Gramsci and the PCI

[Devrim]

Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Gramsci

There seems to be a lot of support for Gramsci here. Are people aware that Gramsci was the leader that the Cominern imposed on the PCI against the will of the majority of the party, and was in many ways Stalin's man.

Devrim

[Led Zeppelin]

There seems to be a lot of support for Gramsci here. Are people aware that Gramsci was the leader that the Cominern imposed on the PCI against the will of the majority of the party, and was in many ways Stalin's man.


I don't think that's true:


NOTE: Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937): A founder of the Italian Communist Party, imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926, he died in prison 11 years later. He sent a letter from prison, in the name of the Italian party's political committee, protesting Stalin's campaign against the Left Opposition. Taglatti, then in Moscow as the Italian representative to the Comintern, suppressed the letter. Throughout the Stalin era, Gramsci's memory was deliberately effaced. In the period of de-Stalinization, however, he was "rediscovered" by the Italian Communist Party and officially enshrined as a hero and martyr. Since, there has been considerable international acclaim of his theoretical writings, particularly his prison notebooks.
Link (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm)

Also, my "favorite" theorist, that is, the one who I agree with the most, is Lenin.

[Devrim]

I don't think that's true:


NOTE: Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937): A founder of the Italian Communist Party, imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926, he died in prison 11 years later. He sent a letter from prison, in the name of the Italian party's political committee, protesting Stalin's campaign against the Left Opposition. Taglatti, then in Moscow as the Italian representative to the Comintern, suppressed the letter. Throughout the Stalin era, Gramsci's memory was deliberately effaced. In the period of de-Stalinization, however, he was "rediscovered" by the Italian Communist Party and officially enshrined as a hero and martyr. Since, there has been considerable international acclaim of his theoretical writings, particularly his prison notebooks.

I think you will find that it is. The fact that as Stalin's power increased it also turned against Gramsci doesn't mean that he wasn't used as Stalin's tool to remove the left from power in the PCI. The letter that your quote referred to that was suppressed was actually an attack on Trotsky and the left opposition that was mildly critical of Stalin's methods. Too critical for Taglatti, but it was an attack on the opposition.

Devrim

[Led Zeppelin]

The letter that your quote referred to that was suppressed was actually an attack on Trotsky and the left opposition that was mildly critical of Stalin's methods. Too critical for Taglatti, but it was an attack on the opposition.


Source?

[Devrim]

This isn't where I read it. It is something that I read a long time ago when I was doing some research about Italy. Wiki agrees though:


In 1926 Stalin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin)'s manoeuvres inside the Bolshevik (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolshevik) party moved Gramsci to write a letter to the Comintern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comintern), in which he deplored opposition led by Trotsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotsky), but also underlined some presumed faults of the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it.

Devrim

[More Fire for the People]

Devrim probably hates Gramsci because Gramsci trashed Bordiga's elitist idiocy.

[Luís Henrique]

The fact that as Stalin's power increased it also turned against Gramsci doesn't mean that he wasn't used as Stalin's tool to remove the left from power in the PCI.

That maybe, but it is absurd to claim it without immediately making the point that Gramsci was totally innocent of the most important consequence of the Stalinist takeover of th PCI: the subsequent adventurerist policy of bringing communist cadres from abroad back to Italy, where they were quickly arrested by the Fascist dictatorship...

Stalin may have used Gramsci for his own ends; Gramsci was not a Stalinist, nor would "agree" with Stalin regardless of the latter's move to "left" or right...*

*****************

But this is not the discussion; the discussion is about theory. Gramsci cannot be counted as a great theorist, for entirely different reasons: because he spotted the central problem (the relative resilience of "first world" States to proletarian revolution), but he could never formulate an adequate response to it. In mixing concepts taken from Machiavelli and (worse) Croce into marxism, Gramsci lost his way in this conundrum.

Part of it, of course, has to do with the appaling conditions in which he wrote his work, jailed by Mussolini's regime.

Luís Henrique

*and this is the distinctive feature of a true Stalinist: to change from a "social fascism" line to a "popular front" one, and backwards, immediately and without questions, as soon as the command comes from Moscow.

[black magick hustla]

Devrim probably hates Gramsci because Gramsci trashed Bordiga's elitist idiocy.


I think it has more to do with the fact that Gramsci was in practice a stalinist because he helped to consolidate the PCI under Stalin's Moscow, went against Trotsky on the question of world revolution, and he is probably one of the theorists responsable for eurocommunism. Furthermore Gramsci and Togliatti imposed their power against the majority of the PCI.

[Devrim]

Devrim probably hates Gramsci because Gramsci trashed Bordiga's elitist idiocy.

I am not sure what you mean by this. Bordiga made a lot of mistakes certainly. Did Gramsci 'trash his elitist idiocy'? I am not sure what 'elitist idiocy', or which 'thrashing' you are referring to here. Remember though that Gramsci was imposed on the party as leader by the Comintern when the left still held a majority. Remember also that while Gramsci was denouncing the 'Left Opposition', Bordiga was standing up in Moscow denouncing Stalin to his face as the gravedigger of the revolution (the last person to do it publicly actually).


That maybe, but it is absurd to claim it without immediately making the point that Gramsci was totally innocent of the most important consequence of the Stalinist takeover of th PCI: the subsequent adventurerist policy of bringing communist cadres from abroad back to Italy, where they were quickly arrested by the Fascist dictatorship...

I think that we'd disagree over lots of things about the history of the PCI, Luís.

Devrim

[black magick hustla]

" [Bordiga] had taken up a position on the Trotsky question that was radically opposed not only to that of the International Executive, but also to that adopted in practice by comrade Trotsky himself. It is absurd and deplorable from every point of view that comrade Bordiga should not have been willing to take part personally in the discussion of the Trotsky question. That he should not have been willing to take sight directly of all the relevant material. That he should not have been willing to submit his opinions and information to the test of an international debate."

-Gramsci

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/marxists/cd/cd1/Library/archive/gramsci/works/1925/06/internal_situation.htm