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Crisis Articulo Gramsci

The document discusses how the loss of consensus among the ruling class has led to a 'crisis of authority' where people no longer believe traditional ideologies. This crisis results in a variety of unhealthy symptoms as the old system dies but a new one cannot be born. It suggests this could lead to increased acceptance of historical materialism and a focus on economics and cynical politics rather than theories and ideologies.

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29 views3 pages

Crisis Articulo Gramsci

The document discusses how the loss of consensus among the ruling class has led to a 'crisis of authority' where people no longer believe traditional ideologies. This crisis results in a variety of unhealthy symptoms as the old system dies but a new one cannot be born. It suggests this could lead to increased acceptance of historical materialism and a focus on economics and cynical politics rather than theories and ideologies.

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Anonymous Izl4KkS16c
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"WAVE OF MATERIALISM" AND "CRISIS OF AUTHORITY"

That aspect of the modern crisis which is bemoaned as a "wave of


materialism" is related to what is called the "crisis of authority".
If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer "leading"80
79
For the term "gypsy" see "Voluntarism and Social Masses" on pp. 202-4
an~ note IOg on p. 2o4.
See note 5 on p. 55.
G RAM SCI : P R ISO N N O T E B O O KS

but only "dominant", exercising coercive force alone, this means


precisely that the great masses have become detached from their
traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to
believe previously, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that
the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum
a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. N.B. this paragraph
should be completed by some observations which I made on the
so-called "problem of the younger generation"81-a problem
caused by the "crisis of authority" of the old generations in
power, and by the mechanical impediment that has been imposed
on those who could exercise hegemony, which prevents them from
carrying out their mission.
The problem is the following: can a rift between popular masses
and ruling ideologies as serious as that which emerged after the
war be "cured" by the simple exercise of force, preventing the new
ideologies from imposing themselves? Will the interregnum, the
crisis whose historically normal solution is blocked in this way,
necessarily be resolved in favour of a restoration of the old? Given
the character of the ideologies, that can be ruled out-yet not in
an absolute sense. Meanwhile physical depression will lead in the
long run to a widespread scepticism, and a new "arrangement"
will be found-in which, for example, catholicism will even more
become simply J esuitism, etc.
From this too one may conclude that highly favourable con-
tions are being created for an unprecedented expansion of historical
materialism. The very poverty which at first inevitably characterises
historical materialism as a theory diffused widely among the masses
will help it to spread. The death of the old ideologies takes the form
of scepticism with regard to all theories and general formulae; of
application to the pure economic fact ( earnings, etc.), and to a
form of politics which is not simply realistic in fact (this is always
the case) but which is cynical in its immediate manifestation
(remember the story of the Prelude to Machiavelli, 82 written perhaps
under the influence of Professor Rensi, which at a certain moment-
in 1921 or 1922--extolled slavery as a modern means of political
economy).
But this reduction to economics and to politics means precisely
a reduction of the highest superstructures to the level of those which
adhere more closely to the structure itself-in other words, the
possibility and necessity of creating a new culture. [1930]

81 PP., pp. ro4-7. 82 By Mussolini.


I

SELECTIONS FROM THE

PRISON NOTEBOOKS
OF
ANTONIO GRAMSCI

edited and translated by


QUINTIN HOARE
and
GEOFFREY NOWELL SMITH

1971
LAWRENCE AND WISHART
LONDON

j (
I
Gr
af,
046

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