March 5, 2021
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Weekly Worker To accuse others of ‘misuses’ of Antonio Gramsci might sound like the defence of some stale orthodoxy. But the challenge is, if anything, to assert the communist character of the Sardinian Marxist’s actual work, in the face of its dominant political and academic uses.
In a famous 1976 book Perry Anderson counted Gramsci among the first generation of so-called “western Marxists” - an array of thinkers counterposed to the “construction of socialism” in the eastern bloc.
1 In the then Trotskyist-influenced Anderson’s reading - and in the more acid tones of Domenico Losurdo’s more recent work
The misuses of Gramsci
Quoted by charlatans to provide an air of magic, praised for his ambiguities, more revered than read: David Broder calls for a serious engagement with a political strategy that still has considerable relevance
To accuse others of ‘misuses’ of Antonio Gramsci might sound like the defence of some stale orthodoxy. But the challenge is, if anything, to assert the communist character of the Sardinian Marxist’s actual work, in the face of its dominant political and academic uses.
In a famous 1976 book Perry Anderson counted Gramsci among the first generation of so-called “western Marxists” - an array of thinkers counterposed to the “construction of socialism” in the eastern bloc.
Disputed heritage
The pathetically weak remnants have been marking the centenary of the Partito Comunista. Toby Abse reports from Livorno
January 21 2021 marked the centenary of the foundation of the Italian Communist Party, or, to be more exact, of the
Partito Comunista d’Italia (PCd’I: Communist Party of Italy) - it only became known as the
Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) in 1943, the year in which Stalin wound up the Comintern.
The centenary was given relatively wide coverage in the Italian media, with television documentaries and radio dramatisations, as well as many newspaper and magazine articles. Moreover, a fair number of books were either published or reprinted to mark the occasion. However, the continuing Covid-19 pandemic obviously imposed very severe limits on attempts to celebrate it in physical locations, as opposed to websites, Facebook pages or Zoom meetings.