Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 02:45:41 -0500
From: vacirca-AT-charm.net (robert brown)
Subject: Re: AUT: why gramsci


>an interesting post, Bob.
>
>I'll let others address your main points, but for now I'll make a minor
>quibble: I have my doubts how much Gramsci influenced most people in the
>Autonomia of the seventies. Formally, at least, many of those who cared to
>write about such things seem to reject both his later work (the Prison
>Notebooks) as non-materialist, and his earlier work (the councils period)
>as productivist (i.e. glorifying work). Thus all the talk about class
>composition rather than hegemony, to give one example. Of course, an
>argument could be mounted that it was then very difficult to ignore
>Gramsci's influence completely, given the extent to which many of his
>precepts had become enshrined as part of the broad Italian left's common
>sense. On the other hand, as far as I can tell much of Autonomia was in
>part an attempt to revolt precisely against that common sense. This was so
>to such a degree that it was only in the late seventies that some of the
>editors of the journal _Primo Maggio_ (influential on the borders of the
>autonomist movement) tried to re-examine Gramsci again, fearing that they
>may have thrown the baby out with the bath water.
>
>I'll emphasise the rider I used above of "those who cared to write about
>such things" - I'd be very interested to hear fromanyone who was there at
>the time whether such arguments amongst workerist intellectuals had much to
>do with what activists were on about  . . .
>
>Steve
>

        hi steve,
                    Thanks for your interesting response to my post.  i
don't totally disagree with your analysis, but i think it misses some
important aspects of  Gramsci's place in italian left politics  in the 60's
and early 70's.  First its importamt to remember that the extra
parliamentary student left , which loosely came to be identified as
autonomia operaia , i.e. Lotta Continua, Potere Operaio,etc.  came into
being as a response to a rank and file working class revolt against the
PCI-led unions that peaked in 1969, with the CUB movement at FIAT and many
other factories mainly in the northern "industrial triangle"
Torino-Genova_Milan . THis revolt took place inside as well as outside tthe
party, concurrently with the rise of the student anti-war movement. The CUB
movement with its factory sit downs and occupation tactics was a
spontaneous return to militant traditons of the Resistance and the 1920,
Gramsci-led Ordine Nuovo factory occupation movement spearheaded by the
FIAT workers in Torino at Mirafiore. There was a militant proletarian core
group inside the PCI who had kept alive the revolutionary traditons of
Stella Rossa in1944-5 and Ordine Nuovo, 1919-20. For these workers many of
whom were jailed under fascism and/or fought in the resistance the PCI was
still their party and Gramsci was  still their theoretical and spiritual
leader and martyred hero. They felt the party had been hijacked by
Togliatti and the stalinist intellectuals and union bureaucrats. Their
interpretation of  Gramsci's prison notes and politics in general were at
sharp variance with the official hagiography constructed by Togliatti. But
these militants were not theoreticians, and some of them paradoxically
remained stalinists ideologically.

        Togliatti in my view created a "vulgar Gramscism" that justified
his own reformist strategy at the end of the second world war and on into
the 60's. It was this vulgar Gramscian line bureaucratically drummed into
workers and intellectuals heads  for 20 years by the party's cultural
machine that the 60's italian student left reacted against. Many of the '69
CUB militants later ended up in the BR  which reapropriated the
revolutionary aspects of the Resistance. The BR in one of their documents
attacks the party's " gramscian theoretical mush" but not Gramsci. i
suspect they didn't spend a lot of time defending Gramsci at that point
because  he didn't need to be  defended to ex-pci worker militants some of
whom worked with  Gramsci personally. The BR's theoretical focus anyhow was
on the problems of armed guerrilla war against the State in the 70's.

        Any way, the theory and practice of workers autonomy(the  original
basis of Autonomia politics)   starts with the FIAT  Mirafiore workers
factory occupation movement in 1920 , led by Gramsci's Ordine Nuovo
communist workers and intellectuals group, and remerges during the
Resistance when the PCI rank and file tries to turn their armed occupation
of the northern factories and cities into a socialist insurrection , and is
reborn once again in 1969.  That some or many "workerist intellectuals"
didn't  understand the central place of Gramsci in the development  of
their own movement's politics  i don't pretend to fully understand, but i
suspect class and generational problems were at play here.
         Gramsci was  such a heroic and respected figure inside the entire
working class and among left intellectuals after the war that Togliatti
could not afford to let the revolutionary leftwing of the party
appropriate Gramsci's ideas. Through out the late 40's and  50's a fierce
fight was waged over Gramsci's legacy to the party which togliatti
esentially won. As Gramsci himself pointed out when the working class has
enough cultural autonomy to really know its own history it can also  seize
power. The revolutionary base of the PCI was not able to achieve hegemony
over its own party much less Italian society.  So its not surprising to me
that  Gramsci remains a contested  and, i believe, misunderstood figure.
         i certainly don't agree with all of Gramsci's views, but thats
another post.  Its clear from this discussion , however that i will have to
rewrite some of my draft to make it clearer.

        By the way i never saw the Primo Maggio material, do you know where
i could get a copy?
thanks again for your thoughts.  best, bob brown


"A fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer"  Long live the
fool.




     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---