MARX, ENGELS, AND MARXISMS Alternative Modernities Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century Giuseppe Vacca Translated by Derek Boothman · Chris Dennis Marx, Engels, and Marxisms Series Editors Marcello Musto York University Toronto, ON, Canada Terrell Carver University of Bristol Bristol, UK TheMarxrenaissanceisunderwayonaglobalscale.Whereverthecritique of capitalism re-emerges, there is an intellectual and political demand for new, critical engagements with Marxism. The peer-reviewed series Marx, Engels and Marxisms (edited by Marcello Musto & Terrell Carver, with Babak Amini, Francesca Antonini, Paula Rauhala & Kohei Saito as Assis- tant Editors) publishes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions, reprints of old texts, as well as translations of books already published in other languages. 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More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14812 Giuseppe Vacca Alternative Modernities Antonio Gramsci’s Twentieth Century Giuseppe Vacca Fondazione Gramsci Rome, Italy Translated by Derek Boothman Chris Dennis Perugia, Italy Modena, Italy ISSN 2524-7123 ISSN 2524-7131 (electronic) Marx, Engels, and Marxisms ISBN 978-3-030-47670-0 ISBN 978-3-030-47671-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47671-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. 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This was the year that the Critical Edition of the Prison Notebooks was published, an edition which gave the public access to the chronological sequence of these prison writings. Reading the Notebooks diachronically persuadedmeonceandforallofthevalidityofthecriterionsuggestedby PalmiroTogliattiforstudyingGramsci.InTogliatti’sNotes forhisspeech at the first conference of Gramsci studies, in January 1958, he wrote. Gramsciwasatheoristofpoliticsbutaboveallapracticalpolitician,thatis acombatant[…]ThewholeofwhatGramsciwroteshouldbeapproached with[this]inmind,butthistaskwillonlybeaccomplishedbythosehaving such a detailed knowledge of the concrete moments of his activity that makesitpossibleforthemtoseehowtheseconcretemomentscorrespond to each of his general doctrinal definitions and statements. They must also besufficientlyimpartialtoresistthetemptationtoletfalsedoctrinalgener- alizations obscure the clear connection linking thought to concrete facts and real movements. (Togliatti 2001 [19581], pp. 213–4: cf. Togliatti 1979, pp. 161–2). Sincethemid-1970sIhave,then,lentmyselftoreconstructingthelife and thoughts of Gramsci through their insertion into the history of the twentieth century. ix x PREFACE As is borne out by the online Bibliografia Gramsciana,1 from the 1980s onward, knowledge of Gramsci’s writings and studies devoted to histhoughthavebeenundergoingacontinuingexpansionattheinterna- tionallevel.OnbecomingDirectoroftheFondazioneGramsciinJanuary 1988 I therefore sought to give a new impetus to the dialogue between students of Gramsci in Italy and abroad, to acquire new documents and foster the necessary philological research for reconstructing his political and intellectual biography. Fundamental in this respect is the project of theNationalEditionofhiswritings,towhichIshallreturnlater.Iflanked this polyphonic and choral undertaking by personal involvement in the clarification of Gramscian categories given that, faced with the expansion of their uses, a work of conceptual cleansing seemed to me useful. TheintentiontopromoteanewseasonofGramscistudiestookrootin mefortworeasons:thefirstwastheneedtogetridofthesingularparadox that, while internationally Gramsci’s reputation was growing exponen- tially, there was an increasing conviction in Italy that his thought should be consigned to oblivion.2 The second reason was born from the devel- opment of my studies of the Notebooks, from which in my view there emerged new possibilities of reading them. Here I have in mind three essays recently republished but conceived during the 1970s and 1980s.3 1This bibliography is available for consultation on the site of the Fondazione Gramsci, www.fondazionegramsci.org. 2Todenouncethisincongruence,inApril1987thethenheadoftheCulturalCommis- sion of the Italian Communist Party, Giuseppe Chiarante, and I were responsible for a special number of the monthly Contemporaneo supplement to Rinascita devoted to the diffusion of Gramsci throughout the world. A short time afterwards, on becoming Director of the Foundation, I organized an international conference on the worldwide studies and translations of Gramsci. This conference was held on 25–28 October 1989 in Formia (where Gramsci had spent two years in a prison-approved clinic), the proceed- ingsbeingpublishedsometimelaterin1995(Gramscinelmondo,ed.MariaLuisaRighi, Rome:FondazioneIstitutoGramsci).DuringtheconferenceJohnCammettpresentedthe brochureoftheInternationalGramsciBibliography,onwhichhehadbeenworkingalone for years. This Bibliography was published in the Annali (Yearbooks) of the Foundation (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1991), and then transferred on line and continued, again under the editorship of John Cammett, by Maria Luisa Righi and Francesco Giasi, who are still currently responsible for its update. 3These correspond to the first three chapters of the volume edited by Marcello Musté: G. Vacca In cammino con Gramsci (Vacca and Musté, 2020), appearing under the titles ‘La “quistione politica degli intellettuali” nei “Quaderni del carcere”’, ‘Dal materialismo storicoallafilosofiadellapraxis’and‘I“Quaderni”elapoliticadelNovecento’respectively.