PAPER FOR THE XII INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR " GRAMSCI BEYOND MARX", 1867-1937-2017.

CONVERSATIONS WITH PETER THOMAS AND TONI NEGRI ABOUT "THE GRAMSCIAN MOMENT".

MIGUEL ANGEL HERRERA ZGAIB

DIRECTOR OF GRAMSCI GLOBAL SOCIETY PROJECT

Antonio Negri´s review on Thomas book is from 2011. I already take account of it. But I know The Gramscian Moment earlier on. The central issue is Philosophy of praxis, the name that Gramsci used to refer historical materialism. He took it from Antonio Labriola, an independent marxist, who was pretty active and critical during the period of the II International. Engels registered Labriola´s attitude facing some topics of debate during those years.

The Philosophy of Praxis is a response to Benedetto Croce, Labriola`s disciple, who treated marxism as a canon of historical representation, and no more than that. Instead, Labriola as Gramsci insisted on the autonomous and independent character of Marx`s theory. But the common ground for it, comes from the reading of the Thesen on Feuerbach, that Engels included with his essay Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of the German Classical Philosophy published in 1888.

Neither Thomas nor Negri talked about in the book and the commentaries. There is also relevant to remind them how Gramsci´s point of departure in theoretical terms goes back to another text of vulgarization, The three sources and the three parts of Marxism which is a translation of what Engels wrote in The AntiDhuring, a piece that Marx knew too. Gramsci has a particular way of understand it.

He wrote a note in his Prison Notebooks titled The translation of scientific and philosophical languages. From this point of view, Gramsci develops his understanding of Philosophy of Praxis as Political Science, a point of view as well a position against the dominant view of Marxism in the Soviet Union, based on the writing of Bukharin, a sort of organic intellectual in the second part of the Soviet Revolution in his political pedagogy as a way of building a proletarian hegemony after the triumph of revolution,

When Negri made comments on Thomas` book, Reading Gramsci Anew, that is, The Gramscian Moment, puts into question the convenience to talk about Marxism as philosophy after the insistency on absolute historicism, immanence and humanism as part of the incomplete process...of marxism as a philosophy of praxis. Thomas explicit proposal is to advance on an autonomous research programme in Marxist philosophy today.

However, that proposal is not on the vein of Gramsci´s Philosophy of Praxis. He is not interested in going back to Feuerbach after he studied and translated the Theses when he was in the Facist jail. He goes on the Marx´s premises, specifically, on Thesis Eleven: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kömmt darauf an, sie zu verändern.

That seems to me is the spirit of the last part of the comments presented by Negri, who, nevertheless, has not renounced to be called an heteredox philosopher, more punctually, a political philosopher. Negri insists on Marx¨s thought as follows: "The praxis object is not philosophical. The praxis object is historical, revolutionary...

From my own perspective, Marx´s thought is not a critical thought,It is a thought of rupture, a new way of thinking according to the radical immanence. It´s is praxis too, that is, the simultaneous relation between theory and practice to revolutionise the existent world of capitalism.

Gramsci´s orientation goes on: looking for a new kind of man in accordance to a new type of labor and production process, as Negri quotet him.

(TO BE CONTINUED)