ABSTRACT
The motivating impulse of the first part of this book is the hope that we can learn to appreciate Gramsci as a political figure and as the product of a specific political experience. It is in this spirit that I have endorsed the recurring attempts to reclaim Gramsci for Marxism. But “Marxism” is a queer thing indeed if it can accommodate both the constellation of social forces, ideals, and struggles that produced a figure as remarkable as Gramsci, alongside those that distorted, falsified and effectively turned him into a politically inanimate object. I have argued, accordingly, that Marxism can only succeed in reclaiming Gramsci if it identifies itself through a more specific
set of historical and political coordinates. Specifically, my argument is predicated on the need to take seriously the legacy of Stalinism, understood as a distinct and crucial phenomenon. I have traced the effects of Stalinism, first, in the process of production and preservation of Gramsci as an author. I have then traced its effects on the rise of the dichotomy separating the communist from the intellectual Gramsci. I have addressed from this standpoint, in other words, the “philological” and “sociological” deficits afflicting the contemporary uses of Gramsci. But the relationship between Stalinism and Gramsci needs to be addressed even more directly, in a political sense. Gramsci lived at the time when Stalinism emerged as the victor of a political struggle within the Russian Communist Party, the Comintern, and the PCI. At least until 1926, Gramsci was no mere spectator in this struggle. Even after his arrest, in spite of the limits and censorship imposed by the prison regime, he did gather information and express judgments on developments in the Soviet Union. This is the terrain on which Gramsci can be judged politically in the most direct way. Those who insist, rightly, that Gramsci’s theoretical merits and allure should not be assessed independently from political considerations should work to interrogate both Gramsci and Marxism on this specific terrain.
