As someone who wasn't born into political radicalism (quite the opposite), relics of attitudes and ideas long abandoned sometimes clutter up the synapses. And one of these is a notion I used to hold about politicians. At the risk of making myself red faced, until quite late in the day I believed that climbing the greasy poll, to be a councillor, a Member of Parliament, and a minister you had to have something about you. Some level of intellect, a dash of charisma, the capacity to connect with people and, most helpful of all, nous. And a part of me is disappointed every time an elected representative falls short of these not-so-lofty expectations.
The gentleman who's had my head a-shaking at the start of this week is Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the referendum he lost on bringing "stability" to government. As readers are aware, Italy's had almost as many different governments as there have been years since the Second World War. Renzi's ruling Democratic Party is the country's primary centre left formation, recently formed from a mishmash of the safely de-communised, social democratised former communist party, the Christian left, the greens and liberals, and a few others. These currents retain their distinct identities for the most part, with the several times diluted ex-PCI as the party's organisational backbone. Renzi for his part is described as half-way technocrat, half-way populist. He hails from a Christian democratic background and made a name for himself butting his head against the PD's leadership. He was also keen to portray himself as a moderniser in much the same vein as a certain someone, and for want of a better phrase has occupied the ground of liberal populism. Frequent targets of his rhetoric were the bankers and, in equal measure, the "privileges" secured by the trade unions (among which was protection from unjustified dismissals). How boringly petit bourgeois and, from the viewpoint of maintaining a healthy centre left, dumb.
After the 2008 crash, Italy's long-term weakness was exposed. GDP growth is anemic, and the country remains a long way off recovery. And you thought Britain's GDP recovery was tardy. Unemployment is falling again, but is dangerously high, contributing its part to the erosion of the established parties and providing the relevant combustibles to our friends in the Liga Nord and Five Star Movement.
As part of a package of measures he believed would pull Italy out of the doldrums, Renzi sought to inject stability into the notoriously fractious political system. Understandably thanks to 20 years under the fascist cosh and the unhappy experience of the Nazi occupation, the post-war constitution fashioned in 1947 balanced the powers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Presently a vote of no confidence in the upper house can dismiss a government, and herein lies the Italian party system's instability. With the lack of so-called strong government, opponents of the Senate's constitutional rights argue that parties have a very hard time thinking and acting in the long-term, as well as taking on challenging and controversial political projects. Renzi's referendum was about curbing these powers as well as introducing a new electoral system. This would retain PR but give a bonus number of seats to any party crossing the 40% threshold. After much wrangling and horse trading, including a pact with Silvio Berlusconi of all people, the measures cleared both houses but not by the margin deemed necessary by the constitution. Therefore the proposals had to be put to a referendum.
Asking people to vote for a package of reform amounting to less democracy was never going to be an easy sell. Though, constitutionally speaking, Renzi didn't have much of a choice. But then he made the fatal error, and not one you'd expect from a politician proven to have nous enough to thrive in the rough and tumble of Italian politics. He committed a catastrophic mistake that not even Dave, the most politically inept PM of recent times was daft enough to make: by threatening to resign if the vote was lost, Renzi made the referendum all about him.
There is a tendency in politics to simplify things. Policies can be complex and beyond the ken of legislators, let alone a public who cast politics the odd sideways glance outside of election time. Perhaps this was part of Renzi's reasoning. I can't imagine, for instance, that many people were fussed whether the Senate was elected on a region-by-region basis or not. But most people would certainly have had an opinion on the Prime Minister's record, which calls into question Renzi's reasoning. While not polarising or as dismal as the hapless Francois Hollande, yet, those attacks on the centre left's bedrock will have not done him any favours. While the Catholic-rooted Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions backed Renzi, the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) - the main target of the earlier labour market reform package - did not and agitated for a no vote. It might not have attracted the publicity of Beppe Grillo's oh-so funny antics, but this is a union that had pulled a million people out onto the streets of Rome to protest the attacks on workers. They were an important factor, a five million strong factor and one typically overlooked by a politician unable to comprehend the political character of the parties they lead. Compounding the foolishness was allowing the populists to, well, consolidate their populism. Personalising the referendum explicitly framed the proposals as an establishment stitch-up designed to give the elites a smoother ride, and granted the awful anti-politics of Five Star permission to gain extra ground. Renzi's best bet at winning was to turn it into a snoozefest rather than a shitfest, and he completely blew it.
Rightly, Italy said no to the changes. But in so doing, another Prime Minister says ciao - though no one should rule out repeat Berlusconi-style come backs for Renzi. And Grillo's movement has grown in strength and legitimacy. A good outcome with a pretty grizzly consequence, and yet another reminder why the centre left are on the retreat.
The 'Modern Prince' is among Gramsci's most important writings. Because of their significance, his notes on the modern prince (i.e. the political party) will be spread over a number of posts. In this short piece I will be concentrating on Gramsci's appreciation and appropriation of the early Florentine political theorist, Niccol簷 Machiavelli.
Machiavelli's had a bad press these past 500 years. Along with the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf, The Prince is regarded as a notorious tract of political pornography. Why? For dictators, careerists and climbers of the greasy pole, The Prince is *the* handbook for achieving and maintaining political power. Machiavelli is said to be responsible for exposing political calculation in all its naked cynicism and bad faith. For example, this piece is typical of the commentary on Machiavelli. Gramsci however had no truck with this sort of hand wringing and goes some way to rehabilitate him for Marxist political theory.
What did Gramsci want to recover from centuries of hypocritical commentary on The Prince? It was the fact Machiavelli and Gramsci were motivated by analogous political projects. Whereas Gramsci theorised the political strategy appropriate to socialism in an age where capitalism appeared exhausted (what is fascism if it is not an attempt to freeze historical development by state violence and dictatorship?), Machiavelli was concerned with developing an ideal construct/individual that could unite a "shattered people". In other words he was motivated by a political vision of a united and strong Italy that could compete on equal footing with the powerful unitary states of England, France and Spain. In this sense he was an enemy of the feudal land owners and the Pope, whose interests were served by the division of the Italian peninsular into petty states and fiefdoms. From the standpoint of the development of the productive forces, Machiavelli's project, had it been a success, would have set Italy firmly on the path to capitalist modernity centuries before Italian national unification actually occurred.
For Gramsci what made Machiavelli a modern political thinker as opposed to a utopian dreamer like Thomas More and Plato was the rooting of his project in the prevailing social conditions of his day. Gramsci argues Machiavelli knew that a movement for national unity would need to mobilise the mass of the peasantry, and the means for doing so lay in the emerging urban bourgeoisie. He favoured the reformation of militias - which were the preserve and playthings of aristocrats and princelings - into truly popular forces. And of course 'the Prince' of his work's title was to spearhead this movement. Therefore the hard headed advice Machiavelli dispenses is really a programme for building consent, winning power and consolidating a new nation-wide regime in 16th century Italy.
As far as Gramsci was concerned, Machiavelli's work was not written for those already 'in the know': it was addressed to the (would-be) constituents of the historic bloc for whom politics was not part of their complex of socialisation. In so doing he systematised the existing political practice of elites - an enterprise that may have seen the traditional classes in the centuries since reap the benefit, but also and more significantly he introduced the mechanics of political technique to those outside these exalted circles. For many commentators on Machiavelli's work, this is his real, unpardonable sin.
What was Machiavelli's relevance to Gramsci? In a very basic sense their respective political projects were similar, that is to forge a new collective will that could bring together an historic bloc of classes whose interests lay in a revolutionary direction. But that is where the similarities end. For Machiavelli, the movement he desired was personified by the prince: a figure who would act as a lightning rod for the popular social forces and who, in turn, would stamp this bloc with his personality. Under modern conditions the roles and functions of 'great men' are much more tightly circumscribed. For Gramsci it's only at specific conjunctures where politics allows decisive individual action, such as moments of crisis (cometh the hour, cometh the man is a political myth, but it contains a grain of insight by recognising individuals can exercise a crucial influence over the course of events). However the actions of the individual political leader are capable of "restoration and reorganisation", but not the major shift the supersession of capitalism by socialism would require. Therefore individual leadership is an improvisation that serves particular interests at particular times.
Instead of an individual standing at the front of the workers' movement we have (or should aim to have) the modern prince: the revolutionary socialist party. Only a collective actor is capable of the immense task of organising for socialism. As the harbinger of the socialist future and the expression of working class interests, of necessity it must address itself to the question of 'Jacobin' (i.e. insurrectionary) technique, but more importantly it is the chief agent for organising a new collective will from political and (seemingly) non-political moral, intellectual and cultural phenomena and promote the vision of socialism.
This is why Machiavelli was significant for Marxist politics. Just as The Prince stresses building the consent necessary for achieving and stabilising the prince's reign (while recommending violence be deployed when necessary), Gramsci emphasises the patient work of developing the collective will, putting off a violent confrontation with the ruling class to the point where the modern prince can pull the rest of society in its train.
Gramsci's discussion of Machiavelli raises a couple of points about the role of personality in modern politics. At first glance his idea that politics have rendered the individual redundant appears to sit uneasily with his own circumstances. If this was the case, how would he have explained the Mussolini personality cult of the fascist regime that jailed him? Furthermore the bulk of his notes date from the time when dictatorships were mushrooming all over Europe. By the time the second world war broke out, liberal democracies were thin on the ground. However if one applies Gramsci's understanding of the modern prince to the likes of Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR, the qualitative difference between modern and late feudal/early modern politics is plain.
Most dictatorships regardless of their professed ideologies rest on a political party or a party-style organisation. This is no accident of history: parties provide the indispensable foundation for dictatorial rule. In liberal democracies, theoretically speaking parties link (mass) memberships and electorates to competing sets of political elites. The same can be said of Iraq's Ba'ath party, the Korean Workers' Party and Italy's Fascist Party, albeit the linking they performed was with a permanent leadership. While these parties possessed a monopoly on political power and enabled their figurehead considerable license to mould party and society in their image, this was only possible because of the organising capacities of their party. The party did not exist because of their leader: the leader existed because of their party.
Many may moan today about the dominance of personality politics, but this is a far cry from Gramsci's understanding of personality in the political process. Sure, personalities have become more important as the political differences between the main bourgeois parties in the West have narrowed, but it is very rare for an individual to utterly dominate their party. Whatever they like to pretend now, the Tories were never united behind Thatcher. Where personalities persist in having a 'prince-like' effects on their parties, this tends to be toward the fringes where social weight gradually drops away the further the distance travelled from the centre left and centre right (this helps explain why so many far left organisations are grouped around petty gurus, and to greater or lesser extents collectively project the personality of their comrade number one).
Returning to the main point, for Gramsci the modern prince was the revolutionary socialist party. Its task is nothing less than winning over the mass of popular classes (the working class, the peasantry) to a force (the historic bloc) is with the potential to make a revolution. Intertwined with this is the forging of a national-popular collective will that successfully challenges the hegemony of the modern day 'traditional class' (the bourgeoisie), overturns their legitimacy, and justifies the socialist transformation of society.
A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.
The first two set of selections from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks discussed here were concerned with demonstrating how classes exerted their influence through groups of intellectuals. In the fragments grouped together in 'Notes on Italian History' Gramsci is demonstrates how the formation of the Italian state during the 19th century was the story of subordinate classes overcoming the domination of the peninsular by landed aristocracies, petty monarchs, Austria, and agents of the Pope while simultaneously negotiating the consent of the mass of the peasantry and nascent working class. As I'm no scholar of Italian history this contribution to the ongoing series on Gramsci's Selections will confine itself to a few (overly theoretical) points.
Gramsci begins by noting that classes do not enter the stage of history as unified actors: they are the outcome of particular social processes:
The historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State, and their history is essentially the history of States and group of States. But it would be wrong to think that this unity is purely juridical and political ... the fundamental historical unity, concretely, results from the organic relations between State or political society and "civil society" (Gramsci 1971, p.52).
Subaltern (i.e. non-ruling) classes belong to civil society: that segment of society not part of the state (in this definition the economy is part of civil society, whereas 'political society' is not). Nevertheless class histories are bound up with the state under whose auspices they developed. For example, it would be impossible to understand the making of the working class in these islands without reference to its relationship with the UK state.
To analyse non-ruling classes Gramsci recommends six methodological criteria:
1. Classes are 'objectively' formed by economic processes from the classes and strata of previous societies. Initially they have a non-conscious 'sociological' existence and to an extent their previous histories are preserved.
2. In their existence, classes have active/passive affiliations with a number of political actors of other classes. Their dealings with these parties influence them, condition political consequences of those interactions and in turn impact on the formation of the class.
3. As well as being influenced by the social weight of subaltern classes, parties and institutions belonging to the ruling class attempt to win control over them by seeking their consent to be ruled.
4. The above produces an organisational response within subaltern classes. The initial group of organisations are formed to press its own claims.
5. The second set of organisations lay claim to the interests of the subaltern class(es) in the prevailing social order.
6. Finally, organisations emerge that assert the integral, independent identity of a class as a class.
Applied to the formation of the working class in capitalist societies, these criteria can guide the study of the passage it makes from a class in itself to a class for itself (in Gramsci's guarded writing, the latter three criteria refer to the formation of trade unions, social democratic and labour parties, and revolutionary parties). Such an analysis must pay attention to the complex interplay of struggles, institutions, parties, etc.
In the second part of his notes on Italian history; 'The Problem of Political Leadership in the Formation and Development of the Nation and the Modern State in Italy', Gramsci demonstrates how the formation of the Italian bourgeoisie was bound up with the consolidation of their nation state. He begins:
... the supremacy of a social group [class] manifests itself in two ways, as "domination" and as "intellectual and moral leadership". A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to "liquidate", or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise "leadership" before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it firmly in its grasp, it must continue to "lead" as well (ibid, pp 57-8).
By making the distinction between coercion and consent, Gramsci argues ruling and rising classes tend to use force for subjugating subaltern classes to its will while exercising 'intellectual and moral leadership' to speak with and bind potential class allies to it. Such leadership is the condition for winning power, but also it must continued to be exercised if a class is to retain its dominant position: class rule that depends on force of arms alone is a brittle thing doomed to early extinction.
This insight into the nature of class rule remains as keen now as it was almost 80 years ago. But as his discussion of the formation of the Italian state shows, a class must have reached a certain level of development before it can exercise intellectual and moral leadership. Looking at the revolutionary wars of Italian unification (the Risorgimento), Gramsci argued the orientation of the bourgeoisie could be summed up by two broad factions. The first was the Moderate Party, which was a 'pure' bourgeois party. Its anchor in Italy's capitalist class meant it was socially homogenous (its members were owners, managers and entrepreneurs - social locations forged by the capitalist relations of production), influential and, because of its class basis, not consistently revolutionary.
The other dominant faction of Risorgimento Italy was the Action Party. The group favoured Italian unification under a single republic and, to varying degrees, were hostile to the political influence wielded by the Vatican. However, its Jacobin pretensions were a symptom of the shallow roots it had in the Italian bourgeoisie. Without the anchor its leadership was unstable and vacillating, which in turn meant it couldn't seek to shore up its base. As such the moments the Action Party had in the Risorgimento were episodic and fleeting. Exacerbating this was its de facto alliance with the Moderates against Italy's petty states: just as the homogeneity and resources of the Moderates drew in their train intellectuals from other classes, it similarly conditioned the Action Party. If the AP was to play a similar role to its Jacobin counterparts in the French revolution, Gramsci argued it needed to separate from the Moderates and form its own 'national-popular will': it needed to build a base among the peasantry and nascent working class and become something more than the Italian bourgeoisie's arms-length revolutionaries. But it did not produce its own programme and did not go down this route. It meant the Italy what was to eventually emerge was one most in tune with the interests of its bourgeoisie: a constitutional monarchy and limited parliamentary government. But it also meant the exclusion of the working class from the revolutionary process meant it would form its own parties later on: organisations stamped by a high degree of class consciousness and a receptivity to revolutionary socialism.
Gramsci's examination of the Risorgimento period is much richer and detailed than what I've presented here. It recalls Marx's The Class Struggles in France in his grasp of the intermeshing of personalities, parties, factions and classes in the historical process.
Overall Gramsci's approach to analysing class can be most clearly seen today in the so-called Neo-Gramscian approach to study class relations at the level of states. But there are objections that can be levelled at Gramsci from within and without the Marxist tradition. The main criticism regards his analytical criteria: that a class, when formed, is on an irreversible path towards greater consciousness. Now some may take this as a teleological argument which was handed down to Gramsci from Hegel by way of Benedetto Croce, but it seems to me this criteria is the theoretical condensation of the concrete experiences of the workers' movement up to the 1930s. At the time Gramsci compiled his thoughts it was reasonable to argue the working class had risen from an amorphous mass and developed the means to become progressively self-aware and that only the brute force of fascism could set back this development in Western Europe. But from the vantage point of the early 21st century with its weaker labour movements and the massive reversals revolutionary socialism has suffered, of course Gramsci's argument appears teleological: the last 30 years has seen very significant retreats to the point where class consciousness, at least in Britain, is at an historic low.
Gramsci cannot be blamed for not anticipating socialism's current malaise. The legacies of the developments he charted are however still with us: the West European working class does retain trade unions, workers parties, and fragments of once mighty revolutionary parties. The logics of class struggle in a capitalist society means sooner or later these will again shape and condition the consciousness of the working class, but hopefully this time with a victorious conclusion.
A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.
One of the points Gramsci emphasises in his notes on intellectuals (see the previous post) is the links between increasing intellectual specialisation and the division of labour. This is the starting point for Gramsci's brief notes, grouped in the Selections under 'The Organisation of Education and Culture' and 'In Search of the Educational Principle'. The piece begins:
It may be observed in general that in modern civilisation all practical activities have become so complex, and the sciences so interwoven with everyday life, that each practical activity tends to create a new type of school for its own executives and specialists and hence to create a body of specialist intellectuals at a higher level to teach in these schools (Gramsci 1971, p.26).
In the Italy of Gramsci's day, education had prior to Mussolini been divided by class. There was a distinction between vocational schooling, which to all intents and purposes were for proletarian and semi-proletarian layers of Italian society; and the classical schools which offered an undifferentiated and universalist education befitting the class born to rule.
As industrial capitalism took hold in the 19th century the demands of unceasing expansion and technological advancement required a new type of urban intellectual. As we saw previously these professionals tended to be drawn from the big city bourgeoisie and other urban middling layers. Furthermore, rather than benefiting from a traditional classical education these entered and graduated from new (non-manual) technical schools. While the end result of proletarian vocational education was to equip them with basic skills and habits to enter industry, the urban professionals learned how to organise it.
A consequence of this was to erode "disinterested" general education. What elements of it fed into the vocationally-oriented education of the many were put under pressure and gradually expunged. General education became even more a property of elites. This situation of course was not unique to fascist Italy - today it is increasingly difficult to defend academic disciplines not immediately connected with "usefulness" defined almost exclusively in neoliberal terms.
This link between education, class and capital is not the only one. There are other ties that bind too. In the first place, specialisation in the division of labour has a tendency to generate their own 'post-scholastic' institutions. These act as bearers of disciplinary culture, carry news about the latest developments, and are generally the public (expert) face to outsiders. These bodies are important for all forms of governance too. Gramsci reduces deliberative political bodies to two functions (whether they are democratic or not is immaterial). The first is their essential deliberative functions. The second are 'technical-cultural activities', that is complex and sometimes very technical issues they need to make decisions on. Often this is beyond their immediate competence and requires experts to analyse and make recommendations about the issues - which is where the professionals of the post-scholastic institutions come in.
It is difficult to see how this mediating role of expertise can be avoided - even the mass democracy of technologically advanced socialist societies will have to make use of specialist knowledge by 'lay' delegates and representatives. But in capitalism, this mediation is one means by which the system erodes the depth and quality of democratic decision making. Expertise, which is united by its informal disciplinary bodies, is in reality distributed across bureaucracies consisting of universities, think tanks, consultancies, enterprises, etc. Despite the disinterested, "free-floating" conceit of intellectualism, they are bound by a thousand and one bureaucratic links to public and private finance, which has the effect of defining/conditioning the parameters of expert scrutiny and the recommendations they make. Therefore when politicians turn to experts for advice, the latter's mediation helps align the (often unspoken) interests of capital with the outlook of politicians.
As an alternative to education geared around the needs of capital, Gramsci advocates a more comprehensive system drawing on vocational and classical education. He upholds a distinction between primary and secondary education. In the first phase of schooling it should provide information about rights and responsibilities and inculcate a basic world view at odds with folklorist superstition (which was still a live issue in early 20th century Italy, particularly in the countryside). Primary schooling should also be prefaced with pre-schooling. Gramsci notes that the cultural backgrounds of parents do matter - children of city dwellers come to school better habituated to the rhythms of education and school discipline (those with a background in the intellectual strata even more so). Pre-schooling can potentially "level-up" children without this background advantage.
In secondary education there is a renewed emphasis on 'humanism', which Gramsci identifies with the inculcation of the moral discipline and independent intellectual activity necessary for specialisation. Hence secondary education needs to be creative, but with limits placed on intellectual libertarianism. It must expand the individual personality and potential of its pupils appropriate to the demands of a technologically sophisticated society, but do so on the basis of a common morality. For Gramsci, the latter is inculcated in the primary phase - authority, instruction and discipline are important, but this form of comprehensive education will only really work if the result is 'dynamic' conformism.
In the second section of his notes on education, Gramsci returns to the education system prior to the fascist era (Italian education was significantly reformed by the 1923 Gentile Reform). The vocationalist education "enjoyed" by the working class and peasantry taught some of the basics of natural science, and some ideas around rights and responsibilities. For Gramsci the science was designed to prepare children for the 'realm of things', and the latter the state and civil society. Both helped move the child away from notions of natural philosophy and aimed to construct an appreciation of society - of understanding the world and how society has the power to change it. In other words, for Gramsci, the guiding principle of this education was work.
However, whatever model of education one favours Gramsci was fully aware it is not received in a vacuum - hence his argument for pre-schooling. But even then this will not and cannot engineer 'dynamically conformist' pupils. He explains:
The individual consciousness of the overwhelming majority of children reflects social and cultural relations which are different from and antagonistic to those which are represented in the school curricula: thus the "certain" of an advanced culture becomes "true" in the framework of a fossilised and anachronistic culture. There is no unity between school and life, and so there is no automatic unity between instruction and education (p.35)
Therefore hunting for an ideal method of teaching that will produce the right results (an assumption that undergirds most right wing grumbles about what's wrong with schooling in Britain) is as pointless as it is idealist. Bridging the gap between education and instruction can only be done by the teacher's practice, and for it to work they need to be aware of the gulf between their culture and society and that of their charges. The discipline and conformism necessary to imbibe formal education may (and often is) in direct contradiction with the life experiences of the pupils. As any teacher will tell you, there's nothing more difficult than teaching children who don't want to learn.
And this presents a fundamental problem socialist politics has to overcome. For large sections of the working class, there is a general lack of social competencies appropriate to the mores and discipline of formal education. And yet we need to build the capacity for intellectual work within our class to develop Marxist concepts AND the millions of organic intellectuals through which the class can become conscious of its interests.
Whether you can argue Gramsci's analysis of the situation in early 20th century Italy is appropriate to early 21st century Britain is a matter for debate. While it is true formal education is a complete turn off for significant layers of working class people, it is also true the workforce has never been more highly educated as at present. According to the 2001 Census, 30 per cent of the work force have no qualifications while 20 percent are university graduates or have a higher qualification. We may be a long way off Labour's target of 50 per cent, but undoubtedly the numbers have increased since this data was collected. So while the culture clash problem Gramsci identifies has not gone away, it would appear to be less of a problem now.
But of course, there is a related problem. Despite a highly educated work force class consciousness remains at an historic low. People are being educated, but not politically. The difficulty of propagating socialist politics, working class history, and suffusing our class with the confidence to act for itself remains - and is probably even more acute than it was in Gramsci's day.
A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.
Gramsci's approach to intellectuals has been much abused in academia since the first publication of the Selections from the Prison Notebooks in English in 1971. In this piece I will set out as plainly as possible what Gramsci's understanding of intellectuals was and how he ties them in with the class relationships of capitalist societies.
Gramsci begins his short two-part piece, 'The Intellectuals' with a basic distinction concerning the class origins of intellectuals. 'Traditional' intellectuals are rooted in the classes that have hung over from pre-capitalist society, and as such express the interests of landed aristocracies, monarchs the church. Where these relationships have persisted into the modern era feudal classes, according to circumstance, have retained some ability to produce traditional intellectuals. But this is tempered by the ever-growing ensemble of social relations that is subject to capital. Where capitalist and feudal relations of production exist simultaneously there can be found battles that pit one set of intellectuals against another in a struggle for ideological supremacy. However, because of the greater dynamism of capitalism traditional intellectuals are onto a loser and either retreat and/or co-opted by the intellectual apparatus of the rising class - in this case, the bourgeoisie.
The other type of intellectual, the 'organic' intellectual is rooted in capitalism. They are produced by and serve the fundamental classes of that system i.e. the bourgeoisie or the proletariat (it is possible to have organic intellectuals who come from proletarian origins who go on to serve capital, and vice versa). As far as the peasantry are concerned, they do not produce organic intellectuals in the same way the bourgeoisie and working class do. Because of the historical division of peasants into semi-self sufficient households/families and their absorption by immediate concerns and interests, the peasantry has not been able to articulate its interests separately and distinctively from capitalism's fundamental classes. This isn't to say it cannot and has not produced intellectuals, obviously it has. But these have tended to be assimilated to the interests of the other classes. Therefore, Gramsci notes:
Every social group [i.e. class] coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields (Gramsci 1971, p.5).
So we have established the two different types of intellectual and how they are related to social class. But what *is* an intellectual? Gramsci notes "all men are intellectuals ... but not all men in society have the function of intellectuals" (p.9). Therefore an intellectual is defined by the qualities of their activities, but being an intellectual is more than just being involved in "brain work". In capitalist societies, the numbers and types of intellectuals and the ideas they employ are variously elaborated in conjunction with preceding intellectual activity and ongoing 'muscular nervous activity'. In other words, the specialist knowledge developed in conjunction with the ever-growing division of labour allows not only for the examination of the practice(s) of that division, and the suggestion for improvements/new practices. This existence as a specific form of intellectual practice forms the grounds for new ways of seeing the world. As far as Gramsci was concerned, these sorts of intellectuals are specific to capitalism and are therefore of a 'new type' that differs from the received contemplative connotations of the word 'intellectual'. He says:
The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor and organiser, "permanent persuader" and not just a simple orator ... from technique-as-work one proceeds to technique-as-science and to the humanistic conception of history, without which one remain "specialised" and does not become "directive" (specialised and political) (p.10).
Therefore Gramsci demonstrates how intellectuals as organisers of capitalist production set in train a tendency that leads to the formulation of gradually more abstract ideas to the point where they are formally divorced from economic organisation altogether. That is, as intellectuals organise the class relations of production they have the effect of organising class consciousness too. As you might expect, because the bourgeoisie are the ruling class in capitalist societies and its interests are bound up with the creative/destructive chaos of capital accumulation, there is a great concentration of intellectuals of every conceivable specialism clustered around it.
It's at this point Gramsci introduces his famous notions of hegemony and civil society in order to bring out the significance of the functions of intellectuals. It's worth quoting what he has to say:
What we can do ... is to fix two major superstructural "levels": the one that can be called "civil society", that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called "private", and that of "political society" or "the state". These two levels correspond onf the one hand to the function of "hegemony" which the dominant group [class] exercises throughout society, and on the other hand to that of "direct domination" or command exercised through the state and "juridical" government (p.12)/
Hence not all the intellectuals at the bourgeoisie's disposal are of the technical/professional kind: there are intellectuals who to greater or lesser degrees (irrespective of subjective consciousness) organise ruling class hegemony, and therefore serve and defend the activities of this class. Academics, journalists, politicians and even celebrities define the parameters of public discourse, promote certain forms of common sense, provide spectacles (be they political or 'harmless' entertainment), and so on. This has the effect of naturalising existing conditions, co-opting radical grievances and protest, and seeing off alternatives through a mix of rendering them absurd/unthinkable/unworkable and/or crowding them out.
Just as the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie organise the hegemony of capital, hegemony (tautologically) justifies the existence of an education system appropriate to it. As one advances through modern mass education systems the degree of specialisation increases and multiplies into disciplines, sub-disciplines, and niches of sub-disciplines. The pursuit of qualifications legitimises educational hierarchies of prestige, as well as the intrinsic qualities of intellectual activity itself. Generally speaking, the more abstract a field is the more prestige accrues to it (this is certainly the case within Sociology - while careers can be made off the back of ground-breaking empirical studies, it tends to be social theorists who command lasting fame and influence).
Gramsci notes some strata tend to be 'traditional' producers of intellectuals. In the Italy of his day, middle land owners, the petit bourgeoisie and the urban bourgeoisie provided the bulk of capital's organic intellectuals. Some sons of land owners and rural/small town bourgeoisie ended up as state bureaucrats. The urban bourgeoisie found outlets for its offspring in the technical professions. Of course, the fate and growth of the latter is bound up with the spread of industry and the pace of technological change, and the further up the intellectual hierarchy you go the more and more it merges with the general business management staff of capital. Rural intellectuals on the other hand "belong" to the mass of the countryside in two senses. In terms of outlook, culture and standard of living they identify with the small town bourgeoisie. But in their everyday activity (at least in early 20th century Italy) rural intellectuals in the shape of teachers, lawyers and priests formed a contact point that bridged the gap between the peasantry and (local) state administration. They were pillars of the community and many a peasant family aspired to have their sons in these sorts of positions.
As we have seen, intellectuals are more than 'brain workers', they organise things. The bourgeoisie's organic intellectuals organise the production process and work to maintain its class hegemony over society. Proletarian intellectuals on the other hand seek to organise the working class in pursuit of its interests (more in a future post). As organisers, what is the relationship between intellectuals and political parties which are, at base, aggregates of certain interests of certain classes and/or class fractions that are pursued collectively? Is there a necessary cross over of parties and intellectuals? Gramsci thinks there is. He makes two points:
1) For the bourgeoisie, all members of 'their' political parties are 'their' organic intellectuals. The parties offer a way of training organisers and elaborating new ideas that can maintain bourgeois hegemony. Given the 'general' mass character of the political field, this is the only way they can be so organised. The isolation of technical intellectual activity from politics means this does not and cannot offer the requisite training.
2) For all classes, parties perform roles in civil society analogous to the position the state holds in political society. A bourgeois party tends to be an alliance of organic intellectuals and traditional intellectuals (where feudal relations have persisted in some form) and transforms them "into qualified political intellectuals, leaders and organisers of all the activities and functions inherent in the organic development of an integral society, both civil and political" (p.16). Regardless of the class character of a party, anyone who joins is submerged into a group of organic intellectuals and through it becomes linked to the class it represents.
In addition to these two points, regardless of size and political orientation all parties have a general character. The bourgeoisie has various associations, combines and industry bodies to tend to its immediate (economic) interests. The working class has trade unions that further its sectional interests. But only parties transcend this particularity and attends to (what it takes to be) the general interests of its class.
By way of a conclusion, intellectuals are organisers, and their activities - be they technical or political/social/ideological - are linked with organising one of the two main classes in capitalist societies, regardless of the level of abstraction they are working at (an abstraction that itself is an outcome of organising those classes in the production process). Gramsci is absolutely crystal clear about this - the bonds between intellectuals and classes maybe elastic but they are incredibly strong too. Which is why attempts to decouple hegemony and intellectuals from class, as so-called post-Marxists attempt to do are problematic. It supposes hegemony is a free floating object that somehow exists rather than being the result of elaborations an struggles in the real world. Post-Marxism is simultaneously seduced by the intellectual fiction that somehow intellectuals (or more properly, academics) stand outside and apart from actually existing historical processes.
Attending to Gramsci rather than his pomo epigoni, it could be suggested that nevertheless his understanding of intellectuals is problematic from the standpoint of socialist politics. Critics of Leninism have traditionally attacked Lenin's What Is To Be Done? for arguing that socialist politics needs to be brought to the working class "from without" by a vanguard party is elitist (the point Lenin made was actually far subtler than this, but that's for another time). Gramsci's treatment of the intellectuals could be similarly interpreted - that the working class "needs intellectuals" to organise and become aware of itself, that workers are incapable of understanding things and struggling for themselves, etc. However this position is only possible if Gramsci's understanding of what an intellectual is is twisted and pared down to its traditional meaning. It's self-evident that any class needs organisers in order for it to organise itself - and Gramsci's discussion of the part they play emphasises the importance of the left today needs to place on cadre building and training.
In the next piece we will turn to Gramsci's writings on education: how it sustains class relationships, legitimises itself, feeds into bourgeois hegemony, etc.
A list of posts in this series on the Selections from the Prison Notebooks can be found here.
Here's another piece by Mark Featherstone lifted from Keele's Sociology and Criminology blog. (Original here).
On Thursday 22nd October eight million people watched Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, appear on the BBC’s premier political debating programme, Question Time. The immediate reaction to Griffin’s appearance in the national press may have led one to believe that it was a complete failure for the racist right – on Friday 23rd October The Daily Express explained that ‘BNP Leader Nick Griffin is...A Complete Disgrace to Humanity’ while The Independent wrote that ‘The BBC gave him the oxygen of publicity. He choked’ – but my own reaction to his moment in the full media glare was not so certain.
It is true that Griffin’s appearance was marked by confusion, irrationality, and illogical statements. Even his racism was not logically worked out. That is to say that even Griffin’s abhorrent racist belief that Britain should be maintained exclusively for the benefit of some mythological British people, primarily made up of a mythological white working class, collapsed at various points. These points, when he made the effort to hide his racism behind the veil of a brand of ultra-nationalism able to tolerate minorities, but not displaced peoples seeking asylum, were telling because what they illustrate is what we all know only too well. That is that the BNP are well aware that their racism, the core value of their politics, is beyond the pale and must be hidden from view and never explicitly spoken about if they are ever to achieve any kind of mainstream support.
In my view it was this fact, the fact that BNP must engage in a politics of deception, a politics of deception that cannot possibly work, that rendered Griffin a comic figure on Question Time, a comic figure who had been pushed centre stage, and found himself in a situation he could not possibly cope with in the full glare of the mass media, primarily because he was forced to evade a truth everybody already knows.
However, I was also aware that Griffin’s comic appearance, his appearance as a fool, a clown, would appeal to a specific audience, simply because those already alienated from mainstream politics and turned on to the BNP were unlikely to be persuaded by a situation that could not help but show their man as a fool and the cynical discredited mainstream as a mocking audience, who were well aware of the truth their fool wanted to hide and therefore could not but appear to be to disdainful of their man. In this situation the mainstream parties really needed to resist the temptation to exploit the fool in order to confirm their own moral superiority, because this would, of course, only confirm their own bankruptcy rooted in recent events, such as the expenses scandal.
Unfortunately, I felt that this was a temptation that the mainstream parties could not resist. Herein, then, lay perhaps the main problem with Griffin’s appearance on Question Time and possibly the key factor behind the shocking result of a YouGov poll carried out hours after the broadcast that showed that 22% of British people would ‘seriously consider’ voting BNP in a future local, general, or European election and perhaps more worryingly that ‘more than half of those polled said they agreed...the party had a point in speaking up for the interests of "indigenous, white British people"’ (BBC News, Saturday, 24th October).
That is to say that the main problem with Griffin’s appearance was that the mainstream parties appeared to want to confirm their own superiority by moralising against Griffin, rather than defeating him through rational argumentation. From the point of view of Griffin’s politics this was, of course, totally unnecessary because he was already defeated by his need to hide the truth of his own position, which resulted in ridiculous statements pertaining to the tolerance of the Ku Klux Klan. Unfortunately, though, I believe that the mainstream parties could not resist exploiting Griffin’s comic persona in order to confirm their own moral righteousness, with the result that they only confirmed their own moral bankruptcy.
In my view this was the main result of Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. In other words, by over-playing their morality and tolerance and under-playing their arguments and policies, the mainstream parties have probably confirmed both their own moral bankruptcy and lack of political imagination in the eyes of those who were either alienated from or on the verge of being alienated from the political mainstream. But this begs the question, why would the mainstream parties adopt this approach to dealing with Griffin, the comedy fool?
I think that the answer to this question is that the mainstream parties wanted to simultaneously confirm, boost, or simulate their own tolerance, hide the bankruptcy of their own policies, and finally deflect attention away from the real nature of the political situation in Europe which, as sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and Slavoj 鬚i鱉ek teach us, is already closing in on a form of friendly fascism that cannot speak its name. The truth is that the BNP are amateurs and that they will be defeated if our mainstream parties engage them in reasonable debate over policies, rather than employing empty moralising about the ‘tolerant’ nature of British culture and British politics.
Unfortunately, this is likely to be a lot harder than it sounds, since the empty moralising of the mainstream parties over the blindingly obvious racist nature of the BNP has a very particular purpose, which is to confirm their tolerance and hide their intolerance regarding the flows of homeless, displaced, refugees, and asylum seekers created by the form of globalisation sponsored and advanced by the generation of neo-liberals, including Brown, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi, and the master builders of the immigration architecture of Sangatte and the Schengen zone.
For 鬚i鱉ek (See his ‘Berlusconi in Tehran’, London Review of Books, 23rd July, 2009), Italy, the new front line of the European battle to control immigration, is dominated by a new form of authoritarian capitalism. In 鬚i鱉ek’s view, the popularity of the offensive comedy fool, Berlusconi, who praised Obama for his suntan, is not coincidental, since what Berlusconi and the new Italy exemplify is a new form of state organisation that is more than happy to exploit the poor workers of the global south for their labour, so that consumers can have cheap training shoes, but not allow them to penetrate its borders, where they would become legally liable for the benefits their labour warrants.
It is the struggle against this situation, the struggle against exploitation based on racial and ethnic inequality, that must be understood as the real front line of anti-racism in Europe today. We know the BNP are racists. But we must recognise that they have, in many respects, already missed the boat. It is not that we are threatened by racism to come, but rather that the racist situation is already upon us. Given this reality, I think that we must resist the temptation to use the abhorrent nature of the BNP to affirm the mythology of the tolerance of contemporary globalisation and instead recognise the racist intolerance already pervading Europe and our own society. It is this situation that we must address if we are to really save our tolerant ideals, rather than simply use the comic fools of the BNP to kid ourselves that we live in a society that is free of racism.
One way to start to achieve this would be to break the popular support for the BNP by illustrating to the alienated white minority who have turned to them in times of need that the problem of contemporary society is not one relating to race and ethnicity, but rather one rooted in the new form of neo-liberal capitalism that plunges everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age, into a precarious world, where everything is uncertain. The effect of this approach would be to dismantle the mythological connection between precariousness and race that enables the BNP and other parties of the far right to scapegoat minorities, and turn popular attention towards the real problem, the form of capitalism that turns people against each other like never before.
However, this approach presents a utopian challenge. It presents a utopian challenge because such an approach would, of course, require that our political, capitalist, elite really want to do away with the BNP, that they really want to do away with the comedy fools who allow them to simulate their own tolerance and maintain the brand of authoritarian capitalism rooted in exploitation, and that they really want to found a society free of exploitation and racist intolerance.
While there has been an outpouring of media coverage in this country about last week's earthquake in central Italy, comparatively little has been written on the disaster's political fall out. Silvio Berlusconi was quick to declare a state of emergency but in recent days has reverted to clownish type, declaring survivors should treat their emergency accomodation as if it were a "camping trip", and joking with a doctor that he "wouldn't mind being resuscitated" by her. But this earthquake has done more than highlight Berlusconi's insensitivity to the suffering of others, it has exposed Italian capitalism's inability to properly prepare for disaster. Christine Thomas of the CWI's Italian section, Lotta has translated this piece from Marco Verrugio, a comrade with the Controcorrente platform of Rifondazione Comunista:
The tsunami which razed the coast to the ground like a bulldozer offered building contractors an opportunity they could never have dreamed of, and they moved quickly to grasp it. (Seth Mydans, Times Southeast Asia correspondent)
We have finally managed to clean up public housing in New Orleans. We didn't know how to do it but God did it for us. (Jim Baker, Republican congressman)
These quotes from Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine show clearly what the capitalists think of natural disasters. While all of the politicians in Italy are talking about 'national unity' and avoiding controversy (including Paolo Ferrero, general secretary of Rifondazione Comunista), it would be useful to reflect on what has happened in order to avoid the Abruzzo tragedy becoming once again a tragedy in two acts: the earthquake and the reconstruction.
Today the mood of people hit by the earthquake is despondent, in some cases distrustful of institutions (there are small towns which were only reached three days after the earthquake) and, above all, worried about their future because in Italy there are earthquake victims who are still living in prefabricated wooden houses 20 years on. But this mood could soon turn to one of anger.
Could it Have Been Foreseen?
Immediately after the tragedy a controversy broke out in the press about whether the earthquake could have been predicted. For months, Abruzzo had experienced a series of tremors which led to the mayor of L’Aquila ordering all schools to be closed in the week before that fateful day. But in particular, there was discussion about the fact that a week previously, Giampaolo Giuliani, a technician and researcher at the Laboratori dell’Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare at Gran Sasso, had predicted the catastrophe. He had subsequently been accused of being alarmist and was called “an imbecile who enjoyed spreading false news” by Bertolaso, the head of Civil Protection.
The international scientific community intervened in support of Bertolaso, testifying that it is not possible to accurately predict earthquakes. While I do not feel qualified enough to get into a controversial scientific discussion of this kind, I would like to reflect politically on what a capitalist government in a country like Italy would do if prediction were possible.
L’Aquila has a population of 73,000. Obviously it would not be possible in every case to determine a priori how far the earthquake would spread, so the government would have to clear a much wider area, evacuating hundreds of thousands of people. If, for example, the cost per head of doing so was a minimum of €50 a day, to evacuate 300,000 people, it would mean spending around €15 million a day, probably for several days, because it would be difficult to predict exactly when the earthquake would begin. In addition it would be necessary to have a structure in place capable of carrying out an operation of this size 365 days a year, which would obviously be quite costly.
It would mean increasing public spending instead of cutting it as all governments have done in the last 20 years. We only have to consider the fact that the provision of hospital beds is based on ‘average occupancy’ so as to avoid empty beds, which means that with an ‘extraordinary’ event such as a ‘flu epidemic, heat wave or natural disaster the hospitals are bursting at the seams. (Recently, at the accident and emergency department of the San Martino hospital in Genoa, some patients had to wait to be seen stretched out on the floor of the hospital and similar incidents happen regularly). What is more, the government has recently drastically cut funds for safety, including for earthquakes.
All of that would be necessary without of course being sure that the earthquake tremors would be strong enough to 'justify' such expenditure, and risk being accused of alarmism and wasting public resources. On the other hand, intervening after the event reduces expenditure because only the damage is covered. Or rather, only part of the damage, because in reality finances compensate only some of the damage suffered by ordinary people, the rest goes to the companies which will be involved in the business of reconstruction. In this way, earthquakes and any natural disasters become yet another opportunity to redistribute wealth from below to above. Workers and ordinary people lose out while the banks and building companies in particular win.
So, can earthquakes be predicted? Or rather, if the government had had wind of the danger, would it have had the will or the capability of intervening to prevent it? In reality, from the capitalist point of view, it is not worth having a huge safety apparatus and applying all the safety norms to protect the population. It is more economical and, in some respects, more profitable to close the stable door after the horse has bolted. The same cynicism which oozes from the quotations cited earlier on can be applied to Abruzzo as much as to South East Asia and New Orleans.
The Building Business
In a period in which the building sector is collapsing, an earthquake is one of those classic 'strokes of luck' which can 'relaunch the economy'. In Abruzzo some buildings collapsed while others just a few metres away remained intact. One building company had built 60 buildings in L’Aquila, none of which collapsed. Media interest concentrated on the San Salvatore hospital, a building which was completed in the year 2000 and was almost destroyed in the earthquake. Work on the hospital began in the ‘70s and, over the years, the cost of building it increased tenfold. Impregilo, a company owned by Benetton-Gavio-Ligresti, which is already involved in numerous scandals and had won the tender to build the bridge over the Messina Straits, worked on the hospital from 1991 to 2000. But it maintains that it merely “made it functional” and does not know who was responsible for the hospital’s walls.
Reconnaissance carried out at the ‘crime scene’ (because what happened was a crime) show that many buildings were not only built without complying to anti-earthquake norms, but without respecting the most elementary building rules - using out of date materials, building on unsuitable land and skimping on strengthening the cement. In particular, cement companies, which are usually subcontracted, use out of date material to mix the cement. Using sea sand instead of quarry sand can mean a doubling of profit margins from 30% to 50-60%. But because sea sand is full of salt, after a few years the metal of the reinforced concrete is corroded and becomes useless. If the percentage of sand is increased, compared to the cement and gravel, the costs decline further. Journalists wrote about blocks of concrete amongst the debris which had crumbled like sand. These kinds of irregularities have also been found in the new high-speed train lines in Italy, in some parts of the motorway system in the Veneto region and in the Genoa underground system.
It is well known that in Central and Southern Italy, and now also in many parts of the North, the cement market is controlled by the mafia-like ‘Camorra’. The subcontracting system allows companies at the top of the chain to entrust the dirty work to small companies and then wash their hands of them. It is also known that this system flourishes because of the links between the Mafia and politicians. In High Speed Corruption, ex-judge and ex-president of the anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission, Ferdinando Imposimato, reveals how, in the 1990s, Romano Prodi, who was then president of the state company IRI, personally guaranteed work for the high-speed rail link in Campania to companies which had a whiff of the Mafia. Some had even been found guilty by the courts. Prodi was brought to trial and acquitted, but the magistrate who had conducted the enquiry was threatened. After the acquittal he transferred to another office before he could contest and appeal against the charge.
Now, having profited by building cardboard houses, these same companies (or other companies controlled by the same people) can see future rich pickings in the rebuilding process in Abruzzo.
As is always the case when there is a big cake to be divided, the employers call for national unity. The political parties have responded docilely and in unison. This includes the left which once again does not understand one of the golden rules of good politics: when you've got nothing intelligent to say it's better to stay quiet! Rifondazione Comunista has organised groups ready to go to Abruzzo to help, even though comrades on the ground say that this is not the main requirement. But it leaves the press to denounce those politically responsible for the massacre. The Pdci (Party of Italian Communists) is silent. Berlusconi on the other hand has said that “there was no malice” and the Italian president, after visiting L’Aquila, decreed that everyone is guilty - those who sold cardboard houses and those who bought them. In other words, everyone is guilty and everyone is innocent. He is sure to be well received at the next reception organised by the association of builders!
A Social and Political Response to the Tragedy
People are anxious about the future. Everyone knows that reconstruction in Italy takes forever. Up until a few years ago in Belice, which was hit by an earthquake in 1968, 400 people were still living in shacks and reconstruction was not complete. The same is true for Irpinia, (hit in 1980), and for Umbria (1997). In Abruzzo, the government recently agreed to requests from builders to further delay any obligation to adopt anti-earthquake measures until 30th June 2010. It has waived payment of electricity and gas bills in the stricken area by way of compensation…but only for two months.
Some community organisations have already started to promote collective discussion and organisation. They have asked Italians to show solidarity with the earthquake victims not by going to Abruzzo but, for the moment, by organising initiatives and the collection of funds throughout Italy and depositing the money in local accounts until the affected community has set up its own representative organisations and projects. At the same time they have underlined the necessity of local control over reconstruction, explicitly banning companies which have previously disregarded building norms.
A left party should reflect on these initiatives, develop them and try to build a political campaign to denounce those responsible for the disaster and to promote a collective response to the needs of those who risk paying the highest price of the catastrophe - workers and small employers in the commercial and craft sector. All expenses should be frozen (bills, mortgages, taxes, charges) and everyone who has lost their house or their job should be guaranteed an income until normality is restored. Reconstruction should be immediately got underway under the control of organisations democratically elected by those who have been hit by the earthquake in order to avoid profiteering.
All building projects should be checked by law before building commences and anyone wanting to start a building company should have to meet specific requirements. At the same time, a more general proposal is needed aimed at finding those responsible for the disaster and avoiding another Abruzzo happening in the future. Large building companies like Impregilo should be nationalised with the aim of creating a large public building company with democratic control over what is built and how it is built.
Maintenance companies which have been privatised should be brought back into local authority control and building companies which have disregarded norms should be forced to pay compensation and be brought into a new public building system. Sub-contracting, which allows infiltration into the public system by small Mafia-controlled companies, should be ended. Illegal working, which in the building sector accounts for up to 40% of work, should be abolished. Workers who are deprived of basic rights are not in a position to denounce irregularities committed by the company they are working for.
A special plan should be launched to check and maintain the country’s buildings, beginning with those in the public sector. In L’Aquila it was not just the hospital and the student halls of residence which collapsed but also the court, the prefecture (from which the civil protection was supposed to have coordinated its assistance), the regional council building and the Land Registry office (where all the important data necessary for monitoring the situation and for reconstruction was housed). In addition it is estimated that around 800 schools in Italy do not meet safety requirements, as was tragically demonstrated a few months ago when the roof of a high school collapsed in a town near Turin killing one pupil.
Looking Back at the Regional Elections
Until a few months ago the Italian Left governed in the Abruzzo region in alliance with the Democratic Party (DP) – known as the ‘cement’ party (or maybe it should now be the ‘sand’ party). Even after the arrest of Ottaviano Del Turco, regional president and DP spokesman, for a scandal linked to the health service, they continued participating in the alliance, covering this decision with the fig leaf of a ‘moral campaign’. On the day of the regional elections themselves the regional secretary of the PD was arrested, accused of corruption. The centre-right won the election in Abruzzo hands down. (Rifondazione Comunista alone lost 40% of its votes compared to the previous regional elections).
If the Left fails to represent the interests of workers and ordinary people when they come into conflict with the interests of the political and business lobbies, it will face self-destruction. In the regional elections in Abruzzo, 50% did not bother to vote. There did not seem to be a ‘clean’ political force. If voting were to take place today perhaps the abstention rate would be as high as 70-80%.
These are the ‘brilliant’ results of a ‘modern’ and ‘reasonable’ Left, without the ‘extremism’ which Controcorrente was accused of when we alone, at a local and national level, were saying that the Left should not ally itself with spokespeople of the ‘committee of builders ’ and a health service based on bribes and when we described the electoral agreement as an “unrealistic attempt at reviving a centre-left buried under its own rubble” (Ali Ghaderi quoted in Il Messagero, 1 November 2008). It remains to be seen whether, in the next few months, those who made that choice will examine their consciences, including at a national level, or whether once again we will be embroiled in another round of electoral alliances in the June local elections with the ‘party of crooks’, only realising the consequences of this when it is too late.
Ever published a book? Like the idea of those nice people at Channel 4 giving you a programme to plug your latest title? That's the gig Niall Ferguson has managed to land for The Ascent of Money. The first in a six part series aired earlier this evening, and is neutrally described as "the story of money and the rise of global finance. Bringing context and understanding to the current economic crisis, he reveals how the history of finance has been punctuated by gut-wrenching crashes. Each episode shows how a big bang in the ascent of money has changed the course of history." The blurb on his book is far less modest. It says "Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history."
It certainly sounds interesting. Shouldn't the series be something welcomed by Marxists? Isn't Ferguson confirming a basic tenet of historical materialism, that economics (the forces and relations of production), in the last instance, is the key driver of historical development? Not quite, as will soon become apparent.
The first episode, 'Dreams of Avarice', begins with the "bafflement" over the financial crisis and Ferguson asks if his series should be called The Descent of Money? The answer, unsurprisingly, is in the negative. Money has utterly dominated history and its hand can be felt behind technological breakthroughs, wars and revolutions. From ancient Mesopotamia to modern day London, in Ferguson's opinion the ascent of money is synonymous with the ascent of our species.
He takes us back to Peru under the Incan empire. Unlike most other class societies, Incan society had no concept of money. Its economy was directly based on labour and labour time - no medium stood in to represent it as was the case elsewhere. Therefore precious metals were prized for their aesthetic value, not as tokens. Therefore when it came into contact with Francisco Pizzaro and his conquistadors, they were perplexed by the Spanish thirst for gold and silver. But for Pizarro, it represented an opportunity. They secured Peru and the Incan lands for the Spanish crown, and systematically looted the empire of its gold, and used bonded labour to force many of the natives to work in the mines - particularly in what later became Bolivia.
Despite Spain's overseas possessions and seemingly inexhaustible reserves of precious metals, the empire went into sharp decline. Why? For Ferguson, all this was shipped back to Spain to help finance its wars of conquest in Europe. It didn't make Spain any more wealthy - instead it fuelled rampant inflation. What the conquistadors and the Spanish royals failed to appreciate was that money is essentially a promise, a bond of trust. Going further back into history to Babylonia, Ferguson argued money started off as clay tablets detailing a promise to pay for a good or service in exchange for a good or service. Over time these promises assumed monetary form, going through phases of precious metals, coin and bank notes. The character of trust symbolised in money changed from a promise to exchange a set amount of commodities to a trust in people and banks not to behave irresponsibly.
Ferguson then moves on to the development of credit, without which the modern world would have been impossible. The historical developments from around 1200 in Northern Italy are key here. Then the region was divided up into feuding city states with very little in the way of trust between them. Furthermore the development of trade was retarded by a continuing dependence on Roman numerals - a system that was cumbersome and overly complex when dealing with large sums. If that wasn't bad enough, there was no standardised currency. In Pisa, for example, several different systems of coin were in circulation. The Caliphate to Europe's south and east were much more advanced when it came to mathematics and trade. Then, for Ferguson, Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa entered the stage of history. Fibonacci's father directed a trading post in what is present-day Algeria, which exposed the young Leonardo to the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, which was far simpler and concise than that burdening the Italian states. He spent years travelling around the south-eastern Mediterranean basin studying under the Arabian mathematicians of the day, and published his findings in the celebrated Liber Abaci - a book that made the case for Hindu-Arabian numerals, and was widely influential on European mercantilism - not least because the examples he used was taken from business (bookkeeping, interest calculation, etc.).
The infrastructure of numbers were in place by the mid 13th century that allowed for an expansion of lending. Traditionally, in Venice, it had been the preserve of the city state's ghettoised Jewish population. Scripture prevented Christians from charging interest on monies loaned (usury), a position enforced by the powerful medieval church. However, a theological technicality allowed Jewish money lenders to do so. Deuteronomy forbade the faithful from charging interest to one's "brother" - but Christians and Muslims were not counted as such. One could be a usurer provided it was they who were the customers. Therefore the religious animosity toward usury combined with biblical-inspired antipathy toward Jews to make the position of the money lender extremely undesirable.
How was this overcome? For Ferguson the sea change began with the emergence of banking, and in particular the rise of the Medici family in Florence. Initially a family of merchants with a less than flawless record (five Medicis were sentenced to death for various crimes and plots), they achieved wealth, power and respectability thanks to the role played by Giovani di Bicci de Medici in setting up the Medici bank. They were able to get around the rules on usury by dealing with foreign currency exchange - the bank charged a commission for undertaking the conversion. By building the bank up and diversifying its activities, it was able to whittle away at usury by recasting the terms. Loans became 'advances' that had 'commissions' to compensate for the risks the bank was taking. This was funded by allowing deposits to be made, which funded the loans. In return, savers received 'credit' as a reward for their investments (this credit, or interest, was typically well below the commission rates charged on advances).
In this way, modern banking was born. The Medicis reaped the benefits, becoming de facto rulers of Italy for a period, producing three popes and marrying into two royal families. Scale and diversification meant that went debtors defaulted on their loans, the spreading of risk meant there was less chance the bank would go under - but nevertheless the Medicis did suffer from bad debts, especially from aristocrats who thought nothing of taking out loans and not repaying them.
For Ferguson, the USA is the country par excellence that has demonstrated the benefits of this financial innovation the most - its success rests on borrowed money. As compared to European nations in the 19th century, who used to imprison defaulters, the process of US bankruptcy is comparatively painless. For example, if one files for chapter seven bankruptcy the property of the debtor is collected by an appointed trustee who auctions it off to pay the creditors. However, most US states allow the debtor to keep essential property. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows for a rescheduling of debt repayments against projected future earnings. This ability to emerge relatively unscathed is key to the success of American capitalism: it encourages entrepreneurship, and he cites the careers of Mark Twain, Buster Keaton and Henry Ford as former bankrupts made good.
Summing up the first episode, Ferguson argues that lenders should not be seen as parasites or leeches, but as providers of an essential service. But if the banks are the answer to the problems posed by finance, why are we now suffering from a collapse in confidence in the banking system? That question, which is tied to bond markets, is the subject of next week's episode.
There's no doubting Ferguson's ability to make a topic usually the preserve of dry economics text books interesting. But, if you would forgive the pun, there are a couple of reasons why this history of money should not be taken as good coin.
There is the money question itself. As we have seen, Ferguson argues money originated as a bond of trust, as a promise by the buyer to pay the seller a given quantity of goods in exchanged for their purchase(s). Indeed this is the case, but there's more going on beneath trust that Ferguson allows for. Karl Marx argued that all commodities embody greater or lesser amounts of labour time. i.e. Some things take longer to make than others. Therefore in an economy based on barter, the value of one commodity can be expressed in a given quantity or portion of another commodity. When promises of payment emerged as either clay tablets, sea shells, gem stones, precious metals, etc. their function as standing in for payment developed into the means of payment. They became the universal equivalent against which all commodities, as expressions of abstract labour time, could be measured.
The second problem is Ferguson's treatment of capitalism. Or rather, his non-treatment of it. By focusing entirely on the history of finance he abstracts it from their contexts. For example, we are led to believe there is no real difference between the capitalism of today and the mercantile activities of 13th century Northern Italy. Taken at face value, it results in a naturalisation of capitalism, a presumption that the mode of production in which we live now is as old as humankind itself. For example, it is true the Medici innovations can be found in modern day banking, but the mode of production in which they were operating was very different.
In this period, the European economy was based on the feudal system whereby peasants were bonded to the land and forced to labour for a period of time for the land owners. This could take place either as set quantities of grain farmed from the peasant's plot and handed over as tax, or as a set number of days labouring in the lord's fields. If after fulfilling this obligation and attending to the household's needs there was a surplus, the peasantry could sell it on the local markets. Monies made would then be spent on replacing tools, buying livestock, purchasing clothes, etc. The landowners would spend the money realised from the forced surplus labour of the peasants on furnishing their retinue, their castles, objects of (aristocratic) conspicuous consumption, currying royal favour, and so on. Peasants had no economic self interest outside of their immediate needs and their antagonistic relationship to the feudal land owners. Similarly the baronial class had an interest in maintaining these relations of production, but not increasing the productivity of the peasants in their charge. As far as feudalism was concerned, markets were ancillary to its core relationships.
The merchant class of the Italian city states grew up around these markets. Their fortunes were made by purchasing surpluses of this kind and trading it with other city states and empires around the Mediterranean. This activity demanded certain outlays, which was where the money lenders and later, the Medici bank came in. But the sums advanced realised interest off the back of trade profits, or booty from conquest and plunder. Capital accumulation as we understand it now was not sustained as profits went into pursuing dynastic intrigues, funding armies and navies, and patronising the arts. There was no production for profit and accumulation of capital for its own sake. There was no labour market and waged labour, if it did exist, was rare and marginal. In short, no capitalism, despite the superficial differences between the medieval and modern finance systems.
In addition to ignoring the discontinuities between capitalist trade and trade in feudal social formations, Ferguson is guilty of what Ellen Meiksins Wood calls a 'Neo-Smithian' interpretation of history. For Adam Smith, capitalism was an expression of our natural state of being. What Wood argues against (principally against other Marxists, sometimes including Marx himself, as well as the famous German sociologist, Max Weber) is approaching history as if capitalism is a system waiting in the wings to emerge onto the historical stage - provided the conditions are right, instead of treating it as a highly specific mode of production that was born out of a particular conjuncture of feudal crisis and class struggles. Ferguson is certainly guilty of this, suggesting that the law of usury was holding finance, and by extension, capitalism, back from its free development - an argument paralleling some of those made in Weber's otherwise seminal The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Perhaps it's too early to make these criticisms of Ferguson's series. After all only one episode has aired and there are still five parts to go. If it is anything like the book, these will deal with previous crises (including the South Sea Bubble), the development of bonds and securities, the colonial globalisation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the financial roots of wars and revolutions, the present crisis, and what we can learn from this history. All interesting material, but unfortunately a very one-sided and distorted view of the real history fomenting beneath the financial froth.
