The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci

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Notes

1 The position is thus continuous with Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses, a theory, Anderson argues, which is incapable of distinguishing bourgeois democracy, wherein civil societal organizations like trade unions are relatively autonomous, from fascism, where they are not (79).

2 Gramsci’s innovation was thus not to advance a new substantive position, but rather to recover the strategy and put it forward (in his private notebooks) during the very different Third Period (1928-1933). Gramsci had himself been an ultra-leftist prior to the disastrous advent of Fascism (116-18). Thus, his espousal of the united front/war of position during the Third Period represented not only an important disagreement with the Comintern but also marked an important evolution of his own views.