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POLITICAL WRITINGS
1910-20
Antonio Gramsci
ELECBOOK CLASSICS
Selections from
Political Writings
1910-1920
Antonio Gramsci
ISBN 1 84327 121 4
SELECTIONS FROM
POLITICAL
WRITINGS
(1910-1920)
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Selected, Edited and Introduced by Quintin Hoare
Translated by John Mathews
ElecBook
London 1999
Transcribed from the edition published by
Lawrence & Wishart, London 1977
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Contents
Click on number to go to page
INTRODUCTION......................................................................... 10
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION .................................................. 22
INTRODUCTION
T
he earliest piece in this selection (the first of two volumes) from
Antonio Gramsci’s political writings prior to his imprisonment
dates from 1910. The author wrote it at the age of twenty, in his
final year at school in Sardinia, before he became a Socialist. The last
piece was written just before the January 1921 Livorno Congress of the
Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which was also the founding Congress of the
Communist Party of Italy (PCd’I): Gramsci was then almost thirty and a
major figure on the revolutionary left in his country. The decade which
these texts span was perhaps the key watershed of our century. During
those few years, the First World War left 10 million dead and twice as
many wounded. The Second International was swamped by the upsurge
of nationalist passions and pressures in 1914, and collapsed. In Russia,
the February Revolution of 1917 overthrew the Tsarist regime. It was
followed within a few months by the Bolshevik Revolution, which
destroyed the fragile bourgeois order installed in February; took Russia
out of the War; deprived capitalism at one stroke of the largest country
on the globe; sent ripples of enthusiasm and fear throughout the world;
successfully confronted foreign intervention and a terrible civil war
(though at a price in internal repression which was destined to have
heavy consequences); and embarked upon socialist construction. The
Third International was founded in 1919, as a revolutionary wave swept
through much of continental Europe.
In Italy itself, by the end of 1920 when this volume closes, that wave
was already receding. But no one on the left believed—or allowed
themselves to believe—that the tide itself had turned and was now on
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the ebb. The decade had seen a vertiginous expansion of the country’s
productive forces, above all during the war years (production of iron and
steel multiplied five times during the course of the war, and firms like
FIAT—whose work force rose from 4,000 to 20,000 in that period
increased their capital tenfold). At the same time, the war was followed
by a severe economic crisis (the lira lost 80 per cent of its value
between 1914 and 1920; the budgetary deficit rose from 214 millions
in 1914-15 to 23,345 millions in 1918-19, with the main tax burden
falling on the petty bourgeoisie; wheat production fell from 52 million
quintals in 1911-13 to 38 million in 1920, and 40 per cent of the
balance of payments deficit was accounted for by food imports;
production dropped after the war by 40 per cent in the engineering
industries, 20 per cent in chemicals, 15 per cent in mining, etc.; coal
prices were over 16 times higher in 1920 than they had been in 1913;
and so on) to which successive governments seemed to have no
solution. The political crisis of the old order was manifest: incapable of
creating any coherent political party with a stable structure, mass base
or clear programme, the shifting cliques of ‘notables’ in parliament, with
their personal followings, clientele and hired vote-gathering enforcers,
appeared impotent either to control the worsening economic situation or
to confront the inexorable growth of the socialist forces.
At the same time, the PSI had become the largest single party at the
November 1919 elections, with 156 seats out of a total of 508.
Membership of the Socialist trade-union federation (CGL) rose from
250,000 to two million between the end of the war and 1920.
Moreover, in words at least, the Socialist Party stood for Revolution and
Soviets, and the workers in the main industrial centres had shown in
repeated actions that they were a formidably militant force. For the
insurrectionary uprising in Turin in August 1917, the great general strike
Classics in Politics: Antonio Gramsci ElecBook
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