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I would like this contribution to be an introduction for anyone interested in reading from the works of the Italian Communist leader and intellectual, Antonio Gramsci.

After Marx, Engel’s, Lenin, the work of Gramsci that has aroused the greatest interest, however, reading Gramsci is difficult. Even a casual consideration of his works requires considerable commitment and effort. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which I will get into below. Although reading Gramsci may be difficult, finding the correct tactics to apply in difficult situations is also difficult. Those who wish to follow this difficult and dangerous road can use all the help and suggestions that they can get. Towards this end a serious consideration of Gramsci will be worth the effort. Central to Gramsci’s approach is the idea that the methods of physical science could not be mechanically applied to social analysis. Instead Gramsci stresses cultural factors and the idea that successful class rule cannot depend on force alone but also on certain cultural or social values and norms shared by the rulers and the ruled. In Gramsci’s conception dialectic exists between authority and the masses. With this emphasis Gramsci shifts the focus of analysis from economics to psychology and culture. Gramsci’s insistence, that it is not possible to predict everything as products of economic factors can be seen as a reflection of his anti reductionism. Philosophically Gramsci’s writings exist as a counterweight to mechanical materialism, particularly to that of Nikolai Bukharin, and to the empiricist fallacy that what can’t be tested does not exist, (which happens to be one of the objections of modern economists to the Marxian theory of value), but one needs to be wary because Gramsci can easily lend itself to an idealistic interpretation. Readers should attend to Gramsci’s insistence on patient examination of the particular and concrete, and that Knowledge based on sense perception rather then on the development through logic of a priori assumptions, things which those wishing to dismiss Gramsci as a hopeless idealist overlook.

Although Gramsci has been appreciated for the originality of his approach and for his analysis of culture and leadership, the concept of ‘hegemony’, understood as ideological dominance, is the most famous and widely known of his ideas. Gramsci is also known for the effort he made to apply and adapt Marxism to the post WWI era, to approach it as a scientific analysis and not a sterile dogma, to encourage innovation as opposed to a recitation of ‘sacred texts’. In doing so he strove to define the strategy and tactics that the working class needs to apply in the face of advanced and entrenched capitalism, in his case, the conditions that applied as Western Europe recovered from WWI and the post war upheavals. In this context Gramsci was to post WWI Italy as Lenin was to Revolutionary Russia. Lenin, like Gramsci interpreted and adapted Marxism. Lenin applied Marxism to the conditions of the early 20th century imperialism; Gramsci struggled to apply it to the conditions of the capitalist west. In doing so he was informed by the experiences of Italy from the late teens to the 1930’s, from the failed rebellions in Turin and Milan to the formation of the PCI to the rise and consolidation of fascism and ultimately his arrest and imprisonment.

Major questions addressed by Gramsci, questions that were important to him and that still have theoretical and practical interest today are:

• What is the nature of Fascism?

• Why hasn’t Western Europe followed the example of the Russian Revolution — what accounts for the persistence of capitalism
• What tactics are appropriate for Marxists operating within modern capitalist states
• What is the nature of belief – why do people think certain ways and do certain things, even things that are not necessarily in their interest?
• What accounts for the lack of class-consciousness?
• How can the failure of the Soviet Union and related socialist states be accounted for?

In prison Gramsci had to come to terms with Italian fascism and the mistakes that both he and the PCI made about it. Gramsci addresses this question throughout the notebooks, although his efforts to avoid the prison censors made it impossible for him to do so directly.

There is a tension between an assertion of iron laws of historical development and the idea that human activity, though constrained by physical reality, can transform human reality. In prison Gramsci reflected on the concept of dialectical laws of history in light of contemporary historical developments; reformism, the failure of the 2nd international, the failure of the Russian revolution to spread in general and in particular the failure of the German and Hungarian rebellions and the failure of the Italian ‘factory council’ movement to lead anywhere. After all, even the great depression did not bring about the expected word revolution. Today, we need to deal with this and also the fact that many existing Socialist states failed, even after Soviet scholars stated that the achievement of Socialism by these societies was irreversible. How can what happened be explained?

After WWI it was general expected, even by the capitalist class, that the Russian Revolution would spread to the industrialized west and, indeed a great revolutionary upsurge followed the war. However this upsurge died out within a few years and the expected revolutions never came. Why? The lack of a revolutionary party is one explanation, indeed it was this analysis of the failure of the Italian industrial uprisings to lead to a Socialist revolution that sparked the founding of the PCI. In later years Gramsci addressed the question of the party in his prison notebooks, published as, ‘The Modern Prince’. In any event a consideration of the analysis presented in the ‘notebooks’ leads us to conclude that we just can’t wait for the next great catastrophe to bring about the downfall of capitalism and usher in the new Socialist era. We must fight a protracted ‘war of position’ to undermine capitalisms basis of support and legitimacy, Socialism is not historically pre-determined but can be achieved through human action and, to do this, a long-term political strategy is needed.

One of the fundamental questions addressed in the notebooks, at least implicitly, is how can a Socialist revolution be made. Is it made through agitation and propaganda leading to a revolution, after which a socialist consciousness can be built in the working class or is a necessary pre condition for socialist revolution the establishment of socialist consciousness among the working class, an alternate hegemony to counter the overarching cultural hegemony of the ruling classes? Gramsci does not dispute that consciousness reflects objective reality but insists that consciousness is interactive, that human activity interacts with material reality and plays a creative role within its constraints. Once accepted that human activity plays a role Gramsci presents an analysis of how it interacts with material reality and how consciousness can be changed and how, and by whom, this new consciousness is defined.

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