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Foreword

I already became interested in Antonio Gramsci at the beginning of the 1980s as an activist in the anti-nuclear and peace movement and the freshly founded party “The Greens”. Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and civil society were already making the rounds back then. I considered Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks” – albeit rather shadowy at the time – a key document for understanding Marx’s philosophical intentions and the phenomenon of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. From the mid-1980s, I studied political science as well as economics and international law at the University of Hamburg. In 1989, I completed a one-year study at the University of New Mexico/Albuquerque with a Master of Arts in Political Science. In 1991, I rewrote the Master Thesis and published it as a working paper of the Research Group European Communities (FEG) No.5 with Prof. Frank Deppe under the title “Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony, Historical Bloc and Intellectual Leadership in International Politics”. In 1995, I was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg. I abandoned a planned career at the university in the following years for various reasons. For many years, I have been working as a partner manager for an IT company in Hamburg. More than 10 years ago, I rediscovered the old documents from the 80s and 90s. The topic grabbed me again and so I turned “Gramsci’s Plan” into an exciting and work-intensive hobby. Parallel to the publication of this book, the website www.gramsci-plan.net will go online, providing information about the book at hand. This website will also provide a forum for a lively discussion of philosophical issues and specifically the “Prison Notebooks.” Perhaps at some point, there will be enough material for a second edition, incorporating questions and criticisms from readers. My special thanks go to my colleague Lisa Horwege, who reviewed the introduction for errors and clumsy formulations.

Almost no month goes by without hundreds of thousands of people in some nation protesting against a repressive regime and demanding a democratic republic. In the past 12 months, these protests have taken place primarily in Sudan, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Belarus, Thailand, but also as Black Lives Matter in the United States and around the world. I would like to take this opportunity to express my solidarity with all those who are risking their freedom, physical integrity, and lives in the struggle for the democratic republic.

Gramsci’s Plan – Volume 1: Kant and the Enlightenment 1500 to 1800 is an interesting read even for philosophical nonprofessionals because …

- the philosophy of the Enlightenment is presented in comprehensible language and embedded in the 300-year struggle for the liberation of the bourgeoisie against feudalism,

- the importance of reason in our knowledge, in the sciences, and in the democratic republic is elaborated based on Kant’s writings,

- in times of threat with Kant’s philosophy a reassurance can be made regarding the foundations of the democratic republic and the worldwide spread of this form of government since the First French Republic,

- Kant’s “categorical imperative” must be reinterpreted as a fundamental political norm of the democratic republic, if his ethics is understood as a “German theory of the French Revolution” (Marx),

- countering the postmodern discrediting of the philosophy of history by placing the current struggle for the democratic republic in the context of Kant’s goal of history, which called for a democratically organized and federally unified humanity on the grounds of reason.

“Gramsci’s Plan” is conceived from the outset as a series of books that build on each other chronologically and factually. The series is to be concluded with Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks” under the question “What am I to do?”. Chapter 1, “Gramsci’s Plan and the Legacy of Classical German Philosophy,” is an introduction to the basic premises and questions of the “Prison Notebooks” and the author’s project. Chapter 2 “Kant and the Enlightenment 1500 to 1800” presents the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism and, embedded in it, the development of Enlightenment philosophy from the Renaissance/Reformation to the French Revolution and Kant. The first volume is to be followed by others, the contents of which have been conceived and, on average, about 30 % of which have already been written. Volume 2 is 60% complete and, if the author’s working conditions remain the same, maybe published in the second quarter of 2021. The preliminary planning is as follows:

Volume 2	Chapter 3	Hegel and the Dialectic 1800 to 1830
	Chapter 4	Marx and the Inversion of Hegel’s Dialectic 1843 to 1883
Volume 3	Chapter 5	Marx and the Emancipation 1830 to 1848
Volume 4	Chapter 6	The Categorical Imperatives of Kant and Marx
	Chapter 7	Marx, Engels and the Liberation of the Proletariat 1848 to 1883
Volume 5	Chapter 8	Darwin, Haeckel, Engels and the Dialectic 1850 to 1895
Volume 6	Chapter 9	Orthodox Marxism, Lenin and Materialism 1883 to 1914
Volume 7	Chapter 10	Lenin and the October Revolution in Russia 1917–1921
	Chapter 11	Luxemburg and the November Revolution in Germany 1918-1921
	Chapter 12	Gramsci and the Two Red Years in Italy 1919-1920
	Chapter 13	Bukharin, Trotsky, Stalin and Lyssenko – Philosophy in the Soviet Union 1917-1938
Volume 8	Chapter 14	Gramsci and the Dialectic 1929-1935
	Chapter 15	Gramsci and Bourgeois Hegemony 1929-1935
Volume 9	Chapter 16	The Everyday Mind and Dialectical Reason
	Chapter 16	Gramsci’s Plan – What Should I Do?
	Chapter 16	What Can I Hope For?

For more up-to-date information, please visit the website

www.gramsci-plan.net

Hamburg, September 16, 2020