To Live is to Resist: The Life of Antonio Gramsci

329 Pages·2022·3.687 MB·English

by  Jean-Yves Frétigné, Laura Marris

To Live Is to Resist

To Live Is to Resist
The Life of Antonio Gramsci
Jean-Y ves Frétigné
Translated by Laura Marris
With a foreword by Nadia Urbinati
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago & London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2021 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of
brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact
the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 71909- 2 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 71912- 2 (e- book)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226719122.001.0001
Originally published in France as Antonio Gramsci. Vivre, c’est résister by
Jean-Yves FRÉTIGNÉ © Armand Colin, 2017, Malakoff. ARMAND COLIN
is a trademark of DUNOD Éditeur, 11, rue Paul Bert, 92240 Malakoff.
English language translation rights arranged through The French Publishers’
Agency.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Frétigné, Jean-Yves, author. | Marris, Laura, 1987– translator.
Title: To live is to resist : the life of Antonio Gramsci / Jean-Yves Frétigné ;
translated by Laura Marris ; with a foreword by Nadia Urbinati.
Other titles: Antonio Gramsci. English
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021027260 | ISBN 9780226719092 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780226719122 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Gramsci, Antonio, 1891–1937. | Communists—Italy—Biography. |
Philosophers—Italy—Biography. | Communism—Italy.
Classification: LCC HX289.7.G73 F7413 2021 | DDC 335.43092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021027260
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence
of Paper).
À Isabelle, Rémi, Eugénie, Justine,
et Cordélia avec toute mon affection

Contents
Foreword ix
Nadia Urbinati
Part I From Sardinian Gramsci to National Gramsci
(1891– 1915)
1 In Sardinia (1891– 1911) 3
2 A Poor Student in Turin (1911– 1915) 22
Part II From National Gramsci to Internationalist
Gramsci (1915– 1922)
3 A Socialist Journalist, Marginal and Original
(1915– 1919) 55
4 From the Experience of L’Ordine Nuovo to
His Departure for Moscow (1919– 1922) 82
P art III The Bolshevik (1922– 1926)
5 In the Service of the Comintern
(May 1922– May 1924) 117
6 At the Head of the New Communist Party of
Italy (May 1924– November 8, 1926) 145
Part IV The Prisoner (November 8, 1926–
April 27, 1937)
7 For Twenty Years, We Must Stop This Brain from
Functioning (November 8, 1926– July 19, 1928) 181
8 The Prisoner and the Philosopher (July 19, 1928–
November 19, 1933) 209
Epilogue: November 19, 1933– April 27, 1937 236
English Editions of Gramsci’s Writings 257
Selected Chronology of Gramsci’s Life 259
Appendix A: Family Tree of the Schucht Family 265
Appendix B: Overview of Gramsci’s Visits and Visitors
between May 1927 and His Death in April 1937 267
Notes 269
Translator’s Note and Acknowledgments 295
Index 297
viii contents
Foreword
Nadia Urbinati
“To live is to resist”— Jean- Yves Frétigné could not have chosen a
better title for his biography of Antonio Gramsci, which offers an
excellent portrait of an extraordinary figure.
Gramsci’s life cannot be understood and reconstructed without
understanding and reconstructing the political history of the first
half of the twentieth century. Indeed, his tragic life in many ways mir-
rored the failure of liberal regimes to manage their transformation
into democratic societies. A victim of that failure, Gramsci sought to
envision how self- government could function in a system made up
of bourgeois and proletarians, thereby renouncing the aims of class
abolition and socioeconomic uniformity. Gramsci understood that
the Jacobin revolutionary moment had passed in the West as social
differentiation and pluralism had taken solid root. His goal was to
find out what kind of radical transformation a liberal order could
bear without fully denying its historical heritage, the legal and politi-
cal culture that predated the liberal and capitalist order. In Gramsci’s
historicist approach, unburdened by the determinism of the Second
International socialists, there was ample room for the expression of a
political will and for that will to adjust to specific contexts. In other
words, a socialist transformation could not just be the mechanical
outcome of social forces, but had to be devised, idealized, and envi-
sioned by the party and the intellectuals so that social forces could
become the political agents of their own transformation.