This article analyses the intellectual and political trajectory of the Pasado y Presente group in Argentina, focusing on its main representative, José María Aricó (1931–91). Although usually described as ‘the Argentine Gramscians’, the ‘Gramscianism’ of the Pasado y Presente group was actually little more than a theoretical cover for its erratic political behaviour, which led them from Stalinism to Guevarism, from Guevarism to Maoism, from Maoism to Montoneros’s branch of Peronism, and from Peronism to Alfonsín’s Radicalism. Politically, their weakest point (...) was that they distanced themselves from Stalinism empirically, because of the popularity of foquism, without undertaking a thorough critique of Stalinism. This made them vulnerable to the ubsequent crisis of Stalinism, which they identified with a ‘crisis of Marxism’ sans phrase. What made them historically significant was that they articulated the radicalisation of a whole social layer in Latin America under the impact of the Cuban Revolution, as well as its subsequent deradicalisation and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary democracy. The article closes with an analysis of Aricó’s intellectual legacy, particularly his well-known book Marx y América Latina (1980). (shrink)

Summary This article examines the complex nature of post-war Italian political thought, stressing the importance of Italy's unusual institutional and historical political arrangements, but also the vibrancy of its political ideologies in this period. In the past it has often been argued that the dysfunctional nature of post-war Italian democracy with its rapidly changing governments, and widespread corruption—which nonetheless coexisted with the one party, the Christian Democrats, being constantly in power—led to the atrophying of political theory in general, and political (...) ideologies in particular. But this picture is strongly disputed here—on the contrary it is argued that Christian Democratic, Left and liberal political ideologies were all complex and interesting. Thus if Christian democracy should ultimately be seen as an ‘ideology of transition’ which existed to help Catholicism adapt to the parameters of modern mass democracy, and which lacked a thinker of the calibre of Jacques Maritain, it nevertheless contained within it important debates on the role of the state, between such interesting thinkers as Giuseppe Dossetti and Alcide De Gasperi. And if anything, political thinking on the Left in the post-war period was even more complex, with visceral debates within the (large) Communist Party (PCI) over whether to work within the law—between such thinkers as Palmiro Togliatti and the Il Manifesto group. Equally on the more revolutionary Left, there were important debates about how quickly capitalism could be made to collapse through revolutionary action between thinkers such as Raniero Panzieri and his more radical disciples, Mario Tronti and Antonio Negri, while later, due to the general failure of these revolutionary efforts, post-modern thinkers such as Gianni Vattimo sought to abandon grand metaphysical narratives, whilst retaining a commitment to Left of centre political commitments. Finally, although not part of a widespread mass movement, the liberal thought of Norberto Bobbio was also highly interesting and sophisticated—borrowing from Hobbes and Kelsen, he sought to advocate a modest form of liberal democracy which allowed for civilised forms of conflict, and the protection of minorities, and which rejected the contention of Marxists that civil rights could not be distinguished from economic ones. Overall, if normative aspirations in post-war Italian politics were often frustrated in practice, this was certainly not due to any lack of theoretical vibrancy. (shrink)

Born in 1891 in Sardinia, Gramsci studied in Turin and in 1919 founded, together with Palmiro Togliatti, the Ordine Nuovo, a journal which tried to give expression to the aims of the council movement, which developed during those years in the industrial cities of northern Italy. In 1921 he was a founding member of the Italian Communist Party and, after the fall of the ultra‐leftist leadership headed by Bordiga, became in 1924 the Party's general secretary. Imprisoned by the (...) Fascist regime in 1926, he spent the rest of his life in jail. He was freed in 1937, a few days before his death. (shrink)

This slim volume by an Austrian Marxist attempts two major types of correction to contemporary Marxism. One is an historical correction which seeks to restore what was originally present in the basic vision of Marx and Engels. The other is an innovative correction which seeks to revise the historical doctrine in the face of new conditions which contradict its original conclusions or premisses. The historical correction is the restoration of the human element as the crucial factor in the law of (...) motion of society. Without the human element, there are only tendencies in the movement of history. The human element adds direction--converts a tendency into a specific direction. Previous social movements were spontaneous, but the leap from capitalism to socialism absolutely requires the conscious activity of man. The revisionist correction is two-pronged, but its necessity arises from the same consideration of how to effect the move from capitalism to socialism. The capitalist model has not acted in accordance with Marx's conception of the absolute or relative impoverishment of the working class. Social distribution of surplus value in the industrial powers of the western world has been sufficient to develop a materially satisfied working class. The appeal to the working class, therefore, has to change to a new stress on culture, democracy and, above all, morality. At the same time, the economic arena must not be abandoned. The concept of structural reform, advanced by the late Palmiro Togliatti, should be supported. This means that the working class should join in capitalist planning to avoid depression; that it should insist on a larger role in the operation of the plants and in their relations to the financial and political institutions; and that it should struggle for nationalizing measures which take the decisive means of production out of the hands of the big capitalists. Structural reform could hardly be expected to bring on revolution, but it does move the working class forward toward the decisive content of the socialist revolution, which for Marek is the socialization of the means of production. It thereby tends to heighten the class consciousness which Marek considers vital. This book represents an effort to restore coherence to Marxism by confrontation with historical reality. The failure of the effort does not render it futile, especially as a more extensive attempt by the author is evidently already in preparation. Students of Marxism who do not accept the theoretical exposition of the present volume will still find it useful as a reference for rarely quoted statements by leading Marxists, beginning with Marx himself.--H. B. (shrink)

Ugo Spirito's _Memoirs of the Twentieth Century_ is the intellectual autobiography of one of the most original and anticonformist contemporary Italian philosophers. In it, Spirito makes an evaluation of his long career (spanning from the decade of the 20's to that of the 70's of the twentieth century) as a thinker who was never satisfied with any theoretical or philosophical system, while constantly aiming at finding a definitive truth: the “incontrovertible” or absolute. The various stages of his search deal with (...) different philosophical and scientific systems - from positivism to actual idealism, from problematicism to omnicentrism, from scientism to neoproblematicism - revealing at the same time an inherent antinomic procedure that does not permit him to take any truth for granted. At the end of his life, Spirito realized that he could only be sure of his present state of “unawareness,” thus challenging the validity of his lifelong investigative activity. “Man cannot know himself,” Spirito wrote. Confronted with the manifestations of life and universe, he could not help but feel a sense of “surprise and astonishment.” Throughout his life, he was only a spectator of his destiny, not the conscious creator of it, as he believed in the early stage of his career. Consequently, he reached a position of negating any value system, bordering on skepticism and nihilism. Within this context, he offered a post-modern interpretation of life. This interpretation was also Spirito's conclusion, and as such, implied a rethinking about other faiths, both political and ideological, that for more than fifty years would develop parallel to philosophical faith. Consequently, he revisited some of the most important philosophical and political personalities who interpreted or materialized those faiths, from Benedetto Croce to Gentile, from Benito Mussolini to Giovanni Bottai, from Togliatti to Pope Paul VI. Spirito was not a thinker who remained secluded within the ivory tower of pure investigation, but in an effort to modify society according to principle of the identification of philosophy with life, he tried to act upon it by following thoughts with action. _Memoirs of the Twentieth Century_ is divided in two parts: one purely autobiographical and theoretical, and the other more historical, where Spirito narrates his relationship with the above-mentioned personalities, as a way of testing the validity of his beliefs. Indeed, one can perceive his moment of adherence to each of the different approaches expounded, only to subsequently detach himself from them. For the English-speaking reader, the second part will appear more interesting and poignant, since Spirito's involvement with history foretells the intellectual fate of a nation. _Memoirs of the Twentieth Century_ is a reflection on life, in which personal history serves as a vehicle for judgment upon an entire century. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza uno de los episodios más importantes de la batalla ideológica y cultural entre el PSI de Craxi y el PCI de Berlinguer de los años 1976-1978: la crítica socialista del concepto de “Hegemonía” de Antonio Gramsci. Una crítica que se produce en la revista Mondoperaio en 1977 y coincide con el 40 aniversario de la muerte de Gramsci. Como se tratará de mostrar, esta crítica del pensamiento gramsciano está vinculado a los procesos de transformación ideológica del socialismo (...) y el comunismo del sur de Europa a finales de los años setenta. En este sentido, la crítica del concepto de “Hegemonía” de Gramsci que realizarán los intelectuales del PSI, denunciando su matriz leninista, no puede disociarse del debate sobre la legitimidad de los partidos comunistas para gobernar en las democracias occidentales en la Guerra fría. (shrink)