Gramsci in debate with the political-pedagogic conceptions of Rosa Luxembourgo, Trotsky, the Communist International and Bukharin

Abstract

This article is mainly based on the Prison Notebooks and discusses Gramscian analyses of Rosa Luxemburg’s, Trotsky’s, the Communist International’s, and Bukharin’s theories. Gramscian criticisms of these theoreticians and the Communist International, in general, point out that their perspectives and political tactics were based on an economist/positivist prism, in which a mechanistic theory of historical causality predominated, and an idea of spontaneous political action remained. In an opposite direction, Gramsci advocates a new political-pedagogical conception. In this case, he presupposes a dialectical relationship between infrastructure and superstructure, and between theory and social-historical practice, in addition to advocating the insertion of culture in a perspective of political-pedagogical struggle. In this way, he hopes to elevate morally and intellectually the subordinate classes, creating the theoretical conditions capable of overcoming bourgeois conformism, to the same extent that it could establish a new conformation and a new political hegemony. Thus, Gramsci considers essential the action of organic intellectuals of the subaltern classes who, in contact with the masses, would form the necessary conditions for the revolution of the proletariat in civil society.