Notes on:
Anderson, P. (1976-77) 'The Antinomies of
Antonio Gramsci'. New Left Review,
100: 5-81
[Serious revolutionary politics discussed here! I
read it years ago -- there are some gaps]
'The price of ecumenical admiration is necessarily
ambiguity' (5). We need to discuss the
problems raised by Prison Notebooks and
other writings, especially in the context of the
electoral success of communist parties in Italy,
France and Spain [those were the days!]. NLR
had discussed the influence of Gramsci in
1964, and there had been a response by EP Thompson
in Socialist Register 1965. This is
a philological reading of Gramsci, covering the
notion of hegemony and its connection with the
ideas of wars of position and maneuver, or the
notion of civil society as a series of trenches
and so on. The differences between east and
west are also discussed. Permanent revolution is
seen as an notion where the conditions are such
that even civil society is unable to become a
trench around the fortress. A war of
position leads to a policy of united front, and
here, the State is the outer ditch.
However, there are ambiguities about civil society
and whether the economy is in it. It is also
not clear who is being addressed in these
commentaries, possibly the Comintern? This would
explain references to the united front policy at
least. The permanent revolution is seen as a
Jacobin strategy before the emergence of the
modern state, operative up to the end of the
Commune. Since 1870, the State has been
balanced with civil society and has become the
mere outer surface of a much more massive
structure.
Hegemony, especially 'civil hegemony' is a concept
belonging to the notion of war of position.
The term is not original to Gramsci, but was used
by Russian Social Democrats to oppose economism
(15) and to ensure the need to lead the
proletariat. It was picked up by Lenin in
1902 in What is To Be Done, where it is
linked to problems of political organization and
the formation of alliances, and after 1917 where
the problem of hegemony involved smashing the
bourgeois state. Lenin contrasted hegemonic
and corporate politics, and abolished the term and
the contrast as Soviets were established—he began
to talk about dictatorship of the proletariat
instead. However, there was still an
international dimension, where the need was to
assert proletarian leadership. Nevertheless,
the term was not used to account for bourgeois
rule until 1922.
We find the gramscian use of the term appearing in
Third International debates to refer to alliances
with other classes and the emergence of the
working class party exercising cultural
leadership. Here, the proletariat was to
compromise with the peasants but dictate to the
bourgeoisie (19). A new emphasis for the
term appeared in the discussion of forming the
unitary blocs. These obvious roots for the
term were blurred by Gramsci's need while writing
in prison to use 'floating referents'(20).
For example, talking about the dominant class
could mean either the bourgeoisie or the
proletariat, and there was a tendency to see both
as equivalent. The style did allow Gramsci
to develop his original analysis, to extend
Marxism to different structures in the west.
He did this through reading Machiavelli on power
and this led to the general theory of political
possibilities, for example whether to use force or
consent, outright domination or hegemony. It
was not originally applied to options for
proletarian rule but to the bourgeoisie, producing
a new role for intellectuals to undertake
investigations of the site of hegemony in
capitalism. There were still ambiguities,
however—hegemony was the opposite of coercion, or
a mixture of the two (22): if a mixture, it means
hegemony is located in both state and civil
society.
Slippages and aporia arise in the answers
to these questions raised by ambiguity. Some
responses omitted economic power altogether,
focusing on political or cultural power
instead. Some readings stressed binary
oppositions between the economic and the cultural
rather than complex concrete interrelations.
Different models emerged:
- An east/west model,
seeing cultural politics as the site of
struggle in the west rather than a struggle
with the state. The state was seen as
monopolizing force, while civil society
monopolized hegemony. The state could
permit working class access to state power so
the main problem lay in civil society.
On the other hand the parliamentary state is
really an 'ideological linchpin' (28),
offering a fictive unity of people, falsely
universalized, with popular support resulting
from this trick. The legitimacy of the
state became more important than economic
growth or the other apparatuses of civil
society. The state was powerful because
the masses believed in formal equality and in
popular sovereignty as its principle
(30). There is no real account of this
in Gramsci himself, though.
- The balance model.
The state does hegemony not just civil
society, through the education system and the
law. Civil society apparently offers no
coercion any more—only the state does both
coercion and consent. Here, the term
hegemony is too general and lacks specificity,
arguing that for example laws and customs are
not different in their effects [maybe, 32].
- The enlarged state,
incorporating both political and civil
society, as a whole social formation.
State power is now emphasized. This is
the approach taken by Althusser,
and it involves in effect an abolition of
civil society. However, the concept does
appear in the 18th Brumaire, and is
developed by Gramsci as a necessary
intermediary between the economy and the
state. This is seen to correct
Althusser's abolition of the term which had
consequences for example in equating bourgeois
democracy and fascism, and blurring the
specific effectivity of different ideological
institutions (36). Interest in the
Chinese cultural revolution emphasized this
criticism.
Gramsci's position was influenced by philosophers
like Croce, who saw the State as a higher
entity. Although this concept was
materialized, it is still responsible for his
notion of the extended state. With this
notion, Gramsci's appeal widened, especially post
- War, since the concept appeared to be able to
offer analysis of both fascist and parliamentary
states.
However, does the power of the capitalist state
lie in cultural hegemony? If so,
parliamentary reformism is the way forward.
However, if the State and culture is connected in
more complex ways, further research is
needed. Similarly, what if there is
domination by culture and determination by
coercion simultaneously? Normal conditions
might involve cultural domination, but there could
still be a silent background force of coercion,
while in crisis, coercion is both dominant and
deterministic. Overall, the relation between
proletariat and bourgeoisie is unlikely to ever
just be cultural, but this is obscure in
Gramsci. There is one implication too which
is never allowed in Gramsci -- that the
proletariat can gain cultural domination over the
bourgeoisie before they seize power.
However, some people have seen this is a
possibility, again showing the ambiguity and
confusion in the term hegemony. Such a view
would lead to an argument that there was no need
to smash the State, that it was possible to evade
military operations [as in Autonomism?] .
Gramsci certainly overstated cultural moments of
rebellion (48), and also underestimated the feudal
nature of the Russian State, which rather ruins
his apparent list of comparative options.
This failure was, of course, matched by Bolshevik
inability to grasp the notion of western
states. The result was a simple polarity or
oscillation between power and consent.
Bordiga's analysis is better -- the state in the
west is also more efficient at coercion!
The notion of the war of position has also had an
effect on strategy. The concept assumes that
revolution is on the cards by 'abstractly
affirming the revolutionary character of the time
itself' (56), a mistake also made by Lukacs.
This lead to partial armed struggle by the German
Party, as an adventurous version of Second
International reformism, believing that a
'revolutionary offensive' would provoke a crisis
and win over the proletariat. What it led to
was ill organized fighting in Germany, defeat and
demoralisation (57). This tendency was
'corrected' by Trotsky and the Third
International, and this led Gramsci to suggest the
notion of war of maneuver, which actually
specifically referred to this fighting. The
eventual advocacy of a united front instead
reflected the Comintern line, based on Lenin's
speech, on the necessity to work with other
groups, including the army. However, Gramsci
and others had rejected this strategy for
Italy. The Comintern itself took an ultra
left turn in 1928 and this sponsored a new
adventurism in Italy, and this led to Gramsci
reactivating the notion of the united front when
in prison (60). The notion of a war of
position was intended to be applied generally in
this situation.
The background again is relevant, especially the
debates between Kautsky and Luxemberg.
Kautsky's position was similar to Gramsci's [on
united front?] (62), and ended in
Fabianism—Luxemberg's reply said that the whole
strategy really concealed a hope for electoral
victory. These dangers were unknown to
Gramsci, though, but his policy never integrated
insurrection firmly into the war of position, and
there was no real account of escalation to a
revolutionary state. He should have
specified that the war of position would lead to
armed assault, but because of his generalizations
between civil society and state, the war of
position became a strategy for the whole
revolution (70). Economic crisis was seen as
an indication of the near victory of the war of
position, and a sign that hegemony was developing
within the revolutionary bloc.
However, this argument contained shades of
authoritarianism and the need for discipline [and
patience] inside the working class. The real
revolution would arise instead from proletarian
democracy and experience. The war of
position is really a stoical adjustment to defeat
rather than a strategy, a sign that Gramsci's
thought had lost its way, although he was always a
militant personally. Trotsky was better, in
advocating united front and military action,
combining wars of position and wars of maneuver in
real wars.
Gramsci neglects to discuss open coercion by the
state and insurrection by the working class.
Insurrection must divide the State, win over
troops and go on to fight militarily. Real
worker democracies provide experience of the
limits of bourgeois types, and only then would a
united front be possible. Overall 'the
imperative need remains to win the working class'
(78).
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