Las antinomias de Antonio Gramsci

by Perry Anderson, Lourdes Bassols (Translator), J.R. Fraguas (Translator)

A major essay on the thought of the great Italian Marxist An explosive analysis of the central strategic concepts in the thought of the great Italian Marxist, Anderson’s essay has been the subject of book-length attacks across four decades for its disentangling of the hesitations and contradictions in Gramsci’s highly original usage of such key dichotomies as East and West, domination and direction, hegemony and dictatorship, state and civil society, war of position and war of movement. In a critical tribute to the international richness of Gramsci’s work, it shows how deeply embedded these notions were in the revolutionary debates in Tsarist Russia and Wilhemine Germany, in which arguments criss-crossed between Plekhanov, Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, Lukács and Trotsky, with contemporary echoes in Brecht and Benjamin. A new preface considers the objections this account of Gramsci provoked and the reasons for them.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Sociology, Theory, Ebooks

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1976

About the author

Perry Anderson is an English Marxist intellectual and historian. He is Professor of History and Sociology at UCLA and an editor of the New Left Review. He is the brother of historian Benedict Anderson.

He was an influence on the New Left. He bore the brunt of the disapproval of E.P. Thompson in the latter's The Poverty of Theory, in a controversy during the late 1970s over the scientific Marxism of Louis Althusser, and the use of history and theory in the politics of the Left. In the mid-1960s, Thompson wrote an essay for the annual Socialist Register that rejected Anderson's view of aristocratic dominance of Britain's historical trajectory, as well as Anderson's seeming preference for continental European theorists over radical British traditions and empiricism. Anderson delivered two responses to Thompson's polemics, first in an essay in New Left Review (January-February 1966) called "Socialism and Pseudo-Empiricism" and then in a more conciliatory yet ambitious overview, Arguments within English Marxism (1980).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_An...

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A careful working through Gramsci’s key concept, hegemony, which is subject to varying presentations in the prison notebooks. The concept is keyed into a series of oppositions: state v. civil society, east v. west, war of position v. war of maneuver, and so on (37). Complicating this presentation, Gramsci’s work is generally afflicted by the necessity of working “within the archaic and inadequate apparatus of Croce or Machiavelli” (30), but also the necessity of speaking in cipher, on account of the fascist prison authorities.

We see that the concept of the state is unstable insofar as it simultaneously in Gramsci “contrasts with,” “encompasses,” and “is identical with” civil society (42). Another factor that generates ambiguity is that the term ‘hegemony’ “had a long prior history” (43) in left writings, such as in Plekhanov, Lenin, and others—wherein it involved the labor movement’s internal politics and relations to the bourgeois revolution. There’s some nuance here, but ultimately “Gramsci extended the notion of hegemony from its original application to the perspectives of the working class in a bourgeois revolution against a feudal order, to the mechanisms of bourgeois rule over the working class in a stabilized capitalist society” (53). In this analysis, hegemony is not “a pole of ‘consent,’ in contrast to another of ‘coercion,’ but is itself a synthesis of consent and coercion” (57).

My lovely non-marxist significant other has drawn little hearts around this passage, which I also highlighted in a more conventional manner:

elections never produce a government dedicated to the expropriation of capital and the realization of socialism. Fifty years after the advent of universal suffrage, such a phenomenon seems further away than ever. What is the reason for this paradox? It must lie in the prior conditioning of the proletariat before the electoral moment as such. The central locus of power must therefore be sought within civil society—above all, in capitalist control of the means of communication (press, radio, television, cinema, publishing), based on control of the means of production (private property). In a more sophisticated variant, the real inculcation of voluntary acceptance of capitalism occurs not so much through the ideological indoctrination of the means of communication as in the invisible diffusion of commodity fetishism through the market of instinctual habits of submission induced by the work routines of factories and offices—in other words, directly within the ambit of the means of production themselves. (63)

What’s more, “the ideology of bourgeois democracy is far more potent than that of any welfare reformism, and forms the permanent syntax of the consensus instilled by the capitalist state” (66). It is something of the ruling class sous rature, insofar as consent is generated by the belief by the proletariat that it exerts sovereignty, a “credence in the democratic equality,” “a disbelief in the existence of any ruling class” (68). The dominance extends from beyond the grave, as it were, insofar as “even after a socialist revolution—the conquest of political power by the proletariat—the culturally dominant class remains the bourgeoisie in certain respects (not all—habits more than ideas) and for a certain time (in principle shorter with each revolution)” (94).

The overall conclusion is perhaps: “the debt every contemporary marxist owes to Gramsci can only be properly acquitted if his writings are taken with the seriousness of real criticism. In the labyrinth of the notebooks, Gramsci lost his way” (135). Though Anderson reads Trotksy’s analysis of the “social formations of Western Europe” as superior to Gramsci’s, containing “the only developed theory of a modern capitalist state in classical Marxism,” Trotsky nevertheless “never posed the problem of a differential strategy for making the socialist revolution in them, unscheduled by that of Russia, with the same lucidity or anxiety as Gramsci” (141).

Plenty elsewise on Althusser’s famous interpretation (75 et seq.), some comments on the Frankfurt School here and there, Gramsci’s biography, a bit on the theory of intellectuals, what Gramsci might make of reformism (87 ff.), contrasts with Lukacs on adventurism (110 ff.)—which Anderson regards as “nothing in common with Marxism” (113), notes on Delbruck (119 et seq.), and so on. Good stuff. Coda is an excerpt of a fellow inmate of Gramsci’s, presenting some touching personal details of Gramsci’s conduct inside.

Recommended for those in want of an art of audacity.

[Rob M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perry Anderson is not an easy writer to read, and Gramsci is not an easy thinker to comprehend. I found this book almost impossible to tackle when I bought it in a Verso sale circa 2017-ish. This is, to an extent, unavoidable. As Anderson notes, Gramsci's major works were written in a cryptic and disorganised fashion in order to evade the watchful eyes of the fascist censors who monitored him in the prison where he worked (so what's your excuse Perry?). But, as Anderson also notes, this feverish compositional style gives Gramsci's work a certain longevity, ambiguity, and diversity, especially compared to more orthodox marxist writings of the time.

So, having returned to it again several years later, I managed to get quite a lot out of it, especially having since completed a masters level module in political theory. For those readers expecting standard populist Verso fare, this is not that. This is a dense, intense unpacking of a dense, intense set of ideas.

Just as advertised, Perry Anderson introduces us to the 'antimonies' of Gramsci's thought (read: contradictions - is it even a Perry Anderson text if you don't need to look up a new word somewhere in the first 60 seconds of picking it up?). However, once you've got into the groove of it there are some very illuminating political insights - particularly in Gramsci's ideas about political strategy ('war of manoeuvre vs war of position') and of course his theory of hegemony.

The basic contradiction Gramsci deals with is that faced by a mass revolutionary party in a society not in, or approaching, a revolutionary crisis. I'm not sure Gramsci, or the PCI, really had an answer for us, but Gramsci asks us to approach the problem dialectically. Incidentally, many of the ideas discussed will be helpful for anyone wishing to make a genuine postmortem of the failed wave of left 'populist' movements which swept the Global North ~2015-2019 (or, indeed, the successful ones that have swept across Latin America).

Some basic knowledge of the post-war PCI will nonetheless be very helpful for anyone approaching this text, and as such I would recommend first reading the much longer - but much more comprehensible - The Tailor of Ulm: A History of Communism to help set the scene in which these ideas are being discussed.

[Domhnall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite a succinct book – the author calls it an essay. Although its ostensible topic is Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, it actually addresses only a few key ideas in those notebooks - hegemony and war of movement / war of position - and the way these have fed into an ongoing debate among revolutionary socialists; a debate from which he personally was, of necessity, largely excluded. The question is whether to engage in militant conflict with the bourgeoisie and their allies, risking defeat, or rather to build up a politically conscious working class at the risk of assimilation into the bourgeoise state. The possible answers to these choices very much depended on the context. Gramsci’s party in Italy, like Rosa Luxemburg’s in Germany, had rejected advice from Lenin and Trotsky to seek a united front with democratic forces, and were both routed by fascists as a result. These defeats were the major drivers in his search, through the notebooks, for a different strategy. Gramsci himself remained committed to an eventual revolutionary struggle, believing that bourgeoise democracy might make concessions but would never tolerate a genuinely socialist governing party. He saw education as part of the preparation for that struggle, never an end in itself. This was not always how other Marxists saw things. Over the following century socialists have debated and tested the same basic choices and the same challenges in every possible permutation. “The classical debates, therefore, still remain in many respects the most advanced limit of reference we possess today. It is thus not mere archaism to recall the strategic confrontations which occurred four or five decades ago.” P130

Quotes

‘the basic problem of hegemony is not how revolutionaries come to power, though this question is very important. It is how they come to be accepted, … as guides and leaders’. P18

he saw that defeat did not leave victors and vanquished unchanged, and ‘might produce a much more dangerous long-term weakening of the forces of progress, by means of what he called a “passive revolution”. On the one hand, the ruling class might grant certain demands to forestall and avoid revolution, on the other, the revolutionary movement might find itself in practice (though not necessarily in theory) accepting its impotence and might be eroded and politically integrated into the system’. P20

They speak of what the hegemony of the working class should be, without raising the empirical question of what, on a realistic historical reckoning, it could be. P24

The purpose of this essay, then, will be to analyse the forms and functions of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony in his Prison Notebooks, and to assess their internal coherence as a unified discourse; to consider their validity as an account of the typical structures of class power in the bourgeois democracies of the West; and finally to weigh their strategic consequences for the struggle of the working class to achieve emancipation and socialism. P33

Permanent Revolution’ now clearly refers to Marx’s ‘Address to the Communist League of 1850’, when he advocated an escalation from the bourgeois revolution which had just swept Europe to a proletarian revolution. The Commune marks the end of this hope. Henceforward war of position replaces permanent revolution. P40

The ideas of the Free Trade movement are based on a theoretical error, whose practical origin is not hard to identify; they are based on a distinction between political society and civil society, which is rendered and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laissez-faire too is a form of State “regulation”, introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. P42

The notion of hegemony had a long prior history, before Gramsci’s adoption of it, that is of great significance for understanding its later function in his work. The term gegemoniya (hegemony) was one of the most central political slogans in the Russian Social-Democratic movement, from the late 1890s to 1917. The idea which it codified first started to emerge in the writings of Plekhanov in 1883–4, where he urged the need for the Russian working class to wage a political struggle against Tsarism, not merely an economic struggle against its employers. P43


At the Fourth Congress in 1922, the term hegemony was—for what seems to be the first time—extended to the domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, if the former succeeded in confining the latter to a corporate role by inducing it to accept a division between political and economic struggles in its class practice. ‘The bourgeoisie always seeks to separate politics from economics, because it understands very well that if it succeeds in keeping the working class within a corporative framework, no serious danger can threaten its hegemony.’ P49

It can now be seen why Gramsci’s primary formula was mistaken. It is impossible to partition the ideological functions of bourgeois class power between civil society and the state, in the way that he initially sought to do. The fundamental form of the Western parliamentary state—the juridical sum of its citizenry—is itself the hub of the ideological apparatuses of capitalism. The ramified complexes of the cultural control systems within civil society—radio, television, cinema, churches, newspapers, political parties—undoubtedly play a critical complementary role in assuring the stability of the class order of capital. P62

The novelty of this consent is that it takes the fundamental form of a belief by the masses that they exercise an ultimate self-determination within the existing social order. It is thus not acceptance of the superiority of an acknowledged ruling class (feudal ideology), but credence in the democratic equality of all citizens in the government of the nation—in other words, disbelief in the existence of any ruling class. P64

Althusser was thus later logically led to a drastic assimilation of Gramsci’s final formula, which effectively abolishes the distinction between state and civil society. The result was the thesis that ‘churches, parties, trade unions, families, schools, newspapers, cultural ventures’ in fact all constitute ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’. Explaining this notion, Althusser declared: ‘It is unimportant whether the institutions in which they (ideologies) are realised are “public” or “private” ’—for these all indifferently form sectors of a single controlling state which is ‘the precondition for any distinction between public and private p72

The revolutionary character officially claimed for the process in China could, in effect, only be squared with classical Marxist definitions of a revolution—the overthrow and destruction of a state machine—by decreeing all manifestations of culture to be state apparatuses. In the Chinese press of the time such manifestations were, indeed, typically discerned in the psychological traits displayed by individuals. To provide Marxist credentials for this ‘revolution of the spirits’ underway in China, a radical redefinition of the state was necessary. P72

A similar conflation of state and civil society could conversely lead younger disciples of the Frankfurt School at the same time to argue that ‘liberal democracy’ in post-war Germany was functionally equivalent to fascism in pre-war Germany, since the family now fulfilled the authoritarian instance previously occupied by the police, as part of the state system. The unscientific character of such theses is obvious. P73

once bourgeois power in the West is primarily attributed to cultural hegemony, the acquisition of this hegemony would mean effective assumption by the working class of the ‘direction of society’ without the seizure and transformation of state power, in a painless transition to socialism: in other words, a typical idea of Fabianism. Gramsci himself, of course, never drew this conclusion. P85

Gramsci was acutely aware of the novelty and difficulty for Marxist theory of the phenomenon of institutionalised popular consent to capital in the West—hitherto regularly evaded or repressed within the Comintern tradition. He therefore focussed all the powers of his intelligence on it. In doing so, he never intended to deny or rescind the classical axioms of that tradition on the inevitable role of social coercion within any great historical transformation, so long as classes subsisted. His objective was, in one of his phrases, to ‘complement’ treatment of the one with an exploration of the other. P86

The fact is that the Russian party fought under special conditions, in a country where the bourgeois-liberal revolution had not yet been accomplished and the feudal aristocracy had not yet been defeated by the capitalist bourgeoisie. Between the fall of the feudal autocracy and the seizure of power by the working class lay too short a period for there to be any comparison with the development which the proletariat will have to accomplish in other countries. For there was no time to build a bourgeois State machine on the ruins of the Tsarist feudal apparatus. Russian development does not provide us with an experience of how the proletariat can overthrow a liberal-parliamentary capitalist State that has existed for many years and possesses the ability to defend itself. p94

The radical misunderstanding of the integral unity of capitalist state power, and the necessarily all-or-nothing character of any insurrection against it, naturally led to disaster in Central Germany. In March 1921, the KPD launched its much vaunted offensive against the Prussian state government, by falling into the trap of a badly prepared rising against a preventive police occupation of the Mansfeld–Merseburg area. P99

it was in order to rebut the demand by Luxemburg for the adoption of militant mass strikes, during the SPD’s campaign for a democratisation of the neo-feudal Prussian electoral system, that Kautsky counterposed the necessity of a more prudent ‘war of attrition’ by the German proletariat against its class enemy, without the risks involved in mass strikes. The introduction of the theory of two strategies—attrition and overthrow—was thus the precipitate of the scission within orthodox German Marxism before the First World War. P107

[David C Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

More politically inflected by the European situation of the mid 70s than I remember when I first read this - 40 years ago in NLR. A lengthy exegesis on the difference between coercion and consent, east and west. What is always gainsaid, from the perspective of 2017, is whether the working class is revolutionary. The absence of any discussion of nationalism by Anderson or the founders of modern Marxism elides an essential point about how the state extracts consent, as well as coerces it. Also, more theoretically, I don't think that what Gramsci means by hegemony is equivalent to its other usages in the communist movement. The distortive impact of the 1917 revolution cannot be measured.
Anderson adds a new preface ruing how far away we are from the 70s. He makes the crucial point, belied by his own essay, that any great thinkers work is never a unity, especially when it's produced under the conditions endured by Gramsci.

[hajduk]

Contextualises Gramci's writings on hegemony quite effectively. A judicious editor could have got him to do so in a clearer and more concise manner though.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know what you call a tin ear for Praxis, but whatever it is, Perry Anderson's got it.
Continued at:
http://theorangepress.com/woid/woid21...

[Peter Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a short exploration of Gramsci's thought based on a fairly close reading of (in particular) the Prison Notebooks. Anderson is moderately critical, identifying a range of inconsistencies and problematic aspects. I'll add some further thoughts here later.

Update: I promised to add some further thoughts, and in fact that became a longer blog post with notes on the Anderson's analysis of Gramsci's concept of hegemony. In brief this book is a helpful companion to reading The Prison Notebooks themselves. You can find the full set of notes on my blog here https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very clarifying short book analyzing Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. It was written in the 1970s. In the Preface, Anderson is quite pessimistic. He says he doesn't really see the point in reading this essay today, as the progress of the revolutionary movement has degraded so much as to be virtually nonexistent. That may be true but I still believe it is necessary to understand the breakthroughs and shortcomings of previous thinkers in order to build off of them.

Gramsci basically tackles two sets of problems: defining the nature of capitalist society and deducing what form of strategy would be the most successful in overturning that society. His great insight is that there is more to politics than power. Overthrowing capitalist society is not simply a matter of doing war with the state, or political society, by fighting the military and police. There also exists civil society. This is where Gramsci's famous term hegemony comes in. Hegemony is basically an expanded version of Marx's superstructure. Hegemony is cultural ascendancy, the dominant ideology over the working class by the bourgeoisie. It is rule by consent rather than coercion. This is Gramsci's great breakthrough. He applied this to the fundamental difference in the political structures of East and West, Russia and Europe. Prior to him, no theorist had looked at this divide as coherently and in a systematic way. Russia had a very weak civil society, its feudal culture did not have a strong hold over the people, and so the Bolsheviks could direct their attention directly toward the state. In Europe, a complex civil society existed as a frontal barrier over the state. The means of communication and supporting civil structures create ideological consent for the submission of the working class. The use of violence, coercion, is reserved as a last stand against revolution.

Anderson's critique of hegemony is that Gramsci gives it too much power. He places civil society above the state. While hegemony is crucial and needs to be incorporated into any revolutionary strategy, one can not put aside the power of the state. Anderson argues that "the general form of the representative state - bourgeois democracy - is itself the principal ideological linchpin of Western capitalism, whose very existence deprives the working class of the idea of socialism as a different type of state, and the means of communication and other mechanisms of cultural control thereafter clinch this central ideological effect." The reality of class divisions and the structure of parliamentary democracy and the means of production does more to ideologically contain and defeat the working class than all of civil society. "For it is the freedom of bourgeois democracy alone that appears to establish the limits of what is socially possible for the collective will of a people, and thereby can render the bounds of its impotence tolerable." Later in the Notebooks, Gramsci becomes aware of this problem of over emphasizing civil society but can never resolve the contradiction.

Gramsci's second problem is strategy. He develops the twin concepts of a war of position and a war of maneuver. A war of maneuver was the strategy of the Russian revolution, fast and mobile, a big movement and big risk, overthrowing the state at great speed. A war of position is the strategy Gramsci suggests for the West. Because the social structures are heavily fortified in the West, fast and mobile attacks would in a short time exhaust themselves. A war of position follows the political line of the United Front adopted by the Comintern. Its objective was "to win over the masses in the West to revolutionary Marxism, by patient organization and skillful agitation for working class unity in action." The goal is to slowly and steadily build a unified mass of people and, once it reaches a certain apex, use its collective to power to overthrow the state. Prior to the failure of the German Revolution, this strategy was considered reformist. The German social democrat Kautsky came up with a very similar strategic analysis, using the terms "strategy of attrition" and "strategy of overthrow". His initial analysis was the same as Gramsci, that the West was much stronger than Russia and necessitated a gradual approach. Kautsky's position was called out by Rosa Luxembourg as a "sophisticated apology for reformism." The difference being that Kautsky's solution was electoralism, whereas Gramsci remained a committed Leninist revolutionary.

Here, Anderson's critique of position/maneuver is that Gramsci never explicitly combines the two strategies into a cogent whole. Gramsci simply applies "war of position" in substitute of "war of maneuver". A war of position strategy on its own is dangerous because a winning position is never decisive. There will always be more work to be done, a stricter party line to follow to reach that ultimate collective unity. It can easily fall into an authoritarian, top down movement. A successful Marxist movement in the West must be radically democratic, to show the limits and failure of bourgeois democracy. At some point, a successful war of position strategy must take that crucial leap and transition to a war of maneuver. To sum it up, Anderson puts it clearly:

To formulate proletarian strategy in metropolitan capitalism essentially as a war of maneuver is to forget the unity and efficacy of the bourgeois state and to pit the working class against it in a series of lethal adventures. To formulate proletarian strategy as essentially a war of position is to forget the necessarily sudden and volcanic character of revolutionary situations, which by the nature of these social formations can never be stabilised for long and therefore need speed and mobility of attack if the opportunity to conquer power is not to be missed. Insurrection, Marx and Engels always emphasized, depends on the art of audacity.

Engaging ideas to ponder over, even though like Anderson said at the beginning, we are a long ways away from even needing to debate these positions. I am glad to now have a basic knowledge of Gramsci and his contributions to political theory.

"Ideology is shared between civil society and the state: violence pertains to the state alone."

[Thodoris Patsatzis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Από τα σπουδαιότερα και πιο δύσκολα βιβλία που έχω διαβάσει ποτέ!

[Tomás · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Las antinomias de Antonio Gramsci» es un libro que destaca por el carácter del estudio que despliega a propósito del concepto gramsciano de la hegemonía. Esto debido a que, como el autor, Perry Anderson, lo reconoce: se trata de un estudio eminentemente «filológico» que, no obstante, conlleva un cariz crítico que se vuelca a exhibir las incoherencias y los contrasentidos con que se encontró el mismo Gramsci a la hora de ir construyendo sus teorías sobre la acción política y sus fundamentos.
Sobre lo filológico, Anderson busca los orígenes del término ‘hegemonía’ y el uso que tuvo esta palabra en los trabajos de los rusos, así como su influjo en Gramsci. Además, va mostrando las distintas acepciones en la producción teórica del último (que vienen desde la idea de la hegemonía como una alianza entre proletarios y campesinos hasta la hegemonía en tanto consenso, estrechamente relacionado con una idea específica de la ‘sociedad civil’) y contrastándolas con las de sus contemporáneos. Aunado a esto, Anderson expone los conceptos con los cuales se sostiene: una caracterización del Estado, con el fin de discutir el problema de las estrategias de los socialistas. El último problema a tratar se trabaja contrastando, como hace desde el inicio (del Estado, por ejemplo, discutiendo con Althusser, Poulantzas y otros), las teorías de otra gente (R. Luxemburg, K. Kautsky, V. Lenin, L. Trotsky…) con la de Gramsci.
Algo que sin embargo resalta es que por tener que ver con un concepto en especifico, se descuida la constelación de términos empleados por el mismo Gramsci (poco se escribe sobre la filosofía, sobre la praxis, sobre la traductubilidad de lenguajes, sobre las relaciones entre las estructuras y las superestructuras y hasta sobre los intelectuales y la organización de la cultura). Por esto, Anderson parece ser algo injusto con el comunista sardo. Pero, pese a ello, no deja de sugerir algunos puntos que abren el espacio para una reflexión más tendida (puntos que implicarían el estudio minucioso y el contraste entre el manejo de los conceptos, la aplicación de éstos en el análisis de la historia, etcétera).
Por lo anterior, este libro abona a la lectura crítica del marxismo, de su política y de sus estrategias. Altamente recomendable.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, though not quite as academic or incisive as I had expected. There is the jaded part of me (roughly 98.7% of the total Me) that believes all intellectuals glom on to Gramsci because of his situation and the series of outs it gives them when discussing, analyzing, and critiquing his writings. If you don't know his situation, seek it out and maybe you'll understand what I mean. Gramsci wrote quite a lot about Marxism and is considered to be an essential read if one makes any claims to be/know/understand/disagree with/champion Marxism. I can honestly say I have no idea what led me to read this essay on Gramsci's thoroughly clear and concise (ha!) idea of hegemony. Still, I enjoyed it because who doesn't love Gramsci, Marxism, hegemony AND a bunch of other period-appropriate names, themes, debates, historical happenings, and Italy? Seriously, who doesn't? As I noted, there is not as much depth to this as I expected, as I don't find Gramsci's hegemony, shifty as it may seem to strict readers, to be al that confusing, hypocritical, or unsound. Anderson makes his points, but they don't carry much oomph! or scathing repartee - hardly normally wielded academic ideas, I know - and his arguments seem to just meander off into the distance. His strength seems to lie more in the history Gramsci lived in, and since I love history i I found his walk through Italy's CPI all the while referencing Trotsky, Lenin, Kautsky, Luxemburg, et al to be fascinating, if not quite anything but a leisurely stroll. I plan to follow this with Anderson's 'The H-Word', his companion piece to this essay-turned-book, and see what all the smarty fuss is (or was?) about. I didn't find the Annexe to be of much interest. An interesting historical fragment, mostly.
Maybe Gramsci lucked out by dying, as he never had to refine, collate, or explain his writings to interested scholars, readers, and the like. Not to make light of dying in prison, but some large slice of the Gramscian School seems to thrive on the lack of finality (or purposeful complexity?) of Antonio's texts. I won't say I mind it, since I think so much of what we think we know for sure is just conditional, subjective, or illusory anyway.

[Ben S · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my second read through of this short essay, and i found it as interesting and grounding as my first. A summary and brief analysis of Gramsci's writings on hegemony, civil society and the state, and the war of position, it places Gramsci's use of the terms in context, discusses the roles of fascist censors in his writings, and analyzes how the way he used those terms changes over the course of the notebooks.

Gramsci's thoughts are always important, but I found revisiting them during hte end of the Bernie campaign especially helpful. His discussion of hoow consent operates, and the role of civil society in producing consent to capitalist system provides a powerful framework for analyizing the failures of the bernie campaign. Additionally, as the reality of Covid blasts a hole in the premises of capitalist ideology, the war of position provides a way to analyze what actions the left should take in this time.

Gramsci is incredibly important for the left today, his thinking on how power operates in bourgeois democracies is necessary for all serious leftists to consider. He does have his limits though, He's writing in the context of Italy, and fails to consider how a settler colonialist state (liberal democracy for white people, a police state for black and brown people) complicates his organizing model. Regardless, I'm glad a I reread it. A good use of Quarantine reading time.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book cuts through so much of the ambiguity in Gramsci’s prison writing to find out that he was basically the same guy he was when he was arrested - a communist militant who upheld the United Front strategy of the Fourth congress of the Comintern.

The book ends with an incredible report written by one of his fellow prisoners who describes a series of lectures Gramsci gave to other prisoners arguing against the Third Period turn in Comintern policy. There’s also a story about how Gramsci grew flowers in the prison yard to give to sick prisoners.

But this book is also interesting in that it raises how consent is really built in capitalist society. Anderson says the primary source of consent is the republican form of government. He downplays the transmission of ideology over the structural sense that we live in a democracy we can change things. I don’t think that is the sole source of consent - I think passive resignation plays a big role. But just look at how, for example, the tactics of “the Resistance” to Trump has reinforced the idea that ordinary people can have a real say just by repeatedly calling your Congressperson.

[ernst · Rating 3 out of 5]

Den Kern des Textes bildet eine intelligent immanente Kritik von Gramscis Gefängnishefte. Hier wird Gramsci als Denker ernst genommen und den Widersprüchen, die wirkliche Anknüpfungspunkte für Sozialdemokraten bieten, nachgespürt. Anderson geht dann noch auf historische Kontexte ein, sowohl solche, die Gramsci bekannt waren und ihn bewusst beeinflusst haben, als auch solche, von denen er nichts wusste, die aber ähnliche Themen behandelten und bereits die Gefahren einer zweideutigen Arbeit mit Begriffen wie Hegemonie und Stellungskrieg bzw. Ermattungsstrategie aufgezeigt haben.

Auch sehr gut ist das neue Vorwort, in dem Anderson u.a. mit gebührender Verachtung eine kurze Abhandlung der eurokommunistischen Vereinnahmung Gramscis und dann der kompletten Selbstdemonatge und des Niedergangs vor allem des italienischen Eurokommunismus gibt.

Neben diesen starken Seiten zeigen sich auch Anderson politische Schwächen, die zum Teil sogar hinter dem Erkenntnisstand Gramscis liegen, seine ins Lachhafte ragende Überschätzung Trotzkis und schließlich auch ein ausgeprägter Eurozentrismus (der mit Sicherheit mit seiner Überschätzung Trotzkis zusammenhäng).

[Matt Harkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's a really good way to get into gramsci. anderson's approach is really neat-- he takes you through the development of gramsci's ideas, explains where he was coming from, situates it within the context of marxist theory, expresses the limits of all of the iterations, and then briefly explains where theorists can take up gramsci's questions. it's really interesting if you're contemplating revolution, consent and coercion, ideology, violence, "why no socialism in the us," and many other pressing contemporary concerns. there are a lot of places where race/racism don't enter the picture when they should, and anderson doesn't really concern himself with that. it's really a shame because i think gramsci gets the fire started, and anderson demonstrated that he had the capacity to burn the mother down. so on one sense we have a book that really excels in accomplishing what it set out to do and gives you enough to build on, but in another sense it missed an opportunity. not sure how to evaluate that in my rating but i'd recommend this nonetheless because it'll give you a lot to build on.

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

an updated NLR essay plus bonus

This essay was originally written 50 years ago, but it has been updated and an additional report from a former Communist inmate. These essays portray Gramsci as an early adherent to Popular front strategy during the Fascist period. Well written polished essay by Perry Anderson takes Gramsci as the Lenin of the Italian Revolution, whose life was cut short by chronic poor health. But a brilliant dialectical Marxist was trapped in a Fascist prison, cut off from his family and comrades. His prison notebooks are vast array of snippets dealing with an amazing variety of interrelated topics. Italian history, sociology, economics and above all politics and philosophy. This is a good introduction to Gramsci, along with G. Fiore’s biography.

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

One's enjoyment of this book will very much depend upon why one is interested in Gramsci. For my purposes, this book was quite interesting in places but altogether dry and difficult to muster up enthusiasm for. Perry Anderson has a gift for focusing on some of the most dull parts of Gramsci's work - or at least one would be forgiven for thinking them dull due to his style. Nevertheless - the book remains quite indispensable for those wishing to understand Gramsci's place within the Marxist cannon.

[William Moriarty]

“The debt that every contemporary Marxist owes to Gramsci can only be properly acquitted if his writings are taken with the seriousness of real criticism.
In the labyrinth of the notebooks, Gramsci lost his way. Against his own intention, formal conclusions can be drawn from his work that lead away from revolutionary socialism.”

[Wyatt Browdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to assess an individual thinker—an intellectual history, as it’s called—start with the method of Perry Anderson.

Close-reading of Gramsci’s text, a rich historical imagination, and a lucid analysis of his contemporary political conjuncture produce one of the greatest intellectual histories.

[Tacodisc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Especially worth a read for the Athos Lisa memoir included as an appendix (taken from Chapter 5: notes on Gramsci's political speeches at Turi di Bari). Includes the background on the famous "punch to the eye" that was the argument (Gramsci's) against Third Period adventurism.

[Peter McKenzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title suggests, this is a complex analysis of Gramsci’s conceptions, requiring quite a bit of time and focus to fully appreciate.

Echoing a previous review, reading I found reading ‘The Tailor of Ulm: A history of Communism’ prior to this to be very beneficial.

[Ramón · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are works I should've read later, in order to truly take advantage of them. In the case of this one, I regret not having read it before.

[v. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Errejoner por sorpresa.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensible.

[Jooseppi Räikkönen · Rating 4 out of 5]

+1 star for Althusser-roast