in a few places and sometimes in a coded way. Therefore, the emancipation of the working class can only be understood in the context of Gramsci’s writings from the time of the Italian factory councils movement and those before his imprisonment. The article “Once Again on the Organic Capabilities of the Working Class,” which Gramsci published in the party newspaper L’Unita on October 1, 1926, is of particular importance. Only in the synopsis of the “Prison Notebooks” with these articles, which express Gramsci’s practice in the factory council movement, in the Socialist and then in the Italian Communist Party, does the philosophical depth and the historical perspective of a communism in Gramsci’s sense become clear.

The philosophy of praxis is the expression of the subaltern classes that want to educate themselves to the art of governing: All of Gramsci’s strategic reflections in the “Prison Notebooks” following the defeats of 1917 to 1921 are based on the necessary transition from a war of movement to a war of position. Whereas the French Revolution of 1789, the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, and the November Revolution in Germany in 1918 were “wars of movement” against feudal or semi-feudal states, the “war of position” means the recognition of a democratic constitutional reality as the historical terrain on which bourgeois hegemony must be pushed back and overcome. It is from this context that it can be explained that Gramsci used the expression “emancipation of the subaltern classes” in the “Prison Notebooks.” The working class can emancipate itself only in alliance with the peasants and other classes and strata. Gramsci’s plan outlines the conditions and possibilities for the emancipation of the subaltern classes, that totality of people who, primarily as wage workers and peasants, are at the mercy of the developments of the world economy and the competition between nations without influence or will. In the process of the “emancipation of the subaltern classes,” the workers gain their intellectual autonomy and political initiative vis-à-vis bourgeois hegemony, become independent and empower themselves to manage the economy. An essential element of this process of emancipation is the control of production by workers’ or factory councils, that is, workers’ control.⁷⁵ Gramsci wrote an evaluation of the experience of the Turin factory council movement for the Executive Committee of the Communist International on this subject in July 1920.⁷⁶ Various elements from Gramsci’s writings on workers’ control are reflected in the resolutions of the 2nd Congress of the Communist International, which met in July/August 1920. In the “Prison Notebooks,” Gramsci linked the project of the emancipation of the subaltern classes to the philosophy of praxis as follows: The philosophy of praxis “is the expression of these subaltern classes who want to educate themselves to the art of governing and who are interested in knowing all truths, even the unpleasant ones, and in avoiding the (impossible) deceptions of the upper class and, a fortiori, of themselves.”⁷⁷

Gramsci’s plan covers a total of four themes: The reconstruction of Marx’s philosophy, the critique of Soviet philosophy, the hegemony of the bourgeois classes, and the emancipation of the subaltern classes. The aim and purpose of the plan is the philosophical preparation of a second attempt to overcome bourgeois society. In the course of preparing these four themes, Gramsci’s answers to Kant’s four questions become clear, allowing a glimpse of the buried Gramscian communism. Subordinated to the presentation of this plan are many other themes Gramsci dealt with in the “Prison Notebooks.” This is especially true of the reappraisal of Italian history and culture.

62 Gramsci, 1929-1935, Prison Notebooks, vol. 1, issue 1, p. 67 contains a detailed 16-point plan dated February 8, 1929. On Gramsci’s various plans, see the “Introduction” by Valentino Gerratana in Prison Notebooks, vol. 1, Introduction, pp. 24 to 35; Fiori, 1966, The Life of Antonio Gramsci, pp. 216/7; and Thomas, 2009, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony, and Marxism, Historical Materialism Book Series 24, Brill Publisher, Leiden, The Netherlands, Ch. 3.3.1. “Forever …” p. 110ff

63 Quoted from Fiori, 1966, The Life of Antonio Gramsci, p. 216

64 Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel works, vol. 18, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 11

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid, p. 23

67 Gramsci, 1929-1935, Prison Notebooks, vol. 5, issue 8, § 21, p. 956/7

68 Engels, 1886, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Exit of Classical German Philosophy, MEW 21, p. 263 section: “Preliminary Remarks.” On p. 264, Engels wrote: “And likewise a full recognition of the influence which Feuerbach, before all other post-Hegelian philosophers, had on us during our storm and stress period, seemed to me an unpaid debt of honor.”

69 Lenin, 1908, Materialism and Empiriocriticism, Lenin Works, vol. 14, Dietz Verlag Berlin/ DDR, 1959, p. 76

70 Marx/Engels, 1848, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, MEW 4, p. 464

71 Marx, 1844, Economical-Philosophical Manuscripts, MEW 1, p. 521

72 Marx, 1864, Provisional Statutes of the International Workingmen’s Association, MEW 16, p. 14. Written between October 21 and 27, 1864

73 Gramsci, 1919 October, The Unions and the Dictatorship, in Riechers (ed.): Antonio Gramsci, pp. 44-49. Originally published in Ordine Nuovo, October 25, 1919

74 Gramsci, 1919 June, The State and Socialism, Epilogue to an article by For Ever “In Defense of Anarchy,” Ordine Nuovo, June 28-July 5, 1919, in: Antonio Gramsci: On Politics, History and Culture, Röderberg Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 1980, p. 75

75 In an article entitled “Workers’ Control” it says: “Through the fight for control – which does not take in Parliament, but is a revolutionary mass struggle and a propaganda and organizational activity of the historic party of the working class, the Communist Party – the working class must acquire, both spiritually and as an organization, awareness of its autonomy and historic personality.” (Gramsci, 1921, Workers’ Control, unsigned 10th of February 1921, in: Antonio Gramsci – Selections of Political Writings 1921-1926, selected and edited by Quentin Hoare, International Publishers, New York, 1978, S.11)

76 See Gramsci, 1920 July, The Turin Factory Councils Movement, Report to the Executive Committee of the Communist International, in: Riechers (ed.): Antonio Gramsci, Philosophie der Praxis, Eine Auswahl, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1967, pp. 89-100.

77 Gramsci, 1929-1935, Prison Notebooks, vol. 6, issue 10, § 41, p. 1325