{"title":"Morbid Symptoms: What Did Gramsci Really Mean?","authors":"G. Achcar","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000One of Gramsci’s most quoted phrases is his 1930 statement in the Prison Notebooks that ‘[t]he crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’. This has traditionally been taken to refer to the emergence of fascism against a background of capitalist crisis and failure of anti-capitalist forces. However, a closer examination of the textual and historical context of that sentence indicates that Gramsci was more likely to have been referring to the pci’s ultraleft turn in conjunction with the Comintern’s Third Period.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122860743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Italian Communist Party, Wars and Revolutions","authors":"Donald Sassoon","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Following the path dependence principle, the article describes the emergence of communism and the role played by wars and revolutions as unrepeatable and extraordinary catalyst factors. According to this view, communist parties can be considered institutions that outlasted the situations that created them and that, to survive, have been constantly forced to adapt to new circumstances such as fascism, the cold war or the clash of ussr. In this framework, the article describes the peculiar path of the Italian Communist Party (pci).","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122937113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tronti and Gramsci on the Young Tronti’s Research Programme","authors":"P. Serra","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article reviews, for the first time, all the research, published and unpublished, by the young pre-operaismo Tronti (as well as his key cultural sources, from Ugo Spirito to Galvano Della Volpe), from his 1956 undergraduate thesis, supervised by Ugo Spirito and Lucio Colletti, to an essay written in 1961 for Società, which symbolically closes his pre-operaismo phase. The author reconstructs the formation of the Tronti–Gramsci relationship, between 1958 and 1959, through two fundamental writings. Those texts outline not only all the issues around Gramsci’s thought (that anticipate by a few decades criticisms from, for example, Bobbio, Del Noce, Biagio de Giovanni and Althusser and Laclau), but also the fundamental aspects of a critical reflection on Gramsci and his philosophy.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"124 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134594815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From the ‘New Party’ to the Party of Nuovismo: The Decline of the Political and Institutional Culture of Italian Communists","authors":"Michele Prospero, Francesco Marchianò","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article uses a comparative framework to study the two party models that characterised the early years of the Italian Communist Party and its dissolution: the ‘New Party’ outlined by Palmiro Togliatti and the ‘nuovismo’ introduced in the 1980s by the post-’68 leadership. The analysis focuses on the aspects of political culture, the idea of party organisation, the role of the party within the democratic system, the concept of democracy in the Italian political system, and the role of the party leadership. This analysis brings to light the great foresight of Togliatti, in addition to the constructive role entrusted to the party within the democratic system and the destructive role of later leaders of the party, which resulted in a broader collapse of the Italian political system and the total marginalisation of the heirs of Gramsci.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125656228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Machiavelli: On Power, Freedom and the Use of Time","authors":"S. Prinzi","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, some philosophical questions connected with modernity have taken centre stage again: these relate to power, sovereignty, freedom and moral responsibility; and above all to the importance of the use of time in public life and health issues, something that is closely connected to political organisation. This article goes back to the birth of modernity to see how problems related to these subjects were dealt with by one of its most important thinkers: Machiavelli. The aim is to go beyond the traditional two-dimensional reading that defines him as a ‘Machiavellian’ friend of tyrants and at the same time overcome the contemporary interpretation that he was a champion of republican freedom. Instead, the article detects the temporality of political life, which constantly changes the setting in which we move – meaning we are unable to always trust the same solutions. Machiavelli allows us to understand this time of contingency and opportunity, which we must learn to use in order to take ownership of the sovereign space in which what was not can be.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130531300","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The pci: The Communist Giraffe","authors":"L. Castellina","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This commentary offers an insight into ‘the Gramsci genome’, the concept typically used to underline Gramsci’s influence on the historical experience of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano; pci). Drawing on a personal and specific experience of political militancy within the party, this contribution explores how the pci, by assuming the role of a collective subject in Gramscian terms, pursued the Gramscian line of revolution as a protracted process of democratic expansion and conquest of essential forms of power in civil society. The article underlines the pivotal role played in this endeavour by party leadership until the death of Palmiro Togliatti; it assesses the events that led to the end of pci – including Berlinguer’s failed attempt to revive a left alternative after the historic compromise position; and underlines the persistent need for communism (a ‘more robust communism’) in view of the disaster caused by capitalism over the last 40 years.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129958983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gramsci after the ‘Unforgettable ’56’","authors":"Giulia Dettori","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01020005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01020005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The aim of this paper is to analyse the rediscovery of two Gramscian themes from 1956: Factory Councils and Americanism and Fordism (1949). It explains their importance, not only in allowing us to better understand the changes taking place at that time, but also in outlining a new conception of Marxism, one that was different from the historicism of Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964). In particular, the paper focuses on Raniero Panzieri (1921–64) whose theoretical and political research closely resembled that of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937).","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114303162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interview with Neuri Rossetto, Member of the National Coordination of mst","authors":"Renata Bugni","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01010012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01010012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"344 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114488328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"covid-19 and the Role of the State: Evidence from Keren, Eritrea","authors":"Biyan Ghebreyesus Okubaghergis","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01010007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01010007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The covid-19 pandemic has caused the worst socio-economic disruption since World War ii. From the integral state perspective, this article explores the Eritrean government’s pandemic response and the ramifications for its people. The study seeks to understand the measures taken by the government to contain the virus and their immediate impact on the residents of the city of Keren, using individual stories, in-depth interviews, participant observations, media sources, and archival resources gathered from local and national resource centres in Eritrea between March and July 2020. According to the findings, the state’s main measures were restricting large gathering, maintaining complete or partial lockdowns, quarantining persons who might be infected, closing non-essential shops and stores, setting up hotline services, and running massive media campaigns. However, these measures hurt the livelihoods of the majority of residents, leaving many households without any way to earn a living.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128211114","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neoliberalism and the Pandemic","authors":"A. Saad-Filho","doi":"10.1163/26667185-01010010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/26667185-01010010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper offers a political economy interpretation of the covid-19 pandemic, framed around its relationship to the dynamics, contradictions and limitations of global neoliberalism. It argues that the pandemic emerged in a context of growing inequalities and deepening crises in neoliberal economies and their political systems, and that the pandemic is likely to reinforce the exclusionary tendencies in the current phase of capitalism, with detrimental implications for democracy. In turn, the pandemic has revealed the limitations of neoliberalism like never before, with adverse consequences for the legitimacy of capitalism itself, and opening unprecedented spaces for left political activity.","PeriodicalId":156288,"journal":{"name":"Notebooks: The Journal for Studies on Power","volume":"177 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121309351","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}