Abstract
Gramsci’s political biography between 1917 and 1926 was marked by the dramatic failure of revolutionary attempts in the West and the beginning of a phase of reflux that facilitated the radical reactionary rise. The main question that Gramsci asks himself in the Notebooks is why, despite the deep economic crisis and the hegemony of the ruling class, in an objectively revolutionary context, was it not possible to repeat, in Italy and Europe, the victorious experience of the Russian Bolsheviks?
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Notes
- 1.
Gianni Fresu, “Antonio Gramsci, fascismo e classi dirigenti nella Storia d’Italia”, NAE: Trimestrale di Cultura, Cagliari, Cuec, n. 21, ano 6, 2008, 29–35.
- 2.
Enrico Corradini (1865–1931) was the founder of the Italian Nationalist Association in 1910, which merged into Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (PNF) in 1923.
- 3.
Antonio Gramsci, Scritti giovanili 1914–1918 (Turin, Einaudi, 1975), 41.
- 4.
Ibid., 49.
- 5.
Filippo Carli (1876–1939), a sociology and economic history scholar, was one of the leading theorists of corporatism and nationalism before and after fascism.
- 6.
Antonio Gramsci, Scritti giovanili 1914–1918, cit., 51.
- 7.
Ibid., 147.
- 8.
Antonio Gramsci, “L’unità nazionale”, L’Ordine Nuovo, 4 out. 1919, in L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920 (Turin, Einaudi, 1972), 277.
- 9.
Ibid., 276.
- 10.
Antonio Gramsci, “Gli avvenimenti del 2–3 dicembre”, L’Ordine Nuovo, 6–13 dez. 1919, in L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920, cit., 62.
- 11.
Luigi Salvatorelli e Giovanni Mira, Storia d’Italia nel periodo fascista (Turin, Einaudi, 1964).
- 12.
Antonio Gramsci, L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920, cit., 410.
- 13.
Gianni Fresu, Nas trincheiras do Ocidente: lições sobre fascismo e antifascismo (Ponta Grossa, Editora UEPG, 2017), 115 and 136.
- 14.
Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere (Turin, Einaudi, 1977), 45.
- 15.
Ibid., 46.
- 16.
In the article “Italy and Spain” of March 11, 1921, he wrote: “What is fascism, observed on an international scale? It is the attempt to solve the problems of production and exchange by means of machine guns and revolvers. The productive forces were ruined by the imperialist war. […] a unity and simultaneity of national crises were created and they make the general crisis extremely bitter and permanent. But there is a stratum of the population in all countries—the petty and middle bourgeoisie—that believes that it can solve these problems with machine guns and fire, and this stratum feeds fascism by providing effectives to fascism” (Antonio Gramsci, L’Ordine Nuovo 1919–1920, cit., 101).
- 17.
Idem, Socialismo e fascismo (Turin, Einaudi, 1978), 9.
- 18.
Ibid., 10.
- 19.
Ibid., 150.
- 20.
Ibid.
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Fresu, G. (2023). Revolutionary Reflux and Reactionary Offensive. In: Antonio Gramsci. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15610-6_8
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