Once this is achieved, society enters a period of relative tranquility, in which hegemony rather than dictatorship is the prevailing form of rule. Gramsci incorrectly identified this period of hegemony with Croce's idea of the "ethico-political" in history. This was an understandable error, since Croce illustrated his concept in two historical works, A History of Italy, , and History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century ,16' which obviously excluded those periods of revolutionary struggle and dictatorship which preceded and followed the period covered by his narrative.
Gramsci criticized this exclusion of violent struggle, as if the ethico-political period were "something that had been dropped from the heavens. In every historical period he aimed to discover the quality of univer- sality, in every struggle some sign of the human spirit seeking to realize its freedom. Indeed, Croce had first arrived at this concept of history through his study of the Neapolitan Revolution of , but his initial attraction to the Jacobin, anti-monarchical elements in this revolt turned to disgust as he saw the outcome in a reactionary police state.
Gramsci's error, therefore, was only formal. He accurately sensed the bias in Croce's concept, which in application could be equated with the concept of hegemony. One reason for the similarity between Gramsci's and Croce's theories has already been suggested. Both men were rebelling against the positivist view of history which prevailed in Italy at the turn of the century.
Both sought to re- store to Italian historiography the full significance of the human personality materialismo storico, Cecilia M. Henry Furst New York, Samuel Putnam, Science and Society, 10 Winter , BATES and an appreciationof the complex moral drama playedout in the political sphere.
Despite the formal similarityof theirphilosophicalmotives,however, theirpoliticalmotiveswere entirelyopposed. Identifyinghimself as a protagonistin his own theory, Gramsci imaginedhimself locked in fierce ideologicalcombat with the "Lay Pope" of LiberalItaly, whomhe regardedas the most importanteducatorof the ruling classes.
In fact, Gramsci frankly acknowledged the "instrumental value" of Croce to Italian Marxism He has drawn attention to the importance of cultural and intellectual factors in historical development, to the function of great intellectuals in the organic life of civil society or of the state, to the moment of hegemony and consensus as the necessary form of the concrete historical bloc.
A large measure of Gramsci's debt to Croce can be found in the latter's Etica e politica, a series of essays written in the early 's and later published by the House of Laterza in Bari.
In Etica e politica Croce took a Machiavellian approach to the study of politics, an approach which he had long ago inherited from the "Machiavellian school" of Italian theorists, par- ticularly Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Gramsci could not have been displeased with this approach, which shared with Marxism a profound skepticism toward traditional political categories. For all modern Machia- vellians, the fundamental categories of power are force and consensus, and these are not mutually exclusive but interdependent realities.
Croce, just as much as Gramsci, believed that there could be no consensus without force, no "liberty" without "authority. The effort of some scholars to trace these concepts to Marx and Hegel only leads to confusion because, though he borrowed their language, Gramsci did not borrow their meanings. Croce's understandingof this relationshipwas practicalas well as theoretical.
As Ministerof Educationin Gio- litti's short-livedCabinetof ,he had urgedhis liberalhero to take forcefulaction againsta strikemovementin the civilservice. Furthermore,he gave Mussolinia vote of confidenceeven after the murderof Matteotti in ;cf. In this same period,accordingto H.
Stuart Hughes, Croce was movingtowardsa "grudgingendorsement"of liberal democracy: Hughes, Consciousness and Society New York, , This is true, just as it is true that he endorsedthe most illiberalandundemocraticmeansto achieve it.
Onlyin didCrocerealizethathe hadgotten moreforce thanhe bargainedfor. It was used by the EnglishEconomists and FrenchPhysiocratsof the 18thcenturyto denotethe "private"realmof social and economicintercourse,a supposedly"natural"and beneficentorder best left alone by the state.
Hegel, in his Philosophyof Right ,overturnedthis Lockiannotion by definingcivil society as a realmof chaos andcorruption,in contrastto the state, which he investedwithuniversalvalues. Likewise for Gramsci, civil society is a sphere of potent historical action, but it belongs not to the structure but to the superstructure of society.
It is not the sphere of commerce and industry, but of ideology and "cultural organization" in the broadest sense. For both men, whatever "ethical" content a state may have is to be found in this sphere, not within the state proper. One, as Gramsci correctly observed, was the destruction of Marxism. His other purpose was to combat the "Actualist" philosophy of Giovanni Gen- tile, whose concept of the "Ethical State" provided the theoretical foundation of the Fascist dictatorship.
It is interesting that Gramsci appears to take Croce's side in re- jecting the Gentilian Ethical State, in which civil and political societies are fused, as well as his "governmental concept of morality": The concept of the citizen as functionary of the state descends directly from the failure to divide political society and civil society, political hegemony and politico-state government; in reality, therefore, from the anti-historicity of the concept of state that is implicit in the concept of Spirit Bobbio,"Gramscie la concezionedella societacivile," op.
Gramscihimselfacknowledgeda debt to Hegelfor his definitionof civilsocietyas the spherein whicha socialgroupexercises hegemonyover the entire society, and embodyingthe "ethicalcontent"of the state; Passatoe presente Turin, , However,thiswas to give Hegeltoo muchcredit, for Hegel ratherdeducedthe ethicalcontentof the state from his abstractidealof the state, for whichhe wasjustifiablycriticizedby Marx;cf.
Croce derivedhis categories"church"and "state" from the Germanhistorianvon Ranke,and founda moredistantantecedentin Vico's distinctionbetween"certainty" force and"truth" morality :Eticaepolitica, BATES The "anti-historicity" of the Gentilian concept resulted from his inability to distinguish the "ethical" phase from the "economico-corporative" phase in history.
More specifically, the philosopher of Fascism did not understand Fas- cism. According to Gramsci, Fascism was a product of the post-war crisis, which was a hegemonic crisis of world-historical proportions. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.
In this interregnum the most varied of morbid phenomena appear. He did not view it as a raw dictatorship defending the interests of a decadent class. In fact, he aspired to base Fascism on a national consensus, to be achieved not through violence but through the sweet voice of reason.
He saw Mussolini not as the Tyrant but as the Tutor of his people. Gentile's con- cept of the state was, like Hegel's, self-justifying, whereas in reality the ethics of a state can only be evaluated historically, in the realm of civil society.
What if the majority of people do not know what is best for them or, if they do know, are ignorant of the means to achieve it? In this situation is it not incumbent upon the state to shoulder the destiny of society; to assume, even if temporarily, an ethical content of its own? Gramsci's Leninism shows through clearly in his response to this problem: The state is the instrument for adjusting civil society to the economic struc- ture.
But it is necessary that the state will to do it, that is, that the representa- tives of the change in the economic structure lead the state. To wait for civil society to adjust itself by means of persuasion and propaganda to the new structure, for the old homo oeconomicus to disappear without being interred with all the honors he deserves, is a new form of economic rhetoric, a new form of vacuous and inconclusive economic moralism. Bobbio, "Gramsci e la concezione della societa civile," op.
This view has gained favor in Italy to the extent that Stalin and the Russian regime had fallen into disfavor. As late as , however, the P. Taken literally, Togliatti's claim is patently incorrect: hegemony and dictatorship are not the same thing. But this does not mean that the concept of hege- mony is not totalitarian: on this score the Old Left understands Gramsci better than his post-Stalinist interpreters.
Of course they weren't ready for socialism! The point was to prepare them, and this could cer- tainly be done better by leaders dedicated to socialism than by leaders dedi- cated to a "capitalist stage" of development. But does not the acceptance of this historical task oblige socialists to embrace the concept of the State-as- Educator; in other words, the Hegelian State? It does, and Gramsci frankly recognized this fact. Indeed, his real criticism of the Hegelian State, in a positive sense, was that it conceives of its educational tasks too narrowly.
This conflict, characteristic of his prison thought, is responsible for the contradic- tory interpretations held by contemporary scholars. Only when his critique is placed in the perspective of his program do we perceive the difficulty of ex- tracting liberal sweetening from what is really sour grapes.
What bothered Gramsci most was not how Fascists played the game, but that they won the game. The modern phenomenon of "statolatry" was not, to his way of thinking, the prerogative of reaction, but might just as well serve the cause of revolution: For some social groups which, before ascending to autonomous statehood, did not have a long period of their own independent cultural and moral de- velopment This "statolatry" is nothing but the normal form of "statehood," of initiation, at least, to autonomous statehood, and to the creation of a "civil society" which was not historically possible to create before the ascent to independent statehood.
In any case, such "statolatry" must not become theoretical fanaticism and be considered perpetual. It must be criticized, so that it de- velops, producing new forms of statehood But he also warns against "theoretical fanaticism"; that is, making the state a law unto itself. This caution against statolatry en permanence may be understood as his true critique of statolatry in its reactionary form, as well as prudent advice to the Stalinist regime.
In reality, he concludes, "only the social group which poses the end of the state and of itself as the goal to be achieved can create an Ethical State The problem which had most troubled Gramsci as a young socialist was the widening gap between the mechanistic prognoses of orthodox Marxism and the movement of reformism in the twentieth century.
Like Lenin and many other left-wing socialists, he was overwhelmed by the ap- parent "indifference" of the masses. Lenin's response to this dilemma was 32Note su Machiavelli Turin, , BATES two-fold: first, he rejected the notion that workers would acquire revolutionary consciousness "spontaneously" from the material conditions of their lives, and second, he formulated the theory of imperialism, the "highest stage of capi- talism," to explain the formation of labor "aristocracies" which split the proletarian movement and led it further down the path of reformism.
The apathy and indifference of the masses to the appeals of the revolu- tionaries expressed for Gramsci the fact of their subordination, not only to the force of the state, but also to the world view of the ruling class.
To achieve a revolutionary perspective, the worker must first be freed of the ideological fet- ters imposed on him by the cultural organizations of the ruling class. How does this come about? Critical understanding of oneself.
The awareness of being part of a definite hegemonic force A human mass does not "distinguish" itself and does not become independent "by itself" without organizing itself in a broad sense , and there is no organization without intellectuals The phenomenon of "false consciousness," which from the standpoint of economic determinism is simply incomprehensible, represents from Gramsci's standpoint simply a vic- tory of the ruling-class intellectuals in this struggle.
Conversely, the phenomenon of the passing of "traditional" intellectuals those of a decadent ruling class into the proletarian camp, which Marx recognized but never paused to explain, is explained by Gramsci as a victory for the proletarian in- tellectuals, who are aided by the fact that their class represents the "progressive" stage of human development. Henry M. Christman New York, , , Marx makes a fleeting reference to this phenomenon in the "Communist Manifesto," Basic Writingson Politics and Philosophy, Gramsci was one of the few modern Marxists to attempt a theoretical explanation of the "generation gap" or the "radicalism of youth".
According to Gramsci, the older generation always educate the young. The question is, which elder generation shall do the educating? The passing of bourgeois youth into the proletarian camp indicates the failure of the bourgeoisie to educate their own offspring properly, and to prepare them for the succession. These youth must then turn to the elders of the proletariat for guidance.
But this effort backfires. The struggle, of which the normal external expressions are suffocated, attacks the structure of the old class like a dissolving cancer, weakening and putrifying it. It assumes morbid forms of mysticism, sensualism, moral indifference, pathological degenerations. The old structure does not provide and is unable to satisfy the new exigencies.
The permanent or semi-permanent underem- ployment of the so-called intellectuals is one of the typical expressions of this insufficiency, which assumes a harsh character for the youngest, insofar as it leaves no "open horizons. How was one to explain the passing of entire groups of left-wing intellectuals into the enemy camp? More precisely, how was one to explain the phenomena of so- cialists entering into bourgeois governments and of revolutionary syndicalists entering into the nationalist and then the Fascist movement?
Gramsci viewed these puzzling events as the continuation on a mass scale of the trasformismo of the nineteenth century. The "generation gap" within the ruling class had re- sulted in a large influx of bourgeois youth into the popular movements, espe- cially during the turbulent decade of the 's. But in the war-induced crisis of the Italian State in the early twentieth century, these prodigal children returned to the fold: The bourgeoisie fails to educate its youth struggle of generations.
The youth allow themselves to be culturally attracted by the workers, and right away they Unfortunately, Gramsci does not adduce any concrete evidence in support of this hypothesis, but one assumes it is based on first- hand impressions. Like Gramsci, Michels believed that the conversion of bourgeois intellectuals to the proletarian cause was indispensable to the de- velopment of revolutionary consciousness.
But he was also highly skeptical of their motives and reliability, and warned against their "Bonapartist" tenden- cies. But the system of thought, precisely for that reacting to the disintegration , perfects itself dog- matically, becomes a transcendental "faith. One of Gramsci's primary aims in the Quaderni del carcere was to create an "Anti-Croce" comparable to Engels' Anti-DUhring, and capable of shattering Croce's hegemony in Italian culture.
After all, were not Croce's own historical writings essentially an "Anti- Marx? Gramsci observed that a traditional culture, tottering on the edge of an historical abyss with a young and vigorous culture at its back, may turn around and grasp at its executioner in an effort to save itself.
Marxism, for instance, is sufficiently robust and so productive of new truths that the old world resorts to it in order to furnish its arsenal with the most modern and effective arms. This signifies that Marxism is beginning to exercise its own hegemony over traditional culture, but the latter, which is still robust and, above all, is more refined and finished, tries to react like conquered Greece Michels was drawn to Fascism in the 's when he found his theory of charis- matic leadership fulfilled in the person of Benito Mussolini.
The Duce rewarded Michels with a chair at the University of Perugia in ; cf. Lipset, Political Parties New York, , These fatalistic assumptions led to a variety of strategical errors. The "economists" failed to understand "how mass ideological facts always lag behind mass economic phenomena and how at certain moments the automatic drive produced by the economic factor is slowed down, cramped or even broken up momentarily by traditional ideological elements.
Gramsci believed that parliament and polling booth are mere forms, the real content of which is determined by effective control of the cultural organizations, of the lines of communication in civil society.
The "normal" exercise of hegemony in a particular regime is characterized by a combination of force and consensus variously equilibrated, without letting force subvert consensus too much, making it appear that the force is based on the consent of the majority.
Gramsci described nance of force as "economico-corpor which there was no general agreement "Ibid. In such situations, politics is the direct and unrefined exp dictatorship in the economic sphere. In the Risorgimento Gramsci discern reflection of the historical tendency of the Italian bourgeoisie to within 'corporative' limits.
A social class cannot convince others of the validity of its world view until it is fully convinced itself. Once this is achieved, society enters a period of relative tranquility, in which hegemony rather than dictatorship is the prevailing form of rule. Gramsci incorrectly identified this period of hegemony with Croce's idea of the "ethico-political" in history. This was an understandable error, since Croce illustrated his concept in two historical works, A History of Italy, , and History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century ,16' which obviously excluded those periods of revolutionary struggle and dictatorship which preceded and followed the period covered by his narrative.
Gramsci criticized this exclusion of violent struggle, as if the ethico-political period were "something that had been dropped from the heavens. In every historical period he aimed to discover the quality of univer- sality, in every struggle some sign of the human spirit seeking to realize its freedom. Indeed, Croce had first arrived at this concept of history through his study of the Neapolitan Revolution of , but his initial attraction to the Jacobin, anti-monarchical elements in this revolt turned to disgust as he saw the outcome in a reactionary police state.
Gramsci's error, therefore, was only formal. He accurately sensed the bias in Croce's concept, which in application could be equated with the concept of hegemony. One reason for the similarity between Gramsci's and Croce's theories has already been suggested. Both men were rebelling against the positivist view of history which prevailed in Italy at the turn of the century.
Both sought to re- store to Italian historiography the full significance of the human personality materialismo storico, Cecilia M. Samuel Put and Society, 10 Winter , BATES and an appreciation of the complex m sphere. Despite the formal similarity of their political motives were entirely o alternative to Marxism, Gramsci's was to Croce.
Identifying himself as a pr imagined himself locked in fierce ide Liberal Italy, whom he regarded as the m classes. In fact, Gramsci frankly acknowledged the "instrumental value" of Croce to Italian Marxism He has drawn attention to the importance of cultural and intellectual factors in historical development, to the function of great intellectuals in the organic life of civil society or of the state, to the moment of hegemony and consensus as the necessary form of the concrete historical bloc.
A large measure of Gramsci's debt to Croce can be found in the latter's Etica e politica, a series of essays written in the early 's and later published by the House of Laterza in Bari. In Etica e politica Croce took a Machiavellian approach to the study of politics, an approach which he had long ago inherited from the "Machiavellian school" of Italian theorists, par- ticularly Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto. Gramsci could not have been displeased with this approach, which shared with Marxism a profound skepticism toward traditional political categories.
For all modern Machia- vellians, the fundamental categories of power are force and consensus, and these are not mutually exclusive but interdependent realities. Croce, just as much as Gramsci, believed that there could be no consensus without force, no "liberty" without "authority.
The effort of some scholars to trace these concepts to Marx and Hegel only leads to confusion because, though he borrowed their language, Gramsci did not borrow their meanings. Stuart Hughes, Croce was moving towards a democracy: Hughes, Consciousness and Society just as it is true that he endorsed the most illibera it.
Only in did Croce realize that he had gotten 22The term "civil society" has a long history. It w and French Physiocrats of the 18th century to den economic intercourse, a supposedly "natural" and the state.
Hegel, in his Philosophy of Right defining civil society as a realm of chaos and corru he invested with universal values. Marx adopted the This content downloaded from Likewise for Gramsci, civ sphere of potent historical action, but it belongs not to the struct superstructure of society. It is not the sphere of commerce and in of ideology and "cultural organization" in the broadest sense. For both men, whatever "ethic state may have is to be found in this sphere, not within the state p Croce's development of ethicopolitical history was inspired by t aims.
One, as Gramsci correctly observed, was the destruction His other purpose was to combat the "Actualist" philosophy of tile, whose concept of the "Ethical State" provided the theoreti of the Fascist dictatorship. It is interesting that Gramsci appears to take Croce's jecting the Gentilian Ethical State, in which civil and politica fused, as well as his "governmental concept of morality": The concept of the citizen as functionary of the state descends the failure to divide political society and civil society, political politico-state government; in reality, therefore, from the anti-his concept of state that is implicit in the concept of Spirit Bobbio, "Gramsci e la concezione dell op.
Gramsci himself ackno to Hegel for his definition of civil society as the sphere in which a social hegemony over the entire society, and embodying the "ethical conten Passato e presente Turin, , However, this was to give Hegel to for Hegel rather deduced the ethical content of the state from his abstr state, for which he was justifiably criticized by Marx; cf.
Avineri, op. Croce derived his categories "churc from the German historian von Ranke, and found a more distant ante distinction between "certainty" force and "truth" morality : Etica ep 25Ibid. More specifically, the philosophe cism. According to Gramsci, Fascism which was a hegemonic crisis of world-h The crisis consists precisely in the fact t be born.
In this interregnum the most v Gentile, of course, saw nothing morbid i dictatorship defending the interests of base Fascism on a national consensus, to through the sweet voice of reason. He the Tutor of his people. In t the state to shoulder the destiny of socie ethical content of its own?
Gramsci's L response to this problem: The state is the instrument for adjusti ture. But it is necessary that the state w tives of the change in the economic str society to adjust itself by means of p structure, for the old homo oeconomic with all the honors he deserves, is a n form of vacuous and inconclusive economic moralism.
Bobbio, "Gramsci e la concezione della societa civile," op. This view has gained favor in Italy to the extent that Stalin and the Russian regime had fallen into disfavor. As late as , however, the P. Taken literally, Togliatti's claim is patently incorrect: hegemony and dictatorship are not the same thing.
But this does not mean that the concept of hege- mony is not totalitarian: on this score the Old Left understands Gramsci better than his post-Stalinist interpreters. Of course they weren't ready for socialism! The point was to prepare them, and this could cer- tainly be done better by leaders dedicated to socialism than by leaders dedi- cated to a "capitalist stage" of development.
But does not the acceptance of this historical task oblige socialists to embrace the concept of the State-as- Educator; in other words, the Hegelian State? It does, and Gramsci frankly recognized this fact. Indeed, his real criticism of the Hegelian State, in a positive sense, was that it conceives of its educational tasks too narrowly. This conflict, characteristic of his prison thought, is responsible for the contradic- tory interpretations held by contemporary scholars.
Only when his critique is placed in the perspective of his program do we perceive the difficulty of ex- tracting liberal sweetening from what is really sour grapes. What bothered Gramsci most was not how Fascists played the game, but that they won the game. The modern phenomenon of "statolatry" was not, to his way of thinking, the prerogative of reaction, but might just as well serve the cause of revolution: For some social groups which, before ascending to autonomous statehood, did not have a long period of their own independent cultural and moral de- velopment This "statolatry" is nothing but the normal form of "statehood," of initiation, at least, to autonomous statehood, and to the creation of a "civil society" which was not historically possible to create before the ascent to independent statehood.
In any case, such "statolatry" must not become theoretical fanaticism and be considered perpetual. It must be criticized, so that it de- velops, producing new forms of statehood But he also warns against "theoretical fanaticism"; that is, making the state a law unto itself.
This caution against statolatry en permanence may be understood as his true critique of statolatry in its reactionary form, as well as prudent advice to the Stalinist regime. In reality, he concludes, "only the social group which poses the end of the state and of itself as the goal to be achieved can create an Ethical State The problem which had most troubled Gramsc a young socialist was the widening gap between the mechanistic prognoses orthodox Marxism and the movement of reformism in the twentieth century Like Lenin and many other left-wing socialists, he was overwhelmed by the ap parent "indifference" of the masses.
Lenin's response to this dilemma w 32Note su Machiavelli Turin, , BATES two-fold: first, he rejected the notion th consciousness "spontaneously" from the m second, he formulated the theory of im talism," to explain the formation of l proletarian movement and led it furt Though nowhere does Gramsci criticize L response is contained in the theory of he nation in economic data, but in "cultur The apathy and indifference of the m tionaries expressed for Gramsci the fact force of the state, but also to the worl revolutionary perspective, the worker m ters imposed on him by the cultural o does this come about?
Critical understanding of oneself. The awareness of being part of a definite hegemonic force A human mass does not "distinguish" itself and does not become independent "by itself" without organizing itself in a broad sense , and there is no organization without intellectuals The phenomeno "false consciousness," which from the standpoint of economic determin simply incomprehensible, represents from Gramsci's standpoint simply tory of the ruling-class intellectuals in this struggle.
Conversely phenomenon of the passing of "traditional" intellectuals those of a de ruling class into the proletarian camp, which Marx recognized but n paused to explain, is explained by Gramsci as a victory for the proletari tellectuals, who are aided by the fact that their class represents "progressive" stage of human development.
Henry M. Christman New York, , Gramsci was one of the few modern Marxists to attempt explanation of the "generation gap" or the "radicalism of you to Gramsci, the older generation always educate the young. T which elder generation shall do the educating?
The passing of bou into the proletarian camp indicates the failure of the bourge their own offspring properly, and to prepare them for the s youth must then turn to the elders of the proletariat for guidan when the bourgeois elders see this happening on a national sca tervene politically and militarily to stem the tide, to cut off the munication between their young and the progressive forces. The struggle, of which the normal external expressions are suffo the structure of the old class like a dissolving cancer, weakening it.
It assumes morbid forms of mysticism, sensualism, moral pathological degenerations. The old structure does not provide and satisfy the new exigencies. The permanent or semi-permane ployment of the so-called intellectuals is one of the typical expre insufficiency, which assumes a harsh character for the youngest, leaves no "open horizons. More precisely, how was one to explain the phe cialists entering into bourgeois governments and of revolutionary entering into the nationalist and then the Fascist movement?
The "generation gap" within the rulin sulted in a large influx of bourgeois youth into the popular move cially during the turbulent decade of the 's. But in the wa of the Italian State in the early twentieth century, these pro returned to the fold: The bourgeoisie fails to educate its youth struggle of generati allow themselves to be culturally attracted by the workers, a they Like Gramsci of bourgeois intellectuals to the prolet velopment of revolutionary consciousn their motives and reliability, and war cies.
One of Gramsci's primary aim create an "Anti-Croce" comparable to shattering Croce's hegemony in Italia own historical writings essentially an "A effort to liquidate Marxism, incorpor philosophy?
Gramsci observed that a tra of an historical abyss with a young and around and grasp at its executioner in instance, is sufficiently robust and so productive to it in order to furnish its arsenal with This signifies that Marxism is beginn traditional culture, but the latter, which refined and finished, tries to react like The theory of hegemony has impor strategy and, in fact, the theory resp 42Robert Michels, Political Parties New 42a Gramsci's personal copy of Michels' w Paris which was sent to him in priso
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