Gramsci's Turn to the Superstructures - 2

Gramsci's Turn to the Superstructures - 2

The hallmark of Gramsci's writings lies in the

degree of independence he gives to the realm of

"superstructures." But what did he say about the

economy? Here too he retained a commitment to

historical materialism. While he maintained that

the relations of production would fetter the forces

of production and thus generate economic

crises (P3), he did not believe that by themselves

these economic crises would lead to the breakdown

of capitalism (1971, p.178). Without a

theory of automatic collapse, politics and ideology

assumed much greater importance. Gramsci,

therefore, made much of the distinction of P4

between the relation of social forces ("closely

linked to the structure, objective, independent of

human will and which can be measured with the

systems of the exact or physical sciences") and

the realm of subjective will formation -the

political and ideological forms in which men

become conscious of the conflict between forces

and relations of production and fight it out (197 1,

pp. 138, 162, 180-1,365,371-2).

Gramsci's originality developedwithinthecoha

of Marxist orthodoxy. He always insisted on P5 -

an order cannot perish until its potential has been

exhausted and the seeds of a new society have been

created(l971 ,p. 177),andhetookforgrantedthatthe

expansion of the forces of production would lead to

the progressive development of history (P6). He saw

communism as a society in which the economy is

turned from a structure of domination into an instrument

of emancipation (p. 367). Not only is the

relationshipbetweenbaseandsupe~structurereversed,

but within the superstructure the stateis absorbedinto

civil society (1971, pp. 253,263). This was Grarnsci's

interpretation of the end of prehistory (I'7).