Page 31 - summer 22

Indeed, both fascist dictators used the fear of communism as a propaganda device to

frighten people into supporting them, and this proved highly effective.

Marx’s predictions had gone seriously awry. Fascism was not in the script. Many
Marxist intellectuals were forced to conclude that a re-think was needed. This would
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have a dramatic impact on 20 century politics, both in theory and in practice.

The great re-appraisal
The great re-think about Marxism came from two main sources: Antonio Gramsci, a

leading Italian communist, activist and intellectual imprisoned by Mussolini; and a
group of brilliant German intellectuals and researchers associated with the Frankfurt
School (though they were forced into exile during the Nazi era, first to Geneva, then
Paris, then New York and Colombia University). They included Theodore Adorno, Max
Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. Walter Benjamin, a brilliant freelance critic and
intellectual, was affiliated to them. This diverse group focused their minds on the key
questions of the age.

The Frankfurt School called their approach, based on rigorous multi-disciplinary
enquiry, “critical social theory”. This was later shortened to “critical theory” or even
just “theory”. Although it grew out of Marxism, it went through several
transformations. George Lukacs and Karl Korsch were the first writers to suggest that
it was wrong to apply Marx’s ideas mechanically and rigidly, as if they were a branch
of science that meant everything would inevitably happen exactly as he said (an
accusation that was increasingly directed at Stalinists). These critics questioned

Marx’s economic determinism, the fundamental idea that economics drove history
regardless of human will or decision. The proletarian revolution, said Marx, wasn’t
just desirable, it was inevitable. But critics now argued that changing historical
circumstances meant that you had to adapt Marxism. Marx himself would probably
have agreed, though orthodox Marxists might dispute this.

Gramsci and hegemony
Gramsci took up this challenge. A founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party,
he was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1926. At his trial the prosecutor said, “For 20 years

we must stop this brain from working.” Denied medical care, Gramsci’s health
collapsed; he was eventually released to a clinic, where, still denied proper
treatment, he died in 1937. The great irony is that his Prison Notebooks, often
written in cryptic form, became one of the key writings of modern times. They were
published in 1971, all 30 notebooks, with 3,000 pages of notes. Through them,
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Gramsci had a major impact on 20 century thought.