John R. Houk
© April 2, 2013 [UPDATED 4/13/24]
In my college days (1979 – 1981) I toyed with the idea to minor in political science. I studied a bit about the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and the then described father of Eurocommunism – Antonio Gramsci.
It is my opinion Gramsci is of huge importance today because modern Marxists are using his ideas about Communism to build a Marxist world. President Barack Hussein Obama was influenced by the prince of community organizing in Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s agenda to transform society could have been ripped and copied from the pages of Gramsci’s written works. Below is a quote from a bio of Gramsci at Discover The Networks: [Blog Editor: Discover The Networks has long since updated their website since I posted this in 2013. I re-formatted the Gramsci Bio-link to reflect the updated website. Ergo, the below quote and embedded links probably are a bit different and the links may not function.]
Such a development, said Gramsci,
would never occur naturally as a result of some inexorable, unseen, “historical
laws” that Marx had accepted as axiomatic. Rather, Gramsci called for Marxists
to actively spread their ideology in a gradual, incremental, stealth manner, by
infiltrating all existing societal institutions and embedding it, largely
without being noticed, in the popular mind. This, he emphasized, was to be
an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process
that, over a period of decades, would cause an ever-increasing number of people
to embrace Marxist thought, until at last it achieved hegemony. Gramsci
described this approach as a “long march [Blog Editor: The
original DTN link doesn’t work. Here’s an alternative ‘Long March’ link (even the alternative was removed since the last update)] through the
institutions.” Among the key institutions that would need to be infiltrated
were the cinema and theater, the schools and universities, the seminaries and
churches, the media, the courts, the labor unions, and at least one major
political party. According to Gramsci, these institutions constituted society's
“superstructure,” which, if captured
and reshaped by Marxists, could lead the masses to abandon capitalism of their
own volition, entirely without resistance or objection.
In this regard, Gramsci's views bore a great resemblance to those of the famed godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, who likewise viewed revolution as a slow, patient process requiring the stealth penetration of existing institutions that could then be transformed from within.
In this regard, Gramsci's views bore a great resemblance to those of the famed godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, who likewise viewed revolution as a slow, patient process requiring the stealth penetration of existing institutions that could then be transformed from within.
Think of the above paragraph every time you hear or read about Obama’s agenda to ‘Change’ America. Obama’s agenda is a Marxist agenda.
Earlier post on Gramsci:
JRH 4/2/13
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ANTONIO GRAMSCI [Updated here 11/5/19 - Last updated at DTN 11/5/19] Last updated: November 5, 2019
§
Italian Marxist and journalist
§
Advocated the spread of Marxism by means of a “long march
through the institutions” — i.e., gradual, incremental infiltration of such key
institutions as the cinema and theater, the schools and universities, the
seminaries and churches, the media, the courts, the labor unions, and at least
one major political party
§
Deceased in 1937
Antonio Gramsci was born in Sardinia on January 22, 1891.
After graduating from the Dettori Lyceum in Sardinian capital of Cagliari, he won
a scholarship to the University of Turin in 1911; by this point in his life, he
was ideologically a socialist. Four years later he became an active member of
the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and began a journalistic career that saw him
develop into one of Italy’s most influential writers. In the Turin edition
of Avanti! (PSI’s official organ), Gramsci wrote a regular
column on various aspects of the city’s social and political life. Also active
in educating and organizing Turin’s workers, Gramsci in 1916 began speaking
periodically at workers’ study-circles on such topics as the French and Italian
revolutions and the writings of Karl Marx. When Russia’s Bolshevik revolution
broke out in 1917, Gramsci embraced the goal of spreading socialist transformation
throughout the capitalist world.
In the spring of 1919, Gramsci co-founded L’Ordine
Nuovo: Rassegna Settimanale di Cultura Socialista (The New Order: A
Weekly Review of Socialist Culture), which became an influential periodical
among Italy’s radical and revolutionary Left. Meanwhile he continued to devote
much of his time and energy to the development of the factory council movement,
which sought to advance the cause of a proletarian revolution in Italy.
In January 1921 Gramsci aligned himself with the Communist
minority within PSI at the Party’s Livorno Congress, and soon thereafter he
became a central committee member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI).
From May 1922 to November 1923, Gramsci lived in Moscow as
an Italian delegate to the Communist International. In 1924 he relocated to
Rome and was named general secretary of PCI. He also began organizing the
launch of PCI’s official newspaper, L’Unità (Unity).
In 1926, Italy’s Fascist government enacted a host of
“Exceptional Laws for State Security,” designed to suppress political
opposition. On November 8th of that year, Gramsci was arrested in Rome and was
sentenced to 5 years in confinement on the island of Ustica. In June 1928, his
prison sentence was increased to more than 20 years, including a stint in
solitary confinement.
Gramsci’s health deteriorated badly during his
incarceration, and in November 1933 he was transferred to a medical clinic in
the Italian city of Formia, where he stayed, under constant police guard, until
August 1935. At that point he was transferred again, still under perpetual
guard, to the Quisisana Hospital in Rome. Gramsci eventually died there, of a
cerebral hemorrhage, on April 27, 1937.
During his years as a prisoner, Gramsci filled 32 notebooks
(containing almost 3,000 pages) with his political and philosophical
meditations on how Marxist theory could be applied practically to the
conditions of advanced capitalism. The notebooks, which were smuggled out from
Gramsci’s prison cell, were eventually published in Italian several years after
World War II, more than a decade after Gramsci’s death. They were not published
in English, however, until the 1970s.
In his writings, Gramsci accepted Marx’s assertion that
perpetual struggle between the ruling class and the subordinate working class
was the driving mechanism that ultimately made social progress possible. But he
rejected the notion that direct physical coercion by police and armies was the
method of choice for achieving and maintaining victory in that struggle.
Rather, Gramsci held that if a population at large could, for a period of time,
be properly indoctrinated with a new “ideology”—specifically, a set of values,
beliefs, and worldviews consistent with Marxist principles—a Marxist system
could be sustained indefinitely and without coercion or force. In short,
Gramsci held that Marxists needed to focus their efforts on gaining “hegemony”
(i.e., control or dominion) over the core beliefs of non-Marxist societies; to
change the population’s understanding of what constitutes basic “common sense.”
Such a development, said Gramsci, would never occur
naturally as a result of some inexorable, unseen, “historical laws” that Marx
had accepted as axiomatic. Rather, Gramsci called for Marxists to actively
spread their ideology in a gradual, incremental, stealth manner, by
infiltrating all existing societal institutions and embedding it, largely
without being noticed, in the popular mind. This, he emphasized, was to be
an evolutionary, rather than a revolutionary, process
that, over a period of decades, would cause an ever-increasing number of people
to embrace Marxist thought, until at last it achieved hegemony. (Rudi
Dutschke, a prominent spokesperson of the German student
movement of the 1960s, described this approach as a “long march through
the institutions” — a phrase that is often mistakenly attributed to Gramsci).
Among the key institutions that would need to be infiltrated were the cinema
and theater, the schools and universities, the seminaries and churches, the
media, the courts, the labor unions, and at least one major political party.
According to Gramsci, these institutions constituted society’s “superstructure,” which, if captured
and reshaped by Marxists, could lead the masses to abandon capitalism of their
own volition, entirely without resistance or objection.
In this regard, Gramsci’s views bore a great resemblance to
those of the famed godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky, who likewise viewed
revolution as a slow, patient process requiring the stealth penetration of
existing institutions that could then be transformed from within.
Further Reading: “An Introduction to Gramsci’s Life and Thought”
(Marxists.org); “Antonio Gramsci, Schooling and Education”
(Infed.org); “Antonio Gramsci: Take Over the Institutions!”
(American Thinker, 4-26-2014).
Additional Resources
Gramsci in His Own Words:
-------------------------------------------
Gramsci the Eurocommunist and Obamunism
John R. Houk
© April 2, 2013
_______________________
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Copyright 2003-2012: DiscoverTheNetworks.org
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