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Between ethics and politics: Gramsci's theory of intellectuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

James Martin
James Martin*
Affiliation:
School of Politics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1PA, Northern Ireland, UK, Telephone: (01232) 273765, Fax: (01232) 235373. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

This article examines Gramsci's theory of intellectuals in the light of Bauman's distinction between ‘legislators’ and ‘interpreters’. By distinguishing descriptive and prescriptive dimensions to Gramsci's theory, it is possible to see a tension between the dual ethical and political functions that he attributes to ‘organic intellectuals’. In the one, Gramsci effectively deconstructs the intellectual's role as the bearer of universal knowledge, while in the other he reconstructs that role through an emphasis on the revolutionary party. It is argued that the tensions in Gramsci's theory stem from his attachment to a peculiarly modern conception of the relationship between intellectuals, culture and the state.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 67 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. For a useful discussion of the problematic status of intellectuals in social and political thought, see Eyerman, Ron, Between Culture and Politics. Intellectuals in Modern Society, Polity, Cambridge, 1994.Google Scholar

2. See the following for general appraisals of Gramsci's contribution: Sassoon, Anne Showstack, Gramsci's Politics, 2nd edn, Hutchinson, London, 1987; Boggs, Carl, Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modernity, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993; Karabel, Jerome, ‘Revolutionary Contradictions: Antonio Gramsci and the Problem of Intellectuals’, Politics and Society, 6, 1976, pp. 123–72.Google Scholar

3. See Bauman, Zigmunt, ‘Legislators and Interpreters: Culture as the Ideology of Intellectuals’, in his Intimations of Postmodernity, Routledge, London, 1992, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

4. Bauman, , ‘Legislators and Interpreters’, p. 5.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 7.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 11, 12.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., p. 22.Google Scholar

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13. Here I have followed the commentary by Hughes, , Consciousness and Society, pp. 411–18.Google Scholar

14. A similar conception of the intellectual was proffered by Karl Mannheim in his Ideology and Utopia. See Hughes, , Consciousness and Society, pp. 418–17.Google Scholar

15. This cultural environment is well illustrated in Bellamy, Richard, Modern Italian Social Theory. Ideology and Politics from Pareto to the Present, Polity, Cambridge, 1987 and Bellamy, Richard, ‘Gramsci, Croce and the Italian Political Tradition’, History of Political Thought, 11, 1990, pp. 313–37.Google Scholar

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30. See Gramsci, Antonio, Lettere dal carcere, edited by Caproglio, Sergio and Fubini, Elsa, Einaudi, Turin, 1965, pp. 58–9 (English translation in Letters from Prison, 2 vols, edited by Rosengarten, Frank and translated by Rosenthal, Raymond, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994 (hereafter LP), 1, pp. 83–4).Google Scholar

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36. Lettere, pp. 459–60, 481 (LP, 2, pp. 52, 67).Google Scholar

37. Quaderni, pp. 1518–19 (SPN, pp. 12–13).Google Scholar

38. Lettere, p. 481. (LP, 2, p. 67).Google Scholar

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41. Piparo, Franco Lo, Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci, Laterza, Bari, 1979.Google Scholar

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44. Ibid., p. 355 (English translation in Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from Cultural Writings , edited by Forgacs, David and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell, translated by Boelhower, William, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1985, p. 170).Google Scholar

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46. Ibid., pp. 1543–7 (SPN, pp. 36–40).Google Scholar

47. Ibid., pp. 1207–1362 (English translations are scattered throughout FS, especially sections VI and VII, and SPN, pp. 323–77).Google Scholar

48. See Croce, Benedetto, Politics and Morals, translated by Castiglione, Salvatore J., George Allen & Unwin, London, 1946. This is a partial translation of Croce's Etica e politico (Ethics and Politics) of 1931, which Gramsci closely followed in his critique of the former's philosophy.Google Scholar

49. Quaderni, p. 1212 (FS, pp. 332–4).Google Scholar

50. Ibid., p. 1231 (FS, pp. 352–4).Google Scholar

51. Ibid.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., pp. 2139–81 (SPN, pp. 279–318).Google Scholar

53. Ibid., p. 2139 (SPN, p. 279).Google Scholar

54. Ibid., p. 2146 (SPN, p. 285).Google Scholar

55. Ibid.Google Scholar

56. Ibid., pp. 2147–50 (SPN, pp. 294–7), 2160–4 (SPN, pp. 298–301).Google Scholar

57. Ibid., p. 1551 (SPN, p. 9).Google Scholar

58. Ibid.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., p. 2171 (SPN, p. 309).Google Scholar

60. Ibid., p. 2166 (SPN, p. 303).Google Scholar

61. Ibid., p. 1387 (SPN, p. 335).Google Scholar

62. Ibid., p. 1556 (SPN, p. 126).Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 1561 (SPN, p. 133).Google Scholar

64. Ibid., p. 1734 (SPN, p. 153).Google Scholar

65. Ibid., p. 1387 (SPN, p. 335).Google Scholar

66. Ibid., pp. 1334 (SPN, p. 348), 1378–80 (SPN, pp. 325–7), 1385–6 (SPN, pp. 333–4).Google Scholar

67. Ibid., p. 1382 (SPN. p. 330), 1390 (SPN, p. 334).Google Scholar

68. Ibid., pp. 1383 (SPN, pp. 330–1), 1428–30 (SPN, pp. 427–9), 1780 (SPN, pp. 364–5).Google Scholar

69. Ibid., p. 1505 (SPN, p. 418).Google Scholar

70. Ibid., p. 1561 (SPN, p. 133).Google Scholar

71. Bovero, Michelangelo, ‘Gramsci e il realismo politico’ in Sbarberi, (ed.), Teoria politico e società industriale, pp. 55–69.Google Scholar

72. Quaderni, pp. 1633–5 (SPN, pp. 186–90).Google Scholar

73. See Femia, Joseph, Gramsci's Political Thought, Clarendon, Oxford, 1981, pp. 172–85.Google Scholar

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75. See Boggs, , Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modernity, pp. 59–60.Google Scholar

76. Quaderni, pp. 1376–7 (SPN, p. 324).Google Scholar

77. Bellamy, , ‘Gramsci, Croce and the Italian Political Tradition’.Google Scholar

78. Quaderni, p. 1560 (SPN, p. 133).Google Scholar

79 Ibid. pp. 1377 and 1384 (SPN, pp. 325 and 332).Google Scholar

80. Ibid., p. 1378 (SPN, p. 325).Google Scholar

81. This contradiction is central to Michael Walzer's reading of Gramsci as a ‘social critic’. See ‘Antonio Gramsci's Commitment’, chapter 5 of The Company of Critics. Social Criticism in the Twentieth Century, Peter Halban, London, 1989, pp. 80–100.Google Scholar

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83. See Laclau, Ernesto, Emancipation(s), Verso, London, 1996, chapter 7.Google Scholar