The Frontiers of the "Prison Notebooks"Asok Sen

The paper argues in what sense we can trace the frontiers of the "Prison Notebooks" in its abandonment of'materialist' reductiomsm, in the logical and historical implications of the passive revolutions, and in a tensionbetween the levels of mediation analysed by Gramsci. It follows that the frontiers can then be suggestive of historicalforces and their strength yvhich are not necessarily anchored in an adequate development of capitalism and itsnexuses of civil society.

THE "Prison Notebooks"' were nor meantto be a new manifesto for the communistmovement. Gramsci's entire political ex-perience sharpened his disbelief in the col-lapse of capitalism under the pressure of itsown economic crisis. While the SecondInternational's perspective of waiting for aninevitable natural collapse was falsified bythe Bolshevik revolution enacted underLenin's' leadership, the rest of Europe foundno ready means of revolutionary proletarianseizure of power through the same route.Gramsci's own efforts to build the base ofSoviet power in factory councils and to in-tegrate them with the organisation of a partyon the Bolshevik model had little success inthe Italian context. This was so despiteGramsci's correct emphasis on the workers-peasant alliance against the Italian bourgeoisorder characterised by the north-south struc-tural duality; .

Amidst such circumstances of history,Gramsci saw that much remained to be doneby way of reexamining the forms and con-tent of bourgeois power before one couldsignify the social and cultural identities ade-quate for the struggle to abolish capitalism.Further, such identities do not present pre-constituted characters who are bound to actaccording to the project of the mediator. I,nthe very nexus of exploitation, the oppress-ed are subject to the dialectic of acquiescenceand protest. It would then be futile to af-firm the proletarian will to power, and yetto expect that the same might emerge justfrom their suffering or from the enlighten-ed determinations monitored by themediator. The necessary engagement of theoppressed in the liberation process can gofrom strength to strength only when theirconsciousness becomes the key force in thestruggle to free themselves.

This concern was repeatedly articulatedin Gramsci's reflections on hegemony, duali-ty of coercion and consent, the role ofsubaltern groups and the historical realityof a passive revolution. In all this he pro-blematised many received ideas of themarxist tradition. This marks no departurefrom the core of Marx's critique to changethe world. Gramsci strived to be a con-temporary both with the past of Marxismand its necessary confrontations with thepresent as history. Some of the fragmentsof the "Notebooks", which were neither con-ceived, nor structured by Gramsci as a book,are even suggestive of going beyond the moreapparent.framework of his argument. Suchstrains and stresses, while betraying the un-

finished nature of Gramsci's reflections, cer-tainly reveal some vital'insights which stillremain to be reconstructed as furtherdevelopment of creative Marxism. This iswhat we may properly regard as the fron-tiers of the "Prison Notebooks".

For example, the concept of hegemonywas not at all new in a Marxist discourse onclass struggle and power. The point-aboutleading the allies and dominating theenemies is also reminiscent of Lenin's em-phasis in "What is to be done", on the masstasks of social democracy opposed to bothreformism and sectarian" terror. Gramscibegins with a distinction between civil socie-ty and state as the spaces of consent andcoercion respectively.2 This difference isthen displaced by assigning to the state a rolein the generation of consent as well.3 Fur-ther, Gramsci affirms the fusion of state andcivil society in the reciprocity of consent andcoercion constituting the totality of a rul-ing order.4

Gramsci proceeds through different levelsof abstraction to comprehend the reality ofstate power both in its molecular and totalsignificance. It is misleading to characterisethe different positions as antinomies.5 The>are not so on the same ground that Marx'sreflection on abstract, collective labour in"Das Kapital" is not an antinomy of Engels'narrative of the working class conditions inEngland.

The need for molecular understandinghad critical relevance when the classicialMarxist message of smashing the bourgeoisstate appeared to lose its way. The problemwas posed by the persistence of mass illu-sions about the scope of self-deterrninationprovided by the bourgeois system of formalequality. Gramsci identified how such a legalsystem could influence the toiling masses toconform to the bourgeois order. Heobserved:

The previous ruling classes were essentiallyconservative in the sense that they did nottend to construct an organjc passage fromthe other classes into their own, i e, to enlargetheir class sphere "technically" andideologically: their conception was that ofa closed state. The bourgeois class poses itselfas an organism in continuous movementcapable of absorbing the entire society,assimilating it to its own cultural andeconomic level.6

Marx and Engels sharply distinguishedbetween the form and content of bourgeoislaw. They insisted on the full use of oppor-tunities permitted by bourgeois legality. It

would historically enable the proletariat tobe conscious of the illusions of real equali-ty in the world of capitalist exploitation. Theeconomic laws would cumulate the con-tradictions of the capita! relation. Thus, thewar between capital and labour was boundto be openly avowed and clearly understoodby the proletariat and its mass allies.

During the period of the First World War,Italy had some experience of state-sponsoredorganisation of capital and labour to keepup the levels of industrial production. Sub-sequently, corporatism emerged as the mostpowerful institution of Italian fascism to en-sure industrial advance and to avert labour'srevolutionary opposition to capitalism.' Itprojected an ideology of no distinction bet-ween proletarians and capitalists reminiscentof pre-capitalist guild production. Cor-poratism was really the Italian fascistmanoeuvre to serve the interests of bigmonopoly capital. However, it helped in theadvance of production forces and also suc-ceeded in disguising the class conflicts bet-ween capital and labour. Thus, in terms ofboth forces and relations of production, cor-poratism could sublimate the contradictionthat was supposed to press for the collapseof the bourgeois order.

For Gramsci, during his entire experiencefrom the Turin days to the rise and con-solidation of fascism in Italy, socialism wasnever merely a project of construction afterthe seizure of political power. He emphasisedthat the process of political victory over thebourgeois order had to be rooted in the pro-jection of a proletarian alternative within thecapitalist social formation. This constitutedhis calling of ethico-poiitical mediation ofproletarian values and for a new culturaltotality in making. Thus, it was necessaryfor Gramsci to distinguish between .civilsociety and state, hegemony and domina-tion, coercion and consent and also to af-firm their fusion in the totality of a politico-economic order.

All this points to the nature of relationbetVeen the party, its class and the broadermasses. The mediation of collective will re-quires an extremely minute, molecular pro-cess of exhaustive day-to-day work. Thebourgeois apparatuses of cultural control,the sovereignty of the market and its con-tagion of consumerism, and above all theatomistic faith in self-determination evok-ed by bourgeois legalityall this worksthrough relentless processes of moleculardiffusion in capitalist society. Gramscirecognised this source of bourgeois power

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and its manifold means of mass cooptionboth in their liberal and totalitarian variants.He stressed the need for counter-hegemonicinitiative on the part of the proletariat.

Gramsci reflected on vital issues, althoughhe did not work out the practical directivesof a new programme, a line of march for his'modern prince'. Indeed, the course of worldcapitalism since the days of Gramsci has im-mensely accentuated the tendencies ofengineering an economy of armaments, con-sumerism and waste to reduce the workingpeople to a prolonged acceptance of thebourgeois order. The central problem posedby Gramsci has assumed enormous dimen-sions in contemporary capitalism. However,it still remains a complex question to answerhow ethico-political mediation can make abeginning.

The central issues of Gramsci's reflectionson state, civil society and hegemony pertainmore to the contexr of advanced capitalism'where capitalism responded to its owneconomic crisis through a self-consciousrestructuring of its own apparatuses ofreproduction and social control. The classstruggle of the proletariat had to face newcomplexities engendered by the innovativeforms of interlocking of the state and theeconomy. Gramsci also made a distinctionbetween the west and the east to indicate thata direct move for revolutionary seizure ofpolitical.power would be more realisable inthe latter because of its conditions of im-mature civil society and incompletebourgeois hegemony.

However, the realities of uneven capitalistdevelopment were analysed by Gramsci ina much broader historical context rangingfrom the Italian Risorgimento to thephenomenon of Americanism and Fordism.This is where the different senses of thecategory of passive revolution, as used byGramsci, can be taken together as a criticalcorollary of the marxian problematic oftransition. We can then look for a globalinterpretation of the involvement of politicsin the elimination of a mode of production.And, 'If we take the study of politics of tran-sition to consist in a critical analysis of thedialectic between historical bloc and institu-tional forms, then passive revolution emergesas "a general principle of political art andscience".8

Significantly, Gramsci takes note of twospecifications of the Marxian paradigm tosignify the point of departure of a passiverevolution. Such specifications relate to thenexus of productive.-forces and relationsstating that (a) no social formation disap-pears as long as the productive forces whichhave developed within it still find room forfurther advance and (b) social transforma-tion can happen only when material condi-tions for its emergence have matured withinthe old society itself.

Gramsci gives two major examples wherethe politics of the transitional state critical-ly modified the necessity and sufficiency ofthose conditions. He shows the limitationsjf mechanistic-economistic understanding

of the Marxian position. Firstly, Gramscicites the case of Risorgimento in Italy wherethe bourgeoisie came to a compromise withpre-capitalist classes and thus moved in areformist way to achieve its own goals. Inthis connection, Gramsci noted thephenomenon of transformismo 'whereby theso-called "historic" Left and Right partieswhich emerged from the-Risorgimento tend-ed to converge in terms of programme dur-ing the years which followed, until thereceased to be any substantial difference bet-ween them.. .'9

Thus, the Italian bourgeois revolution waspassive because of the politico-culturaldisorientation of the bourgeoisie to lead aradical transformation and to unify the peo-ple. The national economy remainedrelatively underdeveloped and was subject tothe gross duality of the north and the south.The bourgeois order did not clarify eitherthe conditions of its accumulation dynamics,or the homogeneity of its production rela-tion for the whole country.

The other example of a passive revolutionis provided by Gramsci's analysis ofAmericanism and Fordism. This is the caseof effective state intervention to prevent adownfall of capitalism under the pressure ofadvancing productive forces. The active ele-ment of advancing production forces is sub-ject to an involution that thwarts the otheractive force of proletarian revolution,although its material conditions havematured within the capitalist mode of pro-duction. The capitalist state, both in itsdemocratic and totalitarian forms, evolvesways and means of participation in the veryprocess of economic reproduction throughvarious forms of restructuring and coordina-tion, which accord with the supremacy ofmonopoly capital. The solutions aremanoeuvred to secure political supportamong large sections of the petty bourgeoisand even toiling masses. This is the passiverevolution of capital which can thus incor-porate the potential forces of socialist tran-sition into a kind of 'planned' survival ofcapitalism.

Indeed, the concept of passive revolutioninitiates some important principles ofunderstanding the dialectic of the economicand non-economic forces in the course ofany historical transition. The point need notbe confined to Gramsci's examples only. Nobourgeois revolution in history has ever beencompletely free from such passive tenden-cies. Viewed in terms of the global experienceof uneven and combined development ofcapitalism, the concept of passive revolutioncan serve as some kind of genera! model ofbourgeois transitions' in the midst of enor-mous structural dualities.

In such historical circumstances, the for-mula of capitalist advance of productionforces provides no adequate criterion foridentifying a progressive historicalphenomenon. The point is inherent inGramsci's idea of 'transformism' as onevariant of the passive revolution in capital.It is characterised by ways of domination in

which the capital relation does not lay theconditions of a clarified civil society, nordoes it eliminate the labour forms which re-main subject to pre-capitalist constraintsand exploitation. Even then the strength ofbourgeois political power may succeed incombining some elements of hegemony withits apparatus of coercion. There lies thesignificance of molecular changes workingthrough the curming of capital.

For Gramsci, the concept of passiverevolution was necessary to indicate the com-plexities of understanding the 'stage'paradigm of historical materialism. The ex-amples were critically relevant to his ex-perience. But the general implications of hisidea were not followed up in any clear state-ment on multi-linear directions of history.The weaker links of capitalism in thecumulative course of uneven global develop-ment had more definite recognition inLenin's analysis. Earlier, in the Narodnikcorrespondence, Marx admitted the pos-sibility of socialist transition in Russiawithout antecedent capitalist developmenton any notable scale. With his theoreticaltools of state and civil society, Gramsciemphasised the distinction between the westand the east. In his first reaction to theOctober Revolution, Gramsci appreciatedthat Russia had passed on to socialismbefore the growth of a western-typecivilisation.

However, his reflections on passive revolu-tion took either the necessary emergence ofcapitalism or its maturity as the points-ofhistorical reference. Such a position was link-ed to the proximate experience and its tasks.His own initial understanding of thesouthern question in Italy was formulatedalong entirely Leninist lines. Gramsci couldhave indicated how the October Revolutionwas a triumph over the passive revolutionof capital in Russia. Such an analysis wouldbe an apt complement to the critique of theRisorgimento. Indeed, as a target of counter-hegemony in the world today, the conceptof passive revolution has more practicalrelevance for countries in the peripheries ofcapitalism than in its core lands of the west.This is an invaluable point to have in mindwhen we want to look beyond the frontiersof the "Prison Notebooks".

In this emphasis on the party's role inbuilding up a national popular collective willGramsci strove to counteract the tendencyof increased bourgeois politicisation of themasses. Such tendencies were widespread inthe stage of monopoly capitalism. Lenin sawthe same in the incipient phenomenon ofbourgeois mass politics that he could iden-tify in Lloyd Georgism. It was from thisgrowing mass base that the bourgeois orderworked out a new challenge to proletarianopposition.

The communist movement in Italy ig-nored this crucial problem. By 1920 thefascist action squads began attractingstudents, disgruntled idealists, demobilisedsoldiers, misfits and even working classyoungsters. As observed by Togliatti. we

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didn't see the deep-going social causes deter-mining it; we didn't understand that the ex-servicemen, the misfits, were not isolated in-dividuals but a mass, and represented aphenomenon having class aspects, we didn'tunderstand that we could not simply tellthem to go to the devil!'.10

Much of this confusion was again acreature of the belief that the tendency toliquidate the democratic forms merely ex-pressed the acute crisis of the capitalisteconomy. Such crisis wasihere. But it wouldnot follow that the growth of the fascistmovement was necessarily correlated to theemergence of a revolutionary confrontationbetween the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The fascist experience called for seriousrethinking of the determinations assigned tothe dialectic of production relations andforces in the concept of the mode of pro-duction. In its management of capitalism incrisis, fascism was not necessarily regressivein its effects. Notwithstanding all its reac-tionary political and social features, fascismwas definitely associated with capitalist in-dustrialisation in Italy. Thus, judging by thecriterion of production forces/relations,fascism was in no way extraneous to thespecific course of Italian capitalism. It. wasrather an expression of the many stresses andtensions which the same capitalist develop-ment had generated in Italian society."

In his idea of 'collective will', Gramscimoved away from the base/superstructuredichotomy and projected ideology itself asan organic totality relating the positions ofall its subjects within a historical bloc.12 Ahistorical bloc describes the way in whichdifferent social forces relate to each other;Gramsci placed vital emphasis on the in-separability of structure and superstructurethat articulates the ability of a fundamen-tal class to form an alternative historical blocopposed to the ruling order.

While the fundamental class fulfills thecriterion of a progressive role in social pro-duction, authentic mediation becomes aceaseless process to bring together varioussubject positions in encounter, participationand collective praxis. It is nurtured by therelationship between the intelligentsia andthe proletariat. No less important is theability of the party to comprehend the com-mon sense, spontaneity and strivings ofnumerous subaltern groups on their ownterms so that the ideological bond of thehistorical bloc can extend to those positionswithout extraneous monitoring. The projectis no external manipulation but a creativeoverflow from within the subjects them-selves. The 'modern prince' is not a pre-constituted instrument of the fundamentalclass; it is an organism growing with thepeople and among them. It is in this sensethat the party is the 'anti-state' of thehistorical bloc led by the fundamental class.

The point is noted in Gramsci's reflectionson subaltern groups who are not unified andcannot unite until they are able to becomea 'state1.13 In a sense, the idea of subalter-nity is not absent from

rMarx's under-

standing of the proletariat. The. very fact ofbeing exploited implies domination of thesubject and also its protest against the samestate. It is both submission and protest. Thisis not merely a matter of co-existence. Allthe while they interact in the dialectical pro-cess to articulate the phenomenon of beingand becoming. What is more significant inthe concept of 'subaltern groups' is the ef-fort to appreciate the same dialectic in moreopaque forms of labour, capitalist or pre-capitalist, as the case may be. Indeed, onemajor concern of the "Prison Notebooks"was to explore such situations that wererather remote from the clarity of confron-tation set forth in "Das Kapital" and someother earlier Marxist writings. This wasnecessary to grapple with the experienceGramsci had from the Turin days to thetriumph of Fascism in Italy. Again, the ideaof subalternity becomes particularly-relevantfor historical circumstances where capitalismhas never been free from the ambiguities ofits genesis. Such ambiguities cannot but takeshape into politico-economic structureswhich are replete with dualities, differentia-tion and numerous unclarified forms oflabour partaking of socio-cultural proper-ties of both capitalism and pre-capitalism.

Such an understanding of subalternity isgermane to the distinction made betweenspontaneity and consciousness, and/or bet-ween spontaneous and organised move-ments. While it is valid that spontaneousprotest requires mediation for a consciouscollective thrust towards coherent revolu-tionary goals, the mediators are no lessrequired to respond to the presence of adistinct consciousness in the spontaneousprotest by the subaltern groups themselves.Mediation is a process of changing theworld; it is also a process of learning tochange the world, that is of 'education ofthe educators'.

Thus, the distinction between the 'spon-taneous' and the 'conscious' that we considerin demarcating the position of the Men-sheviks from that of the Bolsheviks may notsignify what is spontaneous among thesubaltern classes. One can recall Gramsci'semphasis on the incalculable value for theintegral historian to recognise ' . . . every traceof independent initiative on the part of thesubaltern groups...'.14 Indeed, Gramsci's'modern prince' is the potential state not byvirtue of its own advanced knowledge only,but through constant learning of what goeson in the mind and work of the people, intheir moments of subordination and theirmoments of protest not necessarily separatedin time and space. History is both molecularand totalising. And the two dimensions mustnot be lost in a fallacy of composition.

This is where Gramsci's letters from prisoncan help us further to discover the meaningof 'collective will' in the "Prison Notebooks".One important theme running through manyletters was his desire to comprehend theramifications of the creative popular mind,in its various phases and levels of develop-ment. The allied questions ranged from fur-

ther elaboration of the southern problem toserials on popular taste in literature. He em-phasised the necessity for having 'immediate,direct, living impression of the life of Tom,Dick, Harry, of real living individuals since'unless we know their lives we cannotunderstand what has been generalised anduniversalised!15

There are moments in the "PrisonNotebooks" which consider mediation notto be a one-way transmission of con-sciousness from revolutionary intellectualsto the world of the exploited. We note theemphasis Gramsci places on fuller realisa-tion of what the 'ignorant' and the 'spon-taneous' may teach the mediator about theirown consciousness. However, his Jacobinistorientation can only work on the bias ofenlightenment which identifies 'ratonalknowledge' with power. The issues are morecomplicated. While Machiavelli may standas a precocious Jacobin, the 'modern prince*has to articulate a historical bloc of com-plex and variegated alignments.

There arises the necessity for reaching theconsciousness of the mediator to that of thetoiling masses. Indeed, the 'modern prince'emerges from such a process of ceaselessfusion. The link is not instrumental, it hasto be organic. For any project of collectivehistoric action, the mediators are requirednot to act on their own understanding only;they have to work with the meaning that toil-ing masses attribute to the project. It is notthat one subject knows the object and thenchooses to act. All beginnings are immersedin inter-subjectivity and ihere is no end toit. This is where Marxist mediation faces theconstant challenge of crossing the 'encyclo-pedic' to arrive at collective historic action.

Perhaps Gramsci stretches the Jacobinanalogy too far since the content of 'collec-tive will' has to vary in accordance with thehistorical situation of the different fun-damental -classes and their allies. Indeed,even in his reflections on passive revolution,Gramsci's apothosis of Jacobinism ignoredthe mixture of the 'active' and the 'passive*elements in the French Revolution and itscourse and trajectories through the sub-sequent century. All this reminds us of thewell known critique that in Marxism themediator does not place himself within hisown theory.16 Although not in un-ambiguous terms, the "Prison Notebooks"makes an attempt to see through to this stillconcealed level of Marxism.

I mentioned the idea of frontiers. Perhaps,it is now more clear. Firstly, Gramsci's reflec-tions on state and civil society signify themolecular and unified dimension of bour-geois power. It focuses on the need for a newkind of anti-capitalist struggle that candeploy ethico-cultural alternatives. The im-portance of an ideological bond obtainssupreme priority as the action parameter oftransformation. It is so crucial since capita-lism succeeds time and again to assure anexistence of its slave within its slavery. Thisfrontier is situated on the line of completeabandonment of 'materialist' reductionism.

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Secondly, we reckon with the historical "tendency toward passive revolutions in manyconjunctures of transition from both

. developed and underdeveloped capitalism.It is no longer possible to associate fullerdevelopment of capitalism with the arrivalof conditions for a socialist revolution.Moreover, in the contemporary world, sucha passive phenomenon emerges as thegeneral experience of capitalism. This fron-tier is contraposed to any understanding ofhistorical transition merely in terms of thecontradictions of the economic base.

Thirdly, it is possible to discover a tensionbetween the levels of mediation analysed byGramsci. There is the problem of ensuringperpetual coherence between the self-consciousness "f the mediator and that ofthe mediated. The frontier is reached inGramsci's resolute effort to co-ordinate allthe positions necessary for the emergence of'collective will'. This frontier presses on theneed to fill up a critical gap in the approachto mediation. The frontiers are significant.They present problems which are not fullyresolved by Gramsci. But he sufficientlyreveals the main issues to emphasise the newtasks of Marxist praxis in its revolutionarystruggles against the capitalist order. Itbecomes misleading to interpret historicaldevelopment solely in terms of productionrelations being outpaced by productionforces within a mode of production. Indeed,a passive revolution can bring about the kindof bourgeois transition which is unaccom-panied by the political and socio-culturalcharacteristics of the capital relation in itsclassical theoretical format. Again,technological advance can be directed tocreate powerful obstacles to working classunity, and more so for the composition ofhegemonic alliances between the workersand the rest of the toiling masses.

Thus, the fuller growth of productionforces and the historical setting of problemsfor which solutions are supposed to existmay signify a field of possibilities whichvarious countervailing forces seek to utilisein opposite ways. Further, the concept ofpassive revolution takes distinct account ofthe political form of transition. The stateand its apparatuses are then found to havedecisive roles in the historical transforma-tions of society.17

In the course of his reflections, Gramscidistinguished between civil and politicalsocieties, the sub-spaces of consent and forcewhich interact in the consolidation ofbourgeois order. Indeed, most of Gramsci'simportant observations on the critical rolesof ideology, hegemony, historical bloc andwar of position are connected with thesignificance which, he assigns to civil society.This leads to the differential stresses inGramsci's thought oh the social hegemonyof fundamental class and on the capture ofstate power by the same class. But asGramsci moves to the frontiers of non-reductionism combined with the pheno-menon of passive revolution, we can ap-preciate his concern over bourgeois mass

politics appropriate to monopoly powerunder mature capitalism. No less importantare the political implications of a passiverevolution in historical conjunctures wherethe bourgeois transition itself may mano-euvre pre-capitalist collectivities for its owngoals of control and power. This is how thefrontiers of the "Prison Notebooks" revealto us a creative view of Marxism whoserelevance is not limited only to the condi-tions of advanced western capitalism.

Such a creative view presents the need tore-organise some ideas about class composi-tion and its alignments in the struggleagainst capitalism. The moment of classunity or that of the larger historical bloc isprovided by no obvious sum of economicconditions and their affinities. The momentis political and its constituents render thedistinction between economic base andsuperstructures blurred and problematic. Ina sense, this was pronounced by Marx's criti-que of political economy which put forwardthe transitory and replaceable nature of thescience that was criticised. Further, the criti-que 'studies it as life but also as death andfinds at its heart the elements that willdissolve it and supersede it without fail, andit puts forward the "inheritor", the heirpresumptive who must yet give manifestproof of his vitality.18

Yet the distinct significance of Gramsci'squestions and interpretations of the 'philo-sophy of praxis' can be realised when weconsider the degrees of articulation of somepairs of vital categories in Marx's ownwritings. Take for example the couples ofproduction forces/production relations andbase/superstructure which were prominentin Marx's economic works and also in hisanalyses of the mode of production. On theother hand, the state/civil society couple wasmore prominent in Marx's historical andpolitical analyses of social formations. Suchcategories were not combined in simul-taneous articulations to provide us withadequate clarification of the ideas of stateand nation in Marx's theory. Gramsci'sreflections on the 'national-popular', theorganic relation of a fundamental class tothe 'people-nation', and on the problematicof social hegemony open up explorations ofthose critical areas of Marxism.

No ready answers are available to specificquestions of hegemonic politics merely froma general awareness of the frontiers ofGramsci's reflections. While it is necessaryto eliminate capitalist relations of produc-tion, mere state ownership of the means ofproduction cannot ensure the abolition ofthe bourgeois order. The very fact of passiverevolution can make for a conflict betweentwo types of endeavourone aiming atsocial hegemony based on mass support todo away with the structural and ideologicalcontrol of the bourgeoisie and the other togain significant parliamentary strengthwithin the existing order. Indeed, suchdualities of strategy are also found to con-form to a stalemate of communist advancewhich holds out not a very encouraging

perspective for- the eventual socialisttransition.

One view is current that the crucial limita-tions of the traditional left perspective liesin its attempts to determine a priori agentsof change and privileged points andmoments of rupture. It is however necessaryto confront the emergence of a plurality ofsubjects, whose forms of constitution anddiversityit is only possible to think aboutif we relinquish the category of 'subject' asa unified and unifying essence. And, 'Theequivalentia! articulation between anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-capitalism, forexample, requires a hegemonic constructionwhich, in certain circumstances, may be thecondition for the consolidation of each oneof these struggles. The logic of equivalence,then, taken to its ultimate consequences,would imply the dissolution of theautonomy of the spaces in which each oneof these struggles is constituted, notnecessarily, because any of them becomesubordinated to others, but because theyhave all become, strictly speaking, equivalentsymbols of a unique and indivisible strug-gle.'19 The plurality of subjects is associatedwith the numerous relations defining thehegemonjc components of civil society.Gramsci contrasted between the voluntary,autonomous element of organisations con-stituting civil society and the coercive, man-datory character of state organisations. Thespheres of civil society range over a largevariety of organisations like those bearingupon religion, family, trade unions, culturalbodies, mass media and educational institu-tions. They have their own contradictionsaccounting for various struggles and popularaspirations. Such struggles demand .thespecific attention of any fundamental classwhich strives for hegemony in civil society.While the relations of civil society inter-penetrate with the nexus of the mode of pro-duction, it is misle'ading to reduce one setof relations to the other in terms of anymechanical cause and effect determinacy.

The autonomous spaces of equivalentarticulation spread from within the levels ofdevelopment of civil society. Gramsci citedthe historical experience of Russia as an in-stance of primordial and gelatinous civilsociety and considered that the central issuesof social hegemony could be relevant for thewest characterised.by a proper relation bet-ween state and civil society. He stressed thatthe latter's sturdy structure" would have acritical role in buttressing the power of theruling order.

We cannot deny the necessary connectionbetween civil society and the stage ofbourgeois economic-cum-political cultureand ideology that would draw a socialmatrix of autonomous, self-determining in-dividuals with their passions and aspirationsfor fulfilling the pursuit of self-interest. Butin Gramsci's project such reflexes are sub-ject to numerous forms of domination andexploitation. Indeed, in the distinction bet-ween the corporate-economic and the hege-monic moments of a fundamental class,

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Gramsci adopted the criterion of conver-gence on a universal plane of the economic,political, intellectual and moral aims of allsubaltern groups.

The reality of a passive revolution, asGramsci elaborates it with several examples,opens up questions about the nature and roleof capitalism in history. Its progressive rolein making for the pre-conditions of asocialist transition no longer appear to beself-evident. Gramsci's reflections on theforms of bourgeois subjection go con-siderably beyond the limits of a strict mode-of-production analysis. History abounds inexamples where the dynamics of the capitalrelation cannot compose.all labour into onehomogeneous form of social existence. Noless significant are Gramsci's ideas on themechanisms of their subjection and theircoherence within the bourgeois apparatusesof exploitation and domination.

However, Gramsci had his own immediateexperience of the terrors and depredationsof fascism in his own country. And so hisstrategy of counter-hegemony had reasonsto conceive of the democratic verities of thekind of capitalist development with itsclearer demarcation of civil and politicalsocieties. Amidst the reign of fascist terrora radically individualist conception offreedom and democracy and its sphere ofcivil social autonomy can support a mean-ingful thrust against the politicisation of themasses for despotic goals and authority.

But the same individuality also endorsesthat the rational pursuit of self-interest perse would require no further consideration ofcqrnmon good to achieve the goals of socialjustice. Thus, in the centrality and autonomythat capitalism ascribes to the economicman, the social sphere of the economysupersedes all traditional priorities ofmorality and its community obligations.Because the conception of the individualdepends for its legitimation on this essential ethic of capitalism, it can hardly beadopted for grounding the social identity ofthe human agent for socialism.

Such problems of reconciliation impartedelements of analytical innovation to the"Prison Notebooks". They are more pronoun-ced at the points which 1 have indicated asthe frontiers of the same text. Firstly, thestructure-superstructure relationship isenforced in newer complexities throughGramsci's rejection of reductionism and inhis critical elaboration of civil society as adistinct space of bourgeois order. It followsthat the struggle against capitalism can neverbe a matter of merely smashing the state. Itcalls for the achievement of counter-hegemony in civil society. Indeed, suchhegemony is often implied as a pre-conditionfor the building of a historical bloc to gofor the seizure of state power.

Again, Gramsci's concept of the passiverevolution and its several examples point tothe complexities of historical response on thepart of a ruling order in pervasive crisis. Wehave instances of state intervention makingup for the deficient role of the bourgeoisie

in civil society. On the other hand, abourgeois transition, which is initially weakboth in its civil and political thrust, can workout the processes of molecular diffusion toachieve a kind of transformism leading tocumulative capitalist domination. This iswhere the market institutions can wo.rk asboth conscious and unconscious tools ofcapitalist expansion. Moreover, at a stagewhen capitalism is more advanced, technolo-gical growth (i e, advance of productionforces) may help in sustaining the bourgeoisproduction relations.

In brief, Gramsci's analysis of the passiverevolution indicates, among other things, theobstacles which capitalism can put up,through a concord with elements of pre-capitalist power and notwithstanding theadvance of production forces, to thwart theworking people's struggle for .socialism. Itis as if the cunning of capital can merge ina critical and continuous confusion theprime question of composing the historicalbloc for an effective assault on the bourgeoisorder.

This was the crucial context of Gramsci'scalling for ethico-political mediation. I havenoted already how Gramsci's ideas onmediation mark out an important directionbeyond the frontiers of the "Prison Note-books". Gramsci elaborated the positionand tasks of his 'modern prince' in greatdetail. His explanatory reflection cared mostfor the problems which occupy the otheralignments of the frontiers already notedby us.

In the previous section; I have indicatedsome critical implications of Gramsci's com-mitment to Jacobinism which was associatedwith such ideas of the Enlightenment thatknowledge would suffice to bring about theliberation of mankind and to end the greatsocial evils of the day. There was the in-separable link between the driving force ofthe Enlightenment with its conceptualfreedom of all trans-individual obligationsand the historical thrust of the marketeconomy, which constituted the social basisof capitalist development in history.

While Marx's critique of politicaleconomy, a vital sub-set of the corpus of theEnlightenment, revealed the logic of historymoving beyond capitalism and also itssocialist perspective, the problem of media-tion was fraught with numerous complexitiesof finding the proper unity of knowledgeand praxis. In his Theses on Feuerback,Marx indicated the split which had to beovercome in the educaton of the educators.It could also be clear that the split was agrand epistemological manoeuvre of thebourgeoisie to assimilate the world of scienceto its social norms of property, exploitationand private enrichment.

We need not enter here into the instancesof Marx's own revolutionary experience, orthat of Lenin and Mao for an elaboratediscussion of the bourgeois strategies inhistory to counteract the initiative and goalsof Marxist mediation. Such a discussioncould also indicate how the level of abstrac-

tion in the stage paradigm of historicalmaterialism had often been wrongly appliedto estimate the nature and role of capitalismin particular conjunctures of transition.

We can cite a few examples of the con-tinuity, contradiction and learning of Marxhimself.20 His evaluation of the Paris Com-mune never admitted the unter.ability ofsuch a revolt in view of the correspondingstage of capitalist development in France.Marx affirmed that the Commune's greatestmeasure was its own organisation provingits life by its vitality, confirming its theses,by its actions which embodied the aspira-tions of the working class of all countries.

Again, in the drafts of his letters toZasulich, Marx expressed an analogous con-cern 'with the centrality of the state ofcapitalist development, on the one hand, andthe appropriateness of the obshchina as acommunal form through which labour canfurther its own emancipation, on the other.Marx is again counterposing communeagainst state. He fastens upon a contradic-

tory dualism within the Russian village com-munity, between private, and collectivisttendencies, which permits alternative pos-sibilities for its social development depen-ding entirely upon the historical environ-ment'.21 Marx was categorical in his em-phasis on the collective strength to achievesocialism notwithstanding the stage ofcapitalist development in Russia.

I have mentioned the problem of il-legitimate abstraction in the use of historicalmaterialism. The two examples from Marxshow the critical priority which he assignedto forms capable of advancing the eman-cipation of labour over such invalid abstrac-tions. Gramsci clearly stressed the impor-tance of the southern question in Italianhistory. It aopeared to him as the conse-quence of a bourgeois transition characteris-ed by the concord of capitalist and pre-capitalist forces. The politics of such atransition .was featured in the absence ofJacobinist revolutionary thrust on the partof the bourgeoisie. Its economics revealedwhat is now understood as the dualities ofan unclarified and incomplete bourgeoisorder.

Gramsci was born in Sardinia where helived the first two decades of his life. Theduality of Sardinia and Piedmont was writlarge over Gramsci's understanding of thetask of Marxism in Italy. In a significantsense 'he was a product of the west's mostremote periphery, and of conditions which,half a century later, it became fashionableto call "Third World". No comparablewestern intellectual came from such a back-ground. He was a barbed gift of the back-woods to the metropolis, and some aspectsof his originality always reflected thisdistance.22

Quite apart from ny consideration ofGramsci's own background, we mustacknowledge that capitalist transformationin history is found to belong to various com-binations of power and ideology. Even thecentral demarcation between civil and

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Economic and Political Weekly January 30, 1988 PE-35

political society which receives criticalemphasis in Gramsci's reflections cannotnecessarily-be identified as distinct processesof historical change. The distinction isextremely relevant for an appreciation of themolecular components and the overallapparatus which sustain the rule of lawunder capitalism. But in real historyGramsci's classic model of Jacobinism alsohad its reign of terror, and the belatedgrowth of bourgeois social hegemony inFrance cannot be separated from the passiverevolution of Bonapartism.

Such examples are necessary to caution usagainst a misunderstanding of Gramsci'snotes. It was not his object to demonstratethe inevitability of the historical processeswhich concerned him. The crucial points areto recognise the interrelations between thekey identities and their contradictions in amanner that would unite the signifier andsignifed to act in the proper direction ofmaking history. Gramsci's 'philosophy ofpraxis' emphasised that 'Prediction revealsitself thus not as a scientific act of know-ledge, but as the abstract expression of,theeffort made, the practical way of creating acollective will'.23

Thus, in his ideas on mediation, Gramscisaw the limits of acting from a sum ofknowledge which could be taken to havesufficiently informed the mediator about theobject. He goes beyond the boundaries ofthe Enlightenment not to look upon thesphere of human sciences as another studyof external objects alone. The mediator'stask consisted in full awareness of theipteraction between his own subject positionand the world of other human subjects.There lies the significance of Gramsci'sefforts to link the elements of spontaneitywith that of consciousness. The same con-cern is revealed again in his ramifications ofcommon sense as containing both theelements of subordination and dissent.No less pertinent is what Gramsci saysabout the contradictory elements in folkculture, its tendency of surrender, andcontrarily its signs of intransigence havingthe potential for conversion into revolu-tionary consciousness.

In all this, Gramsci often reflects on con-ditions which do not seem to be confinedto subjects with clear positions in a civilsociety. So the "Prison Notebooks" go farbeyond the specific questions relating to thestage of clarified capitalism. The idea ofhegemony may then have elements andimplications which can be true of Gramsci'sgelatinous and primordial civil societies. Inan important sense, the southern questionis analysed to indicate the potential of ahistorical bloc which consists of a wide rangeof subaltern classes having the features ofboth capitalist and pre-capitalist social-existence forms. Such a historical bloc hasthe strength of achieving national goalswhich the bourgeoisie of the Risorgimentofailed to achieve from above. The frontiersof the "Prison Notebooks" can then be sug-gestive of historical forces and their strength

which are not necessarily anchored in anadequate development of capitalism and itsnexuses of civil society.

Notes1 Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith

(ed and tr). Selections'from the PrisonNotebooks of Antonio Gramsci, London,1971 (SPN).

2 Ibid, pp 12-13.3 Ibid, p 258.4 Ibid, pp 160, 261.5 Perry Anderson, 'The Antinomies of An-

tonio Gramsci' in New Left Review, No 100,London, November 1976-January 1977pp 5-78.

6 SPN, p 260.7 Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on fascism, New

York, 1976, pp 87-103.8 Christine Buci-Glucksman, 'State, Transi-

tion and Passive Revolution' in ChantalMouffe (ed), Gramsci and Marxist Theory,London, 1979, p 210.

9 SPN, p 58ff.10 Togliatti, op cit, pp 5-6.

11 Paul Coner, 'Fascist Agrarian Policy and theItalian Economy in the Inter-War Years' inJohn A Davis, Gramsci and Italy's PassiveRevolution, London, 1979, p 269.

12 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London,1985, pp 65-71.

13 SPN, p 52.14 Ibid, p 55.15 Alstair Davidson, Antonio Gramsci:

Towards An Intellectual Biography, Lon-don, 1977, pp 244-45.

16 Alvin Gouldner, 'The Two Marxisms' in ForSociology, Harmondsworth, 1975, p 419.

17 Chantal Mouffe (ed), op cit, pp 12-13.18 SPN, p 411.19 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, op cit,

p 182.20 Derek Sayer and Philip Carrigan, 'Late

Marx: Continuity, Contradiction and Lear-ning' in Teodor Shanin (ed), Late Marx andthe Russian Road, London, 1983, pp 77-93.

21 Ibid, p 89.22 Tom Nairn, 'Antonu Su Gobbu' in Anne

Showstack Sassoon, Approaches toGramsci, London, 1982, p 161.

23 SPN, p 438.

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