Antonio Gramsci - Intellectuals and Education
Gramsci gave much thought to the question of the role of intellectuals in
society. Famously, he stated that all men are intellectuals, in that all have
intellectual and rational faculties, but not all men have the social function
of intellectuals. He claimed that modern intellectuals were not simply
talkers, but directors and organisers involved in the practical task of
building society. Furthermore, 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 rather 'express', through the
language of culture, the experiences and feelings which the masses could
not articulate 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, who shared the passions of the masses. His
ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the
notion of critical pedagogy and popular education as theorized and
practised in later decades by Paulo Freire in Brazil. For this reason,
partisans of adult and popular education consider Gramsci an important
voice to this day.
Antonio Gramsci (1891 - 1937) was a leading Italian
Marxist. He was an intellectual, a journalist and a major
theorist who spent his last eleven years in Mussolini’s prisons.
During this time, he completed 32 notebooks containing
almost 3,000 pages. These notebooks were smuggled out from
his prison and published in Italian after the war but did not
find an English-language publisher until the 1970s. The
central and guiding theme of the Notebooks was the
development of a new Marxist theory applicable to the
conditions of advanced capitalism.
He was born in a little town on the island of Sardinia in 1891,
one of seven children. His was one of a very small minority of
families on the island that could read and write and because of
this he did well at school finally winning a scholarship to the
University of Turin. Italy was then, as it is now, a country
divided between North and South. The South being
overwhelmingly rural with a large illiterate peasantry and the
North essentially industrialised with a well organised and
politically aware working class. The contrast was immense.
Turin has been described as the red capital of Italy at the time
Gramsci arrived there. It was home to the most advanced
industry in the country and above all to FIAT, the motor
manufacturer. By the end of the First World War, 30% of
Turin’s population were industrial workers and this despite
the fact that another 10% were in the army and not included in
the total.
The organised workers of Turin had a very combative history.
For the first twenty years of this century, Turin was to witness
countless demonstrations and a number of general strikes
until finally in 1919, there began a movement for the
occupation of the factories and the setting up of factory
councils to run them. It was this sort of atmosphere that
welcomed Gramsci to university life and was to affect his
thinking for the rest of his life.
Gramsci had already become a socialist through reading
pamphlets sent home to Sardinia from the mainland by an
older brother. His political thought was expanded by his
experiences at university and in his new home city. What
Gramsci was to develop, however, was not just an ability to
propagandise or to organise political activity. He became the
first Marxist theorist to work with the problems of
revolutionary change in 20th century Western European
society and the first to identify the importance of the struggle
against bourgeois values ie an ideological-cultural struggle.
Gramsci’s significance for informal education lies in three
realms. First, his exposition of the notion of hegemony
provides us with a way of coming to understand the context in
which informal educators function and the possibility of
critique and transformation. Second, his concern with the role
of organic intellectuals deepens our understanding of the place
of informal educators. Last, his interest in schooling and more
traditional forms of education points to the need not to
dismiss more traditional forms. We will look at each of these
in turn.
Organic Intellectuals
This brings me to my second theme. Gramsci saw the role of
the intellectual as a crucial one in the context of creating a
counter hegemony. He 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. The revolution led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in
Russia in 1917 was not the model suitable for Western Europe
or indeed any advanced industrialised country. The Leninist
model took place in a backward country with a huge peasantry
and a tiny working class. The result was that the mass of the
population were not involved. For Gramsci, mass
consciousness was essential and the role of the intellectual was
crucial.
It is important at this juncture to note that when Gramsci
wrote about intellectuals, he was not referring solely to the
boffins and academics that sat in ivory towers or wrote erudite
pieces for academic journals only read by others of the same
ilk. His definition went much further and he spread his net
much wider.
Gramsci’s notebooks are quite clear on the matter. He writes
that "all men are intellectuals" [and presumably women] "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. He explains this
by stating 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". 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 identified two types of intellectuals - traditional and
organic. Traditional intellectuals are those who do regard
themselves as autonomous and independent of the dominant
social group and are regarded as such by the population at
large. They seem autonomous and independent. They give
themselves an aura of historical continuity despite all the
social upheavals that they might go through. The clergy are an
example of that as are the men of letters, the philosophers and
professors. These are what we tend to think of when we think
of intellectuals. Although they like to think of themselves as
independent of ruling groups, this is usually a myth and an
illusion. They are essentially conservative allied to and
assisting the ruling group in society.
The second type is the organic intellectual. This is the group
mentioned earlier that grows organically with the dominant
social group, the ruling class, and is their thinking and
organising element. For Gramsci it was important to see them
for what they were. They were produced by the educational
system to perform a function for the dominant social group in
society. It is through this group that the ruling class maintains
its hegemony over the rest of society.
Having said that what was required for those who wished to
overthrow the present system was a counter hegemony, a
method of upsetting the consensus, of countering the
‘common sense’ view of society, how could this be done?
Gramsci, in his Notebooks, maintained that what was required
was that not only should a significant number of ‘traditional’
intellectuals come over to the revolutionary cause (Marx,
Lenin and Gramsci were examples of this) but also the
working class movement should produce its own organic
intellectuals. Remember that Gramsci said that all men were
intellectuals but not all men have the function of intellectuals
in society. He went on to point out that "there is no human
activity from which every form of intellectual participation can
be excluded" and that everyone, outside their particular
professional activity, "carries on some form of intellectual
activity …, participates in a particular conception of the world,
has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore
contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify
it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought". This
sounds as if he was exaggerating the possibilities but what he
was really trying to convey is that people have the capability
and the capacity to think. The problem was how to harness
those capabilities and capacities.
Gramsci saw one of his roles as assisting in the creation of
organic intellectuals from the working class and the winning
over of as many traditional intellectuals to the revolutionary
cause as possible. He attempted this through the columns of a
journal called L’Ordine Nuovo (New Order), subtitled "a
weekly review of Socialist culture". This journal came out at
the same time as the huge spontaneous outbreak of industrial
and political militancy that swept Turin in 1919. This outbreak
mirrored events throughout the industrial world that shook
the very foundations of capitalist society.
Gramsci’s insistence on the fundamental importance of the
ideological struggle to social change meant that this struggle
was not limited to consciousness raising but must aim at
consciousness transformation - the creation of a socialist
consciousness. It was not something that could be imposed on
people but must arise from their actual working lives. The
intellectual realm, therefore, was not to be seen as something
confined to an elite but to be seen as something grounded in
everyday life. Gramsci wrote that "the mode of being of the
new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence … but in
active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser,
"permanent persuader" and not just a simple orator…"
[Gramsci 1971 p10]
The creation of working class intellectuals actively
participating in practical life, helping to create a counter
hegemony that would undermine existing social relations was
Gramsci’s contribution to the development of a philosophy
that would link theory with practice. His philosophy was a
direct counter to those elitist and authoritarian philosophies
associated with fascism and Stalinism. His approach was open
and non-sectarian. He believed in the innate capacity of
human beings to understand their world and to change it. In
his Notebooks, he asked the question: "is it better to "think",
without having a critical awareness, … or, on the other hand, is
it better to work out consciously and critically one’s own
conception of the world?". He wanted revolutionaries to be
critical and made it clear that "the starting point of critical
elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is …".
[Gramsci 1971 p323]
The role of informal educators in local communities links up
with Gramsci’s ideas on the role of the intellectual. The
educator working successfully in the neighbourhood and with
the local community has a commitment to that
neighbourhood. They are not ‘here today and gone tomorrow’.
They may have always lived in the area and have much in
common with the local people or they may not. What is
important is that they develop relationships with the people
they work with that ensures that wherever they go, they are
regarded as part of the community (‘one of us’). "They can
strive to sustain people’s critical commitment to the social
groups with whom they share fundamental interests. Their
purpose is not necessarily individual advancement, but human
well-being as a whole" (Smith 1994 p127).
Gramsci on Schooling and Education
Schooling played an important part in Gramsci’s analysis of
modern society. The school system was just one part of the
system of ideological hegemony in which individuals were
socialised into maintaining the status quo. He did not write
much in his Notebooks on the school system but what he did
write was essentially a critique of the increased specialisation
occurring within the Italian school system and a plea for a
more ‘comprehensive’ form of education. The vocational
school was being created in order to help ‘modernise’ Italy.
This new system was "advocated as being democratic, while in
fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences
but to crystallise them in Chinese complexities". Gramsci
describes the social character of the traditional schools as
determined by the fact that each social group throughout
society had its own type of school "intended to perpetuate a
specific traditional function, ruling or subordinate" but the
answer to the question of modernising education was not to
create a whole system of different types of vocational school
but "to create a single type of formative school (primary-
secondary) which would take the child up to the threshold of
his choice of job, forming him during this time as a person
capable of thinking, studying and ruling - or controlling those
who rule" (Gramsci 1971 p40).
Gramsci maintained that this type of school could only achieve
success with the active participation of pupils and, in order for
this to happen, the school must relate to everyday life. This did
not mean that education should not include abstract ideas but
that philosophical concepts, formal logic, rules of grammar etc
needed to be acquired in school "through work and reflection"
(Gramsci 1977 p42). He was clear that learning was not
something that came easily for the majority of young people.
"The individual consciousness of the overwhelming majority
of children reflects social and cultural relations which are
different from and antagonistic to those which are represented
in the school curricula" (Gramsci 1971 p35). A learner had to
be active not "a passive and mechanical recipient". The
relationship between the pupil’s psychology and the
educational forms must always be "active and creative, just as
the relation of the worker to his tools is active and creative"
(Gramsci 1977 p42).
There was no doubt in his mind that education in modern Italy
was one way in which the mass of the population was kept in
its place. In order to transform this situation, the education
system had to be confronted and changed dramatically. He did
not underestimate the huge mountain that had to be climbed.
"If our aim is to produce a new stratum of intellectuals … from
a social group which has not traditionally developed the
appropriate attitudes, then we have unprecedented difficulties
to overcome" (Gramsci 1971 p43).
Gramsci’s writings on education are not always easy to
understand. In fact, they are quite confusing at times. They are
certainly open to misinterpretation (Allman 1988 , Entwistle
1979). The editors of his Prison Notebooks make the point that
his apparent "conservative" eulogy of the old system of
education in Italy was really only a device to get round the
prison censors (Gramsci 1971 p24). However, this device has
had the effect of perplexing more than his captors.
For informal educators, Gramsci stands out as a major
thinker. The importance he placed on critical self awareness,
on critical social awareness, on the importance of the
intellectual being part of everyday life, on the part played by
so-called ‘common sense’ in maintaining the status quo and
the transformational possibilities of education. All of these are
now commonplace in the formation of informal educators.
Is there any wonder that Mussolini’s government made it clear
at his trial that they wanted to stop his brain from working?
Intellectuals and education
Gramsci gave much thought to the question of the role of intellectuals in
society. Famously, he stated that all men are intellectuals, in that all
have intellectual and rational faculties, but not all men have the social
function of intellectuals. He claimed that modern intellectuals were not
simply talkers, but directors and organisers who helped build society
and produce hegemony by means of ideological apparatuses such as
education and the media. Furthermore, 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 rather
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, who would not simply
introduce Marxist ideology from without the proletariat, but rather
renovate and make critical of the status quo the already existing
intellectual activity of the masses. His ideas about an education system
for this purpose correspond with the notion of critical pedagogy and
popular education as theorized and practised in later decades by Paulo
Freire in Brazil, and have much in common with the thought of Frantz
Fanon. For this reason, partisans of adult and popular education
consider Gramsci an important voice to this day.
[edit]
THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUALS IN SOCIETY
Historically, different intellectuals have created the ideologies
that have moulded societies; each class creates one or more
groups of intellectuals. Thus, if the working class wants to
succeed in becoming hegemonic, it must also create its own
intellectuals to develop a new ideology.
"Because of the way society develops, different groups of
individuals will be required to take on particular tasks. Gramsci
suggests that although all tasks require a degree of intellectual
and creative ability, some individuals will be required to
perform tasks or functions which are overtly intellectual. In the
first instance, these occupations are associated with the
particular technical requirements of the economic system.
Subsequently, they may be associated with the more general
administrative and organisational institutions which
synchronise the activities of the economy with those of society
as a whole. In the political sphere, each social group or class
(which is itself brought into being by the particular way in
which economic practices are organised) generates a need for
intellectuals who both represent the interests of that class and
develop its ideational understanding of the world." (Ransome,
1992: 198)
For Gramsci, the revolutionary intellectuals should originate
from within the working class rather than being imposed from
outside or above it.
"They are not only thinkers, writers and artist but also
organisers such as civil servants and political leaders, and they
not only function in civil society and the state, but also in the
productive apparatus..." (Simon, 1991: 90)
1. How does Gramsci most broadly define the term
"intellectual"? In what sense does his interest in the intellectual
point to a recalibration of Marxist notions about class and
ideology?
2. What is the distinction between "traditional" and "organic"
intellectuals?
3. Why do traditional intellectuals consider themselves
relatively or even entirely free from the dominant social group?
Why is this perception on their part significant for Gramsci's
social theory?
4. What kind of new intellectual does Gramsci promote
(especially in his early socialist magazine, Ordine Nuovo) --
what leads to the development of this new kind of intellectual,
and what will such people accomplish? (1141)
5. What is the difference between an intellectual who is
"specialized" and one who is "directive"? (1141) How is this
concept of "specialization" significant with regard to Gramsci's
Marxist framework of analysis?
6. How does Gramsci delineate what he calls the two levels of
superstructure? (1142) What is "hegemony," and how is its
operation different from State authority?
7. Ultimately, Gramsci is trying to lend his analysis a kind of
suppleness that the older Marxist framework and Leninism
lacked. Does this selection on intellectuals and hegemony seem
promising in that light? Does Gramsci's view help explain why
capitalism has survived longer than Marx and the early Soviets
thought it would?
Organic intellectual
As theorized by Gramsci, an Organic intellectual, unlike a traditional
intellectual, is a bourgeoisie scholar who cultivates strong roots in
his/her community, working to maintain links with local issues and
struggles that connect to the people and their experiences. While
traditional intellectuals imagine themselves as an autonomous group
with an historical presence above and separate from political class
struggle, they are in fact strongly allied with the dominant ideology and
the ruling class. On the other hand, organic intellectuals openly
recognize their location within the dominant ideology and their function
in perpetuating it, and use their positionality to cultivate strategies for
helping their communities to develop a self-inspired, organic
consciousness.
As an Italian Marxist interested in socialist Revolution, Antonio Gramsci
privileged the role of education in building a counter hegemonic
revolutionary class consciousness and emphasized the importance of
the working class proletariat in creating its own insurgent movements.
Recognizing the capacity of all humans to contribute to the intellectual
pursuit, he reconceptualized the classically elitist “intellectual
realm†as a fundamental part of everyday life, bringing it into the grasp
of the average working class subject. Because he believed that
ideological transformation was imperative before Revolution became
possible, he wanted a revolutionary socialist consciousness to be
generated organically within the communities that he saw leading the
future Revolution. He called upon the working class to produce its own
organic intellectuals as well as traditional intellectuals, and an
accompanying class consciousness that would appreciate the local
experiences of the people.
Info from: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm
Antonio Gramsci "The formation of Intellectuals"
1. Antonio Gramsci: Is one of the major figures of Western
Marxism. He was born in Sardinia in 1891. He led the
Communist Party of Italy and imprisoned by Benito
Mussolini who led the Fascist Party, In prison he wrote "The
Prison Notebooks". Died in 1937.
2. There was no proletariat revolution; Gramsci calls
proletariats to form their own organic intellectuals.
3. Gramsci identified two types of intellectuals:
a. Traditional intellectuals: are those who do regard
themselves as autonomous and independent of the
dominant social group and are regarded as such by the
population at large. The clergy are an example of that as
are the men of letters, the philosophers and professors.
Although they like to think of themselves as
independent of ruling groups, this is usually a myth and
an illusion. They are essentially conservative allied to
and assisting the ruling group in society.
b. Organic intellectuals are bourgeoisie scholars who
cultivate strong roots in their community, working to
maintain links with local issues and struggles that
connect to the people and their experiences. They
openly recognize their location within the dominant
ideology and their function in perpetuating it, and use
their position to cultivate strategies for helping their
communities to develop a self-inspired, organic
consciousness.
4. Hegemony: the permeation throughout society of an entire
system of values and morality that has the effect of
supporting the status in power relations.
5. Ideology: a system of ideas and beliefs; yet, it is closely tied
to the concept of power.
6. Feudalism : the system where all land was owned by the
king. One quarter was kept by the king as his personal
property, some was given to the church and the rest was
least out under strict controls. It is also a social organization
created by exchanging grants of land in return for formal
oaths of allegiance and promises of loyal service.
7. For Gramsci, intellectuals are not independent but, rather,
products of the class into which they are born.
8. .Gramsci’s goal is to figure out a “unitary criterion to
characterise equally all the diverse and disparate activities
of intellectuals and to distinguish these at the same time . . .
from the activities of other social groupings” (1140).
9. It is a mistake to focus in this regard on the “intrinsic
nature of intellectual activities” (1140) rather than on the
“ensemble of the system of relations in which these
activities have their place within the general complex of
social relations” (1140.)
10. Gramsci stresses that “all men are intellectuals, . . . but not
all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (1140.)
11. .True Intellectuals: Journalists " men of letter", philosopher,
artists who are traditional intellectuals.
12. Ordine Nuovo, a socialist magazine edited by Gramsci,
worked and succeeded in developing certain forms of new
intellectualism and determining its concepts.
13. The “mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer
consist in eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary
mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in
practical life, as constructor, organizer, ‘permanent
persuader’ and not just a simple orator” (1141).
14. Classes “developing towards dominance” (1141) struggle to
“assimilate and to conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional
intellectuals” (1141), but this process is quickened when
such classes develop their own organic intellectuals.
15. The main instrument by which “intellectuals . . . are
elaborated” (1141) is the school.
16. Different classes have been more given to becoming
intellectuals while different categories within these classes
gravitate towards particular specializations e.g.: Italy.
17. Intellectuals are the “‘deputies’” (1143) of the ruling class
“exercising the subaltern functions of hegemony and
political government”
18. The function of intellectuals is organize “social hegemony
and state domination” (1143).
Done by: Bahja Ahmed, Entisar Sabah and Hawra'a Hussain.
C) The intellectuals' role: Premise: ” All men are intellectual… but
not all men play the intellectuals' role in the society ”.
Degrees of intellectual activity: higher level: creators of the several
sciences, philosophy, art, etc. Lower level: administrators and divulgers
of the existent intellectual wealth.
Under the capitalism: the schools form intellectuals of several levels
whose functions in the civil society (private organisms and State) are
those that organize the hegemony, the spontaneous consent of the
population. This consent is born from the prestige the bourgeoisie has in
society and of the apparatus of state coercion that legally assures the
discipline for those that admit the consent.
In the transformation or revolutionary process, the intellectuals’ role
would be given by their technical capacity to act as thinkers and
organizing elements of the subordinate classes.
Their mission is not professional, but, as partners of the construction of
a new culture through the party of the masses, he/she would have the
function of driving the ideas and the aspirations of the class to which
they organically belong, taking into account that all the men are
intellectual and think, although not all fully develop that capacity, due to
the bourgeois hegemony.
The party of the masses, must therefore, merge the traditional
intellectuals (professional) and the organic intellectuals of the
subordinate classes around a conception of the world that transcends
their class interests, so that the workers awake their intellectual
possibilities (through the educational functions of the party) and
contribute to the War of Position, creating the counter-hegemony of
their class.
Intellectuals, school and culture
Perspective transformation of the school:
▪ Role of the school: to form intellectuals that will organize/form a new
culture.
▪ Objective: to contribute to the creation process of a counter-hegemony
against the dominant hegemony.
▪ Justification: it is in the arena of consciousness “that the elites use
their organic intellectuals to maintain the dominance”. However,
given the inequalities and the injustices, it necessary that the
subordinate classes free their consciousness from the bourgeois
hegemony and create a new culture. And in this process, school
can have a role as transformer.
Necessary Conditions:
▪ Public and free school: only this way the school may involve all
generations, without divisions of groups or castes. The efficiency
of the school is better and much more intense when the
relationship between teacher and student is small.
▪ Buildings: the school should be a college-school, with bedrooms,
refectories, specialized libraries, laboratories, classrooms for the
work of seminars, etc.
▪ Duration: the unitary school should correspond to the period of
elementary schools in average, reorganized not only in relation to
the content and teaching method, but also with regard to the
disposal for the student’s attending the several degrees in the
school career.
The teacher's role:
▪ To quit the reactionary position and to became a ” friendly ” guide.
▪ To accelerate and discipline the child's formation according to the
superior type in struggle against the inferior type.
Curriculum: (10 years)
▪ First phase: three to four years. Besides teaching the first instrumental
“notions” (reading, writing, duties, geography and history), the
fundamental notions of the State and society should be learnt, as
primordial elements of a new conception of the world.
▪ Second phase: the rest of the course should not surpass more than six
years, so that, when the student was fifteen or sixteen years old
he/she would have concluded all the degrees of the unitary
school.
Presupposed curriculum effects:
▪ Unified manual and intellectual work;
▪ Values: intellectual self-discipline and moral autonomy.
Method:
▪ The study and learning of creative methods in science and life should
permeate the whole course. Therefore, the school should be a
creative school.
For Gramsci, creative school doesn't mean inventors' and discoverers’
school; it indicates a phase and an investigation method of knowledge,
and not a “pre-determined program” that forces the innovation and
originality at any cost.
For him, to discover a truth by himself, without suggestions and
external helps, is creation (same as the truth is old) and demonstrates
the adequacy of the method. Therefore, the fundamental school activity
will grow in seminars, in libraries, in experimental laboratories. The aim
of education is, at most, to develop the intellect, that is, a habit of order
and system, a habit for relating the whole new knowledge with the ones
that are already possessed and to integrate them together, and what is
more important, the acceptance and use of certain principles, as center
of the thought. In this critical university, history exists and it is not just
a new book of novels; the speakers and publications of the day loose the
infallibility; eloquence doesn't replace thought, nor the courageous
statements or the colored descriptions occupy the place of arguments,
says Gramsci.
