Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to investigate Antonio Gramsci’s interest in the so-called “Jewish question”, and more specifically to explore whether the founder of what would become the biggest Communist Party in the West, had reflected on the topic beyond the epistolary comments he exchanged with Tatiana Schucht and Pietro Sraffa.
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Notes
- 1.
See also §11 of Notebook 16 <text c>: «The Church is an even more implacable Shylock than Shakespeare’s. It will demand its pound of flesh even if its victim will bleed to death, and with tenacity, always adapting its ways, it will reach its final purpose. To use Disraeli’s expression, Christians are but the smartest of the Jews who have understood how to conquer the world. The Church cannot be reduced to its “normal” strength by refuting philosophically its theoretical postulates, or with Platonic affirmations of state (not militant) independence. This can only happen through everyday practical action, and with the celebration of all human creative forces from all social strata» (Gramsci 1975: 1872). About the Jews as speculators, see also the letter to Tatiana dated 4 November 1930, in which, despite declaring to not have read «Ford’s book about the Jews» (the International Jew, a series of articles by Ford first published in 1920 on the «Deaborn Independent», and published in Milan in 1928) but stating to be aware of his perspective from other readings, Gramsci reduced Ford’s antisemitism to a fight with finance: «the struggle against the Jews», he wrote, «is the sharpest aspect of his struggle against the plutocracy that has repeatedly to take over his industrial system» (Gramsci 1994, vol. I: 358).
- 2.
«Er [Feuerbach ] betrachtet daher im Wesen des Christenthums nur das theoretische Verhalten als das echt menschliche, während die Praxis nur in ihrer schmutzig jüdischen Erscheinungsform gefaßt und fixiert wird» (Marx 1845a: 19); «In Das Wesen des Christenthums, he [Feuerbach ] therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance» (Marx 1845b: 3).
- 3.
«Aber der Utilismus ist die wesentliche Anschauung des Judentums. Der Glaube an eine besondere göttliche Vorsehung ist charakteristicher Glaube des Judentums, der Glaube an die Vorsehung der Glaube an Wunder; der Glaube an Wunder aber ist es, wo die Natur nur als ein Objekt der Willkür, des Egoismus, der eben die Natur nur zu willkürlichen Zwecken gebraucht, angeschaut wird […]. Und alle diese Wirdernatürlichkeiten geschehen zum Besten Israels, lediglich auf Befehl Jehovas, der sich um nichts als Israel kümmert, nicht ist als die personifizierte Selbstsucht des israelitischen Volks, mit Ausschluß aller andern Völker, die absolute Intoleranz – das Geheimnis des Monotheismus» (Feuerbach 1973: 208).
- 4.
Even if Gramsci remarked in his letters to Iulca that he was not antisemitic, it is important to notice, like Enzo Traverso does, that «This insouciant language certainly shows how widespread and banal antisemitic stereotypes were in Italy at the beginning of the 1930s—under a still ‘philo-Jewish’ fascism» (Traverso 2018: 138).
- 5.
Raffaele Ottolenghi (1860–1917), was a Jewish-born Italian diplomat, philanthropist and pacifist. He was a member of Italian socialist party and he collaborated with Avanti! and Critica Sociale. He committed suicide in 1917.
- 6.
«Grandsons of Father Bresciani» is a phrasing that Gramsci use to denote those writers, amongst which Panzini, who took inspiration from Jesuit Antonio Bresciani (1798–1862), who had authored the well-known antisemitic novel, The Jew from Verona, famous for its Church-related, anti-patriotic, and anti-Risorgimento rhetoric.
- 7.
Croce’s argument also returns to typical features of his reflection on World War II and tends to absolve the Italian people, contributing to the myth of the “good Italian”. According to Croce, all the responsibilities for the war and for Jew’s persecution were to be ascribed exclusively to the Regime, without any co-responsibility of the Italian population.
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Pinazzi, A. (2021). Antonio Gramsci and the Jewish Question. In: Tarquini, A. (eds) The European Left and the Jewish Question, 1848-1992. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56662-3_9
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