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(pp. 390=419 in Prison Notebooks)
Contrst between science (a new philosophy of the proletariat devised by Marx) and action (Lenin's Russian revolution). Gramsci maintains that it is ridiculous to rank or compare them, both together are 'homogenous and heterogenous', both are necessary. (381-2).
Note: the statement of the problem is really the relation between science and action in Marxism.
(Note: how to study Marx) (382=6)
1) Distinguish Stable and Permanent Elements: ie, in the intellectual development of the thinker, "identify those elements which were to become stable and 'permanent'", as opposed to those ideas which came from the past, which he once took up, but subsequently discarded. (the 'discards').
2) Control 'Heroic Fury': ie, Gramsci suggests that there are two ways of approaching the text of an author: with 'heroic fury': with deep interest and active striving; or with passive "external curiosity". Gramsci argues that there is a danger that in heroic fury there is a danger of being seduced by the material and not taking a sufficiently critical attitude toward it. (382-3) It is thus important to introduce an element of systematisation to heroic fury. And now Gramsci suggests how this might be done as follows:
3) Biography: "reconstruct the author's biography", both in terms of "his practical acitivity" and in terms of "his intellectual development" (383).
4) Catalogue in Chronological Order the works of the author "according to intrinsic criteria -- of intellectual formation, maturity, possession and application of the new way of thinking and of conceiving life and the world. Search for the Leitmotiv" ("the guiding (or leading) motif") (383).
5) Original Works vs Edited By Engels: distinguish between original works written and published under the authority of the author, and those published posthumously and edited by someone else. The latter works are to be treated as incomplete by the author, and may have been repudiated by him (384). In the case of posthumous texts edited by someone else (e.g. Vols. 2 and 3 of Capital), have on hand a diplomatic text (ie, a literal form as left by the author, unedited). (384). Both original and post=humous texts should be arranged "according to chronological=critical periods" (384).
6) Subsequent Alterations by Author Himself : as in future editions of the same work in which the author revises some of his ideas (384=5).
7) Correspondence: treat these with "precautions", since they are marked by "stylistic vivacity" and "logical errors" and "weakness" that would not be repeated in the text that receives more careful consideration. "a confident assertion made in a letter would perhaps not be repeated in a book." (385).
8) Distinguish Between Engels and Marx in their joint works: their joint works do not necessarily perfect agreement between them; the agreement should cover on the particular joint work, not their whole corpus of works. Gramsci states candidly: "There is no need to underrate the contribution of the second [Engels] but there is no need either to identify the second with the first [Engels with Marx] nor should one think that everything attributed by [Engels] to [Marx] is absolutely authentic and free from infliltration. ... The point is that [Engels] is not [Marx] and that if one wants to know [Marx] one must look for him above all in his authentic works, those published under his direct responsibility." (385).
Sorel raises question that "the second of the two friends has scand capacities as a theoretician" (386): Note: it is not clear whether Gramsci agrees with this statement, though he does not challenge it.
Antonio Labiola (386-8) An early Italian marxist whose ideas had a profound effect on Gramsci. Gramsci's purpose here is to resurrect Labiola, especially given the unwarranted attacks on him by Trotsky.
In this context, Gramsci distinguishes two tendencies in Marxism:
1) orthodox tendency: the vulgar materialism of Plekenov (a russian social=democrat whose book Lenin loved).
2) non=materialist philosphical tendency: opposite of the first; represented by Otto Bauer in his attempt to relate marxism to religion by way of Kantianism. This is typical of the whole Austro=marxism school which took a more 'scientific' approach to marx.
1) Romantic period of struggle: period of 'storm and stress' "all interest is focussed on the most immediate weapons and on tactical problems in the political field and on minor cultural problems in the philosophical field" (388);
2) Gaining of Power: "in which a subaltern group becomes really autonomous and hegemonic, thus bringing into being a new form of State, we experience the concrete birth of a need to construct a new intellectual and moral order, that is, a new type of society, and hence the need to develop more universal concepts and more refined and decisive ideological weapons." (388).
In this context, Gramsci suggests that we should bring Labriola back by recovering his unpublished texts. (388).
(fascinating: 388=399)
Thesis: Marxism is depicted as a cultural moment in the history of modern culture; it is a dialectic unity containing challenges of past elements which it incorporates and supercedes. Its base is the subordinate classes (proletariat); its strongest expression is materialism which is a culture always expressed by the proletariat. In contrast, idealism and spirituralism are the cultural currents of pure intellectual groups that express and reflect dominant class interests.
Moment: from Hegel; means in Gramsci: "combines the temporal 'moment of time' with the ideas of 'aspect' or 'feature', and of 'motive force'." (388, fn. 17). In original Hegelian meaning, it is "an aspect of a situation in its concrete (not necessarily temporal) manifestation..." (editors intro, p. xiv).
Marxism as a Moment of Modern Culture:
"The philosophy of praxis has been a 'moment' of modern culture." (388).
Marxism as Combinations with Other Cultural Elements: (or Marxism's "double revision" or "double philosophical combination": (389). Ie, elements of marxism are absorbed or coopted by or into various idealist currents.
1) Orthodoxy (philosophical materialism): combinations with an idealism evident in religion in the popular masses with contain elements of a crass materialism. Orthodox marxists are more closely connected "with the great popular masses" (389=90).
The orthodox current has had to fight against "religious transcendentalism" among the masses, and thought they could overcome this with the "crudest and most banal materialism"; but Gramsci says that this crass materialism is kept alive independently among the masses, and in religion itself, which is expressed "among the people in a low and trivial form, full of superstition and witchcraft, in which matter plays no small role." (390).
Gramsci says later on p. 396: " 'Politically' the materialist conception is clsoe to the pdople, to 'common sense'. It is closely linked to many beliefs and prejudices, to almost all popular superstitions (witchcraft, spirits, etc.). This can be seen in popular Catholicism, and , even more so, in Bysantine orthodoxy. Popular religion is crassly materialistic...".
2) Pure Idealism: marxism, or at least "certain of its elements have been absorbed and incorporated by a number of idealist currents" (e.g., "Croce, Gentile, Sorel, Bergson even, pragmatism"). (389). This has occurred more among "pure intellectuals".
Gramsci says that these pure intellectuals "acting as the elaborators of the most widespread ideologies of the dominant classes and as leaders of the intellectual groups in their countries"; they absorb elements of marxism into their philosophical idealism "to provide new arms for the arsenal of the social group with which they were linked." (390).
Central Question: "Why has the philosophy of praxis had this fate of having served to form combinations between its principal elements and either idealism or philosophical materialism?" (390)
1) "Explicit Absorption": e.g. "the Crocean reduction of the philosophy of praxis to an empircal canon of historical research...has contributed to the creation of the economicico=juridical school of Italian historiography" (391).
2) "Implicit and Unacknowledged Absorption": "because the philosophy of praxis has been a moment of modern culrture, a diffuse atmosphere, which has modified old ways of thinking through actions and reactions which asre neither apparent nor immediate." (391). (e.g. Sorel; Croce; Bergsonian philosophy; pragmatism). Gramsci says that "certain of their positions would be inconceivable without the historical link of the philosophy of praxis." (391).
3) "practical lesson in the science of politics" in which the opponents of marxism adopt some of its elements. E.g. Mario Missiroli (a bourgeois Italian intellectual) writes "that it would be interesting to know whether in their heart of hearts the more intelligent industrialists were not convinced that the 'Critical Economy' [Capital] contained very good insights into their affairs, and whether they do not take advantage of the lessons thus acquired." (391=2_.
4) Combinations with "tradtional materialism", especially Kantianism:
In this context, Gramsci says that "the philosophy of praxis has been forced to ally itself with extraneous tendencies in order to combat the residues of the pre=capitalist world that still exist amongthe popular masses, especdially in the field of religion." (392).
Two Class Bases Against Which Marxism Waged Cultural Struggles in order to Establish a New Group of Autonomous Intellectuals:
1) Against the ideologies of the pure intellectuals "in order to be able to constitute its own group of independent intellectuals" (393). Gramsci considered their culture to be idealism, more specifically German idealism, which marxism had to combat; it remained the culture of "educated classes" or of a "restricted intellectual aristocracy". (394).
2) Against the "medieval" culture of the popular masses in order to educate them. Gramsci considers this second struggle to be by far the most important. (393). The new cultural form, philosophy of praxis, was to be the culture of the popular masses. (394).
1) Reformation and Calvinism: parallel with marxism in that it became the expression of the popular masses in Germany.
e.g. Gramsci says that Georges Sorel hinted at "a conception of the philosophy of praxis as a modern popular reformation..." (395).
2) Renaissance (1815=48): culture of the elites against whom reformation reacted.
Marxism as a Dialectical Synthesis and Supercession of Past Cultures (NB: bracketed passage, pp. 395=6: NB NB NB).
1) Hegel: synthesis of materialism and idealism with a weight toward spiritualism; "a man walking on his head" (396)
2) Marx: synthesis of materialism and idealism, with weight on materialism ("the man walking on his feet"). (396).
3) Laceration of materialism and idealism in marxism into orthodoxy vs idealism.
Organization of Culture and their Intellectual Leaders: Parallel Between Reformation and Marxism (397=8).
Gramsci uses the word "similar" to describe what happened in the Reformation and what happens in Marxism. That is, there was a separation between the intellectuals and the masses.
1) Reformation: During the Reformation, the masses were "deserted" by the intellectuals "in the face of the enemy which explains the 'sterility' of the Reformation in the immediate spher of high culture, until, by a process of selection, the people, which remained faithful to the cause, produced a new group of intellectuals culminasting in classical philosophy." (397).
2) Marxism: "Something similar has happened up to now with the philosophy of praxis. The great intellectuals formed on the terrain of this philosophy, besides being few in number, were not linked with the people, they did not emerge from the people, but were the expression of traditional intermediary classes, to which they returned at the great 'turning points' of history. Some remained, but rather to subject the new conception to a systematic revision than to advance its autonomous development. ... What existsat any given time is a variable combination of old and new, a momentary equilibrium of cultural relations corresponding to the equilibrium of social relations." (397=8). (NB)
Marxism as a Science and as Moment in Modern Culture:
"The philosophy of praxis not only claimed to explain and to justify all the past, but to explain and justify historically itself as well." (399).
(399=402).
Philosophy of praxis is the dialectical synthesis of three movements:
1) classical German philosophy; represented by the 'theoretical moment'; (Hegel)
2) English classical economics; represented by the 'economic' moment; (David Ricardo)
3) French politics, literature and practice: represented by the 'political' moment.
New philosophy of praxis = "the unitary 'moment' of synthesis is to be identified in the new concept of immanence, which has been traslated from the speculative form, as put forward by classical German philosophy, into a historicist form with the aid of French politics and English classical economics." (400). "One could say that the philosophy of praxis equals Hegel plus David Ricardo." (400).
Gramsci then outlines a research program that would trace out these cultural influences on marxism. (401=2).
(402=3).
Three unities?? "Unity is given by the dialectical development of the contradictions between man and matter (nature--material forces of production)."
1) In economics: unitary centre = value; ie, "the relationship between the worker and the industrial productive forces." (402).
2) In philosophy: unitary centre = praxis; ie, "the relationship between human will (superstructure) and economic structure". (403).
3) In politics: the unitary centre is "the relationship between the State and civil society, that is, the intervention of the State (centralized will) to educate the educator, the social environment in general." (403). ...text breaks off here.
(403=4)
Gramsci notes that there should be a "convertibility from one to the others and a reciprocal translation into the specific language proper to each constituent element. Any one is implicit in the others, and the three form a homogeneous circle." (403).
Gramsci raises questions of how a "man of politics" approaches philosophy, etc. "in every personality there is one dominant and predominant activity: it is here that his thought must be looked for, in a form that is more often than not implicit and at times even in contradiction with whast is professly expressed." (403).
Correspondence between stages of history and certain questions in the philosophy of praxis: here Gramsci refers to Luxemburg "about the impossibility of treating certain questions of the philosophy of praxis in so far as they have not yet become actual for the course of history in general or that of a given social grouping. To the economico=corporate phase, to the phase of struggle for hegemony in civil society and to the phase of State power there correspond specific intellectual activities which cannot be arbitrarily improvised or anticipated. In the phase of struggle for hegemony it is the science of politics which is developed; in the State phase all the superstructures must be developed, if one is not to risk the dissolution of the State." (404).
(404=407)
Thesis: marxism is rooted in the contradictions of society; as those contradictions change and disappear, so will marxism (ie, in the transition from necessity to freedom, or to communism). (Note: Gramsci does not actually use the words of marxism and communism, but this is what he means).
Relation Between Marxism and Hegel: "In a sense...the philosophy of praxis is a reform and a development of Hegelianism; it is a philosophy that has been liberated (or is attempting to liberate itself) from any unilateral and fanatical ideological elements; it is consciousness full of contradictions, in which the philosopher himself, understood both individually and as an entire social group, not only grasps the contradictions, but posits himself as an element of the contradiction and elevates this element to a principle of knowledg and therefore of action." (404=5).
Disappearance of Marxism: "the philosophy of praxis too will disappear, or be superseded." (405). Because it is a product or expressions of contradictions, and when these contradictions change or are resolved (when necessity becomes freedom), the marxism will change or disappear, or be superseded by a different philosophy. (405).
(407=9)
Thesis: Rejection of Economic Determinism: Gramsci rejects the attribution to Marx of a vulgar materialism in which some assert that every element of politics is a reflection of structure (economics).
Gramsci: NB NB NB NB "The claim, presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism, that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political historical works." e.g. 18th Brumaire; Civil War in France; REvolution and counter=revolution in Germany; teh Eastern Question; etc. (407).
Gramsci then makes the interesting statement that "the real precautions introduced by Marx into his concrete researches, precautions which could have no place in his general works" (407=8). Note: not explained.
1) Law of Tendencies: there is only a tendency for structure to be expressed through politics, but this may not happen, or may be delayed. ie, "Politics in fact is at any given time the reflection of the tendencies of development in the structure, but it is not necessarily the case that these tendencies must be realised." (p. 408).
2) Errors: individual leaders or groups may miscalculate and commit an error, which eventually will be corrected by historical development.
3) "Internal Necessities of an Organization Character": e.g. many events in the Catholic Church cannot be traced back to structure, but occur because of "sectarian and organizational necessities" (408=9).
(410=414)
Thesis: Gramsci locates the concept of regularity or permanence of forces or causality in the science of economics (Ricardo is seen as the precursor to Marxism), and the concept of necessity by using the examples of Providence and Fortune. Note: a very abstract and dense section to understand.
(414=15)
Gramsci is proposing an international inventory of all the questions and of a bibliography in the philosophy of praxis compiled in different countries and languages; also an inventory of all the critiques of different currents in the philosophy of praxis.
(415=6)
Gramsci proposes a compilation of all the writings of Marx and Engels directly or indirectly relevant to Italy.
(416=418)
Thesis: with little justification, Gramsci argues that European culture has always had a hegemony over other cultures in the world; that currently this involves a transition from Hegelianism to the philosophy of praxis; that once this European culture was a preserve of the professional intellectuals, but that now it is spreading to or affecting mass culture.
Note: the ethnocentric values here.
Passage From Knowing to Understanding and to Feeling and Vice Versa From Feeling to Understanding and to Knowing. (418=9)
Thesis: An Essay on Intellectuals: this appears to be an extremely important essay in which Gramsci seems to argue that for intellectuals to perform their hegemonic function, they must be able to connect their knowledge and understanding to feeling among the people or masses. If they cannot do this, they are ineffective, and form a caste. This is a prerequisite to the formation of any historical bloc .
(419=472)
(419=25) The philosophy of marxism should start firstly with a critique of common sense of the masses, then of religion, and only lastly of the philosophy of the traditional intellectuals. The reason for this is that the terrain of the philosophy of praxis are the masses where common sense exists and because religion becomes part of the masses by its combination of idealism and materialism. On the other hand, the philosophy of the intellectuals do not have a direct effect on the masses who are not aware of it, but it does have an external and coercive effect on the masses. Gramsci uses this argument to critqie Nikolai Bukharin's, The Theory of Historical Materialism, A Manual of Popular Sociology, published in 1921 in Moscow. His criticism is that it starts out with a critique of traditional philosophy, when it should have started out with a critique of common sense.
Common Sense: Gramsci calls this the " 'philosophy of non=philosophers', or in other words, the conception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed. Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space. It is the 'folklore' of philosophy, and, like folklore, it takes countless different forms. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultdural position of those masses whose philosophy it is." (419).
Common Sense and Religion: Gramsci sees an intimate relation between these two. (420). Like common sense, Catholicism is fragmentary in that it is split up into a number of different and contradictory religions: one for the petit bourgeoisie and town people, one for women, one for the peasants and one for the intellectuals. There is a materialism here which is integrated into the religion and also into common sense. Gramsci states: "In common sense it is the 'realistic', materialistic elements which are predominant, the immediately produce of crude sensation. This is by no means in contradiction with the relgious element, far from it." (420).
Note: the materialism of the masses and religion is sensation??
Philosophy of Praxis = (a) In Struggle, (b) Starts with Masses (421).
Gramsci states that: "Indeed, because by its nature it tends towards being a mass philosophy, the philosophy of praxis can only be conceived in a polemical form and in the form of a perpetual struggle. None teh less the starting point must always be that common sense which is the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude and which has to be made ideologically coherent." (421).
French philosophy = Best Model of How to Develop Hegemony: because French intellectuals were close to the people "in order to guide it ideologically and keep it linked with the leading group." (421). Gramsci states: "The attitude of French philosophical culture towards common sense can indeed offer a model of hegemonic ideological construction." (421).
External and Coercive Relation Between Traditional Philosophy and Masses: Gramsci argues that "the great systems of traditional philosophy and the religion of the leaders of the clergy --i.e. the conception ofthe world of the intellectuals and high culture...are unknown to the multitude and have no direct influence on its way of thinking and acting." But it does have a different kind of influence: "These systems influence the popular masses as an external political force, an element of cohesive force exericsed by the ruling classes and therfore an element of subordination to an external hegemony. This limits the original thought of the popular masses in a negative direction, without having the positive effect of a vital ferment of interior transformation of what the masses think in an embryonic and chaotic form about the world and life." (419=20).
Critiques of Croce and Gentile: Gramsci citiques both for the same reason: they merge elements of philosophy with common sense, and thus do not maintain a sufficient distinction between philosophy and common sense (422=4).
Method of Procedure for the culture of the Philosophy of Praxis: "one cannot but start in the first place from com mon sense, then secondly from religion, and only at a third stage move on to the philosophical systems elaborated by traditional intellectual groups." (425).
(425=30)
Thesis: cannot reduce philosophy of praxis to sociology for two reasons:
1) Statistical laws: sociology is based on the attempt to find statistical laws in society through the gathering of data; it is based on "evolutionist positivism". Statistical laws in sociology appear tautological: they repeat the obvious. The philosophy of praxis is something more than this -- it is a conception of history, it is a philosophy, although it too is based on philology (the accurate collection of historical facts combined with the pursuit of the Certain).
2) Action and organization: the philosophy of praxis is directed to action, to political organizing. Sociology requires a passive attitude toward society and social facts.
(431)
Gramsci asks how one should deal with the philosophy of praxis. He answers that first of all, one should "deal with all the general philosophical part, and then should develop in a coherent fashion all the general concepts of a methodology of history and politics and, in addition, of art, economics and ethics, finding a place in the overall construction for a theory of the natural sciences."
Three main constituent parts or moments: philosophical (the dialectic); economics; and politics. These derive from "classical German philosophy, classical English economics, and French political activity and science". These need to be put into a dialectical unity. (which Gramsci calls the "principal task". In the dialectic, "the general concepts of history, politics and economics are interwoven in an organic unity." Although these cannot be separated, they could be in a Manual, such as Buhkarin's, who treats them in an incoherent fashion.
(431=2)
Gramsci says the "crux of all the questions that have arisen around the philosophy of praxis" is "how does the historical movement arise on the structural base"? He says that the answer lies to Marx's two key questions in the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
a) "mankind only poses for itself such tasks as it can resolve;...the task itself only arises when the material conditions for its resolution already exist or at least asre in the process of formation".
b) "A social order does not perish until all the productive forces for which it still has room have been developed and new and higher relations of production have taken their place, and until the material conditions of the new relations have grown up within the womb of the old society" (432).
Note: check Marx to get the exact wording since the above is Gramsci recalling Marx's text.
(432=3)
Major vs. Minor Ideological Opponents: Gramsci argues that in the philosophy of praxis one must take on the major intellectuals in the opposing camp, not concentrate on the minor intellectuals as does Buhkarin.
Difference Between Political and Military Struggle and Ideological Struggle:
Weakest vs. Strongest Links:
NB see passage, pp. 432=3;
Gist is that in political and military struggle, one takes on the weakest links in order to break through and attack the strongest parts of the opponent; however, in ideological struggle, one takes on the strongest links, or the strongest intellectuals in the opposing camp.
Note: if politics and ideology are a dialectical organic whole, how can one recommend separate and distinct stragegies for each terrain?
Science vs Mass Ideology: Gramsci repeatedly says the two should not be confused: "...mass ideology must be distinguished from the scientific works and the great philosophical syntheses which are its real cornerstones." (433).
Note: is this the parallel to Gramsci's prior distinction between common sense vs. philosophy.
(433=4)
Thesis: the philosophy of praxis is not yet a scientific system, and as such cannot be popularized in a manual for the public which is in need of certainties which the philosophy of praxis does not yet have because it is still in the process of development.
(434=6)
Thesis: Gramsci argues that in the dialectic one cannot separate history and philosophy, as the Manual does. Rather, the two are integral.
See passage on page 435 in which Gramsci argues that the dialectic in the philosophy of praxis opens up a new stage in history by going beyond but incorporating elements of the older philosophies of materialism and idealism.
(436=7)
Gramsci criticizes the manual for having an empiricist metaphysics that is not located in historical movement.
Gramsci: "To think of a philosophical affirmation as true in a particular historical period (that is, as the necessary and inseparable expression of a particular historical action, of a particular praxis) but as superseded and rendered 'vain' in a succeeding period, without however falling into scepticism and moral and ideological relativism, in other words to see philosophy as historicity, is quite an arduous and difficult mental operation." (436).
(437=40)
Thesis: Gramsci criticizes Buhkarin's concept of science in the Manual; it takes its model from the natural and physical science and is applied inappropriately to society. Gramsci lists the characteristics of what a scientist is not (on p. 439). In particular, he repeats that in ideological (scientific ?) struggle, one takes on the strongest of one's opponents, not the weakest as Buhharin does (pp. 439=40).
Scientists as Intellectuals Representative of a Social Group?: Gramsci refers to "a social group--of which the men of science are always assumed to be the representatives--". (439). Note: does he mean the more general group of scientists here, or does he mean social class?
(440=8)
Thesis: Gramsci seems to argue that the Manual incorrectly accepts a reactionary concept of the external world practiced in religion (God created the world, so therefore an objective external world must exist). Gramsci argues that a different conception is appropriate to the philosophy of praxis: that of the unity of mankind resulting from the experimental method in science which is the first dialectical method in the unity between man and nature. When this unity becomes universalized, it becomes to that extent real and objective. This occurs through the spread of a Europeanized scientific culture which he hegemonic over the cultures of other nations.
Popular Belief in the Reality of the External World Based in Religion and the Gap Between the Intellectuals and the Masses:
Gramsci argues that a gap exists between the intellectuals and masses in that the intellectuals can seriously debate with the external world really exists apart from man, while the masses would laugh at the asking of this question. The reason for this is that religion has created this belief and it has seeped through culture even among those who are not religious. It has become part of common sense. Thus, subjectivism is ridiculed among the masses. Buhkarin makes the mistake of accepting this religious notion of the reality of the external world. (441=2).
Subjectivism a form of idealism, even where the masses think the world objective on religious grounds. Gramsci gives the example of Tolstoy spinning around (p. 443) and Bernardino Varisco 's newspaper example on the same page: " 'I open the newspaper for information on the news; how can you maintain that I myself created the news by opening the paper? ' "
Buhkarin's Subjectivist Conception of the REality of External World: Gramsci argues that Buhkarin accepts the popular masses' subjectivist conception of the reality of the external world without questioning its historicity. (see passage bottom of page 444 and top of page 445).
Definition of Reality of External World in Philosophy of Praxis:
1) Historical Roots of Mass Belief in REality of External World: Gramsci argues that the philosophy of praxis should ask why it is that the masses have such an unquestioning faith in the reality of the external world, why they laugh at any attempt to question it.
2) Answer: seek out its historicity as any other expression of idealism. ie, ideology has material, historical roots; so this religious belief of the masses must also have material, historical roots.
3) Historical Materialist Approach to Ideology and Idealism: Gramsci says that historical materialism is a "philosophy which, in its theory of superstructures, poses in realistic and historicist terms what traditional philosophy expressed in a speculative form. ... [the development of this approach would] permit an organic development of the philosophy of praxis even to the point of it becoming the hegemonic exponent of high culture. It is surprising that there has been no proper affirmation and development of the connection between the idealist assertion of the reality of the world as a creation of the human spirit and the affirmation made by the philosphy of praxis of the historicity and transience of ideologies on the grounds that ideologies are expressions of teh structure and are modified by modifications of the structure." (442).
4) Philosophy of Praxis Conception of Reality of External World:
a) Universal and Unified Culture: "Objective always means 'humanly objective' which can be held to correspond exactly to 'historically subjective': in other words, objective would mean 'universal subjective.' Man knows objectively in so far as knowledge is real for the whole human race historically unified in a single unitary cultural system. But this process of historical unification takes place through the disappearance of the internal contradictions which tear apart human society, while these contradictions themselves are the conditions for the formation of groups and for the vbirth of ideologies which are not concretely universal but are immideately rendered transient by the practical origin of their substance. There exists therefore a struggle for objectivity (to free oneself from partial and fallacious ideologies) and this struggle is the same as the struggle for the cultural unification of the human race. What the idealists call 'spirit' is not a point of departure but a point of arrival, it is the ensemble of the superstructures moving towards concrete and objectively universal unification and it is not a unitary presupposition." (445=6).
b) Universalised Scientific Experimental Method as the First Dialectical Method: "Up to now experimental science has provided the terrain on which a cultural unity of this kind has reached its furthest exrtension. This has been the element of knowledge that has contributed most to unifying the 'spirit' and making it more universal. It is the most objectivised and concretely universalised subjectivity. ... We know reality only in relation to man. ... Engels' phrase that 'the materiality of teh world is demonstrated by the long and laborious development of philosophy and natural science' should be analysed and made more precise. ... One might say that the typical unitary process of reality is found here in the experimental activity of the scientist, which is the first model of dialectical mediation between man and nature, and the elementary historical cell through which man puts himself into relation with nature by means of technology, knows her and dominates her. ... Scientific experiment is the first cell of teh new method of production, of the new form of active union of man and nature. The scientist=experimenter is also a worker, not a pure thinker, and his though is continually controlled by practice and vice versa, until there is formed the perfect unity of theory and practice." (446)
5) Example of Historicity of Conception of Nature (Space) East vs West; North vs South: NB read passage, p. 447. Cultural hegemony of European intellectuals evident in fact that even in Japan, Japan is thought of as part of the "Far East."
Supercession of Marxism Over Hegelianism: "The Hegelian 'idea' has been resolved both in the structure and in the superstructures and the whole way of conceiving philosophy has been 'historicised', that is to say a new way of philosophising which is more concrete and historical than what went before it has begaun to come into existence." (448).
(448=9)
Thesis: Gramsci criticizes Buhkarin for thinking that philosophies of the past can be valid or invalid for all times, regardless of historical circumstances; this violates the philosophy of praxis which sees philosophies coming and going according to concrete historical circumstances; this is the true dialectical method.
(449=52)
Thesis: This is an essay on language or words that are metaphorical, that is words that survive from the past but which take on new meanings, even though past meanings are still implicit. Such a word is 'immanence' in the philosophy of praxis.
(452=7)
Thesis: in the transition from one society to another, intellectuals arise to represent the new reality. This representation must be based on a change in language, at least in its content, although its form may remain the same. Gramsci discusses this in the context of changes in the meaning of the term 'materialism'. But some intellectuals, the crystallized intellectuals, consider themselves above class struggle, and connect themselves with the past through a maintenance of the same language rather than its reformulation. They thus fail to articulate the new reality.
Crystallized (Traditional) Vs. Organic Intellectuals??:
Gramsci: "One of the characteristics of the intellectuals as a crystallised social group (one, that is, which sees itself as continuing uninterruptedly through istory and thus independent of the struggle of groups [class struggle] rather than as the expression of a dislectical process through which every dominant social group elaborates its own category of intellectuals) is precisely that of connecting itself, in the ideological sphere, with a preceding intellectual category by means of a common conceptual nomenclature. ... Every new social organism (type of society) creates a new superstructure whose specialized representatives and standard=bearers (the intellectuals) can only be conceived as themselves being 'new' intellectuals who have come out of the new situation and are not a continuation of the preceding intellectual milieu. ... If the task of the intellectuals is to determine and to organise the reform of moral and intellectual life, in words to fit culture to the sphere of practice, it is clear that 'crystallised' intellectuals are conservative and reactionary. For while the new social group at least feels itself split off and distinct from its predecessor, these intellectuals are not even conscious of this distinction, but think that they can reconnect themselves with the past." (452=3).
(457=8)
Thesis: Gramsci criticizes the Manual for suggesting that the progress in the history of science can be equated with the development of the instruments of science (instruments of production as a parallel). To this he counterposes: "The principlal 'instruments' of scientific progress are of an intellectual (and even political) and methodological order, and Engels has written that 'intellectual instruments' are not born from nothing and are not innate in man, but are acquired, have developed and are developing historically." (457=8).
Note: this seems to be an attempt to critique vulgar materialism, or an instruments of production thesis, by counterposing it with a dialectical unity of ideas and productive forces.
(458=61)
Thesis: a critique by Gramsci of Buhkarin's emphasis on the technical instruments, and thus the overemphasis on the forces of production over superstructure. This he ridicules.
(462=5)
1) Womb argument of new society in old (p. 432 from Marx).
Note: is society female, or part of nature, in terms of the forces and relations of production as an objective reality or structure that man confronts? Man is subjective ; woman is objective? (Opposite to O'Brien).
2) Nature: Man is depicted as the scientist who struggles to subdue and control a female nature. Gramsci: "One might say that the typical unitary process of reality is found here in the experimental activity of the scientist, which is the first model of dialectical mediation between man and nature, and the elementary historical cell through which man puts himself into relation with nature by means of technology, knows her and dominates her." (446).
Note: thus, is the dialectic a gendered process, with man as the thesis, woman as the antithesis, and the synthesis as the integration of man and woman with the male still in control (ie, the synthesis is PATRIARCHY?). See Mary O'Brien on a similar idea.
(passages from Prison Notebooks)
1) p. 137 (Essay on "Politics as an Autonomous Science"): Context of distinguishing a political level of the superstructure, and of making similar distinctions within the structure: "Concept of 'historic bloc', i.e. unity between nature and spirit (structure and superstructure), unity of opposites and of distincts".
2) p. 168 (Essay on "Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of 'Economism' "): in context of ideological factors lagging behind economic factors, and the necessity of using compromise in order to introduce some initiative in politics (rather than simply force), Gramsci states: "An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies -- i.e. to change the political direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed if a new, homogeneous politico=economic historical bloc, without internal contradictions, is to be successfully formed."
3) p. 360 (Essay on "Progress and Becoming") in context of how individual man exercises will in the context of external reality of social relations with other men and nature: "Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and subjective elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which the individual is in an active relationship."
4) p. 366 (Essay on "Structure and Superstructure") in context of discussing Marx's relation between structure and superstructure from the Preface to the Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, Grasci seems to describe a particular moment when there is perfect correspondence between structure and superstructure in which the superstructure is perfectly homogenous:
"Structure and superstructures form an 'historical bloc'. That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production. From this, one can conclude: that only a totalitarian ['unified' and 'all absorbing'] system of ideologies gives a rational reflection of the contradiction of the structure and represents the existence of the objective conditions for the revolutionising of praxis. If a social group is formed which is one hundred per cent homogeneous on the level of ideology, this means that the premisses exist one hundred per cent for this revolutionising: that is that the 'rational' is actively and actually real. [ie, in fn. "a particular moment of unity of structure and superstructure and of thought and action' = reinterpretation of Hegel]. This reasoning is based on the necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructure, a reciprocity which is nothing other than the real dislectical process."
5) p. 377 (Essay on "The Concept of 'Ideology' ") in the context of discussing how the negative connotation of ideology arose in Marxism from its original meaning as "the science of ideas" and "analysis of the origin of ideas", Gramsci states that Marx had considerable insight when he said that "a popular conviction often has the same energy as a material force", and goes on to state:
"The analysis of these [foregoing] propositions tends, I think, to reinforce the conception of historical bloc in which precisely material forces and the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction between form and content has purely didactic [ie, instructive or pedagogic] value, since the material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces."
6) p. 418 (in the Essay, "Passage from Knowing to Understanding and to Feeling and vice versa from Feeling to Understanding and to Knowing") in the context of trying to argue that intellectuals in a nation can only lead the ruled if they can connect their knowing with understanding and the latter with the feelings=passion of the masses: does this refer back to Gramsci's notion of the materialism of sensation in the masses??
"If the relationship between intellectuals and people=nation, between the leaders and the led, the rulers and the ruled, is provided by an organic cohesion in which feeling=passion becomes understanding and thence knowledge (not mechanically but in a way that is alive), then and only then is the relationship one of representation. Only then can there take place an exchange of individual elements between the rulers and ruled, leaders (dirigenti) and led, and can the shared life be realised which alone is a social force -- with the creation of the 'historical bloc' ".
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© Copyright. All rights reserved. Carl Cuneo, Dept. of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.