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For Gramsci’s biography

Regarding Gramsci’s biography, historiography from 1952 to 1956 is split up in two fields: the one about young Gramsci and the one about the period in prison. Another formal partition is between writings based on personal evidences and the ones resting on unpublished sources or documents from archives.

Evidences on Gramsci’s youth period relate most of all about the factory councils experiences: from Santhià’s article, Discutendo con Gramsci (Discussing with Gramsci)[1], where his personal discussions with Gramsci about political strategies are thought back, to the memories of Giovanni Carsano who illustrates the sardinian’s speeches at the worker’s meetings[2], then even a poetry by Velso Mucci, where the communist leader-to-be is painted as a «shepherd of men»[3] while walking trough the Arcades in the center of Turin to the workshops in the suburbs.

After plentiful evidences left by Angelo Tasca, on the pages of «Il Mondo»[4], on the occasion of the release of the collection «Ordine Nuovo», Umberto Terracini too decides to share his memories on the columns of «Calendario del Popolo»[5] and the following year he describes a toast during the night the italiana communist party was founded[6]. In a page of communist journal «Vie Nuove» Felice Chilanti collects some memories of communist militants from Livorso who were there in 1921 and their contacts with Gramsci[7].

About the previous period in Gramsci’s life an evidence is even given by Gaetano Salvemini[8], who referring to a passge of the Southern question[9], tells exactly what happened when Gramsci and the socialists in Turin proposed him to stand for political elections in 1914.

Even in other people’s biographies we can find some fragments of deep memories about the founder of «Ordine Nuovo», for example in an obituary that Alicata writes for Ruggero Grieco: «one of the most brilliant followers of Gramsci’s work»[10]; also in the rebuilding of Gaetano Sozzi’s absconding in Turin[11], the Sardinian has a crucial role pushing him to leave for USSR.

Along the lines of this evidences devoted to the «Ordine Nuovo» period, a much more organic work is the above-mentioned Santhià, where personal memories help to think back to those years when the working class in Turin roused with an intense organization headed by Gramsci.

Among the works based on direct primary sources about the pre-prison period Domenico Zucàro helps us understanding Gramsci’s relationship with Sardinia editing his correspondance with Lussu[12] or he wirtes about his stay in Rome[13].

This same period is most of all considered by wide histories of pci and its foundation, where Gramsci’s shadows fades just after the Congress in Lyons, to appear again suddenly because of his death in 1937: examples are by Robotti and Germanetto[14], or Galli and Bellini’s work[15], or Gruppi and Modica’s pamphlet[16], but even an informal biography about Togliatti written by Marcella and Maurizio Ferrara[17]. Gramsci’s thought and role, even with strained interpretations or failures emerges greatly in “II Quaderno” of «Rinascita»[18].

Really few are memories about Gramsci as prisoner: Aurelio Fontana remembers some anecdotes on Gramsci’s detention in Turi[19], Arturo Pescarzoli tells about the time he spent with Gramsci in the penitentiary «del Carmine» in Naples[20], while Giovanni Carsano describes the trial at Tribunale Speciale, then tells about cultural activities organized by Gramsci and bureaucratic vicissitudes for the transfer to Turi[21].

Domenico Zucàro excels in the historical studies dedicated to Gramsci’s biography after the arrest. Every prisoner’s shift is methodically followed by the author and where possibile reproduces records and documents. From arrest to internment[22], from San Vittore[23] to «Qui si sana» clinic[24], till his death[25], every event is reconstructed in single essays published in journals, magazines and newspapers; all these partial works merged in 1954 in a monograph by Zucàro dedicated to the life of Gramsci in prison[26].

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Many of the works published in these years (1952-1956) are about Gramsci’s philosophy inside of marxist tradition or a comparison with Croce or crocianism, with the cultural background absorbed in Turin or the relationship between culture and politics. We can also find a large number of studies dedicated to multiple branches of Gramscian thought: from historiography to literature, from folklore to the southern question, studies on structure of factories, of parties, to the concept of «passive revolution» and even observations on pedagogy or cinema.

Regarding the ordinovist period studies analize the growing political sistem and the ideological assumptions of russian Revolution some with comparison with marxist orthodoxy.

Another strong topic is the discussion about knowledge, influence and use of Gramsci’s work in contemporary italian and foreigner culture.

Antonio Gramsci’s philosophy in marxist tradition

In a study about Antonio Labriola’s socialist doctrine, Luciano Cafagna emploies the notes in Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce to explain and reject Trockij’s cursory critics to Labriola[27], but even more explicit, Liliano Faenza[28] realizes how Gramsci’s work reminds to Labriola’s assumptions on indipendence of the philosophy of praxis, the Sardinian is represented then as the heir who overcomes the breaking between theorie and praxis through the experience of «Ordine Nuovo» and claiming the concept of hegemony. A comparison established by Faenza between Gramsci’s critics against Bukharin and the one of Labriola against positivism take us to an essay by Mondolfo[29] where he agrees , with Labriola’s original and indipendent concept of reality, to Gramsci’s explanation about Bukharin’s orthodox marxism. In the same year another essay by Riccardo Venturini[30] identifies in Labriola’s statement of philosophical indipendence of historical materialism an harbinger of Gramscian work and of strong critics against determinism.

This last two essays analize deeply the critical study of Bukharin’s Historical Materialism: Venturini, particularly, finds there a start for Gramscian topics: analysis on objectivity, on «Common Sense», or, epistemology. Still in 1955 Roberto Guiducci faces these same issues in his above-mentioned work[31] (maybe stimulated after Mondolfo’s essay), whose humanistic limitations bring also the quality to approach topics in a less speculative and polemical way that comes with the ability to focus on Gramsci’s comments on formal logic and mathematics.

Critics on scientific ideologism were previously showed by Manacorda and Muscetta in their aforesaid essay on Gramsci and the unity of culture, where the issue of knowledge is revised in its purpose of «dominance of reality»[32].

Politics and culture

The relationship between politics and culture, an essential topic in Gramscian thought, is analized by Nicola Matteucci[33] stressing political and moral support to the party; also Mondolfo’s critics[34] about bolshevik influence on Gramscian thought are focused on this problem, where a loss of indipendence in the relationship between freedom and authority is read as an overturning of the philosophy of praxis; or critics by Garosci to the «renewal of totalitarism»[35] in Gramsci, which «essentially rests on a purged idea about a “jump” out of social contraddictions thanks to an iron organization, that tries to bind itself with intellectual strenght and tries to submit them»[36].

Probably the coeval historical situation affects Mondolfo and Garosci’s critics, already in 1953 on the journal «Scuola e Città» Lamberto Borghi identifies, as comparison to Gentile and Croce’s conceptions, some limitations of Gramsci’s idea of freedom in the unavoidable authoritarian and bureaucratic degeneration of communist ideology[37].

Definitely much more optimistic is Guiducci, who, at the end of 1954, writes an essay about the issue of culture for the Left[38]: the leninist idea of “partisanship” of culture is well accepted, with the example of Gramsci, for a cultural renewal truly revolutionary and, as he develops the following year in a pamphlet on thaw and leftist culture[39]: hazard and political attempt were, for the Sardinian, also the philosophical and cultural research, or as said in Socialismo e verità[40], scientific research is considered as an integral part of an active and aware political participation.

Franco Rizzo[41], on the contrary, denies any theoretical importance in the relationship between culture and politics in Gramsci’s thought: he claims the nature of document of the Prison notebooks for studies about cultural events of fascism, but, unlike all previous essays, as we can notice with his footnotes, this one is based just on secondary sources and the author shows a methodical knowledge only about the Letters[42].

Croce after Gramsci

Romano Pasi’s evidence[43], a reader of «Incontri», for a report on the meaning of Benedetto Croce’s work, clearly points out the state of assimilation of the Neapolitan philosopher as an antagonist to young generations, but his deep tie with Gramscian teaching is recognized; further yet is the interpretation of Armando Parlato[44], who states that Gramsci’s thought, even if refers to Marxism, develops in Croce’s idealistic line because of its subjectivist features verging to deny the existence of anything out of human’s consciousness and action, and puts superstructure and structure at the same level determining historical process.

A year before Nino Valeri’s Lessons on Modern History[45], which shows the dialectical relationship between the Prison Notebooks and Croce’s philosophy, and before the above-mentioned Garin’s work[46] with Petronio’s review[47], which finds there a contribution building the «Anti-Croce» wished by Gramsci, Liliano Faenza[48] reminds that the path against italian neoidealism was opened by the Prison Notebooks.

Furio Diaz writes a philosophical essay on Gramsci’s reading of Croce’s historicism, he sees how the Sardinian push «historicity to its extreme consequences», «even if in some way, that means a substantial upsetting of the planning out of historicism»[49].

The Torinese School and Piero Gobetti

The relationship and most of all the contribution of Gramsci to the cultural unrest lived in Turin at the beginning of the century, is recalled by a charismatic character of Torinese culture: Gioele Solari[50], filtered by the figure of Piero Gobetti, a young intellectual who seized the importance of the working class in his town and went actively through the influence of the theoritical forefronts for the councils movement: the group of «Ordine Nuovo» led by Gramsci.

A Solari’s pupil, antifascist militant since the beginning, Aldo Garoci[51], in his analysis of Gramscian theories don’t leave out the cultural experience at the University of Turin and the council struggle among the roots of the future activities of the communist leader-to-be.

Lucio Lombardo Radice[52] finds in the thorough critics to pre-fascist democracy some of the essential premises to antifascism shared by Gramsci and Gobetti. Another Torinese, Claudio Gorlier[53], criticizes with groundless harshness what he thinks is Gramsci’s narrow ideology, which hindered him to understand the ideal, political and military strength of Piedmontese bourgeoisie, who later struggled for italian Resistenza.

Relating the figures of Gramsci and Gobetti, out of the Torinese scene, is Nino Valeri in his historical overview from Giolitti to Mussolini[54], where Gobetti’s activity is considered influences by the «Ordine Nuovo» strategy focused on the alliance among the working class in the cities and peasants in the South of Italy; still supporting the importance of «Ordine Nuovo» experience for Gobetti is Giuseppe Pasquariello[55].

«Ordine Nuovo» and Factory Councils

On XV anniversary of Antonio Gramsci’s death, Giacinto Cardona[56] writes a preliminary remark to the republishing of famous article Socialismo e cultura[57], where emerges a view of cultural activity that cannot be left to spontaneity, it is also stressed the proximity to Lenin’s thought in a moment when Gramsci was almost unknown. On the contrary, Armando Parlato[58] doesn’t want Gramsci’s work in the Leninist-Marxist tradition, with Gennaro Fabbrocino they states an essential extraneousness of the communist leader to the true interpretations of the process that leads to proletarian revolution, reaching in this way productional deviations.

Among reviews on the collection: Giuseppe Carbone[59] identifies in the whole Gramsci’s work a “unique” Gramsci, therefore yet in the «Ordine Nuovo» period we can perceive main themes of the Prison Notebooks; likewise, Carlo Salinari[60] considers that the issue of civilization of working class, implicit in following works, is already strongly present in early articles. Liliano Faenza[61] stresses Marxist assumptions and centrality of the Leninist experience.

From December 1954 to the following Februar, on the anarchic monthly journal of Livorno «L’Impulso», Pier Carlo Masini writes an essay in three parts published later in 1956 as a pamphlet about Gramsci and «Ordine Nuovo» according to a libertarian[62], where, in spite of some critic articles about anarchists, Masini recognizes a community of views between Gramsci and the anarchists about the «libertarian kernel» of the council experience.

Ottino, likewise, thinks that the council system is to be considered as an expression of «true workers’ democracy»[63]; while Alicata[64], in the wake of Carbone’s review, underlines the relationship between this collection with the Prison Notebooks in a moment when political struggle, at a crossroads between fascism and revolution, and in Gramsci’s works emerge the transposition in the action of method and objective research of the truth; on the contrary, Matteucci[65] rejects the thesis of continuity in the whole Gramscian work, suggesting essential reasons of the antithesis between this two moments of his political reflection. Giuliano Pischel[66] points out another subdivision, but inside the same articles collection: a theoretical as propaganda and the other one historical devoted to the features of the councils experience. A latter review of Gramsci’s political journalism is due to Roberto Guiducci[67] on the very first issue of his journal «Ragionamenti», where issues of a new framework as Factory Councils are analyzed as a spur for ideological reworking.

In 1955 the work of Livio Maitan[68] is published: theoretical core is exactly the «Ordine Nuovo» experience, maybe after critics such as the ones of Parlato and Fabbrocino, the trotskyst leader stand up for Gramsci’s choice, guided by political circumstances, to create these institutions that established a dualism of powers, as regards the orthodox choice of a new revolutionary direction for italian working class.

In conference about a the dialogue between Communists and Catholics, an authoritative leader as Giancarlo Pajetta[69] chooses an article of Gramsci[70] to show not just communist traditional overture for a dialogue between working class and peasants, Socialists and Catholics, but the Communists’ need to create a system of political balance with ecclesiastical institutions.

In a presentation[71] of three articles[72], one of them about Catholics, Anna Pagliuca notices the ability, a feature already of young Gramsci, to discover steady significance in the history of Italy going up from even the slightest events.

To come to an end with this period, the above-mentioned work of Ottino dedicates to the councils period just a unique paragraph in the chapter dedicated to young Gramsci’s education, but his description of relationship between union, party and council, even succinct, is many-sided.

After two years since the publishing of «Ordine Nuovo» collection it is not yet satisfying, for depth and organic unity, what has been said till 1956 about the Councils theory and in general about Gramsci’s biography in the period of the «red biennium».