“Nothing is more significant than the case of an economic analyst as penetrating as John Maynard Keynes” wrote the French social historian, Marc Bloch: “There is hardly one of his books in which he does not, from the beginning, expropriate terms, usually pretty well established, in order to decree entirely new meanings for them, meanings which sometimes vary from work to work, but, in any case, depart from current usage.”
Bloch did the same, of course, and was drawing on Keynes to illustrate the distorting effects of worshipping the false idol of precision in fields such as economics and history, which he called “time-sciences” that preserved “something of the stubborn individualism of art!” Even if the day came when understandings clarified nomenclature, and thereby enabled progressive sub-definition, argued Bloch, “the individuality of the scholar will, as always, be reflected in his choice of words.” “I must invent my own system”, Blake said more succinctly, “or be enslaved by another man’s”.
Antonio (‘Nino’) Gramsci was also a great thinker whose individuality is marked in virtually every sentence he wrote. In this late entry into Keynes memorialising, and in the spirit of contributing novel reading rather than point-scoring, here I’ll imagine a much closer relationship between Maynard and Nino than has ever before been supposed. In a non-Windschuttle way, for the fun of intellectual speculation, I’ll imagine relations between them for which there is no direct positive evidence; but, also, for which nor is there any evidence that they didn’t so exist.
What follows, at unusual length, is thus possibly true, but is however unlikely; for I’m going to imagine that Gramsci was the ghost in Keynes’ genius. Please note that this is a post based on idle historical speculation about people, politics and ideas, not about economics. Comments are welcome as always of course, but regular readers will know who I am talking about when I say that arcane, esoteric, angry comments about Keynes’ economics will be deleted.
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To begin with the landmark text, when The General Theory was published in 1936, Gramsci was in one of Mussolini’s prisons, dying in agony from the terrible illnesses he had accumulated over ten years of incarceration. Yet, in the immediately prior years, as TGT was being figured out, Keynes and Gramsci had been in constant contact through their close mutual friend, Piero Sraffa. To appreciate how the dying Nino may have influenced the way Maynard fired at the moon, you need to know about Piero.
Born the son of a distinguished liberal family in Pisa in 1898, Piero was a brilliant student in law and economics (finance), who became a friend of the then 28 year-old Nino when he was 21. The following year, through mutual family friends, Piero was introduced to the then 37 year-old Maynard, already internationally famous because of The economic consequences of the peace, and with whom he would also grow ever closer. The crucial point is that, by 1920, the line between these two big stars in the intellectual universe was drawn, and it was Piero.
Piero beat Robert Michels into an economics lectureship in 1926, and was a professor by the time he turned 28. There is much we could dawdle over at this point, as, on the one side, Piero dazzled the Cambridge economists with his brilliant critiques of marginalism; and, on the other, he challenged Gramsci with his political analysis.
But to cut to the chase, Nino, who had been elected to parliament in April 1924 and had then become (virtually by default) the secretary of the Italian communist party the following August, was arrested by the fascist police in November 1926 and subsequently imprisoned for 20 years (“we must stop this brain from functioning� went the famous words of the fascist prosecutor). Although he had never joined the communist party, Piero was fearful he would suffer the same fate, when Maynard wrote to offer him a Cambridge lectureship.
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Piero moved into Maynard’s Cambridge flat, enjoyed high-dining rights at Kings College, and soon also became close friends with Robert Kahn, Joan Robinson, Maurice Dobb, Frank Ramsey, Nicholas Kaldor - and Ludwig Wittgenstein, with whom he would spend every Thursday afternoon and evening during term. Wittgenstein was reported to have said that “his discussions with Sraffa made him feel like a tree from which all branches had been cut�, which echoed Keynes own description of Piero as a man “from whom nothing is hid.�
Universally respected for his intelligence and learning, and much loved for his warmth and modesty, Piero was unsuited to lecturing because of his embarrassment over his Italian accent, his sensitive temperament and the radical complexity of his research. Maynard thus made him the librarian in the Marshall Library, from where he continued his work critiquing marginalism, meanwhile midwifing an astonishing crop of students.
Piero was permanently dissatisfied with the way the marginalists (and also Marx, for that matter) had supposed to resolve the contradictions between Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and this problem became the focus of his intellectual life work. In 1930 he also commenced his 25-year dedication to editing Ricardo’s complete works, gifting the world with what is widely regarded as the finest work in the literature of economics, and for which he was elevated to the British academy and awarded the forerunner of what would become the Nobel prize.
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How close were Piero and Maynard? Very. Both diehard bibliophiles, they would potter around antiquarian bookshops together on Sunday afternoons, and were otherwise in close contact right up until Keynes died. It was Sraffa who in 1930 organised the celebrated Cambridge “Circus” that developed some of the key ideas in The General Theory; it was Sraffa who took up the task of demolishing Hayek’s explanation for the Great Depression on Keynes’ behalf in 1932; and it was Sraffa who Keynes described as “one of my closest friendsâ€? in 1940.
But what of Sraffa and The General Theory? The key years in the making of TGT are 1932 to 1935, and it is settled ground that Piero not only contributed through the Circus, he read some of the drafts and made extensive criticisms, and then participated actively in the discussions, as he had previously with Maynard’s Treatise on Money. Where this story becomes intriguing is that during these exact years, Piero also had another intellectually fascinating focus in his life.
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From the moment his friend Gramsci was imprisoned in Turin in 1926, Sraffa dedicated himself to securing his release, co-ordinating an international campaign, corresponding, sending books, opening unlimited accounts for him at Milan bookshops, sending presents to his children, and generally acting as a go-between with his family and the Italian communist party.
Sraffa is given the credit for Gramsci being transferred to a clinic (converted into a cell) in Formia in 1933, for which Piero paid all the bills and where, tantalisingly, he gained permission to visit Nino regularly between 1933 and 1935. In other words, we know for certain that, while Piero was collaborating with Maynard on the development of TGT during its key formative years, he was also visiting Nino four or five times a year, staying for up to a week at a time.
We can safely conclude that it is an entirely practical possibility that Sraffa could have been an interlocutor between Keynes and Gramsci. Could Sraffa have been a transmission belt? Perhaps even the medium through which the brilliant Italian communist guided the great English statesman? Could Gramsci have been the ghost in The General Theory’s ‘machine’?
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There is, as I have said, absolutely no direct evidence for the interlocution of ideas as far as I am aware. Gramsci never even wrote Keynes’ name once, as far as I know; and nor, as far as I know, did Keynes ever refer to Gramsci in his writing. Piero himself never revealed anything that was said in any of all those long times spent in his friend’s cell, with the exception of passing on a couple of political messages at Nino’s request.
Yet, given how much of Sraffa’s life was dedicated to saving Gramsci, and how close Sraffa was to Keynes, it’s impossible to believe that the Englishman was not aware of the imprisoned Italian. Likewise, we know that Gramsci consumed (guided?) Sraffa’s work and was deeply interested in Ricardo; and we know that Sraffa sent him Keynes’ work. That is, we positively know Gramsci knew of Keynes. I therefore think we can pretty safely assume that The General Theory was much discussed in Nino’s Formia cell between 1933 and 1935.
If Keynes and Gramsci knew of each other, but we cannot positively prove an intellectual relationship through Piero, can we nevertheless bolster the case by finding common, if unacknowledged, currents in their work? As it happens, we can, very easily.
The common currents are not what you might expect. A very close reading of Gramsci reveals his brilliant comprehension of the theoretical debates over economics, but he wrote little directly on the topic. This was obviously because his original work was starkly different in its focus, being concerned with society generally and the balance of political forces. Nino would have been very much more interested in whether Maynard’s work was bound up with an emergent manner of thinking in the world, than whether or not Alfred Marshall should be discarded. And it is here, in this way of thinking, that we can find in Gramsci’s work an analysis that fits Keynes like a glove.
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As Nicholas has written in his post, “Keynes was also a rather deeper seeker after a ‘third way’ than the stuff that circulates under that label today.� So was Gramsci; perhaps even, to some unknown extent, causally.
For ‘Third Wayism’, Gramsci used the term “Caesarism�, by which he meant to mock the analogy frequently drawn in fascist Italy between Julius Caesar and Mussolini. Gramsci poured scorn on the “theory of Caesar� that compared the fascist dictator with the great soldier-emperor of antiquity who transformed Rome from a city-state into the capital of an empire.
Yet, Gramsci also took the term Caesarism seriously, incorporating it in his theory of fascism and recognising that Caesar rose to power because of the specific circumstances destroying Rome at the time. He observed how Caesarism (or “Third Wayism�) recurred in a catalogue of historical events as an expression of “a particular solution in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation characterised by an equilibrium of forces headed for catastrophe.�
Gramsci concluded that the phenomenon appeared whenever it seemed that forces A and B were so balanced that they could not defeat each other and risked bleeding themselves to mutual death. In these circumstances, wrote Gramsci, “a third force C intervenes from outside, subjugating what is left of both A and B.�
Gramsci defined his concept of the Third Way in detail and with examples, identifying progressive and reactionary versions, insisting that it was a “polemical-ideological formula�, not a coherent political philosophy or canon of historical interpretation, and, characteristically, that the significance of each manifestation can only be established from a close study of the actual circumstances in which it appeared. He noted the effects on Caesarism of changes that followed the advent of the modern political systems, qualitative and quantitative Third Ways, intermediate and episodic forms, and politico-historic movements where Third Ways emerge in gradations, until the genuine Third Way finally fully emerges, and he made other qualifications and cautions.
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Looking through this thread of Gramsci’s thought; it’s hard not to recognise in Keynes the 20th century’s most outstanding progressive example of qualitative Third Wayism.
Keynes obviously lived during a moment where there was an equilibrium of Fascist and Stalinist, of Conservative and Labour, of individualist and collectivist forces, with no apparent clear winner and catastrophe on a looming horizon; his work was a progressive intervention tempered by compromises; his Third Way policies were deliberately closely shaped by the realities of his times; his non-economic justifications were “polemical-ideological�, rather than philosophical or historical in the formal sense of these disciplines; and, of course, there were the ever shifting coalitions between Keynes and the different political parties: all characteristics defined by Gramsci.
Two of Gramsci’s criteria particularly stick out. Firstly, we can see the beginning of Keynes’ Third Wayism in gradations from at least 1924 (a few short years after he first met Sraffa and, implicitly, Gramsci), when he wrote his famous essay on “The End of Laissez-faireâ€?, through until he finally developed The General Theory itself, which ushered in a qualitatively new form of state. Secondly, we can obviously see in Keynes himself the “great personalityâ€? par excellence. Nino would not have been surprised to know that Skidelski sub-titled the second volume in his biography of Maynard “The Economist as Saviourâ€?.
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We’ll probably never know if Keynes’ intellectual trajectory was influenced in any way at all by Gramsci through Sraffa, but it’s a nice thought for Gramsci and Keynes fans to play with. Fourteen months after the publication of The General Theory, Nino was dead. Devoted Piero visited the little, quietly spoken, Sardinian colossus for the last time on 25 March 1937, four weeks before he passed away of tuberculosis of the spine and lungs, among numerous other agonising diseases and disabilities, at 4.10 am on 27 April aged 46, too ill to be moved from his cell, even though his prison sentence (less remissions) had expired on 20 April. Cremated the following afternoon, his ashes are buried in Rome.
Maynard was of course also seriously ill by this time, even though he still had much to do, including rescuing Piero from an internment camp on the Isle of Man, where he was taken in 1940 after being arrested for holding an Italian passport. Piero, as was traditional, responded on his return to Cambridge by setting up a secret ‘War Circus’ with Kahn and Kaldor to workshop Maynard’s new world-changing policy responsibilities.
Four years later, that great admirer of Keynes’ originality, and mighty intellectual tower in his own right, Marc Bloch, was felled in a French meadow by a Gestapo firing squad, around 9 pm on 16 June 1944, aged 58. Two years later, also aged 58, Keynes’ great heart gave up around 10 am on 21 April 1946, the day being, suitably, Easter Sunday. His memorial service concluded with Blake’s magnificent Jerusalem.
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Piero lived to the ripe old age of 85. In 1960, the year before he won the pre-Nobel prize, he sparked tremendous arguments that remain unfinished to this day when he published his final, slim masterwork, The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. The work was hailed by Maurice Dobb as Capital Vol. IV because it solved the transformation problem that had so bedeviled Marx’s legacy, even though Piero characteristically refused the title and only scantly (if tantalisingly) referred to the connection. Piero never explicitly mentioned the transformation problem in his book, and never published anything on Marxism, despite being recognised as the resident Cambridge Marxian expert.
Piero stayed on in various capacities at Cambridge, until he retired in 1973, living out his final years in his rooms at Trinity College. Never having married and never even known to have had an affair, he had, perhaps, the profile of the perfect ‘secret intellectual agent’ to go between his two great friends.
The full collection of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, which Sraffa was of course the guiding hand in saving, was finally published for the ongoing amazement of the world in 1975. Soon after, Sraffa donated his copy of Capital Vol 1, signed by the author, to the Istituto Gramsci. The post-Keynesian stream of contemporary economic thought grew in his shadow.
Piero,”from whom nothing is hid”, died on 3 September 1983, hiding all his fabulous secrets right to the end. Movingly, John Eatwell read from Nino at the memorial service in Trinity Chapel on Saturday 19 November:
… the scientific works and great philosophical treatises that are the cornerstones of an historical epoch and a given society … must be overcome, either negatively, by demonstrating that they are without foundation, or positively, by opposing to them philosophical syntheses of greater importance and significance.
Did anyone do more to decree entirely new meanings, as Marc Bloch might have put it, more successfully in both these directions during the last century than Maynard, Nino and their brilliant and ever faithful mutual friend, Piero? Who really influenced who more?
“Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth”, wrote William Blake. When we think of The General Theory, as we are wont on its 70th anniversary, I like to believe it was made by all three of these guys and that they were good buddies … or, if Maynard would allow, comrades.
© Christopher Sheil 2006: permission for personal and non-commercial use only.
I don’t think Keynes was a ‘third wave’ man.
He was merely saving Capitalism from itself.
Sraffa, Kaleki, Robinson, Kaldor and the rest of the Cambridge cahoots all shared a similar attitude to recovering from a depression however they walked different paths after that.
Keynes was definitely a conservative after depression was gotten rid of. The Liberal party after-all was simply a conservative party with a social concience and a belief in social liberal policies as well.
CS
“Antonio (‘Nino’) Gramsci was another great thinker whose individuality is marked in virtually every sentence he wrote”.
Nice of you to bring up Gramsci (Nino) into the history lesson. I spat out my breakfast when I read this.
The Godfather, Nino, should only be known for helping to wreck the West’s education system. I was one of the lucky few in that the damage wasn’t permanent.
“get them young and you get them forever”, was this commi’s motto.
Godfather Nino was probably the worst export out of Italy other than Fiat cars. Thanks.
He’s the reason my kid can go into a uni lecture and be told by his lecturer that he/she is a Marxist and feel no fear of repisal by faculty.
Yep, we have come along way baby and the Godfather is repsonsible.
Any ohter gems, or is this the last one. If Bird catches you saying things like this he’ll fire up the barbecue and have you for Easter dinner.
If you continue in that angry way Joe, there will be very little more discussion.
CS
Relax. That wasn’t done in an angry tone at all!!!!
A few things were in jest.
OK Joe. It just read to me as a wild burst of anti-com prejudice. I’m relaxed.
Jest
Nice of you to bring up Gramsci (Nino) into the history lesson. I spat out my breakfast when I read this.
Yep, we have come along way baby and the Godfather is repsonsible.
Any ohter gems, or is this the last one. If Bird catches you saying things like this he’ll fire up the barbecue and have you for Easter dinner.
Real serious
The Godfather, Nino, should only be known for helping to wreck the West’s education system. I was one of the lucky few in that the damage wasn’t permanent.
“get them young and you get them forever�, was this commi’s motto.
Half serious, but with a touch of reality thrown in
He’s the reason my kid can go into a uni lecture and be told by his lecturer that he/she is a Marxist and feel no fear of repisal by faculty.
There. I’ve deconstructed the comment and there is no anger in this.
I don’t plan on allowing this thread to be derailed into anti-communist polemic Joe, but you seem to be drawing a comparison between communists and jesuits.
jc:
If Bird catches you saying things like this he’ll fire up the barbecue and have you for Easter dinner.
I sez - isn’t male bonding wonderful! And I wonder what Doctor Troppo would make of it all.
what is wrong with anti-commo prejudice Chris?
you seem to be getting very precious of late.
I’m not fond of prejudice of any sort, Homer, and never have been, so I don’t know what’s changed. Perhaps you?
More to the point, I would ask that comments stay more or less related to the content of the thread, which is not about communism, but TGT and its relations.
CS
He lead the Italian communist party for a time, before he was led to prison by the communists’ close relatives (in the 30’s). Family quarrels are the worst!
He wrote about about the indoctination of kids at an early age.
Demonstrating his importance to the commi movement old Joe wanted an exchange of political prisoners with the facists and Godfather Nino was one of the chosen few. So of ocurse his commi leanings have an important determinent on what is written about him.
I’m sorry if you think it doesn’t because it is important!
CS,
I happy to put my hand up as being prejudice against communism, murder, adultery, etal
I think Joe has a point.
only you could write about Keynes and Gramsci.
not Sraffa, Kalecki,Robinson or the other giants at Cambridge but Gramsci!
Joe, Nino was a communist, but so were a lot of people.
He was also an astonishingly original thinker who is admired for this by those interested in such people across the political spectrum (as an extreme example of a case where his brilliance completely defeated anti-communist prejudice, B A Santamaria regarded him as a genius, and said so frequently in his writing).
Gramsci was arrested when Mussolini extended his ban on opposition parties to the communist party deputies, the list being extended at about 8 pm on 8 November, and Nino being arrested on his way home at 10.30 pm.
The possibility of Gramsci’s release arose in 1932 as a consequence of negotiations between the Vatican and the Kremlin. It was long thought that Stalin vetoed the deal because Nino refused to follow the Stalinist line. More recent research has established that Mussolini intervened personally and rejected the proposal.
CS
This is like saying the fascists were good because the trains ran on time.
If a person makes their life in the communist movement that is first and foremost how they ought to be remembered. He was the leader of the communist movement and therefore that’s where he made his bed. The rest are footnotes.
For too long we have been beautifying commis. In view of the fact that this ideology brought death to millions of people around the world it shouldn’t be happening and be made just as disdainful as Nazism.
He may not have aware of what was going on in Moscow, although I have my doubts, but we do now.
This is like “Trot” wearing that offensive moniker as though it was a joke. It isn’t a joke and ought to be brought to book over it.
Mr Shiel,
I gather this is an area of expertise of yours.
If I can ask a selfish question relating to what my friend said.
Any chance of another thread writing about Sraffa,Robinson and the rest and Keynes.
I missed most of this when I studied at University. I have recently started to read Joan Robinson and have found much to my delight Homer was right.
She is a good writer and by no means a ‘lefty’.
Any chance of a thread showing their contribution and perhaps where they also depart?
Any recomendations on books from any of them as well?
Joe, the Cold War is over, so should be your rhetoric. This is not a post about communism, but you have now made your point, and I would ask you to please confine your further comments, however loosely, to the topic.
Homer Adonis, I have no intention of essaying on the other Cambridge cahoots. Joan of course owed her intellectual start on competition theory to Piero, who she loved dearly, and, as is often remarked, died a few days before him. There is an amusing story about how Joan always raved about The Production of Commodities from Commodities, but was never able to convince Piero that she understood it!
cs, I really enjoyed this post. I confess to being only vaguely familiar with the works of Keynes and Gramsci and not at all with Sraffa.
As for the polemic that has arisen in this thread….
To label all who joined, were labeled or attended a communist meeting as evil is a destructive form of intellectual mudslinging. I would not be so quick to dismiss the contribution of Gramsci to the history of philosophy in an extreme reaction against the peversion of Stalinism. There are plenty of people from the 1930s to today who would label themselves as socialists/marxists/communists yet share the level of revulsion of what was done in the name of workers under Stalin - just as many Germans would share a similar revulsion to that which was done by the Nazi’s in the ame of Germany.
So question his ideas but try to be a little more specific and less barbarian in your methodology people.
What a statement. That sentence has been playing in my head over and over this morning. Such a succinct way to admit you want to kill people for their ideas.
Anna
I totally agree with you. That same went though my head when a Cambodian told me about the horrors of living under Pol Pot and that like the Jews, no one ought to forget what was done to him and the family he never saw by communists. The man was a univerity professor.
Thanks Chris. I have been anxious about the possibility that Nino’s ideas would be killed off here again by some of the commenters, simply because he was a communist.
Yes Anna, it is chilling. There is a famous historical irony in all this, which is that only a month before his arrest, Gramsci had taken a stand against Stalin in writing, the letter showing that Nino foresaw the way in which Stalinism would inexorably lead to the liquidation of all opposition. The appalling irony is, as many have noted, that by shutting Nino up and keeping him shut up, in his long death sentence, Mussolini saved him from Stalin, and ultimately saved his ideas for the benefit of the world.
I liked this post as well cs. The ‘Third Way’ has been so discredited as a concept by Bush and Blair (and Latham?) it is worth reminding us of its powerful intellectual heritage. People who think that nothing more needs to be said about Gramsci once you know he was a communist are really doing violence to the whole history of twentieth century political, social and economic ideas. It is a strange position to take for people who claim to defend western civilisation - so they must be objective allies of al Qaida.
Nationalism should be taken seriously notwithstanding Hitler and Mussolini, just as Marxism should be taken seriously notwithstanding Stalin and Pol Pot, and Religion should be taken seriously notwithstanding Jerry Falwell and Osama bin Laden. These ideas created the world we live in.
But if you want to consider moral differences between political ideas consider Christopher Hitchens’ observation that while plenty of communists rejected Communism because it failed to live up to its ideals, no fascist rejected Fascism because it failed to live up to its ideals.
Gramsci was one of a number of 20th century intellectuals and ideologues who wrote their most famous works in prison. Others include Russell, Hitler, Bonhoeffer, Mandella and JH Abott.
Gramsci’s basic idea was to take on board, by the early thirties, the failure of the revolutionary international socialist (Trotskyite) Left movement. The radical Left was defeated in the First World by democratic labourists (eg Labor parties) and the Second World by dictatorial communists (eg Stalinist Bolsheviks).
Both the Broad Left (intellectual elites and industrial populus) of most nation states were mostly interested in getting their hands on economic power. But focus on money power reduced the overall radical potential of the working and under-classes. In both cases the broad Left was won over by national economistic parties, the labourists focusing on controlling the means of distribution, the communists focusing on owning the means of production.
Gramsci’s conclusion was to focus on “culturalism”, as opposed to economism. This meant that radical intellectuals and ideologues should concentrate on owning and controlling the means of cognition, through the “long march through [cultural] institutions”.
This idea was taken up by the New Left in the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian revolt and the conservative tendencies of trade unions in the post war era. The discovery of the Young Marx’s cultural philosophy books reinforced this change of political strategy.
The New Left believed that the working class were not to be trusted - to petty bourgeois in their attitudes once their bellies were full. The focus of political agit-prop had to be changed to marginalised members of the underclass - women, coloureds, ethnics, gays.
This strategy was a tremendous success through the period 1965-95. It is only in the past decade that Buckley’s cultural conservatives have clawed back the gains made by Gramsci’s cultural constructives.
In that sense, Gramsci was the intellectual godfather of the (post-modern) Cultural Wets. Its way past time that he be discreetly interred to allow the Left to undergo one of its periodic reconstructive spasms.
There is some wisdom in those words Jack, but not all the way through.
I might, purely for the sake of the argument, allow your interpretation of the so-called ‘New Left” (there are, now, several generations of ‘New Lefts’), but your summary of Gramsci’s thought - like that of many in the many New Lefts - is substantially deficient (I could - and would - argue at length). He was, above all, concerned to analyse the balance of political forces, so called ‘culturalist’ or not, and the relationship between the state and civil society. I dare say we could do with a damn sight more analyses along these lines these days, not less. What, after all, is less than practically zero? Perhaps you might cite which of Nino’s many essays you are referring to. Alternatively, more study recommended.
PS Who is friggin’ JH Abott?
Further Jack, while you are looking up the texts, where did you get the idea that Nino surrendered to Lenin’s notion of economism? While he agreed it was a tendency (in some senses an inevitable tendency), he argued, against both Lenin and Michels, that workplace pressures would be a regular “reagent dissolving bureaucratism.” It would be wrong, also, to think that Gramsci ever turned his back on Trotsky’s contributions - this was one of his disagreements with Stalin, however silly he thought his comrade’s idea of ‘permanent revolution’ (I add, mindful that this could be material to a certain descendant blogger).
Knowing bugger all about the people in this story, this creation, takes little away from the joy of its attempt.
Rather, it appears that to know more than bugger all is to jerk a few knees, as Chris obviously expected. Shame; it’s a piece worthy of further input.
More than once has an essential revolutionary thought been born of several minds, without clear collusion between them, and this has to be taken into account while invited to entertain the concept Chris has placed.
It’s often as though the nature of the times lived itself forces the issue, from above so to speak, to be taken by certain minds made in part receptive from events below, and given expression - and yet in that very process we are asked to explore more then that collusion need not be so clear for it to exist in some way. Already quoted:..in which he does not, from the beginning, expropriate terms, usually pretty well established, in order to decree entirely new meanings for them, meanings which sometimes vary from work to work, but, in any case, depart from current usage, this could well speak of but one person undergoing this process.
“I must invent my own system”, Blake said more succinctly, “or be enslaved by another man’s”. And that may well speak of why some feel so potently the need to undergo it.
Perhaps indeed Gramsci was the ghost in Keynes’ genius. Scholars I hope do accept Chris’s invitation, and engage in further exploration for perhaps some empirical evidence for how this could be so. Unscholarly, my humble input is to suggest that the unspoken collective process of (to them) unique individual expression to be also valid in the exploration. That is, does the collusion between Gramsci and Keynes have to be clear, empirical? Can the brainiacs here explore the supposition in wider terms?
Why? I reckon it’s terrific a piece has been thoughtfully crafted to challenge historical traditions and provide a new [I trust it’s new] and unique concept.
And this: “Everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth”, offered as it was in conclusion, could well suggest our explorative author, given rightly to the understanding that individual creativity is an act of collectivity or collusion at some level, has not only justified the concept introduced - in his own terms, and fair enough, that it can be introduced - but has sought also to drag revolutionary thoughts from history and combine them as part of that image to write up today a wonderful new one of his own.
Good on you, Chris. I hope it gets a good working through, and is enjoyed for having been placed.
Very nice, learned and informative post, cs.
Two questions for Jack Strocchi:
Forgive my lamentable ignorance. Who is/was JH Abott?
And secondly, isn’t your comment reinscribing a (not even slightly inverted a la Engels) idealistic vs. materialist “dialectic”? In other words, you yourself are (vis a vis the “Cultural Wets”) something of a materialist and dare I say economist and you see yourself as such yet not being in the slightest bit aware that your culturalist discourse is pre-eminently idealist and (just quietly) a tad Gramscian?
Would you agree with this proposition?
Shorter Jack Strocchi: “It’s all about the superstructure, culture warriors”…?
I now see cs got there first with the JH Abott wtf?
Many thanks Robert (it certainly is brand spanking new, as far as I know: although I would be delighted to discover that these relations have been explored by someone else).
Yes, Kim, Gramsci’s thought is a many splendid thing, not given to easy explanation, difficult to summarise and, I think, impossible to exhaust. Virtually everything is in Gramsci somewhere (except JH Abott - was he Tone’s dad?).
Is he referring to Jack Abbott. Author of: In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison(1981).
Uh OK, well I know who Jack Abbott is, via having read Norman Mailer’s Executioner’s Song and he did have a book of letters from prison published but I’m not seeing the relevance really. http://www.answers.com/topic/jack-henry-abbott
Neither an intellectual or an ideologue, just a thug.
Gawd. I’ll pass on Jack’s murderous and suicidal Jack Abbott, but - of course - I’d recommend Gramsci’s Prison Letters (not to be confused with his Notebooks) for a stimulating, intimate, and at times excrutiatingly sad, portrait of an exceptional imprisoned man.