Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

[Anonymous No.11141844]

What are our collective thoughts on Gramsci's work? Specifically his Prison Notebooks?

[Anonymous No.11141892]

>>11141844
What do you think?

[Anonymous No.11141911]

Gramsci himself is great, but his reception is mostly poor.

[Anonymous No.11141946]

>>11141892
I'm still trying to learn about his influences so I can get the full Gramsci experience

[Anonymous No.11141948]

>>11141946
>the full Gramsci experience
What do you mean by that?

[Anonymous No.11142268]

>>11141844
dumb dumb stalinist who ;
- submitted to the "bolshevisation" of the italian Communist Party, which effectively destroyed it as a revolutionary organization and submitted it to the interests of the Russian state
- was a crypto-nationalist : read his sentence on Trotsky lacking Lenin's 'national sentiment', whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean
- in a sense, was an idealist ; his article on 1917 is absolute garbage, where he calls 1917 a "revolution against the capital", a victory of "german and italian idealism", because he thought the revolution happening in a mostly feudal country was a proof we Marxists shouldn't be so materialist, determinist. Which is absurd considering Marx never excluded such an event, and the bolsheviks were very able to explain it from an orthodox stance
- incidently so, focused on 'cultural hegemony' which is anti-marxist and predated current anti-marxist left wing theory,
- upheld the dumb ultraleft notion of "socialism in the factory", of the local council handling the factory as defining of socialism, instead of the revolutionary transformation of the whole of society from the centralized revolutionary institutions, repeating in this way the shitty "self managed capitalism" which has always constituted the heart of the anarchist, trade-unionist and reformist conception.

He did write some ok stuff in the 20s but that's because he submitted to the line of the Bordigist center at the time.

[Anonymous No.11142350]

>>11141948
I heard you need to know the conditions to lead him to write what he did.

[Anonymous No.11142382]

>>11142268
I don't see anything bad with any of that stuff

[Anonymous No.11142389]

>>11142350
what?

[Anonymous No.11142401]

>>11142389
Like the philosophical/social/political scene of Italy of the time and the thinkers who influenced him

Wikipedia names
Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Engels, Niccolò Machiavelli, Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Labriola, Georges Sorel, Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile, Daniel De Leon, Giambattista Vico

[Anonymous No.11142407]

>>11142382
That's because you're not a marxist. It's ok (it's not, but let's pretend it is). But bad or not that makes Gramsci very, very uninteresting. The points I listed are all very mundane, unoriginal ones. Gramsci didn't have one original thought in all his writings, except maybe, the Party as the modern machiavellian Prince.

[Anonymous No.11142431]

>>11142401
Machiavelli and Gentile, yes, because Gramsci was a crass idealist and unprincipled strategist.
Labriola is good for any italian Marxist thought ; if anything, Bordiga was more often compared to Labriola than Gramsci before revisionnism took over. Sorel, is interesting, but anti-marxist and ultimately even the later, most opportunist Gramsci criticized him.
Croce is interesting as the "best" (the most synthetic) critique of Marxism, in Italy at least if not in Europe. You can read him ; but I'd advise then reading the answers to his arguments. Il Partito (a bordigist org) has an article called Marxism and Knowledge or something like that on Croce, you can find it on their website international-communist-party.org, and the stalinist Althusser also adressed Croce many times in his writings (in For Marx for exemple).

[Anonymous No.11142436]

>>11142407
Gramsci's thought leads to communism. He was a better marxist than Marx

[Anonymous No.11142445]

>>11142401
Well you need to know basic Marxism, know that he was imprisoned while fascism was flourishing, and then read him. That's it. As is the case with anybody it helps to actually know author X if author X is being discussed by the author you're interested in, but as with any author, it's not a "necessity" or a precondition of reading someone, but might be if you wanna disagree with how he's interpreting author X, for example. If I have to say this to you, however, chances are you aren't capable of disagreeing with interpretations so save yourself the time and read what you're interested in.

[Anonymous No.11142450]

Gramsci is pretty hard to understand on your own because of the scattered nature of his notebooks and the odd order of their publishing. Also, the reception literature and scholarship on him are very weird because of the various slants and agendas. Perry Anderson's famous essay on him is fucking worthless trash for example, but also a lot of the "neo-Gramscians" will lose the forest for the trees and you can read a dozen books by orthodox Marxists niggling over some niche debate with non-orthodox Gramscians and waste your time.

I tried to tackle him myself a couple years back and what helped me the most was George Hoare's recent and short book, _An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci_. From there, I would read Gramsci's early essay on the language issue in Italy, and then just pick up the old _Selections from the Prison Notebooks_, _Further Selections_, and maybe the _Cultural Writings_.

Be ready to annotate the fuck out of the first book, the original _Selections_. Take it as topical and often redundant and retreading itself, and try to understand the key themes of Gramsci's thought as outlined by Hoare and how they are operationalized in the specific contexts Gramsci chooses - particularly things like education.

It's been a while, but what really helped me to understand Gramsci was (1) his response to Second International "scientific" communism, (2) his unwillingness to jettison the terminology of that era or to directly and clearly say they are wrong - he reappropriates, twists the Marxian theory around to show that "Marx really meant this all along," so you have to watch for how he's doing it (unlike, e.g., Max Weber who just openly states his qualifications of Marx's "system" and makes it easy for you), and (3) an awareness of Gramsci's historical situation, and how he was attempting to remain in dialogue with the Comintern and its shifting internal politics, which explains a lot of the ambiguity in the previous point. He is trying to remain orthodox while proposing a very unorthodox reading of Marx, advocating the "war of position."

I really think that if you go into the _Selections_ armed with the _Introduction_'s ideas, you can just cut it up into enjoyable chunks and pick it apart. Honestly, because of that, I've never read anything quite like it. It's more like trying to reconstruct someone's philosophy based on their correspondence with various other people rather than in a linear, unfolding exposition.

[Anonymous No.11142461]

>>11142407
Gramsci is the most original Marxist after Marx. The problem is that he triggers the shit out of Leninists.

[Anonymous No.11142496]

>>11142436
Lmao that means nothing. If anything, his thought has led to New-Left academia and Althusser's crazy politics. Not much of anything else.

>>11142461
Original ? All the points I listed are the most common revisionists points. Literally everyone has made them ; they basically mean the abandonment of the most fundamental Marxism.
Also he doesn't trigger most self-professed "leninists", who all loved him thorough the 20th century. Who are you reading ?

[Anonymous No.11142883]

>>11142407
>>11142268
lmao you're proud as fuck.

[Anonymous No.11142898]

>>11142883
Yes I am

[Anonymous No.11143911]

>>11141844
How can he blame the fall of Marxism on culture when the culture was so propagandized in favor of it?

[Anonymous No.11143916]

>>11142898
>>11142268
How is cultural hegemony anti-marxist? Its literally explaining how capitalism was able to get a foothold into people's base ideology

[Anonymous No.11143920]

>>11143911
There is more than one culture

[Anonymous No.11143929]

>>11142450
>>11142431
Thanks for your help

[Anonymous No.11143947]

who says 'gram-ski' and who says 'gram-sigh'?

[Anonymous No.11143960]

>>11143947
I say Gram shi

[Anonymous No.11143963]

>>11143947
It's gramshee

[Anonymous No.11143983]

>>11143916
obviously, when capitalism is obviously better, they had black markets after all. Marxism failed because people estimated it was better from what little information that leaked from the west.

[Anonymous No.11144101]

>>11142268
left-coms are hilarious.

[Anonymous No.11144222]

>>11142268
holy shit dude its people like you who bring down marxism. to point is to learn from him, not judge everything he has done negatively just because you personally don't like him

[Anonymous No.11144306]

Pasolini really loved him so much that he would always sneak Gramscian thought into his works. Its most apparent in Salo

[Anonymous No.11144328]

>>11141844
That's like studying common core, its literally designed to make you lose and become equal as every retard.

[Anonymous No.11144337]

>>11144328
Gramsci valued individually highly, what the fuck are you even talking about?

[Anonymous No.11144340]

>>11144337
The goal of communism is to force equality on everyone. The Frankfurt school of culteral marxism came up with it.

[Anonymous No.11144341]

>>11141911
isn't the new right the best gramscians either way?

[Anonymous No.11144349]

>>11144337
>individually highly
They do till they assimilate you since its the only thing preached, then you start fighting for equality.
>be individual while packs of hordes rape your country
Ahhh

[Anonymous No.11144353]

>>11144349

[Anonymous No.11144360]

>>11144353
Peterson knows this very well but he is either one of them or scared to say it. But he is nothing than a meme anyway.

[Anonymous No.11144385]

>>11144341
the new right are still capitalist enablers