Antonio Gramsci 1926
We And The Republican Concentration
Unsigned, L’Unità, 13 October 1926.
Text from Antonio Gramsci "Selections from political writings (1921-1926)", translated and edited by Quintin Hoare (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978). Transcribed to the www with the kind permission of Quintin Hoare.
In the article which we reported on at length yesterday,
Voce Repubblicana seeks to convince us to replace our
analysis of the Italian situation and our perspectives by its own
fossilized models. The Voce’s model is as follows: the
‘Republican Concentration’ should be seen by the communists as a
favourable element for its own game [sic], because it is
potentially capable of breaking the present equilibrium and
endowing political struggle with a rapid tempo, pregnant with
possibilities. In short, we ought to reason as follows. Before the
October Revolution, there was the February Revolution. Before
Lenin, there was Kerensky. Come on then! Conscious Communists, let
us set about looking for the Italian Kerensky. Who will it be? Who
will it not be? Found him. It will be Arturo Labriola, the
theorizer of the "Republican Concentration".
Well, this whole way of reasoning proposed by Voce
seems enormously puerile to us. We communists do not have any
"game", we are not "playing" with history. We seriously want to
do a great deal, and do not have any pre-arranged model to apply,
not even the Russian model. We have principles; a doctrine;
concrete ends to achieve. It is only in relation to our
principles, our doctrine and the ends to be achieved that we
establish our real political line. Our ‘Machiavelli’ is the works
of Marx and Lenin, not the editors of Voce Repubblicana
and Hon. Arturo Labriola - who, in any case, only resemble Master
Nicolò Machiavelli in the sense of the well-known
lines:
Behind the tomb of Machiavello
Lie the bones of Stenterelo
For us, the form which our relations with the Republican
Concentration should take is clear. In Italian society, which has
attained the highest degree of capitalist development which it
historically could attain, given the conditions of time and
place, only one class is revolutionary in a complete and permanent
sense: the industrial proletariat. But as a result of its specific
development, the specific national conditions of capitalist
development, Italian society has conserved many relics of the
past: a whole series of institutions and political relations which
weigh on the situation and clouded fundamental lines. In other
countries too, where capitalist forces are far more developed than
in Italy, ancient institutions and political relations survive. In
England, there is the monarchy, despite the fact that 85 per cent
of the population is industrial. In England, the Church is a very
powerful institution, even if it is not formally centralized like
the Vatican. In England, the Upper Chamber carries out a function
of prime importance, especially when the Conservative Party does
not have a majority in the House of Commons. Shall we, therefore,
say that England is a backward, pre-capitalist, semi-feudal
country? And again: in England there is no republican party,
although the monarchy exists. This means that the republican party
does not necessarily exist and develop because there is a
monarchy; but because there exist a class and considerable social
groups which find the republican terrain most suitable for
defending their own position and their own class or group
interests.
However, we recognize that in the Italian situation the
specific weight of the "relics" mentioned earlier is greater than
in other countries. Precisely for this reason, within the general
world situation there exists a specific Italian situation: in
other words, a situation in which there exist certain peculiar
features; in which the fascist government exists and not that of
Baldwin or that of Poincaré - to express ourselves like
the
Seigneur de La Palice. So the question is the following: what
assessment should we make of the specific weight of the "relics"
peculiar to Italy? They exist, they must be overcome. We are in
agreement about that. But do they represent the content of the
historical work of a whole epoch, a whole generation or more than
a generation? Are they the main item on the agenda which history
implacably compels us to complete? Or are they not rather only
details, secondary aspects of our hard historical work? This is
the problem that is posed. For us, the content of the historical
work imposed upon the present generations is the realization of
socialism. On the arduous and difficult road leading to this
realization, we find corpses to be buried, relics to be brushed
aside. We must do this, and we will do it because it is
necessary. But there is one particular corpse which we have the
specific task of burying: that of capitalism. And one road which
we have to open up: that which leads to socialism. This is our
specific duty, and nothing else. As we proceed along this road, we
shall attend to the secondary tasks and questions of detail.
The Republican Concentration expresses these secondary
questions of detail in the Italian situation. We recognize the
existence and relative weight of the issues which it
raises. Therefore, we pay attention to the Concentration, we
discuss with its representatives, we have sought and will in all
probability continue to seek a relationship of alliance with
it. But if we take into consideration the historically positive
sides of this political current, we cannot and must not hide from
ourselves or from the proletariat its negative sides. Two classes
face each other today: proletariat and bourgeoisie. The present
situation is determined by the fundamental struggle between these
two classes. But neither of these two classes is isolated; each
has real and potential allies. The bourgeoisie has the upper hand
because it is helped by its allies, because it has at its disposal
a system of forces which it controls and leads. The proletariat
struggles partly in order to take these allies away from the
bourgeoisie and make them into its own auxiliary forces.
The Republican Concentration is the political expression of
this oscillation of the intermediate forces; of this latent
disequilibrium of the forces which will decide the outcome of the
historic duel between the two fundamental classes. If these forces
shift en masse, if there is a social landslide of the
intermediate layers towards the Republican Concentration, the
bourgeoisie as a "class" will at once shift onto the same terrain
and will become republican in twenty-four hours. For it will not
want to remain isolated, and will understand that only by moving
in this way could it preserve its essential positions. The
Voce is touchingly naive when it invokes the attitude of
the left groups of the anti-fascist bourgeoisie (Popolari
and Constitutional Democrats). Today in Germany, the President of
the Republic is called Hindenburg and the Prime Minister is called
Dr. Marx, of the Catholic Centre: it is very probable that as
recently as October 1918, neither one of them thought to become
the Head of State or Prime Minister of a German Republic.
For (and this is the point) when could the social landslide of
the intermediate layers occur? It could only occur in the event of
a menacing renewal of the proletariat’s revolutionary energies;
only if capitalism showed itself incapable of satisfying any
longer the essential needs of national life. But we believe that
precisely at that moment it is necessary for the proletariat to be
politically and ideologically united as a class, so that it will
be able to resolve its essential problems - coordinating them
naturally with the solution of the other national questions linked
to classes and social groups which will fight at its side.
There: we are working for the proletariat to be the ruling
class in a renewed Italian society. The Republican Concentration
is working to subordinate the proletariat to other social forms -
which in practice can only be capitalism, because only one of
these two classes can govern the country. On this terrain, no
Machiavellism - whether an old or a new brand - will succeed in
disturbing the limpidity of the relationships which fascism has so
brutally created. Only one republican concentration has a
‘permanent’ and historically stable perspective of success in
Italy today: that which has the proletariat as its fundamental
axis. Our party has seen the problem in its full dimensions since
June 1923, and it is no accident that the present
‘concentrationists’ have only marked time.