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Towards the War of Position: Gramsci in Continuity and Rupture with Marxism-Leninism by Comrade Amil

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Towards the War of Position: Gramsci in Continuity and Rupture with Marxism-Leninism by Comrade Amil Towards the War of Position: Gramsci in Continuity and Rupture with Marxism-Leninism By Comrade Amil Introduction: It’s Time to Jailbreak to Italy from their safe haven in the Soviet The revolutionary crisis that spanned the Gramsci’s Ideas Union after the Second Inter-imperialist course of the immediate postwar years War (WWII), the revolutionary content of revealed serious limitations in how the Among the leading figures of the interna- his ideas would be contained by the revi- ‘October Road’ to revolution that the tional communist movement (ICM) in the sionism of the ‘Eurocommunists’, of which Bolsheviks inspired came to be understood twentieth century – Lenin, Stalin, Ho Chi the PCI’s Togliatti was at the forefront. and applied throughout the Communist Minh… – Antonio Gramsci, leader of the Liberal academics would later further International. The insurrections that were Partito Comunista d’Italia / Italian Com- strip Gramsci’s thought of its clearly com- inspired by the Russian revolution in the munist Party (PCI), features less promi- munist objectives. immediate postwar years all failed – from nently than many others – this in spite of Europe to North America to the failed 1927 his canonical status in the liberal acad- For these reasons, it can be said that insurrections in China. The Revolutionary emy. Granted, he didn’t lead a successful Gramsci has had, at best, very little im- Communist Party of Canada (RCP Canada) revolution. But no communist party in pact on communist strategy in the twen- and the new Communist Party of Italy the imperialist countries did. Also, that tieth century. But Gramsci had much (nPCI) today uphold the idea (with some the bulk of Gramsci’s theorizing – and to say on the challenges of accumulat- conceptual differences between them) that certainly most of his original and most ing revolutionary forces in imperialist this was the result of inappropriate strategy: penetrating texts – were written in posi- countries that should not be overlooked, the insurrectionary strategy underesti- tion of captivity in Italy’s fascist prisons and I would argue, have much import for mates the resilience of the state and that contained Gramsci’s reflections on com- the task of reconceptualizing communist something akin to a protracted people’s munist strategy. Gramsci’s thought would strategy today. It’s time to jailbreak some war strategy is required. I would like to ap- remain quite inaccessible to ICM and of these ideas out of the confines of the proach this problem (in a way that builds even the PCI until well after his death. But liberal academy. upon the critique of insurrectionism carried even when his prison notebooks return out by RCP Canada and nPCI) by digging a Volume 4, 2013 Uprising 19 little deeper into how the State and bour- State and Revolution, but also builds appropriations, but for reconceptualizing geois power were conceived at this time upon elements of and far surpasses it. In the place of these ideas within our project within revolutionary Marxism, particularly this way, Gramsci’s ideas are in continuity of reconceptualizing communist strategy by comparing Lenin’s State and Revolu- and rupture with elements of Leninism. today. tion with Gramsci’s prison notebooks. Gramsci’s inclusion of bourgeois civil society within his theorization of the The Strengths and Limitations The conception of the state contained bourgeois state elaborates a theory of of Lenin’s State and Revolution within Lenin’s 1917 publication State and class power and domination that is more Revolution came to be widely accepted in comprehensive than Lenin’s. And this As the title of Lenin’s State and Revolution the international communist movement conception of class power points us in (S&R) suggests,the question of the State and in turn informed the insurrection- the direction of a communist strategy and the question of revolution are inter- ary approach to revolution and a very that somewhat more protracted (not to twined; and the first should be answered specific expression of the vanguard Party. be confused with reformist) in its concep- before the second. How one conceptual- Whether we attribute the success of the tualization of accumulating proletarian izes the State comes to bear upon how Russian revolution to the contingencies revolutionary forces. one conceptualizes the revolution that is of a particular historical conjuncture or required to overthrow it. whether reactionary regimes were more Gramsci’s moment, though separated prepared for proletarian revolution in the from us by eighty years and in a very S&R is written in the throes of the first wake of the October 1917 revolution – different context from our own, in certain inter-imperialist war and published on the likely both factors apply – the ‘October ways is like our own. Gramsci’s prison eve of the Russian revolution in August Road’ led only to bloody defeats wherever notebooks commence a project of com- 1917. S&R was intended to be a decisive else it was attempted. And out of the munist reconceptualization after the polemical intervention against all the revi- depths of these defeats, Antonio Gramsci wave of failed insurrectionary attempts sionist forces of the Second International was at the forefront of articulating a more in the international communist move- and their “superstitions concerning the comprehensive strategy for the advanc- ment that has yet to be adequately taken ‘State’” (Lenin, State and Revolution, p.5), ing the proletarian revolution in countries up by the ICM. more than any others the Mensheviks and where capitalist social relations and the Socialist Revolutionaries who were sup- hegemony of the bourgeoisie was more Upon a critical re-examination of Lenin’s porting the bourgeois Kerensky govern- advanced. conception of the state and revolution, ment after the February revolution. we can establish the points of continuity Gramsci’s contributions to communist and rupture of Gramsci vis-a-vis Lenin. The approach of Lenin’s S&R is to reclaim theory are many, but among the most It is the argument of this essay that ap- the ideas of Marx and Engels, or “those important is his substantial elaboration prehending these points of continuity aspects of their teachings which have to the conceptualization of the bourgeois and rupture with Leninism are not only been forgotten or opportunistically State, one that falls within Marxist-Le- fundamental to rescuing Gramsci’s ideas distorted” (p.6) by “resuscitat[ing] the real ninist orthodoxy as articulated in Lenin’s from the clutches of liberal academic teachings of Marx on the state” (p.7). In es- sence, Lenin is making a series of affirma- In March 1927, the General Labor Union in Shanghai, under direction of the Chinese Communist Party, launched a general strike and an armed insurrection of some 600,000 workers (image to left) against the warlords and in support of the approaching Revolutionary Nationalist Army led by the Kuomintang, which the communists were members of. While praising the unions publicly, Chiang Kai-shek proceeded to secretly raise a paramilitary force with support from the bourgeoisie and the criminal underworld to drown the communist forces in their own blood. On April 12, these reactionary paramilitary elements launched a series of attacks against the city’s large unions against the now disarmed work- ers (image to right). Union members were slaughtered, arrested, and disarmed. When townspeople, workers, and students staged a protest rally the next day, they were fired on by Kuomintang troops, with executions continuing for weeks. The General Labor Union organizations were declared illegal, and all strike activity in the city ceased. At this time, the CCP operated with a strategy of urban-based insurrection based on the proletariat. This event encouraged the shift to the protracted people’s war in the countryside with the peasantry becoming the main force of the revolution. 20 Uprising Volume 4, 2013 tions of revolutionary Marxism in light transition from capitalism to Commu- Those aspects of bourgeois power of the Second International’s usurpation, nism, up to the period of overthrow- constituted in the realm of civil society degeneration, and revisionism of some of ing and completely abolishing the were already well-developed and quite the basic tenets put forward by Marx and bourgeoisie… the state during this formidable in the capitalist-imperialist Engels. Among these affirmations include period inevitably must be a state that countries to the West in Lenin’s time, and the points that: is democratic in a new way (for the certainly underwent further development proletariat and the poor in general) between the inter-imperialist wars with • “The state is the product and the and dictatorial in a new way (against the vast expansion of the productive base manifestation of the irreconcilability the bourgeoisie) (30-1). of capitalism. Gramsci acknowledged the of class antagonisms,” and, therefore, differences between the Russian state “the existence of the state proves In affirming these essential theses of and the western European states at the that the state class antagonisms are Marxism on the question of the state, moment of the Russian revolution when irreconcilable” (p.8); Lenin is affirming an analysis of the state he reflected more than a decade later in that while evidently applicable to Russia his prison notebooks that • The state is an instrument for the – considering the success of the Russian exploitation of In the East the oppressed the State was classes; and everything, finally, civil society was primordial and • The state is gelatinous; in made up of the West, there “special bodies was a proper re- of armed men lation between who have at State and civil their disposal society, and prisons, etc.” when the state (p.10), which tottered, a is contrasted sturdy structure with the “self- of civil society acting armed was immediate- organization of ly revealed.
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