Abstract
Fatalistic and mechanistic determinism is typical of a phase still defined by the subalternity of certain social groups, constituting a sort of “immediate ideological aroma”, a necessary religion or excitement precisely due to the subaltern character of the social group. The mechanistic conception is, in Gramsci’s view, “the religion of the subaltern”. In Marxism, the division between theory and praxis corresponds to the separation between intellectual leaders and the masses, that is, to a phase in which initiative is not in the struggle yet, and determinism and belief in the rationality of history become a force of moral resistance and cohesion. But all this changes when the subaltern become leaders, historical subjects, protagonists of their emancipation process. Mechanical determinism can be explained as the “naive philosophy” of the mass, but when it is elevated to the status of philosophy by intellectuals, “it becomes the cause of passivity, of imbecilic self-sufficiency, with no expectation that the subaltern might lead and be responsible”.
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Notes
- 1.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (Turin, Einaudi, 1977), 1389.
- 2.
On the “double revision of Marxism”, see Part I, Chap. 2, in this volume.
- 3.
Michael Löwy, “Gramsci e Lukács: verso un marxismo antipositivista”, in Nicola Badaloni (org.), Gramsci e il marxismo contemporaneo (Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1990), 304.
- 4.
The second half of the nineteenth century was marked by a series of such rapid and profound changes that led to an unprecedented development of the productive forces in the history of humankind. Between 1860 and 1870, the zenith of free competition was reached; with the crisis of 1873, the cartel system began to emerge; then, between 1890 and 1903 (the year that, in turn, marked the beginning of a new crisis), there was an increase in business and trade that led to an increasing concentration and centralization of capital, which transformed the organization of cartels into a fundamental basis of all economic life—no longer a transient phenomenon linked to the conjuncture. According to Lenin, “capitalism has turned into imperialism”.
- 5.
Gianni Fresu, Lênin leitor de Marx: determinismo e dialética na história do movimento operário (trans. Rita Matos Coitinho, São Paulo, Anita Garibaldi, 2016), 28–60.
- 6.
Eduard Bernstein, I pressupposti del socialismo e i compiti della socialdemocrazia (Bari, Laterza, 1968).
- 7.
Ibid., 31.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
Ibid., 58.
- 10.
Ibid., 52.
- 11.
Eduard Bernstein, I pressupposti del socialismo e i compiti della socialdemocrazia, cit., 244.
- 12.
The word “Cant” indicates the fanatical chant of the Puritans, the pure and simple ritual repetition of a formula, and more generally, according to Bernstein, insincere rhetoric.
- 13.
In clear opposition to this approach, during the war, Lenin devoted himself to an in-depth study of Hegel’s work to demonstrate its importance in Marxism. From this study emerged his Philosophical notebooks. I covered this extensively in my monograph Lênin leitor de Marx: dialética e determinismo na história do movimento operário, cit.
- 14.
Gianni Fresu, Il diavolo nell’ampolla. Antonio Gramsci, gli intellettuali e il partito (Naples, Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici/La Città del Sole, 2005), 21–48.
- 15.
György Lukács, Scritti politici giovanili 1919–1928 (Bari, Laterza, 1972), 28.
- 16.
Ibid., 30.
- 17.
Domenico Losurdo, L’ipocondria dell’impolitico. La critica di Hegel ieri e oggi (Lecce, Milella, 2001), 25.
- 18.
György Lukács, “La nuova edizione delle lettere di Lassalle”, em Scritti politici giovanili 1919–1928, cit., 225.
- 19.
Ibid., 206.
- 20.
György Lukács, Storia e coscienza di classe (Milan, Sugar, 1970), 38.
- 21.
Idem, O jovem Hegel e os problemas da sociedade capitalista (trans. Nélio Schneider, São Paulo, Boitempo, 2018), 40.
- 22.
Idem, Scritti politici giovanili 1919–1928, cit., 191.
- 23.
Ibid., 201.
- 24.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, cit., 85.
- 25.
“All this leads, as a practical consequence, to attendiste and almost messianic trends in the labor movement: the subjective element assumes a marginal and totally subordinate function in relation to the objective sphere; the class struggle is a law of social evolution that Marxists must limit themselves to explaining, as Newton explains gravitation. Therefore, the task of the socialist forces was simply to increase their strength, waiting for history to take its course, to the point of indeed determining—as an inevitable natural law—the demolition of the capitalist mode of production and the establishment of a socialist society. […] All these trends and interpretations were connected with the general part of the 1891 Erfurt program—which was not only voted by German social democracy, but which soon became an important theoretical assumption for all other socialist parties—and were completely theorized in the essays of such important intellectuals as Karl Kautsky, for whom the task of social democracy was not to organize the revolution, but organize itself for the revolution; not to make the revolution, but use it” (Gianni Fresu, Lênin leitor de Marx, cit., 41–2).
- 26.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, cit., 1432.
- 27.
Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach e il punto di approdo della filosofia classica tedesca (trans. Palmiro Togliatti, Rome, Rinascita, 1950), 12.
- 28.
Ibid., 14.
- 29.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, cit., 1416–7.
- 30.
Ibid., 1430.
- 31.
Ibid., 1426.
- 32.
Ibid., 1424.
- 33.
Ibid., 1403.
- 34.
Ibid., 1434.
- 35.
Ibid., 1449.
- 36.
Valentino Gerratana, “Introduzione”, in Friedrich Engels, Antidühring (Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1971).
- 37.
“The ‘system-creating’ Herr Dühring is by no means an isolated phenomenon in contemporary Germany. For some time now, in Germany, systems of cosmogony, of philosophy of nature in general, of politics, of economics, etc., have been springing up by the dozen overnight, like mushrooms. The most insignificant doctor philosophiae and even the studiosus will not take anything less than a complete ‘system’” (Friedrich Engels, Antidühring, cit., 4).
- 38.
Antonio Labriola, La concezione materialistica della storia (Bari, Laterza, 1965), 191.
- 39.
On this issue, Engels’s letter to Bloch of September 21, 1890 is particularly enlightening. “The fact is that young people sometimes attach greater importance to the economic side than it deserves; this is partly my fault and Marx’s. In the face of adversaries, we should highlight the essential principle denied by them, and then we did not always find the time, place, and occasion to do justice to the other factors participating in reciprocal action. But as soon as the exposition of a period of history was reached, that is, the practical application, things changed, and no error was possible. However, unfortunately, we also very often happen to believe that we have perfectly understood a new theory and can undoubtedly deal with it as soon as we appropriate the essential principles—and, moreover, not always in a precise manner. I cannot help but address this criticism to more than one of the last-minute Marxists, and so a strange confusion was created from time to time” (Friedrich Engels, Sul materialismo storico (Rome, Editori Riuniti, 1949), 78).
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Fresu, G. (2023). The Double Revision of Marxism and Similarity with Lukács. In: Antonio Gramsci. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15610-6_21
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