Hegemony and Class Struggle: Trotsky, Gramsci and Marxism

ISBN-13: 9783030756901 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022

Juan Dal Maso

Opis

Leon Trotsky and Antonio Gramsci are two of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20^th century. This book explores the similarities and the differences between their philosophical and political theories. The first and second chapters deal with a still under-investigated aspect of Trotsky’s thought, i.e. his reflections on the issue of hegemony. The third chapter focuses on Gramsci’s critique of Trotsky in his Prison Notebooks, analysing Gramsci’s knowledge of Trotsky’s positions as well as the scope and limits of Gramsci’s critique. The fourth chapter consists of a critical rereading of Perry Anderson's essay Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, originally published in 1976 and republished in 2017 and an analysis of the book Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism by Emanuele Saccarelli. The result is an investigation that offers new insight into both Trotsky’s and Gramsci’s thought, while proposing a new point of view from which to interpret revolutionary theory and strategy in the contemporary scenario. One of the main topics addressed throughout the three essays is the specific position of the problem of hegemony in a theory of permanent revolution, demonstrating that Trotsky had a particular understanding of the question of hegemony and that Gramsci, in turn, introduced a concept of hegemony that is closely associated with an idea of permanent revolution, such that the dynamics of the relationship between democratic struggles and socialist struggles presented in both theories are very similar.

Spis treści

Hegemony in Trotsky's Thought: From Hegemonic Power to Theory of Revolution

    Hegemony in the analysis of world domination

    Crisis of the British Empire and the rise of US hegemony

    Versailles and Frances' "unstable hegemony"

    The law of productivity and the "theoretical model" of hegemonic power

    Hegemony in the theory of revolution

    Lenin: hegemony as a political dynamic

    Trotsky: hegemony as a social-political dynamic

    The question of hegemony in the balance sheet of 1905

    Soviets and hegemony

    Later recaps: Lenin according to Trotsky

    The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 and the theory of the permanent revolution

    History of the Russian Revolution: critical rethinking of the problem of hegemony

    Hegemony and the revolution in the West

    Hegemony and duality of powers

    Coutinho, Zavaleta Mercado and Bensaid: debates on dual power

    Popular Front vs. Hegemony

Hegemony in Trotsky's Thought: The Problem of Hegemony in the Transition

    NEP, smycka, hegemony

    Lenin's last struggle

    Fromthe truce of the XII Congress to the emergence of the Opposition

    The Scissors Crisis 

    Bukharin, Zinoviev and Stalin: the re-emergence of old controversies

    Criticism of harmonicism and bureaucratic methods

    Stalin's USSR: predominance of the bureaucract, hegemony of the proletariat?

    Conclusion: hegemony and permanent revolution

Trotsky in the Prison Notebooks

    Trotsky's books published after his expulsion from the USSR

    Revolutionary practice and "intellectualized" theory

    Antonio Labriola and the tasks of the workers' state

    Trotsky and industrialism: debate on transition

    Between Cossacks and unionists

    The "frontal attack" in times of siege

    The Soviet Five-Year Plan: from fatalism to activism

    The economic-corporate phase of the USSR: from "pretty minds" to "mechanic waste

    Trotsky returns...and looks a little more like Lenin Bronstein, the German Bessarione and Davidovich

    Reaffirmations

    Black parliamentarism: "the liquidation of Leon Davidovich"

    End to start

Once again on Trotsky and Gramsci

    Perry Anderson: Whose Antinomies?

    The problem of West Democracy and State

    Hegemony and Culture

    War of position and the problem of strategy

    Emanuele Saccarelli: against the legacy of Stalinism in Political Theory

    Gramsci for academics: distortions and depolitcization 

    The Devil is called Trotsky

    Towards a rethinking of communism

O autorze

​Juan Dal Maso is an Independent Scholar from the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is also a member of the editorial board of Ideas de Izquierda Semanario (Ideas of the Left Weekly) in Argentina, and the author of the following books; El marxismo de Gramsci (The marxism of Gramsci, 2016), translated to Italian and Portuguese, and Althusser y Sacristán (Louis Althusser and Manuel Sacristán, 2020) written with Ariel Petruccelli.

Blurb

Leon Trotsky and Antonio Gramsci are two of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20^th century. This book explores the similarities and the differences between their philosophical and political theories. The first and second chapters deal with a still under-investigated aspect of Trotsky’s thought, i.e. his reflections on the issue of hegemony. The third chapter focuses on Gramsci’s critique of Trotsky in his Prison Notebooks, analysing Gramsci’s knowledge of Trotsky’s positions as well as the scope and limits of Gramsci’s critique. The fourth chapter consists of a critical rereading of Perry Anderson's essay Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, originally published in 1976 and republished in 2017 and an analysis of the book Gramsci and Trotsky in the Shadow of Stalinism by Emanuele Saccarelli. The result is an investigation that offers new insight into both Trotsky’s and Gramsci’s thought, while proposing a new point of view from which to interpret revolutionary theory and strategy in the contemporary scenario. One of the main topics addressed throughout the book is the specific position of the problem of hegemony in a theory of permanent revolution, demonstrating that Trotsky had a particular understanding of the question of hegemony and that Gramsci, in turn, introduced a concept of hegemony that is closely associated with an idea of permanent revolution, such that the dynamics of the relationship between democratic struggles and socialist struggles presented in both theories are very similar.

​Juan Dal Maso is an Independent Scholar from the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina.