'The Revolution against "Capital"': constancy, change and collective will in Gramscis concepts

Derek Boothman

Chapter 4 in The Elgar Companion to Antonio Gramsci, 2024, pp 66-82 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Gramsci’s 1917 ‘Revolution against “Capital”’ article contains a cluster of questions, subsequently developed up to and including the prison period. These include the relations of Marxism with both materialism and in a stance that, unknowingly to him, reflects that of Lenin’s Hegel Notebooks, that of ‘intelligent idealism’. The ‘collective will’ invoked in Gramsci’s article, formed from below, and thus opposed to Michelsian notions of charisma from above, spotlights the active role of the ‘masses’, analogous to their role in the Reformation (here referring to the ‘spirit of initiative’ present in Vico’s and Weber’s writings). Through various sources, all in his view leading to the formation of Marxism, Gramsci develops a radically anti-determinist position in the Notebooks which, following Antonio Labriola, he begins to call the ‘philosophy of praxis’, theoretically distanced from Second International gradualist Marxism and, also linguistically, from Bukharin’s version, which became the vulgate of Soviet (and Comintern) Marxism.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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