Gramsci and Futurism

This is a bit of a detour from previous topics but still inline with culture. After this I will go back to 1919-1920 to the high point of L'Ordine Nuovo and its endorsement of Workers' Councils.

Futurism was an important artistic movement that emerged with the Italian FT Marinetti and his followers in Italy. It was popular among educated people in the early 1900s who felt it embodied the "march to the future" and breaking with old norms. It's appeal in Italy as such was particularly strong due to the social tensions present in the country, which had still a considerably entrenched aristocracy and struggling bourgeoisie.

Unfortunately it developed some issues of its own. As Gramsci would note in a letter to Trotsky regarding Futurism, it tended to bring out some elitist behaviors in urban intellectuals, particularly the conception that the south of Italy was like a "ball and chain" holding Italy back due to its backwardness.

There are two pieces in the collections which have Gramsci discussing Futurism. The first is in the Forgacs collection under "Marinetti the Revolutionary?"

Many groups of workers looked kindly towards Futurism (before the European war). It happened very often (before the war) that groups of workers would defend the Futurists from the attacks of cliques of professional 'artists' and 'litterateurs'. This point established, this historical observation made, the question automatically arises: 'In this attitude of the workers was there an intuition (here we are with the word intuition: Bergsonians, Bergsonians) of an unsatisfied need in the proletarian field?' We must answer: 'Yes. The revolutionary working class was and is aware that it must found a new state, that by its tenacious and patient labour it must elaborate a new economic structure and found a new civilization.'...

In their field, the field of culture, the Futurists are revolutionaries. In this field it is likely to be a long time before the working classes will manage to do anything more creative than the Futurists have done. When they supported the Futurists, the workers' groups showed that they were not afraid of destruction, certain as they were of being able to create poetry, paintings and plays, like the Futurists; these workers were supporting historicity, the possibility of a proletarian culture created by the workers themselves.

The article is mostly a discussion on the state of things in a Workers' world. This bit was written in 1921 in L'Ordine Nuovo. In Pg 295 of the Pre-Prison writings pdf, there is a piece titled "Letter to Trotsky on Italian Futurism" where Gramsci gives a much more negative view on the movement's development since his piece in 1921. The basic gist is his description that many of its prominent luminaries- Marinetti included- have thrown their lot in with Fascism. Gramsci notes that only Aldo Palazzeschi seemed to have resisted that of all the major figures, though as a result he ended up isolating himself from the artistic community. Gramsci describes how Marinetti had wholly endorsed the war- seeing it as a "cleansing effect" and even volunteered for service. He contrasts this with Marinetti's participation in a Proletkult show in Turin where Marinetti went alongside workers and displayed arts, where Marinetti felt that workers were more open to the views of Futurism than bourgeoisie. Accordingly, as Gramsci notes, workers were often among the strongest defenders of Futurism against its critics from the upper classes.

One thing I didn't know is that the Futurists seemed to be anti-D'Annuzio. Gramsci describes this briefly, though he says they later participated in Movmiento Fiumano (an irredentist movement involving Italian claims on the city of Triest). For his part Marinetti would later try to appeal to Mussolini on a number of occasions to give full state endorsement to Futurism, a demanded that Mussolini never fully accommodated.

Gramsci sums up the issue at the end:

"It can be said that since the peace the Futurist movement has lost its character entirely and dissolved into variosu currents, which arose as a result of the War. The young inttelectuals were on the whole extremely reactionary. The workers, who saw in Futurism the elements of a struggle against the old Italian culture - academic, dried-up, alien from the people- are now in the midst of an armed struggle for freedom and have little interest in the old debates..."

It showed promise at first to some workers- the promise of a new world and the struggle against the old- that unfortunately got mutated to the end of fascist reaction.