Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 00:32:40 -0500
From: vacirca-AT-charm.net (robert brown)
Subject: Re: why gramsci



hi atifeh,

        a question deserves a question.  Since i haven't read Bourdieu but
people keep mentioning him i guess i'll have to read him eventually, but in
the frattempo give me a quick gloss (ho,ho) on "doxa" and "habitus" and
tell me how and why you got interested in signor toni? what have you read
of his prison notes?

        As for the french posties and maybe the post-whatever folks in
general i' ve always felt there was a lot of plagiarism going on, which is
maybe why they insist on such difficult language, the better to hide their
intellectual robbery.

        His notes on culture and religion, hmm.  The  catholic church was a
huge obstacle to any one like G pushing for cultural revolution in Italy.
The church had and still has, enormous cultural,political, economic and
organizational power in Italy. G's notes on the church develop the the
thesis that the presence of the church in Italy in the middle ages
effectively blocked the development of Italy into an independent bourgeois
nation-state like France or England, by blocking the political growth of
nationalist bourgeois intellectual groups who could lead  national-popular
revolution a la  French revolution, i.e in alliance with the peasantry and
urban artisan classes.
         The church absorbed italian bourgeois intellectuals politically
giving them a cosmopolitan, i.e. european-wide cultural and political
function. According to G italian intellectuals end up either working
politically in the church hierarchy or for the french, english, spanish
monarchies or german merchant princes as specialists of all kinds,
scientists, engineers,diplomats, military leaders. Rome and Northern Italy
are one of the great intellectual centers of europe in the middle ages.
This is the result of Rome creating a brain drain throughout the roman
empire that concentrated an  abnormal number of intellectuals in Rome to
serve the empire. Sound familiar, poco folks?

        In addition he points out that in the middle ages the church had a
monopoly on cultural affairs, teaching, writing philosophy etc is
restricted to ecclesiastics with severe penalties for those who break  this
monopoly or disagree with the church's teachings. Remember Galileo.
Catholic Religion was the dominant world-view or philosophy of medieval
europe and remained so until the French revolution.
         He is fascinated by Machiavelli's" Prince"  because he sees it as
the first national-popular manifesto, a call for italian  bourgeois
intellectuals in the northern communes to unite Italy around a strong
prince who will mobilize the peasants and urbam plebes in armed militias
and free Italy from foreign domination. He ends up calling his own
strategic manifesto for cultural and political revolution in Italy "The New
Prince".
         Because he is in prison   and the church under Mussolini retains a
lot of power(even before the Concordat, the political truce between the
Fascist state and the Pope) he is very careful about his criticisms of the
current church. but in his preprison writings , notably"Some aspects of the
Southern Question" written just before his arrest in 1926, he shows how the
church in the south is still a major landlord and exploiter of the
peasantry.

        Gramsci and Mao. They both put a lot of emphasis on the need for
ordinary workers and peasants to transform themselves and become
intellectually self-sufficient and take moral leadership in the revolution.
Both are revolutionary nationalists. Although Italy is formally a
nation-state after 1861, Italy in  the 20's is still culturally  and
economically a semi-colonial country, the South remaining the economic
colony of the North(still true today) Both Mao and Gramsci think
philosophic struggle is very important; for socialism to triumph workers
and peasants and their intellectual allies have to develop a whole new
world-view; a systematic conception of reality, a new proletarian morality,
i.e. a new way of living, a new way of thinking and feeling, a new art and
literature. Both see the masses as historical subjects ,not just historical
cannon fodder for revolutionary bureaucrats. Both see peasant revolution as
the key to socialist revolution in their countries. Both recognize the
powerful pull of nationalism on the masses and the intellectuals and seek
to harness this nationalist energy for the revolution.
         Gramsci's "Maoism" is not and could not be fully developed, since
G was in prison, excluded from active underground armed struggle. But had G
lived to lead the party during the Resistance in WW2, and assuming he'd
have figured out tactics to survive the Stalinist purges, a big assumption
granted, there could have  been a Mao- Gramsci alliance that would have
radically altered postwar european and international communism and postwar
history as a whole. THere is no question in my mind that Gramsci would have
led the party in a cultural revolution against the church rather than
making a deal to divide up Italy culturally and politically as Togliatti
did in 1946. (with disastrous results for the working class, italian women,
and Italy). i certainly can't see G selling out italian women the way the
PCI did as he had strong feminist sympathies despite his patriarchal
cultural formation. but thats a another evening's discussion.

        Speaking of brain drain, mine has just drained dry. take care. bob brown

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




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