Introduction
Gramsci was born on January 23rd, 1891, in the village of Ales in Sardinia. Soon after his birth the family moved north to Ghilarza and it was here that Antonio spent his childhood. The family was poor and while still a schoolboy he had to work to help supplement the meagre income earned by his father, a minor employee at the local Registry Office. Life in Sardinia at that time was hard and the people, who had gained nothing from the industrial development of the mainland, were still living in the backwardness and poverty of past centuries. "I began work when I was eleven", Gramsci wrote later in his life, "earning nine lire a month (which meant one kilo of bread a day) for ten hours work a day, including Sundays, and I spent them in shifting registers weighing more than myself; many nights I cried secretly because my whole body was in pain." But somehow he managed to devote much time to study and soon distinguished himself as a scholar at the ginnasio in Santu Lussurgiu and later at the Liceo Carlo Dottori, of Cagliari.
In 1910 Gramsci left Sardinia after winning a scholarship and went to Turin where he enrolled himself at the University in the faculty of Letters. He specialised in linguistics and philology, and achieved such distinction that his Professor, Matteo Bartoli, was broken-hearted when Gramsci finally abandoned the academic life for politics.
The stages of Gramsci's life and the development of his thought during this period are difficult to document. We know that when he left Sardinia he was already a socialist, but this attitude, according to Togliatti who was his friend at the University, sprang more from the natural revolt of a humanitarian and an intellectual against the wretched conditions of his native land than from a fully coherent understanding of the theory of socialism. His spiritual guides in his early life at the University were the idealist philosophers, De Sanctis and Benedetto Croce, especially the latter. But before the end of the World War his intellectual position had undergone a profound development.
Soon after Gramsci arrived in Turin he began to interest himself in the working-class movement which at that time was rapidly increasing in strength and militancy. By 1917 he had risen to a position of responsibility and, as a result of his leadership during the anti-war insurrection at Turin in August of that year, was elected Secretary of the Socialist Section in the city. Parallel with this practical political activity, Gramsci devoted himself to a study of the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which led him to reject Crocian idealism and filled him with the conviction that Marxism was the philosophy of the new society he was working to build; or, as he put it later in one of his prison writings: "Marxism . . . contains within itself all the fundamental elements not only for constructing a whole and integral conception of the world, a total philosophy and a theory of the natural sciences, but also for bringing to life an integral practical organisation of society; in other words, for becoming a total, integral civilisation." By the end of the World War Gramsci had matured into the person whom Togliatti has called the first Italian Marxist.
The essentially new feature which Gramsci brought to the Italian socialist movement from his study of Marxism was the concept of the struggle for power, as distinct from the struggle to defend or improve the immediate economic conditions of the working class. Looking back beyond the period of the Second International and reformism, represented in Italy by Fillippo Turati, he saw that the fundamental element of Marx's teaching was that the working class had the historical task of destroying the capitalist state and installing itself as the new ruling class in order to build socialism and ensure human progress. Since the beginning of the century Lenin had been fighting the distortions of Marxism carried out by the leaders of the International. In Italy, Gramsci was the first to realise the paramount importance of this fight. He saw that despite local differences and peculiarities of historical development, the problems in Italy were essentially the same as those of other European countries. The war had brought capitalism to the verge of catastrophe; the ruling class of industrialists and landowners was incapable of producing the solutions to economic difficulties which the people demanded; leadership must therefore pass into the hands of the only class which had this ability—the working class. This class must broaden its view of its own tasks: it must cease merely demanding partial reforms or contenting itself with "intransigent" opposition to the state and must begin to exercise its own "hegemony" over the nation, taking into its own responsibility the solution of the crisis. The working class must, in fact, recognise its role as the protagonist of Italian history.
The historical organisation from which Lenin developed the theory of the proletariat dictatorship was the soviet. After the Soviet Revolution of 1917, which aroused immense popular enthusiasm all over Italy, Gramsci wrote: "Does there exist in Italy an instrument of the working class which can be likened to the soviet, and which shares its nature; something which permits us to say: the soviet is a universal form, not a Russian, a solely Russian, institution; that the soviet is the form in which, everywhere there are proletarians struggling to conquer industrial independence, the working class expresses this will to emancipate itself; that the soviet is the form of self-government of the working masses? Does there exist a germ, a vague, timid wish for soviet government in Italy?" Gramsci's answer was that the Italian equivalent of the soviet was the factory Internal Commission, or what we should call workshop committees. These had been set up by the employers during the war, but they rapidly changed character and in the form of the Factory Councils movement at Turin emerged as a powerful weapon of the industrial working class.
Gramsci was a leader of the Factory Councils movement and it was as an organ of this movement that he founded the newspaper Ordine Nuovo in May, 1919. Starting as a movement for the defence of conditions of employment, it soon assumed revolutionary significance when the workers themselves took over control and operation of the largest industrial enterprises of the city in September, 1919. The industrialists were forced to recognise the authority of the Factory Councils but the victory was short-lived. In the following spring an attempt was made to break up these Councils. In reply a political general strike was called in which broad sections of industrial and agrarian workers joined in protest for eleven days. It ended in failure but the whole struggle of these two years marked a turning point in the development of the working-class movement and, among other things, it provided Gramsci with the experiences on which he was to construct his theory of the Italian revolution.
In May, 1920, immediately following the general strike and its defeat, the Socialist Section of Turin published its Programme which was printed in Ordine Nuovo and was subsequently judged by Lenin to correspond fully with all the fundamental principles of the Third International. Gramsci was mainly responsible for the formulation of this programme. "The aspect of the class struggle in Italy", it declared, "is characterised at the present time by the fact that the industrial and agricultural workers are unswervingly determined, throughout the nation, to bring forward the question of the ownership of the means of production in an explicit and violent way." Great possibilities existed for revolutionary advance but the decisive steps forward could not be made merely by canalising or directing the spontaneous revolutionary fever of the post-war years. Such an attitude was widespread in the Socialist Party at that time. The situation engendered a kind of false optimism which viewed the revolution as in some sense inevitable. This attitude was as dangerous as, and possibly more so than that which rejected revolution and tried to limit the demands of the workers. One thing stood out clearly: the need for resolute leadership and an understanding of the immense problems involved in preparing the working classes organisationally, politically and culturally for the great tasks which lay ahead.
However, the very existence of revolutionary possibilities revealed a state of confusion and indecision among the Socialist leaders. While the ruling class was preparing its counterblows and priming Mussolini's blackshirts for their role, the Socialist leadership was content to let events take their course. The reign of Giolittism—the nearest equivalent in Italy to parliamentary democracy—was approaching its end and the vacuum created by its demise could be filled in one of two ways. “The present phase of the class struggle in Italy”, continued the manifesto of Ordine Nuovo, “is the phase which precedes: either the conquest of political power by the revolutionary proletariat for the transition to new modes of production and distribution which will also allow a revival of productivity; or a tremendous reaction by the propertied classes and the governmental caste. No violence will be spared to subject the industrial and agricultural proletariat to servile labour: they will seek to break up inexorably the working-class’s organs of political struggle (the Socialist Party) and to incorporate the organs of economic resistance (the Trade Unions and the Co-operatives) into the machinery of the bourgeois state.”
The years immediately following the defeat of the Factory Councils movement were packed with the greatest activity for Gramsci. He now saw the immensity of the task facing the Socialist and Communist movements and was at the same time acutely aware of the terrible dangers which threatened the whole Italian nation if that task were not accomplished in time. It is difficult to give a clear picture of the many-sidedness of his interests and influence. He had seen in the Turinese working class the germs of a new society. The task which he set himself was to develop that germ, helping it to show itself superior in all fields to the old society. This involved giving political leadership, but not only that. Ordine Nuovo was much more than a purely political newspaper. Gramsci believed that the working class was capable of understanding and mastering the most fundamental problems of scientific and cultural development. Even this task might have been simple if it had been approached with the attitude of a teacher lecturing to schoolchildren. But this was not Gramsci's way. The editorial offices of Ordine Nuovo at Turin were a meeting place for workers of all kinds who came to discuss with Gramsci the problems of the whole movement. And Gramsci looked on this constant personal contact as essential for success. In addition to being a political leader and an editor he became a personal guide and counsellor, a man who was not only respected but loved far beyond the limits of Turin. He became a sort of legend and used to receive hundreds of letters from workers in all parts of the country. To each one he gave the most careful and minute consideration for he firmly believed that a careful study of these letters would enable the newspaper to fulfil its duties more adequately. He had set himself to learn from the workers as well as to help them.
A glimpse into Gramsci's attitude to his readers and to his own tasks is given in a reminiscence of Felice Platone, who worked with him on the editorial board of the newspaper. One day Gramsci was visited in his office by a young university lecturer who, says Platone, was one of those people "who can, without any difficulty and with a smile on his lips, through inborn genius, answer any question, pass a judgment on any event and reject any objection with supreme disdain. . . ."
Platone continues: "The imperceptible frown with which Gramsci welcomed the newcomer made me assume that if I stayed I would not be wasting my time, and I began conscientiously looking for a newspaper in the heap which cluttered up my desk, savouring the dialogue which was about to unfold. The young professor said that he intended to 'help' the workers, 'instruct them', 'educate them', and all this disinterestedly. The workers would have in him a loyal and capable 'teacher'. From the beginning Gramsci fumed in silence; he kept taking off and putting on his spectacles. I saw that he was about to lose his patience. Then he calmed down and listened to the end, without raising his eyes, entirely absorbed in folding and refolding, with great care, a sheet of paper. When the professor had finished, Gramsci, as if he had heard nothing and had been thinking about something completely different, asked him:
"'What in your opinion was the most fruitful and important step forward made by man after he had learned to use fire?'
"When he saw that the other man gaped astonishingly, he continued:
"'Excuse me, this really is not good enough. But tell me, how many years have you been at school with the workers?'
"'Really, I never intended to become a worker . . .'
"'That is not what I meant. Who do you think is more qualified to be classed as an intellectual: a lecturer, or even a professor, who has stored up a certain number of more or less disconnected notions and ideas, who knows nothing except his own job; or a worker, even a not very cultured worker, but one who has a clear idea of what the progress and future of the world should be and who coherently organises and co-ordinates those modest and elementary notions he has been able to acquire around this idea?'
"'But I know Marxism very well; moreover, I have given it an idealistic basis.'
"That was enough for Gramsci. After a few minutes the professor, as if by magic, had lost his affection and went away saying, in the tone of one who does not want to show his wounded pride: 'I shall think about his advice to learn from the workers.'"
But Platone adds that Gramsci devoted much of his time to the study of intellectual movements outside the working-class camp. Those who read the prison notebooks can be left in no doubt as to the enormous breadth of his reading and knowledge of contemporary developments, but it is worthwhile recording that in the period about which we are talking Gramsci was permanent dramatic critic for the Socialist organ Avanti! At a later date he gave one of the first appraisals of the importance of the dramatic work of Pirandello. While in prison he composed a series of acute observations on the significance of the tenth canto of Dante's Inferno. His interests were in fact encyclopaedic and at the same time they were united in a single organic concept of the struggle for the development of a new society, of which Ordine Nuovo was the first and most daring expression. In that struggle the intellectuals had a definite and important role to play, but only as intellectuals of the working class, accepting the fact that it was this class alone which carried within it the seeds of the new society. "What a tragedy it would be", he wrote to a comrade in 1924, "if the groups of intellectuals who come to the working class and in whom the working class places its trust, do not feel themselves the same flesh and blood as the most humble, the most backward, and the least aware of our workers and peasants. All our work would be useless and we would obtain no result."
The outcome of the new perspectives opened up by the events of 1919 and 1920 together with the work of the Ordine Nuovo group, was the formation in 1921 of the Italian Communist Party. The programme of May, 1920, from which we have already quoted, had continued its analysis of the situation in the following words:
"The working class and peasant forces lack co-ordination and revolutionary concentration, because the leading organs of the Socialist Party have shown that they understand absolutely nothing about the development of national and international history in the present period, and that they understand nothing of the mission incumbent on the organs of struggle of the revolutionary proletariat. The Socialist Party looks on as a spectator at the unfolding of events, it never has its own opinion to show that it is dependent on the revolutionary theses of Marxism and the Communist International, it does not issue directives of a kind which can be understood by the masses, giving a general direction, unifying and concentrating revolutionary action."
The break with the Socialist leadership and the formation of the Italian Communist Party came finally at the Livorno Congress in January, 1921, and it marks in a certain sense the last major revolutionary development of the post-war period. As the strength of Fascism and militant nationalism of the D'Annunzio type began to increase, the character of the struggle changed and rapidly began to take on the form of a fight to preserve democratic liberties by the organisation of powerfully united and effective action. Gramsci was one of the first to realise the full meaning of the change. Inside the Communist
Party he carried on an incessant campaign against all forms of sectarianism and particularly that of the first secretary of the Party, Bordiga, who believed that Fascism was simply another form of bourgeois rule and that the tactics in fighting it should remain unchanged. To this suicidal policy Gramsci opposed the policy of giving maximum support to all forms of popular resistance to Fascism, and he eventually succeeded in winning the Party for support of the idea of a united front. In 1924, after his return from Russia, where he went for health reasons, he was elected secretary of the Communist Party.
Gramsci now began a thorough reorganisation of the Party to meet the new situation and the new tasks. In the prevailing conditions of semi-illegality and constant terrorisation which followed the March on Rome, in October 1922, Ordine Nuovo had been forced to cease publication. In March, 1924 Gramsci founded a new newspaper, Unità, whose title proclaimed its aims. In the following April, elections were held for Parliament, and despite Fascist intimidation, which included the assassination of one Socialist candidate and numerous acts of terrorism, the people returned an unprecedented number of Communist and Socialist candidates. Among the Communists elected was Gramsci himself.
But Mussolini acted before the new policy could prove fully effective. At the opening of the new Parliament, Giacomo Matteotti, a Socialist deputy, denounced the corrupt and undemocratic way in which the elections had been conducted. Shortly afterwards he was assassinated in circumstances which pointed to the direct complicity of the government. This action opened up a grave crisis. The democratic opposition left Parliament and began a campaign denouncing this latest atrocity and calling on the king to dismiss Mussolini. Naturally, the king temporised while Mussolini played for time. Gramsci, together with the other Communist deputies, joined the Parliamentary opposition but insisted that it was impossible to act effectively inside the constitution. He proposed the declaration of a general strike against Fascism, but the proposal was rejected by the other parties, who blindly thought that their strength lay in remaining within the law and waiting for the monarchy to intervene. Even the Parliamentary Socialist Party followed this line and the Communists remained isolated.
As no decisive action was taken Mussolini felt that the immediate crisis had passed and reopened Parliament, which he had closed after the walk-out of the opposition. At this point Gramsci decided to leave the Aventine (as the opposition parties were called), lead the Communist deputies back into Parliament, and continued to denounce Fascism from there. The impotence of the democratic parties had been shown clearly and Gramsci's prompt action resulted in a considerable enhancing of the position of the Communist Party as a leader in the fight against Mussolini. Gramsci saw that this fight could not be confined to verbal protests; it must be coupled with an immense broadening of the whole political and economic struggle of the workers and peasants. It is significant that it was precisely at the time of the triumph of Fascism that Gramsci devoted himself to the study of the Southern Question and wrote his famous article showing that decisive changes in the social and political structure of the country could only come about as a result of united action by the industrial workers of the North and the peasants of the South.
It was while Gramsci was devoting all his energies to the development of this new movement that he was arrested.