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

Out of the Wrappings 39on the other he identified Gramsci’s limits in his political involvement. 80According to Buttigieg, Croce’s insidious appreciation of Gramsci—a praiseworthyintellectual, albeit corrupted by his frequent carnal relations with thepolitical world—is the fountainhead of the later “interpretations and uses”of Gramsci that “dissociated his thought from his political activity.” 81 “Whatcould be more damaging to the marxist tradition,” asks an exasperated Buttigieg,“than to deprive it of one of its most exemplary figures?” 82Buttigieg’s critique is legitimate, and, in a general sense, correct. But itis seriously weakened because it fails to acknowledge the fact that the originsof the dichotomy can be found not in Croce, but in the PCI itself. It was thePCI that established the dichotomy between various versions of Gramsci asthe supra-political thinker, on one hand, and the communist party activiston the other. This was a sustained process that for a long time followed thepolitical contortions dictated by Moscow, and ended only with the self-liquidationof the party in 1991. Contemporary academic illusions about the sortof intellectual represented by Gramsci were thus in good part inherited fromthe contradictions that burdened the international communist movement.The “sociological” deficit cannot be overcome by simply invoking the communistGramsci or by inveighing against a false dichotomy without takingmeasure of this process, which I will now sketch out.As noted earlier, the “third period” declared by Stalin was characterizedby an extreme turn to the left by the Third International. This politicalclimate was also characterized by a definite strain of anti-intellectualism. Incompliance with Moscow’s directives, the PCI refused to recognize any politicaldistinctions to its right, from fascism to the Socialist parties. The difficulthegemonic relations between the working class and its potential allies werereplaced by a simple frontal struggle of “class against class.” 83 These simplifications,combined with the perceived imminence of the revolution, madethis a time for action, not theory. At the height of this frenzy, as we haveseen, Gramsci’s name was erased from PCI publications. Before the close ofthe “third period,” however, some references to Gramsci reappeared, presentinga peculiar and partial figure. In these references, Gramsci was stripped ofany distinguishing intellectual and theoretical faculties—of the capacity topause, reflect, and debate rather than mechanically issue and follow orders.Without individuality, this Gramsci was a replaceable component of a facelessleadership. Without theory, he was an activist in the impoverished literalsense that he . . . acted. This is the actual origin of the “communist” Gramscifound in the dichotomy described above.This figure became fully visible in a curious episode that took placein February 1934, when Nicola Potenza, a young party member in exile,