Gramsci’s Political Thought

Historical Materialism #38

by Carlos Nelson Coutinho

Focusing on the central concepts of the Prison Notebooks and relating them to the history of modern political ideas, Gramsci's Political Thought demonstrates that Gramsci’s ideas continue to be relevant for understanding today's world. Written by a leading Brazilian Marxist theorist, this book provides one of the most succinct and theoretically focused introductions to Gramsci's thought available in any language.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Political Science

198 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Political philosopher, essayist and translator.

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eurocommunist-sympathetic interpretation of Gramsci that condemns Marxism-Leninism but rehabilitates Togliatti as part of a sort of "true Leninist" trend and successor to Gramsci. Interesting elucidation of Gramsci's critique of Trotsky, which hindered largely on his interpretation of Trotsky as too ridden with Blanquist and insurrectionary thought to embrace over the Comintern mainstream. Demonstrably incorrect assertion that Gramsci's conception of civil society was strictly superstructural—even in the quotes that Coutinho draws from, Gramsci takes care to note "superstructure of civil society" rather than "the superstructural civil society," etc., and other grammatical qualifiers that make it clear that to Gramsci civil society had an economic component, if not analyzed nearly as deeply. Some interesting analysis of Rousseau and Hegel, with Gramsci as their radical-democratic successor, in an appendix.

[Tad Tietze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coutinho is probably Latin America's most significant Gramsci scholar, having edited the Brazilian edition of the Sardinian's complete works. In this short book he provides a decent introduction to the development of Gramsci's political ideas, touching inevitably on the latter's philosophical concerns also. The material is presented clearly and Coutinho is honest in those places he disagrees with Gramsci's conclusions (and in some places offers an account of competing arguments about how Gramsci should be interpreted).

Nevertheless there are some frustrations when this is compared with Peter Thomas's magisterial — although far more complex — The Gramscian Moment (as well as subsequent interventions). Firstly, Coutinho comes from a vaguely Eurocommunist perspective and so often completely misunderstands or dismisses various debates of the Communist International on the basis that its first few years were not appreciative enough of bourgeois democracy. Secondly, he tries too hard to drive a wedge between Marx's and Gramsci's respective definitions of "civil society", and how both present a similar critical view of Hegel's presentation of the civil society-state relationship. This results in a lack of clarity over whether the "integral state" conception means a simple unity of civil society and state, or whether in fact civil society is primary and political society then "overdetermines" it. Thirdly, and related to the previous, he accepts Bobbio's commonly repeated but mistaken view that civil society is purely superstructural for Gramsci. Finally, and flowing from the former, there is constant back and forth about what a proletarian hegemonic project would consist of if it does indeed have no choice but to act on the effective terrain of the integral state — will it accede to the logic of politics or act to undermine and destroy it. This, I guess, fits with the confusions of the Poulantzian view of the state that Coutinho has sympathy for.

[pietr]

dsaadasdsdadss