The Bolshevik Gramsci
One of the biggest lies spread by opportunists and bourgeois intellectuals about the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci is about a supposed distance, or even contrast, between his positions and those held by Lenin and Stalin.
This legend has remote and well-defined origins. It began with the fascist newspaper "The Messenger ," which, on May 12, 1937, when announcing Gramsci's death, spoke in a manner as ignorant as it was cowardly of "a loyalty to Trotsky . "
Subsequently, in the 1960s and 1970s, Gramsci's "Trotskyism" was the daily bread of fallacious revisionists, who, in this way, constructed the unworthy and unjust myth of separation, including aversion, between the "good" Gramsci and the "bad" Stalin.
But an examination of Gramsci's writings shows exactly the opposite, that is, it reveals an agreement with Bolshevik positions and a harsh critique of Trotskyist positions and those of other opponents of Stalin. Let us, therefore, leave the floor to Gramsci.
During his time as a leader of the Italian Communist Party
In 1924, Gramsci, in his speech at the Como Conference*, established, for the first time, a parallel between Bordiga and Trotsky (there were also differences between them), criticizing both:
“Trotsky’s attitude, at first, can be compared to that of Comrade Bordiga. Trotsky, even while participating 'in a disciplined manner' in the Party’s work, with his attitude of passive opposition – similar to Bordiga’s – created such a great sense of unease throughout the Party that this situation could not go unnoticed. […] This demonstrates that opposition – even if maintained within the limits of formal discipline – on the part of prominent figures in the workers’ movement, can not only impede the development of the revolutionary situation, but can also endanger the very gains of the Revolution.”
The following year, Gramsci, carrying forward the struggle for the Bolshevization of the Party, stated that Trotsky's positions on "American supercapitalism" were dangerous and should be rejected, since, "by postponing the Revolution indefinitely, they would modify the entire tactics of the Communist International [...] and would modify the tactics of the Russian State, because if the European Revolution were postponed for an entire historical phase, that is, if the Russian working class could not, for a long time, count on the support of the proletariat of other countries, it is evident that the Russian Revolution would need to be modified." (Gramsci, Report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Italy, February 6, 1925)
Gramsci was always aware of the importance of the struggle against the deviations of Leninism and factionalism. Therefore, in the same report, he declared : “The resolution must also state how Trotsky’s conceptions and, above all, his attitude, are a danger, since the lack of unity in the Party, in a country where there is only one Party, breaks the State. This produces a counter-revolutionary movement […]. From the Trotsky question, finally, we must draw lessons for our Party. Trotsky, before his last measures, found himself in a position similar to that in which Bordiga currently finds himself in our Party: a purely figurative role in the Central Committee. His position was a tendency towards factionalism, just as Bordiga’s attitude maintains an objective factional situation in our Party. […] Bordiga’s attitude, like Trotsky’s, has disastrous repercussions.” (Ibid.)
Also in 1925, on the occasion of the 5th Plenary Session of the enlarged Executive Committee of the Third International, the Italian delegation, led by Gramsci, spoke without reservation in favor of Stalin's positions criticizing Trotsky.
For Gramsci, the decision to build socialism in the USSR, under conditions of capitalist encirclement, perfectly aligned with the needs of a period characterized by a relative stabilization of capitalism and a slowdown in the revolutionary wave.
Hence the uncompromising criticism of Trotsky and his strategy of "permanent revolution," which Gramsci considered misguided, simplistic, and inadequate, and his firm commitment to the strategy and politics of the Bolshevik leadership.
Gramsci was always concerned with the cohesion of the Russian Party, which the proletariat needed at both the national and international levels.
During those years, when the differences between the Party, led by Stalin, and the bloc of Zinoviev and Trotsky turned into programmatic differences, Gramsci repeatedly warned about the risks of a rupture, through which the international bourgeoisie could take advantage to overthrow proletarian power in Russia.
Regarding the struggle undertaken by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) against the opposition bloc of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, Gramsci wrote: “One issue is of paramount importance in the decisions taken collectively by the Central Committee and the Control Commission of the Communist Party of the USSR: the defense of the Party's organizational unity. It is obvious that, on this ground, no concessions to compromises of any kind are possible, regardless of who is promoting the work of disintegrating the Party, whatever their past merits and scope, whatever position they hold as leaders of the communist organization […]. Therefore, we believe that the entire International must firmly strengthen its ties around the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR to approve its energy, rigor, and decisiveness in striking relentlessly against whoever attempts to undermine the unity of the Party.” (Measures of the Central Committee of the CPSU in the defense of Party unity and against factional work, in “l'Unità”, July 27, 1926)
The same concern for the organizational and ideological unity of the Soviet Party, and its implications at the national and international level (in particular the struggle it was carrying out in Italy for the development of the Party), inspired the famous "Letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party," written in October 1926 (published in: Gramsci, Political Writings , 1973).
In this letter, Gramsci intervened, on behalf of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Italy, in the fierce political battle that was unfolding in the USSR between the Bolshevik leadership and the opposition of Trotsky and Zinoviev, declaring " fundamentally correct the political line of the majority of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR ," led by Stalin.
Although Gramsci was only partially informed about the situation in Russia, his alignment with the positions of the Leninist majority was vigorous and unequivocal. His accusation against the opposition bloc was very harsh and motivated by one main reason, which he clearly stated:
“We reiterate that it strikes us that the position of the opposition [Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Trotsky] affects the entire political line of the Central Committee, the very heart of Leninist doctrine and the political activity of our Union Party. What is being debated is the principle and practice of the hegemony of the proletariat; the fundamental alliance between workers and peasants is being questioned and endangered, that is to say, the pillars of the Workers' State and the Revolution.”
As a supporter of Leninist principles, Gramsci, in the same letter, criticized "the root of the errors of the opposition bloc and the origin of the latent dangers contained in its activity ," identifying it in "the tradition of social democracy and trade unionism, a tradition that has prevented, until now, the Western proletariat from organizing itself into a ruling class . "
This is a stance that Gramsci further strengthened in his "Letter to Togliatti ," dated October 26, 1926, in which, reflecting on the slow pace of the Bolshevization process within Western parties, he wrote:
"The Russian debate and the ideology of the opposition play a role in this backwardness that is all the more important because the opposition in Russia represents all the old prejudices of class corporatism and trade unionism, which weigh on the tradition of the Western proletariat and hinder its ideological and political development."
And he concludes by stating: “Our entire letter was a questioning of the opposition, but its wording was not demagogic and, precisely for that reason, it was more effective and more serious.”
Therefore, any interpretation of these letters aimed at portraying Gramsci as a "Trotskyist" or wavering figure remains completely unfounded. At the same time, it becomes very clear which side Gramsci was on in the struggle within the Russian Party: the side of the Bolshevik majority of Party members.
Article published in issue #293 of the newspaper A Verdade. Originally published in the Italian magazine Teoria & Prassi , of the Platform for a Communist Party of the Italian Proletariat.