Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism: The ... - Indymedia

Notes to Chapter Three 215aspect of “democratic centralism” as the regime regulating the internal relationsof early Bolshevism was real and should be taken seriously, see Cohen,“Bolshevism and Stalinism,” pp. 13–19. This general point will probablygrate against a deeply entrenched common sense. It should be rememberedthat while the Bolsheviks are usually and flippantly portrayed as the livingantithesis of democracy, the embarrassing, virulently anti-democratic recordof the “moderate” socialists and liberals in 1917 Russia (to say nothing oftheir colleagues elsewhere) is hardly ever subject to the same scrutiny. To goback to Levins’ analogy, tomatoes and orange trees have their own diseasesas well, though they generally do not attract as much scientific interest.12. On this point see Ernest Mandel, From Stalinism to Eurocommunism (London:NLB, 1978). See also Tito Perlini, Gramsci e il Gramscismo (Milano:CELUC, 1974), pp. 29, 37, 113.13. Urban’s assessment of Togliatti is particularly difficult to digest once seenin the light of the history of the “intellectual” and “communist” Gramscidescribed in the previous chapter. According to Urban, what distinguishedTogliatti and most of the “innovators” in the PCI was their superior universityeducation: “[Their] educational background . . . surely contributedto their partiality for reasoned discussion of differing viewpoints. Manyhad received a high level of university training in the humanities or law.Gramsci had excelled in the former and Togliatti in the latter at the widelyrespected University of Turin before 1917.” Moreover, “the readiness of themen around Togliatti to assess realistically the possibilities for action in theItalian context marked them as moderates compared to the radical sectariansin the PCI and the Comintern at large . . . unlike individuals fromproletarian backgrounds . . . they knew from their own life experience thatit was indeed possible to persuade middle-class people of the virtues ofcommunism.” Joan Barth Urban, Moscow and the Italian Communist Party(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 24, 51. Evidently, Togliatti’soutlook and disposition was so broad and elevated as to accommodate,and indeed direct, both the production of the Olympian academic Gramsci,as well as its opposite, the intransigent, “know-nothing” communist. For ascathing, and entirely appropriate critique of Togliatti’s vainglorious posturingas a cultured humanist, see Perlini, pp. 113, 127.14. On the specific question of Gramsci’s alleged Bukharinism, Benvenuti andPons offer a convincing rebuttal. See Benvenuti and Pons, pp. 119–20.15. Dmitri Manuilsky was an exception among Stalin’s allies. Unlike many otherswho were killed during the purges, Manuilsky fell out of favor relativelylate, in 1950, and was merely forced to retire. Ernst Thälmann was arrestedby the Gestapo in 1933, long before the purges, and died in a Nazi concentrationcamp.16. Concerning the origins of socialism in one country, Isaac Deutscher writes,“Bukharin may justly be regarded as the co-author of the doctrine. He supplied