Footnotes

1 The Italian word here is “ceti” which does not carry quite the same connotations as “strata”, but which we have been forced to translate in that way for lack of alternatives. It should be noted that Gramsci tends, for reasons of censor-ship, to avoid using the word class in contexts where its Marxist overtones would be apparent, preferring (as for example in this sentence) the more neutral “social group”. The word “group”, however, is not always a euphemism for “class”, and to avoid ambiguity Gramsci uses the phrase “fundamental social group” when he wishes to emphasise the fact that he is referring to one or other of the major social classes (bourgeoisie, proletariat) defined in strict Marxist terms by its position in the fundamental relations of production. Class groupings which do not have this fundamental role are often described as “castes” (aristocracy, etc.). The word “category”, on the other hand, which also occurs on this page, Gramsci tends to use in the standard Italian sense of members of a trade or profession, though also more generally. Throughout this edition we have rendered Gramsci’s usage as literally as possible.

2 Questions of censorship apart, Gramsci’s terminology presents a number of difficulties to the translator. Wherever possible we have tried to render each term of Gramsci’s with a single equivalent, as close as possible to the original. In one particular set of cases this has proved impossible, and that is with the group of words centred around the verb dirigere (dirigente, direttivo, direzione, etc.). Here we have in part followed the normal English usage dictated by the context (e.g. direzione = leadership; classe dirigente = ruling class) but in certain cases we have translated dirigente and direttivo as “directive” in order to preserve what for Gramsci is a crucial conceptual distinction, between power based on “domination” and the exercise of “direction” or “hegemony”. In this context it is also worth noting that the term “hegemony” in Gramsci itself has two faces. On the one hand it is contrasted with “domination” (and as such bound up with the opposition State/Civil Society) and on the other hand “hegemonic” is sometimes used as an opposite of “corporate” or “economic-corporate” to designate an historical phase in which a given group moves beyond a position of corporate existence and defence of its economic position and aspires to a position of leadership in the political and social arena. Non-hegemonic groups or classes are also called by Gramsci “subordinate”, “subaltern” or sometimes “instrumental”. Here again we have preserved Gramsci’s original terminology despite the strangeness that some of these words have in English and despite the fact that it is difficult to discern any systematic difference in Gramsci’s usage between, for instance, subaltern and subordinate. The Hegelian sense of the word “momento”, meaning an aspect of a situation in its concrete (not necessarily temporal) manifestations, has generally been rendered as “moment” but sometimes as “aspect”. Despite Marx’s strictures (in The German Ideology) on the abuse of this word, it occurs frequently in Gramsci in both its senses, and confusion is made worse by the fact that Italian, unlike German, does not distinguish the two senses of the word according to gender. In particular cases where there seemed to us any difficulty with a word or concept we have referred the reader to a footnote, as also with any passage where the translation is at all uncertain. In general we have preferred to footnote too much rather than too little, on the assumption that readers familiar with, say, the history of the Third International might nevertheless find useful some explanation, however elementary, of the specialised vocabulary of Kantian philosophy, while philosophers who know their Hegel and Marx might be less at home in the history of the Italian Risorgimento. (Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith. 1971. “Terminology”, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers, page xiii-xiv.)

A Mosca’s Elementi di Sciena Politico (new expanded edition, 1923) are worth looking at in this connection. Mosca’s so-called “political class"[3] is nothing other than the intellectual category of the dominant social group. Mosca’s concept of “political class” can be connected with Pareto’s concept of the élite, which is another attempt to interpret the historical phenomenon of the intellectuals and their function in the life of the state and of society. Mosca’s book is an enormous hotch-potch, of a sociological and positivistic character, plus the tendentiousness of immediate politics which makes it less indigestible and livelier from a literary point of view.

3 Usually translated in English as “ruling class”, which is also the title of the English version of Mosca’s Elementi (G. Mosca, The Ruling Class, New York 1939). Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941) was, together with Pareto and Michels, one of the major early Italian exponents of the theory of political élites. Although sympathetic to fascism, Mosca was basically a conservative, who saw the élite in rather more static terms than did some of his fellows.

4 Notably in Southern Italy. See “The Different Position of Urban and Rural-type Intellectuals”. Gramsci’s general argument, here as elsewhere in the Quaderni, is that the person of peasant origin who becomes an “intellectual” (priest, lawyer, etc.) generally thereby ceases to be organically linked to his class of origin. One of the essential differences between, say, the Catholic Church and the revolutionary party of the working class lies in the fact that, ideally, the proletariat should be able to generate its own “organic” intellectuals within the class and who remain intellectuals of their class.

B For one category of these intellectuals, possibly the most important after the ecclesiastical for its prestige and the social function it performed in primitive societies, the category of medical men in the wide sense, that is all those who “struggle” or seem to struggle against death and disease, compare the Storia della medicina of Arturo Castiglioni. Note that there has been a connection between religion and medicine, and in certain areas there still is: hospitals in the hands of religious orders for certain organisational functions, apart from the fact that wherever the doctor appears, so does the priest (exorcism, various forms of assistance, etc.). Many great religious figures were and are conceived of as great “healers": the idea of miracles, up to the resurrection of the dead. Even in the case of kings the belief long survived that they could heal with the laying on of hands, etc.

C From this has come the general sense of “intellectual” or “specialist” of the word “chierico” (clerk, cleric) in many languages of romance origin or heavily influenced, through church Latin, by the romance languages, together with its correlative “laico” (lay, layman) in the sense of profane, non-specialist.

5 Heads of FIAT and Montecatini (Chemicals) respectively For Agnelli, of whom Gramsci had direct experience during the Ordine Nuovo period.

6 For Frederick Taylor and his notion of the manual worker as a “trained gorilla”, see Gramsci’s “Americanism and Fordism”, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Translated and Edited by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith. New York: International Publishers, page 277-318.

D Thus, because it can happen that everyone at some time fries a couple of eggs or sews up a tear in a jacket, we do not necessarily say that everyone is a cook or a tailor.

7 i.e. Man the maker (or tool-bearer) and Man the thinker.

8 The Ordine Nuovo, the magazine edited by Gramsci during his days as a militant in Turin, ran as a “weekly review of Socialist culture” in 1919 and 1920. See Introduction to Selections from the Prison Notebooks, page xxxv ff.

9 “Dingente.” This extremely condensed and elliptical sentence contains a number of key Gramscian ideas: on the possibility of proletarian cultural hegemony through domination of the work process, on the distinction between organic intellectuals of the working class and traditional intellectuals from outside, on the unity of theory and practice as a basic Marxist postulate, etc.

10 The Italian school system above compulsory level is based on a division between academic (“classical” and “scientific”) education and vocational training for professional purposes. Technical and, at the academic level, “scientific” colleges tend to be concentrated in the Northern industrial areas.

11 funzionari": in Italian usage the word is applied to the middle and higher echelons of the bureaucracy. Conversely “administrators” (“amministratori”) is used here (end of paragraph) to mean people who merely “administer” the decisions of others. The phrase “non-executive work” is a translation of “[impiego] di ordine e non di concetto” which refers to distinctions within clerical work.

E Here again military organisation offers a model of complex gradations between subaltern officers, senior officers and general staff, not to mention the NCO’s, whose importance is greater than is generally admitted. It is worth observing that all these parts feel a solidarity and indeed that it is the lower strata that display the most blatant esprit de corps, from which they derive a certain “conceit"[12] which is apt to lay them open to jokes and witticisms.

12 “boria”. This is a reference to an idea of Vico.

13 The notion of the “unproductive labourer” is not in fact an invention of Loria’s but has its origins in Marx’s definitions of productive and unproductive labour in Capital, which Loria, in his characteristic way, both vulgarised and claimed as his own discovery.

F Within productive technique those strata are formed which can be said to correspond to NCO’s in the army, that is to say, for the town, skilled and specialised workers and, for the country (in a more complex fashion) share-cropping and tenant farmers — since in general terms these types of farmer correspond more or less to the type of the artisan, who is the skilled worker of a mediaeval economy.

14 Although this passage is ostensibly concerned with the sociology of political parties in general, Gramsci is clearly particularly interested here in the theory of the revolutionary party and the role within it of the intellectuals. See Introduction to this Section.

G Common opinion tends to oppose this, maintaining that the tradesman, industrialist or peasant who engages in “politicking” loses rather than gains, and is the worst type of all — which is debatable.

15 Gramsci is probably using the word “productive” here in the specifically Marxian sense of productive of surplus value or at any rate of surplus.

H In Max Weber’s book, Parliament and Government in the New Order in Germany[16] can be found a number of elements to show how the political monopoly of the nobility impeded the elaboration of an extensive and experienced bourgeois political personnel and how it is at the root of the continual parliamentary crises and of the fragmentation of the liberal and democratic parties. Hence the importance of the Catholic centre and of Social democracy, which succeeded during the period of the Empire[17] in building up to a considerable extent their own parliamentary and directive strata, etc.

16 Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung im neugeordnetem Deutchland. English translation in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright

17 i.e. up to the formation of the Weimar Republic in 1919.

I More than two hundred of these have, I think, been counted. Again one should compare the case of France and the fierce struggles that went on to maintain the religious and moral unity of the French people.

18 The reference here is to the role of leadership among the Italian States assumed by Piedmont during the Risorgimento. For Gramsci’s analysis of this phenomenon, see “The Function of Piedmont”.

19 “Kulturkampf” was the name given to the struggle waged by Bismarck, in the 1870s, with Liberal support, against Catholic opposition to Prussian hegemony. The Dreyfus case in France, which lasted from Dreyfus’ first condemnation in 1894 to his final acquittal in 1906, coincided with a major battle fully to laicise the French educational system and had the effect of polarising French society into a militaristic, pro-Catholic, anti-Semitic Right, and an anti-Catholic Liberal and Socialist Left. Both Kulturkampf and Dreyfus case can also be seen as aspects of the bourgeois-democratic struggle against the residues of reactionary social forces.

20 Plutarco Elias Calles was President of Mexico from 1924-28. It was under his Presidency that the religious and educational provisions of the new constitution were carried through, against violent Catholic opposition.