Post by politicidal on Jun 28, 2021 16:09:10 GMT
He was a founding member and once the leader of the Italian Communist Party. But he was imprisoned by Mussolini's Fascist government. He remained incarcerated until 1933 and was moved to various clinics for his deteriorating health until he died in 1937.
TEXT:
On November 7, 1922, Petrograd was filled with pomp and ceremony as the Bolsheviks marked the fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. With the Communist International holding its Fourth Congress in the Soviet Republic that same month, Antonio Gramsci was one of the many foreign revolutionaries present for the celebrations. Yet events in his Italian homeland soured the festive mood.
The previous week, the fascist Blackshirts had marched on Rome — with king Vittorio Emanuele III appointing Benito Mussolini prime minister on October 31. For Gramsci and his comrades in the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), this marked a disastrous defeat. Arrested in 1926, Gramsci would spend the rest of his life in jail; the Prison Notebooks he wrote in his cell would provide the most famous reckoning with his party’s defeat.
But while Gramsci’s works are well-known, we are still learning more about his response to the rise of fascism. This month, Critica Marxista published a newly rediscovered article which the Sardinian communist wrote for Pravda in the days following the Fascist takeover. The text of the November 7, 1922 article was translated back into Italian by Natalya Terekhova, historian and founder of the Moscow Gramsci Studies Society, and introduced by her together with Guido Liguori, president of the International Gramsci Society Italia. Here, we reproduce Gramsci’s article in English, followed by Terekhova and Liguori’s commentary on the circumstances of its publication:
Article from Pravda, November 7, 1922:
The Fascists’ seizure of power reduces the Italian Communist Party’s activity to that of a purely conspiratorial movement. In Italy, a new period of history is beginning, which we can define in the following terms: Political power is probably passing from the hands of the capitalist bourgeoisie into the hands of the middling and big agrarian strata, under the ideological guidance of part of the urban petty bourgeoisie. The contradictions of Italian society, which had been latent since the creation of the unitary Kingdom which emerged from the wars for Italian reconstruction, became clearly manifest in these last two years, after the Socialist Party proved incapable of leading the proletariat to power.
The result has been the agrarian landowners’ victory over the proletariat and over the bourgeoisie, which has been enfeebled by the financial and industrial crisis. One can easily foresee an imminent period of fierce struggle in Italy, since even for the bourgeoisie it will be difficult to accept harsh, tyrannical domination by the landowners and the irresponsible demagogy of a mediocre adventurer like Mussolini. So, despite the gravity of the present situation, the future prospects for the proletariat and its party are not particularly negative. Over the last two years, the Communist Party has already found itself in a situation of illegality across three-quarters of the country. Despite this, the party, which counted 42,000 members in February 1921 after the split at the Livorno Congress, still had 35,000 members at the moment of the Fascist coup d’état, not including the around 20,000 young communists. The Socialist Party, which had 150,000 members after Livorno, has in the same period fallen to 32,000 members. They have resolved to join the Comintern, but in truth they are not sufficiently prepared for a situation of illegality.
If in this new phase the Communist Party’s Central Committee proves capable (as it probably will, taking into account the experience of the international communist movement) of developing a tactic adequate to the reality of Italian society and driving open the contradictions created by the Fascist coup d’état, the proletariat will, soon enough, again occupy its historic position, lost after the failure of the factory-occupation campaign in September 1920.
Gramsci (Italy)
jacobinmag.com/2021/06/antonio-gramsci-pravada-italian-communist-party-history
I guess he was in for a rude awakening in regards to that mediocre adventurer.
TEXT:
On November 7, 1922, Petrograd was filled with pomp and ceremony as the Bolsheviks marked the fifth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. With the Communist International holding its Fourth Congress in the Soviet Republic that same month, Antonio Gramsci was one of the many foreign revolutionaries present for the celebrations. Yet events in his Italian homeland soured the festive mood.
The previous week, the fascist Blackshirts had marched on Rome — with king Vittorio Emanuele III appointing Benito Mussolini prime minister on October 31. For Gramsci and his comrades in the Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I), this marked a disastrous defeat. Arrested in 1926, Gramsci would spend the rest of his life in jail; the Prison Notebooks he wrote in his cell would provide the most famous reckoning with his party’s defeat.
But while Gramsci’s works are well-known, we are still learning more about his response to the rise of fascism. This month, Critica Marxista published a newly rediscovered article which the Sardinian communist wrote for Pravda in the days following the Fascist takeover. The text of the November 7, 1922 article was translated back into Italian by Natalya Terekhova, historian and founder of the Moscow Gramsci Studies Society, and introduced by her together with Guido Liguori, president of the International Gramsci Society Italia. Here, we reproduce Gramsci’s article in English, followed by Terekhova and Liguori’s commentary on the circumstances of its publication:
Article from Pravda, November 7, 1922:
The Fascists’ seizure of power reduces the Italian Communist Party’s activity to that of a purely conspiratorial movement. In Italy, a new period of history is beginning, which we can define in the following terms: Political power is probably passing from the hands of the capitalist bourgeoisie into the hands of the middling and big agrarian strata, under the ideological guidance of part of the urban petty bourgeoisie. The contradictions of Italian society, which had been latent since the creation of the unitary Kingdom which emerged from the wars for Italian reconstruction, became clearly manifest in these last two years, after the Socialist Party proved incapable of leading the proletariat to power.
The result has been the agrarian landowners’ victory over the proletariat and over the bourgeoisie, which has been enfeebled by the financial and industrial crisis. One can easily foresee an imminent period of fierce struggle in Italy, since even for the bourgeoisie it will be difficult to accept harsh, tyrannical domination by the landowners and the irresponsible demagogy of a mediocre adventurer like Mussolini. So, despite the gravity of the present situation, the future prospects for the proletariat and its party are not particularly negative. Over the last two years, the Communist Party has already found itself in a situation of illegality across three-quarters of the country. Despite this, the party, which counted 42,000 members in February 1921 after the split at the Livorno Congress, still had 35,000 members at the moment of the Fascist coup d’état, not including the around 20,000 young communists. The Socialist Party, which had 150,000 members after Livorno, has in the same period fallen to 32,000 members. They have resolved to join the Comintern, but in truth they are not sufficiently prepared for a situation of illegality.
If in this new phase the Communist Party’s Central Committee proves capable (as it probably will, taking into account the experience of the international communist movement) of developing a tactic adequate to the reality of Italian society and driving open the contradictions created by the Fascist coup d’état, the proletariat will, soon enough, again occupy its historic position, lost after the failure of the factory-occupation campaign in September 1920.
Gramsci (Italy)
jacobinmag.com/2021/06/antonio-gramsci-pravada-italian-communist-party-history
I guess he was in for a rude awakening in regards to that mediocre adventurer.
