The Gramsci-Trotsky Question (1922-1932)

Abstract

evidence of a Trotskyist influence on Gramsci is,' I think, rather persuasive, and in any case should be carefully evaluated in order to determine what insights the interaction between these two major figures of world communism can provide into the encounter between the Classical (Trotsky) and Western (Gramsci) traditions of revolutionary Marxism, to use Perry Anderson's terminology.2 Some of the recent scholarly work done on Gramsci, and a preponderance of the references to him that one comes across in left periodicals published during the last ten to fifteen years have tended to downplay his connections with the makers and events of the Bolshevik revolution, and to privilege those aspects of his ideas that fit into the framework of what has been loosely called cultural radicalism. Gramsci has become a kind of role model to many radical literary intellectuals, academic Marxists, and left-leaning social democrats. No doubt Gramsci has much to offer people interested in consciousness, subjectivity, and superstructural problems. But it should always be remembered that, for Gramsci, the study of how we understand phenomena and of how and why particular conceptions of the world are mediated by institutions and filter down into the consciousness of the masses was part of a larger enterprise whose aim was the socialist restructuring of capitalist society. His pessimism of the intellect, so widespread today, was counterbalanced by an optimism of the will, which seems to be sorely lacking in left circles of the 1980's. Had Gramsci lived on into the 60's and 70's, perhaps he would have sympathized with the skepticism of new left intellectuals today who ask What is socialism, anyway?, or who are rereading Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky with the insights them by Foucault and Derrida. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to see Gramsci as in some respects a precursor of deconstructionism. One can accept the view of Gramsci as a thinker who provided a new and unique reformulation of Marxian theory.3 His reflections on the role of intellectuals in rationalizing systems of political control and domination would be sufficient--even