POLITICAL WRITINGS
1921-26
Antonio Gramsci
ELECBOOK CLASSICS
Selections from
Political Writings
1921-1926
Antonio Gramsci
ISBN 1 84327 122 2
SELECTIONS FROM
POLITICAL
WRITINGS
(1921-1926)
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
with additional texts by other Italian Communist leaders
ElecBook
London 1999
Transcribed from the edition published by
Lawrence & Wishart, London 1978
English translation Copyright © Quintin Hoare, 1978
Read the entire book at Electric Book www.elecbook.com
Contents
Click on number to go to page
INTRODUCTION......................................................................... 10
OUTLINE CHRONOLOGY, 1921-1926 .......................................... 31
ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................ 36
INTRODUCTION
one hand the Comintern united front policy and on the other the PCI’s
sectarian formation; 4. the intense inner–party struggle that was
conditioned by the foregoing problems, as by more direct forms of
Comintern intervention and by the course of events in the Soviet Union.
These then provide the master themes of the present volume. What is
fascism, what Italian historical specificity had produced it and how to
combat it? How to defeat reformism and destroy its influence over the
masses? What kind of revolutionary party could carry out these tasks,
and how could it gain a mass implantation? How to evaluate and relate
to events in the Soviet Union and the evolution of the Comintern?
When the Italian Communist Party was founded in January 1921,
Gramsci—despite L’Ordine Nuovo’s earlier–mentioned key role in the
central revolutionary experience of the post–war period—was in a totally
isolated position on its first central committee. Bordiga had begun to
organize a national communist faction within the PSI in the autumn of
1919 long before any of the Ordine Nuovo group recognized the need
for an autonomous organization of communists. It was only in May
1920, after the defeat of the April general strike had exposed the PSI
leadership’s inability or unwillingness to take a revolutionary initiative in
practice despite its fiery rhetoric, that Gramsci finally understood the
need for such an organization. Then, however, he found himself unable
to persuade Bordiga that parliamentary abstentionism should not be the
programmatic basis for the faction, so could not join it. At the same
time, he was forced to break with most of his Ordine Nuovo comrades—
Tasca, Togliatti and Terracini foremost among them—since they had not
yet drawn the same conclusions as he had from the PSI’s passivity in
April. Gramsci was thus almost entirely alone in the summer of 1920.
And although by the autumn of that year the other members too of the
original Ordine Nuovo group had come to accept the necessity of a new
captain unable to leave while there were still passengers on board (see
Quaderni del Carcere —QC —pp. 1762-4, quoted in the Introduction to
Selections from the Prison Notebooks —SPN).
The texts translated here represent perhaps one quarter of Gramsci’s
identified political writings and internal reports for the period 1921-6.
Pending a critical edition at present in preparation under the auspices of
the Instituto Gramsci, most of these can be found in the following
collections: Socialismo e fascismo: l’Ordine Nuovo 1921-2, Turin,
1966; La formazione del gruppo dirigente del PCI nel 1923-1924 (ed.
Togliatti), Rome, 1962; La costruzione del partito comunista: 1923-
1926, Turin, 1971; Per la Verita, Rome, 1974. Although the title of the
present volume does not imply a similar restriction to that operating in
SPW I, since all Gramsci’s output during these years can be broadly
classified as political, the selection is nevertheless once again not a
representative one. First of all, it is unbalanced in favour of substantive
texts. This has meant excluding from Part One virtually all Gramsci’s
numerous articles on international events and polemical pieces on the
PSI and other left forces, and from Parts Four and Six most of his
shorter contributions to the 1925-6 faction struggle, even though these
categories account for a considerable proportion of his total production.
Obviously, too, primarily literary or historiographical criteria would have
resulted in a very different choice. But the present volume does contain
as many as possible of Gramsci’s considered political texts of the period,
on the most important issues which faced him. Moreover, any reader
will quickly discover that the writings included here deal with many of
what continue to be central political questions today: organs of working–
class power; bourgeois, parliamentary democracy and proletarian, soviet
democracy; the revolutionary party, its nature and its functioning;
proletarian internationalism and the evolution and nature of Soviet
society; fascism and its specificity as a form of bourgeois class rule; the
fight against reformism and at the same time for unity of the working
class in action and hegemony over other oppressed layers; the nature of
the epoch; and so on. At least, this conviction has fundamentally
governed the selection made.
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