Antonio Gramsci. State and Civil Society
Agitation and Propaganda
The weakness of the Italian political parties (excepting to some extent the
Nationalist party) throughout their period of inactivity, from the
Risorgimento onwards, has consisted in what one might call an imbalance
between agitation and propaganda – though it can also be termed lack of
principle, opportunism, absence of organic continuity, imbalance between
tactics and strategy, etc. The principle reason why the parties are like
this is to be sought in the deliquescence of the economic classes, in the
gelatinous economic and social structure of the country – but this
explanation is somewhat fatalistic. In fact, if it is true that parties are
only the nomenclature for classes, it is also true that parties are not
simply a mechanical and passive expression of those classes, but react
energetically upon them in order to develop, solidify and universalise them.
This precisely did not occur in Italy, and the result of this "omission" is
precisely the imbalance between agitation and propaganda – or however
else one wishes to term it.
The State/government has a certain responsibility in this state of affairs:
one can call it a responsibility, in so far as it prevented the
strengthening of the State itself, i.e. demonstrated that the
State/government was not a national factor. The government in fact operated
as a "party". It set itself over and above the parties, not so as to
harmonize their interests and activities within the permanent framework of
the life and interests of the nation and State, but so as to disintegrate
them, to detach them from the broad masses and obtain "a force of non-party
men linked to the government by paternalistic ties of a
Bonapartist-Caesarist type". This is the way in which the so-called
dictatorships Depretis, Crispi and Giolitti, and the parliamentary
phenomenon of transformism,21 should be analysed. Classes produce parties, and
parties form the personnel of State and government, the leaders of civil and
political society. There must be a useful and fruitful relation in these
manifestations and functions. There cannot be any formation of leaders
without the theoretical, doctrinal activity of parties, without a systematic
attempt to discover and study the causes which govern the nature of the
class represented and the way in which it has developed. Hence, scarcity of
State and government personnel; squalor of parliamentary life; ease with
which the parties can be disintegrated, by corruption and absorption of the
few individuals who are indispensable. Hence, squalor of cultural life and
wretched inadequacy of high culture. Instead of political history,
bloodless erudition; instead of religion, superstition; instead of books and
great reviews, daily papers and broadsheets; instead of serious politics,
ephemeral quarrels and personal clashes. The universities, and all the
institutions which develop intellectual and technical abilities, since they
were not permeated by the life of the parties, by the living realities of
national life, produced apolitical national cadres, with a purely rhetorical
and non-national mental formation. Thus the bureaucracy became estranged
from the country, and via its administrative positions became a true
political party, the worst of all, because the bureaucratic hierarchy
replaced the intellectual and political hierarchy. The bureaucracy became
precisely the State/Bonapartist party.C [1930]
The "Philosophy of the Epoch"
The discussion on force and consent has shown that political science is
relatively advanced in Italy, and is treated with a certain frankness of
expression – even by individuals holding responsible positions in the
State. The discussion in question is the debate about the "philosophy of
the epoch", about the central theme in the lives of the various states in
the post-war period. How to reconstruct the hegemonic apparatus of the
ruling group, an apparatus which disintegrated as a result of the war, in
every state throughout the world? Moreover, why did this apparatus
disintegrate? Perhaps because a strong antagonistic22 collective political will developed? If
this were the case, the question would have been resolved in favour of such
an antagonist. In reality, it disintegrated under the impact of purely
mechanical causes, of various kinds: 1. because great masses,
previously passive, entered into movement – but into a chaotic and
disorganised movement, without leadership, i.e. without any precise
collective political will; 2. because the middle classes, who during
the war held positions of command and responsibility, when peace came were
deprived of these and left unemployed – precisely after having learned
how to command, etc.; 3. because the antagonistic forces proved to be
incapable of organising this situation of disorder to their own advantage.
The problem was to reconstruct a hegemonic apparatus for these formerly
passive and apolitical elements. It was impossible to achieve this without
the use of force – which could not be "legal" force, etc. Since the
complex of social relations was different in each state, the political
methods of using force and the ways in which legal and illegal forces were
combined had to be equally diverse. The greater the mass of the apolitical,
the greater the part played by illegal force has to be. The greater the
politically organised and educated forces, the more it is necessary to
"cover" the legal State, etc. [1930-32]
C.
See the books which after 1919 criticised a "similar" state of affairs (but
far richer in terms of the life of "civil society") in the Kaiser's Germany,
for example Max Weber's book Parliament and Government in the German New
Order: a Political Critique of Bureaucracy and Party Life. Translation
and preface by Enrico Ruta, pp. xvi, 200 – the translation is very
imperfect and imprecise.
21.
Agostino Depretis (1813-87) was at first a Mazzinian; later, in Sicily with
Garibaldi, he was in fact working for Cavour. In 1876 he became the first
"Left" prime minister, and dominated parliamentary life until his death. He
chose his ministers from both sides of the parliament, in the process which
became known as transformism; Crispi called this means of securing his
personal power a "parliamentary dictatorship", but did the same himself when
in power.
22.
i.e. antagonistic to the existing capitalist and bourgeois order.