The open Marxism of Antonio Gramsci

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American postmodernist fiction and the past by Theophilus Savvas

A review of American Postmodernist Fiction and the Past by Theophilus Savva

Filosofijos ir istorijos problemos

Publikuojamas vieno skyriaus iš A. Gramscio knygos „Istorinis materializmas ir B. Croce‘s filosofija“ (1948 m.) vertimas. Šiame skyriuje tyrinėjamos filosofijos istorijos rašymo metodologinės problemos, taip pat aptariami visuomenės, istorijos raidos klausimai. Autorius teigia, kad istorinė filosofijos reikšmė gali būti nustatyta pagal jos praktinį paveikumą. Filosofija yra tam tikros visuomeninės veiklos apraiška, istorinis faktas, ji turi paveikti visuomenę. Filosofas profesionalas labiau priartėja prie visų kitų žmonių nei kitų sričių specialistai. Aptariamos filosofinės kritikos savybės, filosofijos istorinė reikšmė, filosofijos teorinis statusas, filosofo vaidmuo visuomenėje, nagrinėjama sveiko proto, žmogaus, jo prigimties, progreso ir tapsmo, demokratijos, individualizmo sampratos

Os sindicatos e a ditadura

A luta de classe internacional culminou até agora na vitória de operários e camponeses de dois proletariados nacionais. Na Rússia e na Hungria os operários e camponeses instauraram a ditadura proletária e tanto na Rússia como na Hungria a ditadura teve que sustentar uma áspera batalha, não só contra a classe burguesa, mas também contra os sindicatos: o conflito entre a ditadura e os sindicatos foi mesmo uma das causas da queda do Soviet húngaro, pois que os sindicatos, mesmo que nunca tenham tentado abertamente derrubar a ditadura, operaram sempre como organismos “derrotistas” da revolução e incessantemente semearam o desconforto e a covardia entre os operários e os soldados vermelhos. Um exame, mesmo que rápido, sobre as razões e as condições desse conflito, pode ser útil á educação revolucionária das massas, as quais devem se convencer que o sindicato talvez seja o organismo mais importante da revolução comunista, pois a tarefa da socialização da indústria recai sobre ele e porque deve criar as condições para que a empresa privada desapareça e não possa mais surgir, devendo também convencer-se da necessidade de criar, antes da revolução, as condições psicológicas e objetivas que tornem impossíveis qualquer conflito e qualquer dualismo de poder entre os vários organismos que encarnam a luta da classe proletária contra o capitalismo

Tema liceale (2): Conosciuto, ancor che tristo, / Ha suoi diletti il vero

The subject of the essay, here in its Italian version, is taken from Giacomo Leopardi’s poem Al Conte Carlo Pepoli and reads “… Conosciuto, ancor che tristo, / Ha suoi diletti il vero”. One type of person accepts the world as it is, seeing only its beautiful side, is transported by dreams and refuses to take into account cruel truths. Others detach themselves from the human herd, not being content with vain appearances; they are driven by the desire to know but risk becoming total sceptics. A third type looks at the world as it is, knowing that the truth they see may be hard to accept, but reason rather than an attack on spurious targets must be used to find it. The real heroism of the “man of thought” is a knowledge of the world as it really is, which entails not hiding unpleasant sides from outsiders, which would amount to a hypocritical “Jesuitism”. Wrong and harmful positions must be attacked, as for example in Emile Zola’s “J’accuse” letter and, in Italy, Giosuè Carducci’s diatribes against the “patriots” who were ruining the young Italian State

Tema liceale (1): Non si dee l’uomo contentare di fare le cose buone

This is the Italian version of Gramsci’s essay based on the phrase “Non si dee l’uomo contentare di fare cose buone” from the sixteenth century author Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo. This starting point leads into a discussion of aesthetics, art and beauty and their accessibility to the different classes and strata of society. Only in galleries and museums, the preserve of the “initiated”, were art forms accessible. The lower strata of society adopted forms of adornment and decoration which, although aesthetically ugly, in a primitive way showed the yearning for beauty. The styles needed channelling to realize beauty; the nascent garden cities in England indicated what could be achieved while, in contrast to the luxurious mansions of the rich in Italy, or even the aesthetic content typifying ancient Greece and Rome, the working people were confined to fetid alleyways and squalid housing, showing up in the stress of modern life: for the Aristotelian catharsis to come about the artistic spirit must predominate

From Passive to Radical Revolution in Venezuela’s Populist Project

In December 2001, Hugo Chávez and others changed Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolutionary project, which consisted of replacing a corrupt and elitist constitution with a fair and popular one, into a radical one. In its early stages the project corresponded to what Gramsci called a “passive revolution.” Attempts by opposition forces to crush the construction of a new populist hegemony (a coup in April 2002 and an indefinite strike in December 2002) were met with popular mobilization that reaffirmed Chávez’s hegemonic project. The radical revolution consisted of social programs designed to alleviate the suffering of the poor and consolidated a new hegemonic structure among Venezuela’s lower classes. The concept of “radical revolution” provides a theoretical alternative for assessing the extent to which a political project can be described as populist

Jubilee mugs:the monarchy and the Sex Pistols

With rare exceptions sociologists have traditionally had little to say about the British monarchy. In the exceptional cases of the Durkheimian functionalism of Shills and Young (1953), the left humanism of Birnbaum (1955), or the archaic state/backward nation thesis of Nairn (1988), the British nation has been conceived as a homogenous mass. The brief episode of the Sex Pistols' Jubilee year song 'God Save the Queen' exposed some of the divisions within the national 'mass', forcing a re-ordering of the balance between detachment and belonging to the Royal idea. I argue that the song acted as a kind of 'breaching experiment'. Its wilful provocation of Royalist sentiment revealed the level of sanction available to the media-industrial complex to enforce compliance to British self-images of loyal and devoted national communicants