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(pp. 277=318 in Selections from Prison Notebooks)
1) From 'subaltern forces' (279);
2) From lack of a rational demographic structure (see below; note this is simply another term for resistance, in this case from parasitic classes and strata).
3) The literary glorification of Supercountry values and condemnation of the city as a place of idle consumption; Gramsci disagrees with this characterization of the city, and implies that the condemnation of the city is coming from literary intellectuals who wish to preserve the past (287=9).
1) List (p. 279=80)
2) Lack of a rationalized demographic composition in Europe (280=87): ie, too many parasitic classes and strata not engaged in the production of goods. Gramsci describes this as 'passive sedimentations produced by the phenomenon of the saturation and fossilisation of civil=service personnel and intellectuals, of clergy and landowners, piratical commerce and the professional...army' (281). Or: "idle and useless masses"; "pensioners of economic history" (281); Gramsci mostly uses Italy to illustrate this point:
a) Naples: Southern Landowners and their lackeys and layabouts are living a parasitic life (282); ' "Where a horse shits a hundred sparrows feed" ' (283). SEE PICTURE
b) Small=town bourgeoisie living off the rents extracted from peasants; these bourgeoisie own land in the countryside (283).
c) Young men acting as parasites living off the state and not engaging in any productive activity. (283=4)
d) Unfavourable relation between a potentially active and passive populations in Italy: ie, high rates of endemic unemployment (low employment of women), large numbers of people who are malnourished and with diseases; a large parasitic part of the population which requires another parasitic stratum to service it; plus the semi=parasitic (those engaged purely in commerce). (284=5).
1) Definition: (SEE CHART) Americanism: "in any discussion of Americanism it is claimed that it is 'mechanicist', crude, burtal -- 'pure action' in other words -- and it is contrasted with tradition, etc." It is "real action...which modifies in an essential way both man and external reality (in other words, real culture)". (307). See Gramsci's section on Taylor and Americanism (306=7).
Taylorism Defined By Gramsci (302). (SEE CHART)
Excellent description of Taylorized work as applied to the compositor (section on 'Taylor and the Mechanisation of the Worker', pp. 308=10).
a) force: destruction of trade unionism; Gramsci notes the setting up of company associations in the US in contrast to bona fide trade unions in Italy (see page 292). He refers in the US to "the semi-liquidation of the free trade unions and their replacement by a system of mutually isolated factory=based wosrkers' organizations." (292). He argues that craft organizations in the US resisted the introduction of technology, while unions in Italy advanced modern technical efficiency (292).
b) persuasion or consent: high wages; Gramsci says that "high wages...is the instrument used to select and maintain in stability a skilled labour force suited to the system of production and work." (303). But he notes that this is a 'double=edged weapon', because it gives workers the income to spend on vices, such as alchohol (although in other places he argues that during prohibition workers did not have high enough wages to purchase alcholol.).
Wearing down of Labour by Taylorism makes high wages inadquate compensation to retain skilled labour force: Gramsci notes that workers cannot be force to work only out of compulsion, that high wages and a high living standard are needed as persuasive inducements.
"Adaptation to the new methods of production and work cannot take place simply through social compulsion. ... Coercion has therefore to be ingeniously combined with persuasion and consent. This effect can be achieved, in forms propoer to the society in question, by higher remuneration such as to permit a particular living standard which can maintain and restore the strength that has been worn down by the new form of toil." (310).
Two crises in high wages:
aa) loss of technological leadership:Gramsci raises the question of the effect of technology in monopoly industries: that is, monopoly industries can afford to pay high wages as long as they have a competitive edge on other industries in terms of unique productive techniques (310=11).
bb) effects of 'wearying and exhausting' Fordised work: ie, high wages might not be sufficient compensation for workers who must work at Ford in very Taylorized work not expected in other industries; thus, high wage workers quit for lower wages elsewhere. (311=12).
Industry copes with this by keeping skilled workers employed even during seasonal interruptions in production. This elevates the status of skilled workers, making them into a closed=shop aristocracy of labour; and provides some caution to acceptance too readily of the thesis on the effects of the reserve army of labour and unemployment (312=13).
c) hegemony at the point of production ("hegemony here is born in the factory"); (285).
d) lack of intermediate ideological strata of professionals to create and administer hegemony.
e) "structure dominates the superstructure" (286)
In Gramsci's words: given the lack of parasitical strata from the past, in the US "it was relatively easy to rationalise production and labour by a skilful combination of force (destruction of working=class trade unionism on a territorial basis) and persuasion (high wages, various social benefits, extremely subtle ideological and political propaganda) and thus succeed in making the whole life of the nation revolve around production. Hegemony here is born in the factory and requires for its exercise only a minute quantity of professional political and ideological intermediaries. The phenomenon of the 'masses' which so struct Romier is nothing but the form taken by this 'rationalised' society in which the 'structure' dominates the superstructures more immediately and in which the latter are also 'rationalised' (simplified and reduced in number)." (285-6).
f) class collaborationist Rotary Clubs and YMCAs (as opposed to Free Masonry which is too petit bourgeois) (286). Gramsci uses example of Agnelli, owner of FIAT, who tried to use cooperative management to buy off the communist workers in Turin (see fn. on page 286).
g) regulation of sexual instinct: (294=7). Gramsci raises questions about the effects of a lack of biological reproduction (adequate birth rate) on industry, in particular, problems involved in having to import immigrant workers or workers from the countryside who are not accustomed to the regime of industrial production; this raises questions about hegemony, which is most adequately developed in the cities where a stable population can pass on customs suitable for industrial work through socialization from one generation to another.
Gramsci states that advances in medical research "is making the sexual question increasingly important as a fundamental and autonomous aspect of the economic" (295).
Gramsci considers regulation and suppression of the sexual instinct as unnatural (294).
Gramsci states: "It is worth drawing attention to the way in which industrialists (Ford in particular) have been concerned with the sexual affairs of their employees and with their family arrangements in general. One should not be misled, any more than in the case of prohibition, by the 'puritanical' appearance assumed by this concern. The truth is that the new type of man demanded by the rationalisation of production and work cannot be developed until the sexual instinct has been suitably regulated and until it too has been rationalised." (296=7).
h) further on regulation and repression of sexual instinct: 'Animality' and Industrialism (298=301). Gramsci basically argues that, for Taylorism and rationalization of work which require discipline to be introduced, primitive sexual instincts must be regulated and repression. He raises the example of the first world war which required the repression of sexual instincts because of the requirements of trench warfare, etc. After the war, there was a sexual crisis because of all the men killed off; this led to sexual experimentation and a new sense of sexual utopia and libertinism. This produced a conflict with the regulation of sexual instinct required by Taylorism. (299-300).
"Taylorism and rationalisation in general...demand a rigorous discipline of the sexual instincts (at the level of the nervous system) and with it a strengthening of the 'family' in the wide sense (rather than a particular form of the familial system) and of the regulation and stability of sexual relations." (300).
Methods of repression of sexual instincts in the working classes requires the exercise of coercion.
The elites of each class often function to repress sexual instincts for their respective classes.((300=1).
i) Still further on regulation of sexual instincts (Rationalization of Production and Work) (301=6): Gramsci argues that the Fordism and Americanism require that sexual instincts of the working class be regulated, and the institition best suited for this is the family in which regular and mechanical sex occurs, but not irregular pursuit of sexual passion. (303=6).
Gramsci: " 'Womanizing' demands too much leisure. The new type of worker will be a repetition, in a different form, of peasants in the villages. ... The peasant who returns home in the evening after a long and hard day's work wants the 'venerem facilem parabilemque' [easy and accessible love] of Horace. It is not his style. He loves his own woman, sure and unfailing, who is free from affectation and doesn't play little games about being seduced or raped in order to be possessed. ... It seems clear that the new industrialism wants monogamy: it wants the man as worker not to squander his nervous energies in the disorderly and stimulating pursuit of occasional sexual satisfaction. The employee who goes to work after a night of 'excess' is no good for his work. The exaltation of passion cannot be reconciled with the timed movements of productive motions connected with the most perfected automatism. This complex of direct and indirect repression and coercion exercised on the masses will undoubtedly produce results and a new form of sexual union will emerge whose fundamental characteristic would apparently have to be monogamy and relative stability." (304=5) Note the sexism in this passage!
moral gap between working class and bourgeois class: the bourgeois class, especially its women, freely pursue sex and prostitution; their daily lives do not require regimentation; in contrast, this does not occur in the working class where regimentation in Taylorized work is required. (305=6). See Gramsci graphic commentary on the passive and indulging wife of the industrialist (305=6). Gramsci raises the possiblility of the spread of this unregulated depravity to the masses. (306).
j) Prohibition was required in the working classes in order that excessive drinking not interfere with the discipline required in work; in contrast, the upper classes ignored prohibition. (302=4).
Gramsci: "Someone who works for a wage, with fixed hours, does not have time to dedicate himself to the pursuit of drink or to sport or evading the law." (304).
Gramsci argues that the "struggle against alcohol...becomes a function of the state." (303). because he calls alcohol "the most dangerous agent of destruction of labouring power". (303).
Ideological indoctrination of workers to prepare them for the discipline required in fordism (279)
k) New Type of Man and New Type of Worker (302); ie, one who does not drink to excess or engage in sex to excess. This was required by the regimen of Taylorized work. (SEE CHART)
l) Link Between Work and Non-Work Life. Gramsci argues that 'the new methods of work are inseparable from a specific mode of living and of thinking and feeling life." (302).
m) Involvement of the Bourgeoisie and/or State in Workers' Private Lives. Gramsci argues that American industrialists (such as Ford) took an interest in the moral regulation of the private lives of their workers. (302). Where industrialists failed in this, the state could take over and adopt and develop the regulation of sex instinct and alcohol as 'state ideology'. (304).
Gramsci: " 'Puritanical' initiatives [by employers] simpoly have the purpose of preserving, outside of work, a certain psycho=physical equilibrium which prevents the physiological collapse of the worker, exhausted by the new method of production. ... American industrialists are concerned to maintain the continuity of the physical and muscular=nervous efficiency of the worker." (303).
n) Quantity rather than Quality (see Gramsci's Quantity and Quality (307=8) where he argues that only quantity is consistent with production; quality is usually unique, as in art, and cannot be reproduced; whereas quantity can be reproduced, hence it is appropriate for mass production and mass consumption by the working classes.
o) Bourgeois education of workers to control his mind while doing Taylorized work Gramsci argues that it was the genius of American industrialists to recognize that workers doing mechanised Taylorised work were to free to think of other things, which might engender a spirit of rebellion. So Ford and others set up educational institutes for workers. (309=10, plus fn. on page 310).
a) lack of a feudal past, or what Gramsci sarcastically calls "great historical and cultural traditions" (285);
b) lack of parasitic classes and strata which resist fordism. (285).
a) plus b) "The non=existence of viscous parasitic sedimentations left behind byh past phases of history has allowed industry, and commerce in particular, to develop on a sound basis. It also allows a continual reduction of the economic function of transport and trade to the level of a genuinely subaltern activity of production. Indeed, it has led to the attempt to absorb these activities into productive activity itself." (285).
c) financial autarky (self-sufficiency) of industry: Gramsci outlines the requirements in Italy for the setting up of a self=sufficient industry in his critique of Fovel. (see esp. p. 291).
d) judicial form of Liberal State that allows 'free initiative and economic individualism': this allows eventually the development of 'industrial concentration and monopoly' (293). Gramsci calls this "the most important of the immediate conditions" (293).
e) no militarization of labour as occurred briefly in the Soviet Union under Trotsky in 1920 during the civil war. (301).
a) in Gramsci's commentary on Massimo Fovel, he raises the question of whether he represents himself autonomously, or whether he represents certain social tendencies (Italian industrialists) who want to coopt the working class; this is an intellectual who was one time on the fringe of the working class, but who Gramsci implies was in cahoots with the bourgeoisie (pp. 289=94).
Economic Intervention by the State (Section on 'Shares, Debentures and Government Bonds', pp. 313=316). Gramsci discusses the ways in which the Staste intervened directly in the economy in order to save it during the Great Depression of the early 1930s; it guaranteed the investments of capitalists. Note: is this a form of passive revolution in which the state reorganized capitalism in order to preserve the power of what gramsci calls the 'plutocracy'?
Spread of Americanism to Europe (316=18). Gramsci makes several arguments here: (1) it is the decaying classes in Europe that are risisting this; (2) Americanism is not a new culture or civilization since it has the same relationship among its fundamental groups as Europe; (3) its spread threatens to undermine the old society, and introduce new methods of production which will be adopted by new energetic classes, not by the old classes.
Gramsci's anti-feminism?: (short excerpt on Feminism and 'Masculinism') appears to be a reference to legislation in England and the US which gives women economic independence as 'anti- feminist' and as 'unhealthy feminist deviations' (297=8). Also the giving of power to women is described as 'anti-feminist'??
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© Copyright. All rights reserved. Carl Cuneo, Dept. of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.