Adam David Morton

Gramsci studies

Martin, J., Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, London: Routledge 2002, 4 vol. set, ISBN: 0-415-21747-4, £475.00 (hbk).

Somewhat prophetically, the historian Gwyn A. Williams wrote, in his excellent Proletarian Order: Antonio Gramsci, Factory Councils and the Origins of Italian Communism, 1911-1921 [1975], that ‘one braces oneself for the oncoming explosion’, in studies on Antonio Gramsci, ‘a cultural shock of the first order and’, subsequently, ‘the possible collapse of the Gramsci market.’ Almost thirty years since this statement, commentaries on Gramsci and contentions surrounding his political and intellectual legacy still abound. This outstanding four-volume collection, edited and introduced by James Martin, reflects the cultural, political, intellectual milieu of such debates and at the same time propels Gramsci studies onto a new plane.

The volumes comprising the set are organised thematically, containing eighty separate articles in total, dealing with all aspects of the theory and practice of Antonio Gramsci from: Intellectual and Political Context (vol.1); Marxism, Philosophy and Politics (vol.2); Intellectuals, Culture and the Party (vol.3); to Contemporary Applications (vol.4). From these overarching topics, each volume then groups the individual commentaries into a variety of sub-themes: The Young Gramsci, Intellectual and Political Influences, The Factory Council Struggles (1919-1920), Communism and Fascism (vol.1); Marxism as a Philosophy of Praxis, Gramsci’s ‘Anti-Croce’, Epistemology and Science, The Concept of Hegemony, State and Civil Society (vol.2); The Theory of Intellectuals, Culture and Language, On Education, The Politics of Subalternity, Gramsci and the Communist Party (vol.3), Reviews and Commentaries, Political Theory, Political Analysis, Cultural Studies, and International Relations Theory (vol.4).

This is a truly impressive range within which common themes and topics arise across the various sections. It is also this intellectually broad and deep gathering of essays that will be of use to both recent converts and seasoned interpreters alike. For instance, the set contains what are commonly regarded as now classic interventions in debates on Gramsci by inter alia Perry Anderson, Richard Bellamy, Joseph Buttigieg, Robert W. Cox, Joseph Femia, David Forgacs, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau, Esteve Morera, Chantal Mouffe, Anne Showstack Sassoon and the above cited Gwyn A. Williams. Yet there are also specially translated pieces that add an additional dimension to the publication. From the radical liberal opponent of Italian Fascism, Pierro Gobetti (1901-1926), there is a piece on the history of the Factory Councils movement—a revolutionary labour mobilisation in Turin—that Gramsci was active in during the biennio rosso (Red Two Years) from 1919-1920. There is also a piece by the historian of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), Paolo Spriano, on the contemporaries Gramsci and Gobetti, as well as a translation of an essay by Norberto Bobbio on Gramsci and Italian political culture.

More thematically, there is the inclusion of crucial articles exploring aspects of philosophical realism, metaphysics, scientific method and the linkages between ‘objectivity’ and human consciousness in the intersubjective making of the social world. These commentaries on the ‘philosophy of praxis’—as a return to and advance on Marx’s ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and the Theses on Feuerbach—demonstrate the contribution a historical materialist approach can still make to philosophical reflection and emancipatory politics. It is perhaps this approach that might still be opposed to historical forms of philosophical idealism, or the conjuring tricks of ‘Nietzschean "charlatans"’, and their contemporary counterparts. After all, it was in the Prison Notebooks that Gramsci warned against accepting subjective accounts of history based on the progression of philosophical thought rather than historical conditions of class struggle:

It is undoubtedly true that all those Nietzschean charlatans in revolt against the existing state of affairs, against social conventions, etc., have ended up by retching up everything and thus ridding certain attitudes of all seriousness, but one must not let oneself be led in one’s judgements by these charlatans.

Sentiments that might sometimes be worth remembering in light of the erosion of class politics by the agonising over the ‘subject’ of identity politics.

It is precisely controversies such as these that are raised and explored across the range of essays in this four-volume set, from all persuasions of Marxist debate, with or without a prefix. Inevitably in such a collection there are omissions. The contributions of Nestor García Canclini, Sue Golding, José Nun, Dora Kanoussi or Stephen Mansfield, to name a few, may have been included that would have thereby further ensured contributors from more varied and different regions of the world. By its very design, such a collection also becomes rapidly overtaken by new emerging debates across the social sciences, e.g. see recent contributions in Journal of Modern Italian Studies, Rethinking Marxism, Review of International Political Economy, Socialism and Democracy and The Philosophical Forum. Yet these are mere trifles. In supplementing Gramsci’s Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction [1998], with this outstanding collection of commentaries, James Martin has made a prominent and enduring contribution to Gramsci studies.

‘The philosophy of praxis’, Gramsci once pronounced, ‘is realised through the concrete study of past history through present activity to construct new history.’ This compilation will assist researchers across a whole range of social science disciplines to further, as well as contest, this very enterprise. As a result it comes highly recommended even if it is a little highly priced.

Email: avm@aber.ac.uk