This morning I found the following passage in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks which might be applicable to an aspect of Australia’s republic debate:
Thus it is not a question of the people who “have the brains” feeling that they are being reduced to the level of the lowest illiterate, but rather one of people who think they are the ones with the brains wanting to take away from the “man in the street” even that tiniest fraction of power of decision over the course of national life which he possesses.
The section of The Modern Prince in which this quote appears can be found here.
Interesting….
once the “common folk” have some measure of “say” in how things are run, they [we] don’t give this up lightly. No, we bloody hang on to it. Now and then we feel the urge to extend our say.
I think this is apposite to the grumblings about the 2020 Peak. Every citizen had the chance to peek at the Peak. But having a say? No way.
And now some participants are saying the discussions were not adequately represented in the summaries. Not so much because of a necessary precis, but because of wilful distortion. Even “smuggling” in new things that hadn’t been discussed at all …..
One thing puzzles me about this Antonio character. Elsewhere in the extract he writes:
“What is measured is precisely the effectiveness, and the expansive and persuasive capacity, of the opinions of a few individuals, the active minorities, the élites, the avante-gardes, etc. — i.e. their rationality, historicity or concrete functionality. Which means it is untrue that all individual opinions have “exactly” equal weight. Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously “born” in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion — a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.”
He’s writing about ‘one-person-one-vote’ and the fact that some of the citizens are more influential than others….. but hang on a tick! Was he invited to the 2020 Peak? No? An old geezer is he? What, dead you say?? Well why on earth is he writing about the influences of IDEAS on the polity and the state?
Didn’t he know that IDEAS were going to be practically INVENTED far off in the future, in far away Australia, in 2008??!! I mean, really! What would he know? The guy was obviously a dill.
If Leninism is the answer then what the hell was the question again?
I would like to think that the vast majority of the leftists here are small ‘l’ democratic and libertarian socialists and not authoritarians.
Perhaps I was misinformed?
My slogan for an Australian Republic:
Minimalism of the intellect, maximalism of the will.
Good to see that quote being attributed properly for a change.
the one you just quoted yourself , Paul? I am confused.
As a sort of counter to the presented…what was happening in the U.S.A. at the time between say 1900 and 1932!?.Isnt that the period when MacArthur took some orders to kill returnees from a war,because they dare ask for the money they were owed,and would receive sometime on in very small dollops.In my haste,I cut up an old book of U.S.A. history to show someone the beginning of a particular strand of thinking in U.S.A. politics,that started with Booth, stand in or killer of…and there is a worry that………So there are many ways to leave the voters as sort of mugs.Grams would be certainly a word that may still be influencing outcomes in the U.S.A. And white anting prospects anew.Be careful Andrew N. its like you are issuing signals.And the bastards have used me more than once.
Not sure how Gramsci helps, Paul. Yes, the ARM has basically told us that they control the debate now, and tell us they have the model. Gramsci predicts something like this: “the standardisation of broad masses of the population”, and then the formation of a ‘party’ which itself becomes an ‘elite’ who feel that ‘have the brains’ etc, etc. But didn’t we know that already? Hasn’t the Republican debate already been hijacked by ‘the brains’ who need to explain to us mortal plebs why we can’t have a say in the selection of the president? Aren’t we seeing “cultural hegemony” here in its rawest form - that you can’t have a directly elected president because, well, you won’t understand why?
Yes, Gramsci predicted all of this, but how does that help us now?
Minimalism of the intellect, maximalism of the will.
Mmmm - really?
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The problem as I see it is that under our system what is true of America - that there’s no intermediate step between a supreme court decision and a coup d’etat - does not apply. This is because of an external authority which is archaic naturally - the House Windsor. But unlike most monarchs the Queen never makes policy. She simply rubber stamps a recommendation for an office bearer who’s sole function is to rubber stamp the government and dissolve it in the event of things going FUBAR.
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Our problem with the Republic is that we need to develop a viable alternative to this. One as good or even better. I didn’t think the model that was proposed last decade was one such. But I do think the concern about a popularly elected President’s mandate, especially given the American influence on this country, is invalid either.
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We are ignoring this question in our enthusiasm for a Republic and behaving as if it’s now or never.
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I actually think it inevitable and am in no rush. Eventually the generations for which the monarchy has significant meaning will be gone and there will be no reason to hang on to this anachronism. In fact I’d be surprised if the English still indulged it by century’s end.
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So if we’re gonna be a Republic let’s be a good one ‘ey?
Laura, I was paraphrasing the slogan “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” which is commonly attributed to Gramsci, but was actually coined by the French socialist author Romaine Rolland.
“So if we’re gonna be a Republic let’s be a good one ‘ey?”.
Why not have 6 presidents ?
One for each state ? This Council can be a collective head of state - the power isn’t vested in one person.One could be voted the chairperson for each year.
The Swiss appear to get along quite well with a similar system . Then we can have different figure heads at different locations at the same time - each person attending to their own patch so to speak. The voters may feel more comfortable with a ‘local ‘ president and swinging the states on board might be easier in any constitutional change.
As a collective they can weigh in profoundly on long term goals and if they disagree then they will probably only be reflecting the reality of diverse opinions among us.
Professor Rat said:
“If Leninism is the answer then what the hell was the question again?”
Gramsci was not a leninist. He is the originator of western marxism as opposed to the leninist eastern form. They are somewhat distinct.
We have a democratic system to elect our governmental representatives, as Gramsci advocates. How does this really relate to the republic issue? The argument for an indirect model is more about the quality of candidate than assumed intellectual capacity of the elites or masses. Assuming the president is roughly the same as the governor general, they have the ability to dismiss the prime minister.
Simply, in a direct election you have people nominate and run a campaign to be elected. Consequently you get a politician. The indirect model, such as what we have now in appointing the GG, means you get a disinterested party.
It is not a question of the intelligence of the voting public or trying to hand power into the hands of elites, rather preventing a position which should be outside of politics to be kept out of the hands of elites and those with agendas.
But if it is truly ‘outside’ of politics, it matters little who gets to be there and how they arrive.
The position is not course, ‘outside of politics’ as the events of 1975, prove. And that is the point. The question is the kind of politics that the selection process and its likely results both points to and institutionalises.
I support a Republic, but not just any old Republic, and certainly not the notion of a single HoS, whether elected by the people, or appointed by our democratically elected elites, having the power to dissolve Parliament, or otherwise tamper with the deliberations and results of an elected Assembly such as the House of Representatives. Not now, not ever. I am perfectly happy to wait, and if necessary vote against, any model that does not reform the essentailly undemocratic nature of the current HoS arangements.
The problem lies less in who happens to occupy the position, than it does in the unreformed nature of the Office itself and while direct election is fundamental to proper process (at least in my opinion), reform of the Office itself remains the real political question.
Our constitution has two roles in relation to the head of state: the Queen and her representative the Governor-General. One of the main problems with the republic debate is that there is an assumption that there must be ONE role in a republic to take the place of both the Queen and the GG. We could still have two roles with regard to the head of state in a republic by keeping the office Governor-General as it is now and then regularly electing Australians to take the role that the Queen has now. That would keep the elected role ceremonial and out of politics. The reserve powers would continue to reside with the GG as they do now, and you could expect the elected head of state to be as remote from everyday politics as the Queen is now. This approach also entails minimal changes to the text of the constitution.
The assumption that we have to roll two roles into one is the main problem for the republican movement. Given that assumption they present an either/or situation of either an appointed head of state or a powerful elected one. Given that choice conseervatives have said that they will ONLY opt for an appointed head of state. But you can have BOTH an appointed Governor-General with the reserve powers (you could rename the position as the Vice-President if you like) and you can have a ceremonial elected head of state, or a state’s council as mentioned by murf the snurf above, or whatever. There are many options once the basic problem with republican models is identified. There are TWO roles in the Constitution in relation to the head of state - not one.
This isn’t true at all! Gramsci was most certainly a Leninist. Case in point is the section in the Prison Notebooks “The Modern Prince” in which he declares that only the revolutionary party is a viable vehicle for the working class. See also Giuseppe Fiori’s incredible biography of him. In fact, Gramsci was for a time the leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), as Leninist as one could be.
“Western Marxism” is not opposed to Leninism or an “Eastern Form” by any means. Gramsci, Lukacs, Korsch: all of these so-called Western Marxists certainly attempted to reinsert political agency/contingency into the economistic sphere of determination/necessity, but so too did Lenin. In fact, Gramsci wrote of Lenin’s anti-economistic party action as “The Revolution Against Capital” (”Capital” here signifying determinism/economism.) Gramsci was a life-long opponent of bourgeois social-democracy. Only recently have liberal European political theorists like Bobbio and Mouffe attempted to coopt “the good Gramsci” and eradicate “the Leninist Gramsci.” This would be like a Marxist selectively employing John Rawls or Richard Rorty in her work: it’s a contradiction in terms.
I don’t think you’d find a serious writer on the planet who would agree that Gramsci was not a Leninist!
I will go along with a *Western* interpretation of Gramsci… along the lines of Ruhle and Mattick. ( They both agreed the Eastern version was deathly fascist.)
This still leaves us plenty of BETTER Marxists than Gramsci for our purposes.
Bernstein, Kautsky, Juares for starters…then there’s Otto Ruhle and Paul Mattick themselves. I would have thought Orwell, Camus and many others would be even better still in present mixed ( democratic and libertarian socialist) company.
So why drag in dead cats like Gramsci?
Or that reified Hungarian Lukacs?
What a stiff!
Authoritarian Marxism may have had a second-life with the Neocon’s but its surely the last cane-toad ideology we need here. NO MORE DISSOLVING THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLIES LENINISTS!
For Bakunin’s sake.