Antonio Gramsci |
Selections from the Prison Notebooks |
| Tr. by Q. Hoare and G.N. Smith. New York: International Publishers 1971 [1930-32]. |
for the fuller context of these quotes see the selections from the Notebooks edited by D. Forgacs and available on the marxists.org web site. These particular quotes are from "Notes for an Introduction and an Approach to the Study of Philosophy in the History of Culture."
This contrast between thought and action, the co-existence of two conceptions of the world, one affirmed in words and the other displayed in effective action, is not simply a product of self-deception [malafede]. Self-deception can be an adequate explanation for a few individuals taken separately, or even for groups of a certain size, but it is not adequate when the contrast occurs in the life of great masses. In these cases the contrast between thought and action cannot but be the expression of profounder contrasts of a social historical order. It signifies that the social group in question may indeed have its own conception of the world, even if only embryonic; a conception which manifests itself in action, but occasionally and in flashes — when, that is, the group is acting as an organic totality. But this same group has, for reasons of submission and intellectual subordination, adopted a conception which is not its own but is borrowed from another group; and it affirms this conception verbally and believes itself to be following it, because this is the conception which it follows in ‘normal times’ — that is when its conduct is not independent and autonomous, but submissive and subordinate. Hence the reason why philosophy cannot be divorced from politics. And one can show furthermore that the choice and the criticism of a conception of the world is also a political matter.
[...]
But at this point we reach the fundamental problem facing any conception of the world, any philosophy which has become a cultural movement, a ‘religion’, a ‘faith’, any that has produced a form of practical activity or will in which the philosophy is contained as an implicit theoretical ‘premiss’. One might say ‘ideology’ here, but on condition that the word is used in its highest sense of a conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life. This problem is that of preserving the ideological unity of the entire social bloc which that ideology serves to cement and to unify.
note the echo here of anthropological definitions of "culture," starting with Tylor's (1971)
[...]
First of all, therefore, it must be a criticism of ‘common sense’, basing itself initially, however, on common sense in order to demonstrate that ‘everyone’ is a philosopher and that it is not a question of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s individual life, but of renovating and making ‘critical’ an already existing activity.
[...]
here are, however, fundamental differences between the two cases. That the Church has to face up to a problem of the ‘simple’ means precisely that there has been a split in the community of the faithful. This split cannot be healed by raising the simple to the level of the intellectuals (the Church does not even envisage such a task, which is both ideologically and economically beyond its present capacities), but only by imposing an iron discipline on the intellectuals so that they do not exceed certain limits of differentiation and so render the split catastrophic and irreparable.
[...]
The position of the philosophy of praxis is the antithesis of this Catholic one. The philosophy of praxis does not tend to leave the ‘simple’ in their primitive philosophy of common sense, but rather to lead them to a higher conception of life. If it affirms the need for contact between intellectuals and simple it is not in order to restrict scientific activity and preserve unity at the low level of the masses, but precisely in order to construct an intellectual-moral bloc which can make politically possible the intellectual progress of the mass and not only of small intellectual groups.
It seems to me that an element of error in assessing the value of ideologies is due to the fact (by no means casual) that the name ideology is given both to the necessary superstructure of a particular structure and to the arbitrary elucubrations of particular individuals. The bad sense of the word has become widespread, with the effect that the theoretical analysis of the concept of ideology has been modified and denatured. The process leading up to this error can be easily reconstructed:
1. ideology is identified as distinct from the structure, and it is asserted that it is not ideology that changes the structures but vice versa;
2. it is asserted that a given political solution is ‘ideological’, i.e. that it is insufficient for changing the structure, although it thinks that it can do so; it is asserted that it is useless, stupid, etc.;
3. one then passes to the assertion that every ideology is ‘pure’ appearance, useless, stupid, etc.
One must therefore distinguish between historically organic ideologies, those, that is, which are necessary to a given structure, and ideologies that are arbitrary, rationalistic, ‘willed’. To the extent that ideologies are historically necessary they have a validity which is ‘psychological'; they ‘organize’ human masses, they form the terrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their position, struggle, etc. To the extent that they are ‘arbitrary’ they only create individual ‘movements’, polemics and so on (though even these are not completely useless, since they function like an error which by contrasting with truth, demonstrates it) (SPN, 376-7 (Q7§19), 1930-32)
This is one of the very few places (if not the only place) where Gramsci actually specifies that "ideologies" (but I take this discussion to apply equally to all he wrote about hegemony) "that are necessary" "have a validity which is 'psychological'." Do note the the quote marks, as if G. was attempting to distance himself from aspects of the word. But obviously not all as he then talk about "consciousness." Of course he is fighting against thinking of "ideology" as "the elucubrations of individuals" and in favor of a more encompassing view in which ideologies form social fields. Still in order to make the argument he calls upon "psychology" as a kind of "deus ex machina" with fateful implications for those who read his work for its sensitivity to matters of culture (socially constituted and externally factual constraining arbitrariness).