Antonio Gramsci's Marxism: Class, State and Work

Three things are attempted in this paper: to locate (briefly) Gramsci's Marxism in its historical context; to describe Gramsci's Marxism as an attempt at the creation of a theory of advanced capitalist society, especially in his treatment of the central concepts and/or realities of class, state and work; and to evaluate the limitations of his Marxism as a critical theory of society, specifically his discussion of work, sexuality and technology. The paper develops Gramsci's concepts of the historical bloc, his use of historicism, the importance of organic intellectuals and his concept of hegemony and its relation to the modalities of class rule, and suggests that these are aspects of a stunning and new critical theory of society. His analysis of work, however, was ultimately based on a Taylorist conception of productive technology and of the social relations and organization which necessitated the "regulation" of human (sexual) instincts in the divorce of mind from body, object from subject and, ultimately, theory from practice. This reintroduced through the back door the Hegelian duality between thought and being. I stress the conservative implications of these formulations and conclude that Gramsci's analysis lacked both an holistic discussion of work and a critical analysis of production-as-technique.