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chapter 19
Gramsci and the Rise of Capitalism
Yohann Douet
1
Introduction
The problem of the origins of capitalism and of the transition from feudalism
to capitalism is much debated among contemporary Marxists, particularly in
relation to the works of Robert Brenner, Ellen Meiksins Wood and the tradition of ‘Political Marxism’. But Gramsci’s ideas on this question have been little
studied. Of course, Gramsci does not give any systematic theory regarding this
question; and he almost never uses the word ‘capitalism’. Yet, several relevant
elements may be found in the Prison Notebooks.
To better grasp the significance of these elements, we can use the theoretical framework of Ellen Meiksins Wood, which is summarised in The Origin of
Capitalism.1 She distinguishes between two main models for the rise of capitalism: the ‘commercialisation’ model (the most popular, even among Marxists),
and the model of ‘Political Marxism’, to which she adheres. According to the
commercialisation model, the rise of capitalism is explained by the gradual
extension of markets, which outgrows feudal fetters, with at some point, eventually, a bourgeois revolution. Thus, the transition is supposed to be an urban
phenomenon, and the urban bourgeoisie is the main agent of this process.
Moreover, it is conceived as a linear process: there is no qualitative break
between capitalism and the preceding mode of production, only a quantitative
growth of trade, urban population, etc. This model is inspired by Adam Smith; it
was proposed, for example, by the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne; and many
Marxists, including Marx himself (at any rate before he started writing Capital), have used it. Brenner and Wood, however, have devised an alternative
model, drawing particularly on Marx’s conception of primitive accumulation.
For them, the origin of capitalism is not just a quantitative extension of markets, but a qualitative modification of the social relations of production. Capitalism happened because English agrarian producers became, in the course of
the sixteenth century, dependent on the market for their reproduction. Thus,
subsistence economy was no longer possible, and the surplus extraction was
1 Wood 2002.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004417694_021
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no longer direct (as it is under a feudalist mode of production, for example),
but was carried out through market mechanisms. This process started in the
countryside (the English countryside) and not in the cities, and the urban bourgeoisie was not at its centre. There is actually not a single class driving the process: on the contrary it can be explained by the class struggle between several
actors – the landowners, the farmers, and the direct producers (the agrarian
proletariat). Indeed, the producers became dependent on the market because
of the result of class struggle: the producers were not completely victorious,
so they did not get the ownership of their lands like in France; and they were
not completely defeated, so they could escape serfdom, unlike in East Europa
where a second phase of serfdom took place. That is why they had to sell ‘freely’
their labour force to capitalist farmers, in order to survive.
Gramsci’s reflections about the transition from feudalism to capitalism have
probably not influenced the dichotomy between these two models. But we can
try to characterise his ideas in relation to them.2 It seems that from a strictly
economic point of view, Gramsci shares the main assumptions of the commercialisation model. But if we take into account other elements, such as politics
and ideology, he obviously considers as well the idea of a qualitative break
in social relations. To study these points in greater detail, I will briefly sketch
Gramsci’s conception of feudalism. Then, I will examine several dimensions of
the transition: economic, political, and ideological. Finally, I will try to integrate these different elements into a whole. Indeed, for Gramsci, these different
dimensions must be conceived in their ‘organic unity’. Maybe that is why, in
order to understand the transition, Gramsci favours the concept of ‘historical
bloc’ (by which he refers to social totality) over the concept of ‘mode of production’.
1.1
Gramsci’s Conception of Feudalism
We can try to reconstruct Gramsci’s conception of the Middle Ages and feudalism. In such a system, the economy is organised around agriculture. There are
two main landowning social groups: the military aristocracy (which
is characnon-matching parenthesis
terised by its ‘monopoly of military technical capacity’3 and the clergy (which
2 A dialogue between Gramsci and Political Marxism can be found in Morton 2007a, chapter 3
(State Formation, Passive Revolution and International System). In particular, drawing on
Gramsci, the author argues that in certain historical situations the rise of capitalism has to be
understood as a process directed by the State, that is, as a passive revolution. We do not discuss this thesis here, mainly because it does not relate to the rise of capitalism in general, but
to the entry into capitalist modernity of relatively belated countries, according to the theory
of unequal and combined development.
3 Gramsci 1996b, Q4 §49, p. 199.
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‘exercised the feudal ownership of land in the same way as the nobility, and
which was economically on a par with the nobility’). Using Political Marxist
vocabulary, we can say that ‘economic exploitation’ is implemented by ‘extraeconomic means’: politico-military coercion and religious ideology.
In these conditions, the different social groups seem to lead separate lives,
with different cultures, and relatively autonomous political institutions:
… in the ancient and medieval state, both territorial and social (the one
is but a function of the other) centralization was minimal; in a certain
sense, the state was a ‘federation’ of classes: the subaltern classes had a
separate life, their own institutions, etc. (thus the phenomenon of ‘two
governments’ became extremely conspicuous during times of crisis).4
A third important feature of medieval social organisation is the dialectical tension between particularism (localism) and universalism (cosmopolitanism).
The political and cultural institutions are structured either at a universal (or
rather European) level, such as the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic
Church, or at a local level (feudal fiefdom, medieval Communes, etc.). In most
cases, the national level does not have any relevance.
Having said this, how are we to understand the transition from feudalism to
capitalism?
2
The Elements Explaining the Rise of Capitalism
2.1
The Rise of Capitalism as a Transition from Feudalism
First of all, we have to say that Gramsci, agreeing with Wood’s critique of the
‘commercialisation model’ on this point, refuses to understand capitalism as a
natural phenomenon, or as doomed to appear in history.
Thus, Gramsci rejects the notion of ‘ancient capitalism’, the idea that capitalism existed in ancient times. He discusses the writings of Corrado Barbagallo
on several occasions.5 He says that Barbagallo ‘set out to find in antiquity what
is essentially modern, such as capitalism and the phenomena related to it’.6
But, according to Gramsci, Barbagallo is wrong, because he mistakes ‘cash economy’ for ‘capitalism’. Marx had raised the same objection against Theodor
Mommsen. In other words, Gramsci accuses Barbagallo of falling into a tele4 Gramsci 1996b, Q3 §18, pp. 24–5.
5 For instance, in Q4 §60, and in a letter to Tania of 10 February 1930.
6 Gramsci 1996b, Q3 §112, p. 101.
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ological fallacy, which consists in projecting ‘capitalism’ backwards onto a time
when this concept did not apply. Wood uses the same kind of argument against
the ‘commercialisation model’ and its linear conception of the transition: she
contends that this model projects capitalist social relations, especially market
dependency, and its logic of production for profit, onto other periods. And the
authors advocating this model fall into such an error precisely because they
implicitly believe that capitalism is natural or necessary.
Gramsci also rejects Barbagallo’s claim that machines were used in ancient
times. In Q6, §156, he shows that the term ‘machine’ did not have the same
meaning in ancient times (when machines were only something that helped
manual workers) and under capitalist relations of production, where machines
have replaced workers and where workers have to serve these machines
(according to the logic of real subsumption).7
So, with these two points, Gramsci tells us that we must not overlook the
historical specificity of capitalist relations of production. From this specificity
we can infer that capitalism has a specific historical location, and then that its
rise must be conceived as a transition from feudalism. Let us now try and find
the reasons for this transition.8
2.2
Economic Factors
According to Gramsci, the ‘reaction’ against the feudal regime began after
the year 1000.9 For two or three centuries after that date, there was genuine economic prosperity and trade and agriculture expanded. Cities grew and
the bourgeoisie, the ‘new ruling class’, developed, especially in Italy10 and in
Flanders. Consequently, mainly in these two regions, medieval Communes
(autonomous city-states) flourished. These political entities were autonomous
from feudal powers (the Empire, the Lords, the Church), and were ruled by the
bourgeoisie.
7
8
9
10
Gramsci 2007a, pp. 117–18.
To deal with the problem of epochal changes in general terms, Gramsci uses on several
occasions Marx’s Preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’ and
draws on this text to elaborate his own theoretical framework (for example in Q13 §17).
It would be interesting to link this general theory to the specific question of the rise of
capitalism. But we cannot do it in this paper, for reasons of space.
Gramsci 1996b, Q5 §123, p. 362.
According to Michele Ciliberto 1991 (‘Rinascimento e riforma nei Quaderni di Gramsci’),
Gramsci conceives this period of prosperity as the ‘Renaissance’ in a broad sense of the
term (‘spontaneous Renaissance’) in contrast to a narrow sense of the term (‘cultural
Renaissance’ in which Renaissance refers to the cultural movement of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries). The first is a very progressive era, whereas the decline of Italy begins
with the second.
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When Gramsci refers to these different elements (economic prosperity, market expansion, growth of trade and of cities, rise of a new urban class), he
seems to be very close to the ‘commercialisation model’. This idea is supported
by the fact that he mentions favourably the Belgian historian Henri Pirenne
and his book Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade,11 which
is precisely considered by Wood as a classic version of the commercialisation
model.12
But the Communes did not transcend feudalism, even though they transferred power to the ‘communal’ bourgeoisie. As Gramsci writes,
… there was an organic transition from the Commune to a system that was
no longer feudal in the Low Countries,13 and there alone. In Italy, the Communes were unable to go beyond the corporative phase, feudal anarchy
triumphed in a form appropriate to the new situation and then came the
period of foreign domination.14
Then, the Communes declined, as well as the wealth of the cities.15 There was
no successful transition towards capitalism in Italy, although it was in Italy that
cities, trade and the urban bourgeoisie developed the most. So, it is clear that
the economic factor is not sufficient to explain the transition from feudalism
to capitalism.
What other elements do we have to take into account to explain this failed
transition to capitalism in Italy?
2.3
Political Factors
First of all, it seems that the Italian bourgeoisie did not transcend feudalism
because it was not able to go beyond its immediate economic interests. Indeed,
Gramsci conceives the Communes as the ‘economic-corporative phase of the
modern State’. This means that this kind of political entity was a tool directly
in the service of the urban bourgeoisie and its interests, which prevented it
from compromising with the interests of other classes. The lower urban classes
were not represented, and they were hard-pressed by taxes and the public
11
12
13
14
15
Pirenne 1946 [1927].
Wood 2002, pp. 12–13.
In Flanders.
Gramsci 1996b, Q5 §123, p. 363.
In Gramsci’s view, the Italian bourgeoisie was in decline from the fifteenth to the end of
the eighteenth century. On this point, we can note that Gramsci says that Italian intellectuals retained up to the end of the eighteenth century a ‘cosmopolitan function’.
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debt.16 Moreover, each Commune behaved towards the surrounding peasants
as a collective landlord. For instance, in the ‘contado’ system, the feudal rights
previously owned by the count were now exercised by a corporative bourgeois committee: but it imposed on peasants the same kind of oppression and
surplus extraction. As such, the Communes were just a new element in the
same feudal logic. In this sense, the bourgeoisie did not establish its hegemony over the whole society. The bourgeois State did not have the ‘consent
of the governed’, it was a dictatorship. Therefore, the bourgeoisie was not able
to develop.17
Consequently, the cities were not hegemonic over the countryside. There
was no territorial unity, and the feudal fragmentation of space (through local
privileges, custom barriers, etc.) remained the rule. On this point, Gramsci does
not think like Brenner and Wood that capitalist social relations come from the
countryside. But he insists on the fact that capitalism cannot be an exclusively
urban phenomenon: indeed, capitalism, if it wants to be stable, requires an
organic relation between the city and the countryside. And such a relation was
precisely missing in the Italy of the Communes.
That is probably a reason why the Communes were not able to go beyond
a local level of political organisation: the bourgeoisie did not develop on a
national scale and did not create a national political unity. Nor did it create
cultural unity since Italy was still divided into many dialects and cultures. That
is why Gramsci writes that the Communes did not transcend ‘feudal anarchy’.
These two factors, corporatism (in relation to the lower classes and to the
countryside) and localism, caused political instability, and hindered the expansion of capitalism. For capitalist social relations to develop, economic prosperity, commercialisation and urbanisation are not sufficient: an integral State
seems to be required (to guarantee security), and the society has to be an ‘integral society’ (to guarantee stability).18 For Gramsci, the medieval Communes
16
17
18
Gramsci 2007a, Q6 §13, p. 12: ‘the dominant class (… possessed the wealth and …) was
inclined to place the fiscal burden on the mass of the population by taxing consumption’.
Gramsci 2007a, Q6 §13, p. 13: ‘the bourgeoisie of the commune was unable to move beyond the economic corporative phase – unable, in other words, to create a state based on
“the consent of the governed” a state capable of further development’.
Cf. a letter to Tania of 7 September 1931 (Gramsci 1996a, p. 459): ‘This conception of the
role of intellectual clarifies, in my view, the reason or one of the reasons for the fall of the
medieval Communes, that is to say of the rule of an economic class which was not able to
create its own category of intellectuals and thus to exercise a hegemony rather than a mere
dictatorship. Italian intellectuals did not have any national-popular character, but a cosmopolitan character derived from the model of the Church: Leonard did not scruple to sell
the plans of the fortifications of Florence to the duke of Valentinois. The Communes were
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were neither the one nor the other.19 In medieval Italy, the bourgeoisie did not
create the superstructures corresponding to its structural domination because,
among other reasons, the bourgeoisie did not have any group of organic intellectuals who could have constructed such superstructures. Intellectuals did not
have any national-popular feeling and could not create the superstructures of
a national society (because, among other things, of ‘the cosmopolitan function
of Italian intellectuals’).
Indeed, Italy was characterised by the double universalism or, more exactly,
the double cosmopolitanism, of the Holy Roman Empire and of the Papacy.
Such a cosmopolitanism was, as we pointed out earlier, a defining feature of
feudalism. But it characterises Italy more than other regions of Europe: Italy
was the centre of the Roman Empire; it was constantly torn by wars involving
foreign powers and first of all the Holy Roman Empire; and most of all it was
where the Church had its headquarters.20 That is why Gramsci can write that
‘the communal bourgeoisie was unable to go beyond the corporative phase
and hence cannot be said to have created a state, whereas the Church and the
Empire were really the state’.21 So, in addition to corporatism and localism, a
third factor, cosmopolitanism or universalism, was opposed to the creation of
an ‘integral society’, which seems to be a significant condition for the development of capitalist social relations.
That is why absolute monarchy is a better frame for such a development than
the direct political power of the Italian bourgeoisie.22 Absolute national mon-
19
20
21
22
thus a corporative state which did not succeed in transcending this stage and becoming
the kind of integral State which Machiavel urged in vain’ [my translation, YD].
Gramsci 2007a, Q6 §43, p. 35: ‘By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the spirit of initiative of Italian merchants had declined; people preferred to invest the wealth they had
acquired in landed property and to have a secure income from agriculture rather than
risk their money again in foreign expeditions and investments. But how did this happen? There were several contributing factors: the extremely fierce class struggles in the
communal cities, the bankruptcies caused by the insolvency of the royal debtors (… the
non-matching parenthesis
absence of a great state that could protect its citizens abroad – in other words, the fundamental cause resided in the very structure of the commune, which was incapable of
developing into a great territorial state’.
Gramsci 2007a, Q8 §21, p. 248: ‘The reason for the successive failures of the attempts to
create a national-popular creative will is to be found in the existence of certain classes
and in the particular character of other classes, conditioned by the international position
of Italy (holy seat of the universal church). This position determined an internal situation
that can be called “economic-corporative” that, politically, is a particular form of anarchic
feudalism’.
Gramsci 1996b, Q5 §147, p. 395.
Gramsci 2007a, Q6 §52, p. 39: ‘only an absolute monarchy could resolve the problems of
the time’.
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archy is the structure which enables bourgeois development and organisation.
Indeed, under absolute monarchy, the political space is organised on a national
scale. And, in its struggle against aristocracy, the bourgeoisie draws closer to
the people, and has to construct its hegemony. That is why there has been a
development of such a hegemony in France and not in Italy, even though the
economic growth of the bourgeoisie was slower in France than in Italy.23
From all this, we can infer that a national-popular unity, an integral society
and an integral State constitute an environment which fosters the expansion of
capitalist relations of production, and that without such an environment, the
bourgeoisie and its economic activity are doomed to decline. So, the formation
of a kind of ‘national-popular collective will’ is a significant element in explaining the rise of capitalism. But such a formation does not only require political
conditions (a national State). It also requires specific cultural conditions.
2.4
Cultural, Religious and Ideological Factors
I think that another significant element was missing in Italy:24 The Reformation, which is part of another series of factors, that is, religious and cultural
factors.
Gramsci discusses authors who deal with the historical link between religions and the rise of capitalism. In Q11, §12, he refers to Bernard Groethuysen’s
book, The Origins of Bourgeois Spirit in France, which insists on the religious
origins of bourgeois culture. And he also mentions, of course, Max Weber’s The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which he had read in prison in 1931
and 1932.25
Gramsci, in agreement with Weber, considers that the Protestant Reformation is an important cause of the modernisation of European societies, and
more precisely of the transition to capitalism.26 In Q7, §44 Gramsci writes that
23
24
25
26
Gramsci 1996b, Q5 §123, p. 366: ‘Another bundle of contradictions: in Italy, in fact, the
innovative movement after 1000 was much more violent than in France, and in economic
terms the class at the forefront of that movement expanded earlier and more powerfully
than it did in France, and it also managed to overthrow the domination of its enemies;
this did not occur in France’.
This element was, however, present in the Low Countries, which may explain why there
was an ‘organic transition’ beyond feudalism there but not in Italy.
This work was published in the ‘Nuovi Studi’ from May 1931 to October 1932.
The idea that the Reformation promoted initiative and modernisation was very popular
in Italy at the time of Gramsci. A movement called neo-Protestantism defended the view
that Italy needed a religious Reform in order to modernise itself. Gramsci also thought that
Italy needed a Reform, but not a religious one: an intellectual and moral Reform, provided
by the philosophy of praxis. For more on this movement, see Frosini 2010a, pp. 251–2.
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the Reformation shaped the ‘ideology of nascent capitalism’.27 And it seems
to have been able to do so because of the rational character of Protestantism
and because of the new conception of Grace it promotes, two things on which
both Weber and Gramsci agree. Indeed, Gramsci writes that the Reformation
determined ‘a new attitude toward life, an active attitude of enterprise and initiative’:28 he seems to share with Weber the view that Calvinism acted as a psychological boost to economic activity. It is probably the case. Another aspect
of Protestantism (of Protestantism as a whole, and not only of Calvinism) was
probably even more decisive in Gramsci’s view: the fact that Protestantism created a national-popular collective will – which, as we saw, plays a fundamental
part in the transition.
Indeed, the main difference between Catholicism and Protestantism which
is relevant here is the fact that the latter constituted a vast national-popular
religious movement. The Reformation was a reaction against Catholic
cosmopolitanism: it began with the translation of the Bible into German
by Luther. It was also a reaction against the hierarchical organisation of religion which was the monopoly of the ruling class (at least of one of its parts, the
Clergy).
In Q16, §9, Gramsci sums up these two elements (the Weberian one and the
‘national-popular’ one):29
Calvinism, with its harsh conception of Grace and its harsh discipline, did
not favour the free search for knowledge and the cult of beauty either, but
it acquired the role, by interpreting, developing and adapting the concept
of Grace into that of vocation, of energetically promoting economic life,
production and the increase of wealth.30
27
28
29
30
Gramsci 2007a, Q7 §44, p. 193: ‘The historic-cultural node that needs to be sorted out in
the study of the Reformation is the transformation of the concept of grace from something
that should “logically” result in the greatest fatalism and passivity into a real practice of
enterprise and initiative on a world scale that was [instead] its dialectical consequence
and that shaped the ideology of nascent capitalism. But now we are seeing the same
thing happening with the concept of historical materialism. For many critics, its only
“logical” outcome is fatalism and passivity, in reality, however, it gives rise to a blossoming
of initiatives and enterprises that astonish many observers’ (Gramsci notes in Q8 §231,
Gramsci 2007a, p. 376, that ‘Catholic mentality’ prevents an understanding of such a phenomenon).
Ibid.
Gramsci 1971a, p. 394.
This first part of the quotation is an extract from Croce. But Gramsci seems to agree with
him on this point.
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The Lutheran Reformation and Calvinism created a vast national-popular
movement through which their influence spread: only in later periods did
they create a higher culture. The Italian reformers were infertile of any
major historical success.
But the phase of popular development enabled the protestant countries
to resist the crusade of the Catholic armies tenaciously and victoriously.
Thus there was born the German nation as one of the most vigorous in
modern Europe.
So, the religious factor is significant in explaining the transition to capitalism.31
But it is not only because Calvinism promoted individual initiative through
psychological mechanisms, as Weber argues. It is also because the Reformation
produced an ideological effect which caused the formation of national-popular
blocs and of integral States and societies. The national-popular character of
Protestantism is obviously opposed to the cosmopolitan character of Catholicism: and we have seen that such cosmopolitanism was partly responsible for
the historical stagnation of Italy. Therefore, unlike what happened in Italy, the
Reformation helped to create superstructures adequate to the development of
capitalist relations of production.
We have thus three series of factors determining the rise of capitalism: economic, political and ideological. None of these factors is immediately determining (for example, capitalism did not rise in Spain in spite of the existence
of an absolute monarchy); and they are not necessarily required (there was
no absolute monarchy in the Low Countries). In other words, there is no direct nexus between national absolute monarchy, Reformation and the rise of
capitalism, but only complex relationships that allow for different mediations
and combinations: for example, in France, the Enlightenment played the role
of the Reformation; in Germany, the Reformation did not directly cause the
rise of capitalism: it established the ground on which it could take root, but
only centuries later. That is why we now have to see how Gramsci conceives
the interaction and the unity of the different factors.
31
Positively in the case of the Reformation, negatively in the case of the Catholic Church.
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Capitalist Society as a Complex Totality: The Concept of ‘Historical
Bloc’
3.1
Machiavelli as a Thinker of Capitalism?
To conceive the articulation between the different dimensions we described
(above), we can study what Gramsci says about Machiavelli’s economic
thought. Indeed, for Gramsci, Machiavelli is a theoretician of the modern State
and culture. So, what he says about the economy in this context can perhaps
teach us a little about the links between new political institutions and the new
mode of production.
In Q8, §162,32 Gramsci writes:
If it is true that mercantilism is [merely] economic policy insofar as it
cannot presuppose a ‘determinate market’ or the existence of a prior ‘economic automatism,’ the elements of which emerge historically only at a
certain stage of the development of a world market is obvious that economic thought cannot be blended into general political thought, that
is, into the concept of the state and the forces that are supposed to be
its components. If one can show that Machiavelli’s goal was to create
links between the city and the country and to broaden the role of the
urban classes – to the point of asking them to divest themselves of certain feudal-corporative privileges with respect to the countryside, in order
to incorporate the rural classes into the state – one will also be able to
show that, in theory, Machiavelli had implicitly gone beyond the mercantilist phase and evinced traits of a ‘physiocratic’ nature. In other words,
Machiavelli was thinking of the political social milieu presupposed by
classical economics.
First of all, this extract teaches us that the laws of motion of capitalism (‘economic automatism’) can be fully efficient only if this mode of production has
expanded on an international scale (if a ‘world market’ exists). Whether or
not Gramsci considers that the Mediterranean economic system (in the case
of Italy) and the transatlantic trade (in the case of Flanders) constitute such
a ‘world market’ remains unclear. What is certain is that Gramsci brings up
another prerequisite for a stable capitalist mode of production: the existence
of a ‘political-social milieu’. It is because Machiavelli advocated the elaboration
of such a ‘milieu’ that Gramsci can compare him to the ‘physiocrats’ (the first
32
Gramsci 2007a, p. 327.
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economists who favoured production over distribution). Indeed, Machiavelli
has stressed the importance of unity between the cities and the countryside,
and between the bourgeoisie and other classes. In other words, the ‘milieu’
required by capitalism is what Gramsci calls elsewhere an ‘integral State’ and
an ‘integral society’. That is to say, a system of superstructures (of political and
cultural institutions) which would not be strictly ‘economic-corporative’, but
would seek to obtain, to some extent, the ‘consentment of the governed’.
This notion of ‘milieu’ indicates that Gramsci rejects any pluralist explanation of the rise of capitalism. Indeed, a ‘milieu’ has to be thought in its organic
unity with what it conditions. We can therefore say that capitalism was not
caused by a plurality of factors mutually independent from each other. On the
contrary, the economic, ideological and political factors we distinguished analytically above must be grasped in their organic unity.
3.2
The Historical Bloc
The concept of ‘historical bloc’ is precisely used by Gramsci to refer to such a
complex unity, in the perspective of a non-reductionist conception of social
totality. In Q7, §21, he introduces the concept of ‘historical bloc’ as follows:33
Marx also stated that a popular conviction often has as much energy as a
material force, or something similar, and it is very important. The analysis
of these statements, in my view, lends support to the concept of ‘historical
bloc’ in which in fact the material forces are the content and ideologies
are the form. This distinction between form and content is just heuristic
because material forces would be historically inconceivable without form
and ideologies would be individual fantasies without material forces.
The distinction is only ‘heuristic’, analytical; it cannot be real, organic. We can
apply this concept to the failure of capitalism to develop in medieval Italy.
We could say that the Communes and the Catholic Church were forms which
were not adequate to the economic content and were in contradiction with
it. Consequently, the historical bloc was not stable: it was in perpetual crisis.
Eventually, the Communes vanished, to be replaced by principalities; and the
economy declined, replaced by investments in landed property. By contrast,
absolute monarchy (in France for example) and the Protestant Reformation
(in Germany or in the Low Countries) were ‘forms’ (superstructures) more
suited to the growth of productive forces, and to the development of capital33
Gramsci 2007a, p. 172.
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ism. That is why, even though the bourgeoisie rose in France later than in Italy,
it developed more harmoniously in France: it was able to develop its own culture and cultural superstructures (the Enlightenment) and was finally able to
create its own integral State and society at the time of the French Revolution
and with the Jacobins.
Thus, with the concept of ‘historical bloc’, Gramsci insists on the ‘necessary
reciprocity between structure and superstructures (a reciprocity that is, precisely, the real dialectical process)’.34 We have to think of capitalism and the
transition from feudalism as a social totality, a complex and dialectical unity:
as we cannot separate abstractly the different factors which played a role in the
rise of capitalism. Another extract highlights this interdependence of the different spheres of social activity (culture, politics, economy). In Q8, §21, Gramsci
writes that:
the modern Prince should focus entirely on these two basic points: the
formation of a national popular collective will, of which the modem
Prince is the acting and operative expression, and intellectual and moral
reform. … Can
there be cultural reform and a cultural improvement of the
replace 4 periods by 3?
depressed members before there is an economic reform and a change in
living standards? Intellectual and moral reform is therefore always tied to
a program of economic reform; indeed, the program of economic reform
is the concrete way in which intellectual and moral reform expresses
itself.
Drawing on the analogy with Machiavelli and the epoch of the Reformation,
Gramsci is here talking about his own time: the modern Prince is the Communist Party; the intellectual and moral reform is supposed to come from the
diffusion of the philosophy of praxis; the formation of a national-popular collective will can only be achieved under the hegemony of the proletariat. But the
interdependence between the three series of elements – political (the formation of a collective will), cultural (a necessary intellectual and moral reform)
and economic – can be used to understand the sixteenth century. We could
therefore say, using and reversing Gramsci’s phrase, that the creation of a new
kind of (integral) State and of a new culture (through the Reformation for
instance) is the concrete way in which the new (capitalist) economy ‘expresses
itself’.
34
Gramsci 2007a, Q8 §182, p. 340.
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3.3
The Transition as Crisis
There is one last point we should emphasise: the idea of crisis. Indeed, for
Gramsci, it seems that the transition from one epoch to another is linked to
‘organic crises’. This idea is obviously present in one of his most famous statements: ‘the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new
cannot be born’.35 The transition from feudalism to capitalism can be conceived
as a transition from one type of historical bloc to another. As such, it corresponds to a crisis (or, maybe more exactly, to a series of crises). Gramsci writes
in Q6, §10:
The medieval crisis lasted for several centuries, until the French Revolution, when the social grouping that had become the economic driving
force in Europe after the year 100036 was able to present itself as an integral ‘state’ with all the intellectual and moral forces that were necessary
and adequate to the task of organizing a complete and perfect society.37
Unfortunately, Gramsci tells us very little about the crisis of feudalism: we just
know that it is linked to the loss of the ‘monopoly of military technical capacity’38 by the aristocracy, and to a detachment of clerical intellectuals from
the people. But we can nevertheless say that the rise of capitalism can only
be understood as a result of the crisis of feudalism.
4
Conclusion
We can now return to our discussion of Brenner, Wood and ‘Political Marxism’.
As we said, if we look at Gramsci’s reflections on the economic aspect of the
process, we could say that Gramsci anticipated a version of the ‘commercialisation model’. By contrast, if we try to understand what he writes about the
‘superstructural’ aspects, we find more similarities between his approach and
that of Brenner and Wood: all three insist on the importance of political conditions, on the significance of social relations in the countryside, the idea of
a qualitative break and historical innovation, and reject a view of capitalist
relations as natural. The difficulty in locating Gramsci’s conception in Wood’s
dichotomy is probably linked to the concept of ‘historical bloc’. Indeed, it seems
35
36
37
38
Gramsci 1996b, Q3 §34, pp. 32–3.
Namely, the bourgeoisie.
Gramsci 2007a, p. 9.
Gramsci 1996b, Q4 §49, p. 199.
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that Gramsci favours this concept over the more traditional Marxist concept of
‘mode of production’. This theoretical displacement has to be studied more precisely. The ‘historical bloc’ is not a ‘fusion’ of economy, politics, and ideology; it
is not an undifferentiated unity. It is a complex unity, involving a multiplicity
of elements; and the relations between structure and superstructures, between
a mode of production, and the State, religion, culture pertaining to it must be
analysed, both at an abstract level, and in particular historical situations39 (and
the transition from feudalism to capitalism is only one of these situations). But
this difficult task lies well beyond the scope of this chapter.
39
On the importance of concrete historical analysis, see for example Gramsci 2007a, Q7 §6,
p. 159: ‘The “experience” of historical materialism is history itself, the study of particular
facts, “philology” ’.