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On 8/4/15 5:54 PM, Richard Fidler via Marxism wrote:
Excellent balance sheet of the recent Greek events:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/08/tsipras-debt-germany-greece-euro/
Kouvelakis:
"The transitional program is also organically linked — this is something
we learn from the inheritance of the third and fourth congresses of the
Communist International and the subsequent elaboration by Gramsci and
Togliatti — to the goal of the united front, the rallying of all the
forces of the block of the subordinated classes at a higher political
and strategic level. It was this unifying approach implicit in the idea
of a “government of the anti-austerity left” that fired the imagination
of broad masses in spring 2012, enabling Syriza’s rise."
Togliatti? Transitional program? WTF?
This article links to another Jacobin article about Togliatti written by
Peter D. Thomas. He apparently thinks that Perry Anderson was a bit off
on Western Marxism, especially by including Gramsci. I don't think that
Anderson was off at all by claiming that the Gramsci industry in
academia represents a detour into cultural studies but let's leave that
aside for the time being.
What I don't get is Thomas and Kouvelakis's enthusiasm for Togliatti,
especially the latter's linking him to transitional demands unless he is
talking about something totally unrelated to Trotsky's writings.
Meanwhile here's Thomas:
I also think that Marxist theory in this period needs to be understood
integrally and politically, that is, not simply in terms of theoretical
productions (essays, books, etc.), but also in terms of the political
impact of theoretical work. In that sense, the greatest Western Marxist
theorist of the postwar period is not Sartre or Althusser or Colletti or
any of the other figures discussed at length by Anderson, but instead,
Palmiro Togliatti.
In addition to his own theoretical writings — of much greater value
than is often supposed today — Togliatti was also a theoretician of
politics engaged in creating a hegemonic apparatus that encouraged a
profound and real dialectic and real critique of the politics of his period.
Whatever disagreements I might have with his substantive theoretical
and political positions — and there are many — this should not preclude
acknowledgment of his real importance as a theorist and politician with
a real, mass impact on the politics of his time. The theoretical and
political culture that Togliatti helped to shape in the Italian
Communist Party, and in Italy more generally as this massive party’s
sphere of influence radiated across the entire spectrum of the Left, was
the example to which other leftists in Europe and around the world
looked for inspiration.
---
All I can say is that if you are interested in the role of the CP in
Italian politics, you are better off reading Paul Ginsborg's "A History
of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1988" than this
balderdash because after all you have to judge socialists on their deeds
much more than their "theory".
Ginsborg:
In another area, the party's attitude to the Soviet Union, mystification
prevailed. In the 1950s the P C I was characterized by its Stalinism. At
the most straightforward level this meant a slavish adulation of
'Baffone' himself. In Rinascita of 1948, reviewing Stalin's work on the
national question (of all things), Lucio Lombardo Radice had this to
say: 'Creative Marxist that he is, Stalin is not only a scholar of
genius who analyses political and historical problems in the light of
Marxist principles; he is certainly this, but he is above all the great
revolutionary, the great builder who analyses relations in order to
transform them, who studies problems in order to resolve them.'" On the
occasion of Stalin's seventieth birthday Togliatti wrote: 'The role that
Stalin has played in the development of human thought is such that he
has earned himself a place which until now very few have occupied in the
history of humanity.'
When the news reached Italy of Stalin's death in March 1953, the
Communist Party went into mourning. L'Unita's headline of 6 March read:
'The man who has done most for the liberation of the human race is dead'
The party's grief extended to its lowest levels. Natoli has described
how in the party sections of the poorest Roman borgate photographs of
Stalin were surrounded by flowers and candles and local militants sat
around as if commemorating a saint.42
As well as elevating Stalin into a father-figure of superhuman
proportions, the party portrayed the Soviet Union as a society where the
problems of democracy and social justice had been definitively resolved.
In L' Unitet of 2 February 1952 Mario Alicata wrote from Russia that
'this is the first country in the history of the world in which all men
are finally free'.43 As late as March 1956 we find Luigi Longo insisting
that unemployment had been completely abolished in all the socialist
countries, that wages and living conditions were constantly improving
and that the ordinary working day was being reduced to seven or even six
hours.'"
However, the most insidious elements of Stalinism were not the aberrant
judgements on Stalin himself or the Soviet Union, but the attitudes that
permeated the life and activity of the party at home. The tradition of
uncritical adulation of leaders was only too easily transferred to
Italy, where Togliatti seemed happy to allow absurd tributes to be paid
to him by lesser comrades and exaggerated stories of his role in the
early history of the P C I to be published in the party press.45 The
habit developed, and even the finest brains in the P C I like Amendola
and Ingrao indulged in it, of citing the writings of the historic
leaders of the party, Gramsci and Togliatti, as if they were biblical
texts to serve as sermons of the day.
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