Hegemony and Revolution: Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory

310 Pages·1983·21.66 MB·English

by  Walter L. Adamson

Hegemony and Revolution
w ALTER L. ADAMSON
HEGEMONY
AND REVOLUTION
A Study of Antonio Gramsci's
Political and Cultural Theory
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley. Los Angl'lrs. London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
Cl 1980 by
The Regents of the University of California
Printed in the United States of America
I 234 5 6 7 8 9
Library of Conlrrss Cata[otin, in Publication Data
Adamson, Walter L.
Hc,emony and ,""vo[ution. Antonio Gram",j's
political and cultural theory
Bibliography: p.
Includes indu
I. Gramsci. Antonio. 189[-1937.
2. Gram""i. Antonio, 1~91-19J7-Polil;cal science.
I. Title.
tlX288.G7A~8 320.3')2"0924 79-64478
[SBN O-S2O-{lJ92U
To my mother and ja(her
and fO (he memory oj
my grand/others
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART ONE
1. The Formative Years 15
Cuhure and Politics in
Post-Risorgimento italy 19
Between Croce and La Voce 26
Organizing a Collective Will 34
2. The "New Order" and II.f Col/apse 43
Gramsci's Russia and the Road to Marx 44
The ~New Order" in Turin 50
Revolt in the PSI 64
3. FO!;ch. ." , Qlld Revolution in the WeSl 71
United Front and Fusion 73
The Meaning of Fascism 77
A Revolutionary Reassessment 82
Chairman Gramsci and the
Southern Question 90
PARTTWQ
4. Philosophy as Political £dUc"ulion 105
Plato, Hegel, and Marx 106
The Second International and Its Critics 112
Bukharin. Croce. and Gramsci 120
The Pragmaloiogical Dialectic 130
vii
VIII ! Contents
5. Political Educalion as
the OVPrcomillg of Commoll Sense 140
The Psychological Foundation 147
The Social and Historical Context 155
The Coming of a Regulated Society 162
6. Hegemony, HislOrical Bloc. alld Italian History 169
Hegemony and HislOrical Bloc 170
The Polemic Against Croce 179
.Iacobinism and Its Absence 184
Transformism and Crisis of Authority 196
7. The Autonomy of Politics 202
The Modern Prince 207
State and Society 215
Revolution as "War of Position" 222
Conclusion: Gramsci's Political Theory
in Historical Perspective 229
Notes 247
Selected Bibliography 285
Index 297
Acknowledgments
S OME PASSAGES in this book have already appeared,
somewhat differently arranged, in the following journal articles:
"Towards the Prison Notebooks: The Evolution of Gramsci's
Thinking on Political Organization, 1918·1926," Polity (Fall
1979); "Beyond Reform or Revolution: Notes on Political Ed·
ucation in Gramsci, Habermas, and Arendt," Theory and SocielY
(November 1978); and "Marx and Political Education," Review
of Politics (July 1977). I am grateful to the editors for permission
to reprint.
My greatest debt is to George Armstrong Kelly, whose patient
reading and telling criticisms were invaluable when a manuscript
remotely resembling this one served as a dissertation in the
History of Ideas Program at Brandeis University in 1976. Thanks
are due as well to Gerald 1zenberg, who also read the manuscript
at that time and offered many valuable suggestions.
I am grateful to the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the
Harvard-Mellon Fellowship Program in the Humanities and its
director, Richard M. Hunt, who put the resources of Widener
Library at my disposal in 1977-78. Without this help the book
would not yet be written. I would also like to acknowledge the
generosity of the Research Committee at Emory University for a
grant which greatly aided me in preparing the final manuscript for
publication.
ix
x I Acknowledgments
Finally, I thank Lauren, whose intellectual, logistical, and
personal support was absolutely indispensable and far greater
than she will ever realize.
Atlanta
June 1979
Introduction
THE
POLITICAL and cultural theory of Antonio Gramsci
rests on a triple irony. Committed during his lifetime (1891·
1937) to political and journalistic activity as a "unity of theory
and practice," he began to achieve his greatest recognition as
a theorist only in 1947, long after his tragic death had shattered
this unity. What gave him this recognition was the publication of
his Prison Notebooks, written mostly in the early 1930s, smuggled
to Russia upon his death, and returned to Italy at the war's end.
Though enormously diverse in content, these notes arc shot
through with a desire to free Italy from fascism. Yet, as a second
irony, it must be conceded that without fascism's victory and his
resulting imprisonment, Gramsci might well never have under
taken any such sustained theoretical reflection. And thirdly, while
this reflection remains bound to the problems of his epoch and his
people, by the time his work appeared it was appreciated less for
its historical value than for the suggestiveness of its categories for
the politics of a new post-fascist and "technological" society.
Indeed, his continent-wide and even transatlantic acclaim has
been born only in the 1970s and by events of which, in most
cases, he had nOI the faintest inkling: the demise of a theoretically
impoverished New Left. the increased skepticism about the wider
applicability of Eastern "roads to socialism," and the apparent
emergence of a sui generis "Eurocommunism.~