Gramsci-Organic Intellectuals

ORGANIC AND TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS

“All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.”

Gramsci saw the role of the intellectual as a crucial one in the context of creating a counter
hegemony.

When Gramsci wrote about intellectuals, he was not referring solely to the academics that
sat in ivory towers or wrote erudite pieces for academic journals only read by others of the
same like. His definition went much further and he spread his net much wider. According to
Gramsci, “all men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of
intellectuals.” What he meant by that was that everyone has an intellect and uses it but not
all are intellectuals by social function.
Each social group that comes into existence creates within itself one or more strata of
intellectuals that gives it meaning, that helps to bind it together and helps it function. They
can take the form of managers, civil servants, the clergy, professors and teachers,
technicians and scientists, lawyers, doctors etc. Essentially, they have developed organically
alongside the ruling class and function for the benefit of the ruling class. Gramsci
maintained that the notion of intellectuals as being a distinct social category independent of
class was a myth.
He distinguished between a "traditional" intelligentsia which sees itself (wrongly) as a class
apart from society, and the thinking groups which every class produces from its own ranks
"organically". Such "organic" intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance
with scientific rules, but instead articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings and
experiences which the masses could not express for themselves. The need to create
a working-class culture relates to Gramsci's call for a kind of education that could develop
working-class intellectuals, whose task was not to introduce Marxist ideology from without
the proletariat, but to renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it
critical of the status quo.
The fundamental fallacy, Gramsci writes, is that of designating intellectuals by their activity
rather than by their social relations.
Traditional Intellectuals
Traditional' intellectuals are rooted in the classes that have hung over from pre-capitalist
society, and as such express the interests of landed aristocracies, monarchs the church.
Gramsci held that “traditional intellectuals” are not a specific group of people but rather a
specific socio-cultural function. Their role is that of explaining society to itself. What makes
these intellectuals “traditional” is not that they have always existed as a consistent group
but that they present their own social position as existing in a continuous, unbroken
tradition.
The ideological essence of traditional intellectual activity is to represent itself as a continuity
that transcends political and economic changes.
The traditional intellectual function is not simply to explain, but to explain in a way that
naturalizes existing social relations and helps manufacture the kind of consent that Gramsci
considered crucial for socio-political hegemony. For Gramsci, this ideologically-motivated,
de-historicized self-conception marks a kind of devil’s pact between the traditional
intellectual class and dominant hegemonic forces. “The intellectuals are the dominant
group’s ‘deputies,’ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political
government”
The traditional intellectual masks real relations of force and supports hegemonic cultural
formations by presenting intellectual labour as a de-politicized, de-historicized activity.
Organic intellectuals
Gramsci was clear that the transformation from capitalism to socialism required mass
participation. There was no question that socialism could be brought about by an elite group
of dedicated revolutionaries acting for the working class. It had to be the work of the
majority of the population conscious of what they were doing and not an organised party
leadership.
For Gramsci, mass consciousness was essential and the role of the intellectual was crucial.
This is where the role of organic intellectuals came in. Their role was to think and
act elsewhere and in other ways than the traditional intellectual. From a revolutionary
perspective, the organic intellectual creates the conditions by which secondary or subaltern
social groups can become conscious of their material conditions of existence, the reality of
which is obfuscated by the ideology of hegemonic discourses.
The “organic” part of the equation is the idea that the organic intellectual function comes
into existence alongside or from within a particular social group to elaborate its lived
conditions of existence to itself.
Hence one of Gramsci’s most famous statements: “Every social group coming into existence
on the primal basis of an essential function in the world of economic production creates
together with itself, organically, a rank or several ranks of intellectuals, who give it
homogeneity and a consciousness of its own function in the economic sphere”
Every revolutionary is an intellectual, in this sense, but not every intellectual is a

revolutionary. But every intellectual – and all intellectual activity – reveals a world. The
question – the difference between the traditional and the organic intellectual – is whose
world is being revealed, and why.

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ORGANIC AND TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS

Every revolutionary is an intellectual, in this sense, but not every intellectual is a

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