Glienicker bridge, connecting Berlin to Potsdam, forming together the dissolved axis of German economic, political, and military power, was before the recent German unification known as a remote place for exchanging captured Cold War spies. Glienicker Jagdschloss, the former royal hunting castle near the bridge, has since the days of feudal splendor been turned into a prosaic schooling site, though with interesting international projects. It was also the site for the founding conference of Berliner Institut für kritische Theorie (InkriT) on April 18-20, 1997--an international conference commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of of Antonio Gramsci's death.
The three day event combined succesfully two interrelated aims: on the one hand, to establish an association that can help to secure the further work on the huge project of publishing the Historisch-kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus, of which up to now three sizable volumes have reached the market, as well as the completion of the German translation of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks (that has now, with seven volumes, reached notebook 15). Indeed, this newly founded Berliner Institut für kritische Theorie has not been altogether unsuccessful considering that its scientific advisory board includes such luminaries as Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Zygmunt Bauman, and the recent Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo.
On the other hand, the confrence presented recent work on Gramsci (or that makes use of Gramsci's ideas), with emphasis on analyzing the current conjucture of neoliberalism. There were often two parallel sessions going on since most of the some 60 participants had come along with their own presentation. There were thematic sessions dealing with how to understand the economy, the eradication of the former GDR, the history of Gramsci-reception in Germany, subjectivity and post-fordism, culture, education and social work, Gramsci compared with Mao or Korsch, and readings of other intellectuals (e.g. Hume, Pestalozzi, Weber) from a Gramscian perspective. Concerning this last topic, Jan Rehmann's paper "Max Weber: Modernization as a Passive Revolution", was a significant critical intervention in the thriving field of Weber-studies, with rich implications for our time. Rehmann's main thesis was that Weber's way of conceptualizing modernization anticipated fordism and represented, at the time, a passive [END PAGE 14] revolution with respect to the worker's movement. To show this, Rehmann analyzed Weber's discussion of class struggle, labour aristocracy, and cooptation of the social democrats. Rehmann, furthermore, has maintained in his article "A Gramscian Reading of Max Weber: Modernization as a 'Passive Revolution'" (published in German in Das Argument 222/1997) that this project of passive revolution pervaded not just Weber's political analysis in any restricted sense but his overall strategy of conceptualization, including his study on protestant ethics. These interesting themes are developed in more detail in Rehmann's forthcoming book (in German) Max Weber: Modernization as a Passive Revolution (Berlin: Argument).
The current relevance of Gramsci's concepts--such as passive revolution--wasprobed in Bernd Röttger's "Passive Revolution of Capitalism: Political Restructuration of the Market and the Neoliberal Expansion of the State." He criticized the prevalent dichotomy of the market and the state (e.g., as found in Polanyi) and, instead, conceived neoliberalism as a political project that aims at a radical restructuring of social relations. Indeed, through state action the neoliberal block has reshaped the terrain and parameters of class struggle. His lively debated thesis--directed against the current common sense of diminishing state power--was that the neoliberal form of state expansion, through organizations and treaties like European Union or NAFTA, has shifted the balance of forces in favour of transnational capital.
In his presentation on "Lorianism, the Cultural Industry, and Postmodernism," Tilman Reitz studied the usefulness of Gramsci's concept of Lorianism (after the Italian economist Achille Loria) in analyzing the recent vogue of [END PAGE 15] postmodernism. His presentation (published in German in Das Argument 219/1997) was useful for its discussion of both the concept of Lorianism ("lack of responsibility both for intellectual seriousness and the social meaning of intellectual production") and its lamentable current relevance.
Moving to the opposite end of the scholarly spectrum, Peter Jehle, one of the German translators of Gramsci, discussed Benedetto Fontana's recent book Hegemony and Power. On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli (University of Minnesota Press). In his contribution, now published as "Philosophy in Action" (in German, in Das Argument 219/1997), Jehle criticized Fontana's book--while acknowledging all the merits--for losing sight of the whole significance of Gramsci's notebook on Machiavelli. In Jehle's critical view, Fontana, after positioning Croce and Gramsci as antipodes, actually ends up with a 'Crocean' Gramsci. Fontana construes a chain of equivalences (hegemony = consensus = mutual discourse and equal speech = public and political space) that is opposed to the force of the despotic state (and Marxism represented by "Kautsky/Lenin"). For Jehle, the complexity of Gramsci's 'integral state', 'civil society', and 'political society' can not be reduced to this binary array. Besides, though Fontana refers to 'hegemony' in the title of his book, he does not show interest in the apparatuses of hegemony--hardly grasped as 'mutual discourse and equal speeech'. Against the current vogue of identifying Marxism as a state ideology (e.g., from the "contemporary post-Marxist perspectives" lauded on the back of Fontana's book), Gramsci's critique of liberalism and his reading of Machiavelli represent, for Jehle, a vital self-critique and development of Marxism as the backbone of a 'new culture' surmounting 'subalternity'.
Indeed, Klaus Bochmann, in his "Gramsci's Relevance for a Democratic Approach to Language," pointed out how Gramsci's critique of various intellectuals and their political, philosophical, or literary works functions simultaneously as a critique-language. Thomas Barfuss, in his "Island in the Island? Aliens and Alienation in Gramsci," reflected on the contribution that Gramsci can make to current analyses of racism and identity-politics. By propelling the 'self'-- experienced with increasing intensity under the strain--racism and identity-politics entrench people in subalternity. If the local or particular identity is conceived in a stern opposition to what is 'alien', this 'self' will generate 'alienation'. For Gramsci, instead, the particular is not something to get rid of, but a kind of bridge to the more universal, something to be articulated in this direction.
"The Neoliberal Shaping of Biotechnology" was the topic of Daniel Barben who discussed the various problems connected with biotechnology (conflicts of innovation, regulation of risks, patent law, biodiversity, and bioethichs) and the neoliberal responses to them. Dissecting neoliberal regimes of innovation, regulation, and enculturation, Barben presented a strong critique of technological determinism. Like a previous speaker--Helono Saña, a Spanish writer working in Germany--Barben also criticized the ethical-political emptiness of the neoliberal project. ForBarben, the neoliberal perspective on biotechnology covers this emptiness with market logic coupled with exalted promises for solving global problems like cancer, hunger, and pollution. Thus, the political-ethical emptiness of the neoliberal strategy of 'letting go' is filled with an ideology and aesthetics of biotechnology. Barben's presentation (published in German in Das Argument 220/1997) ended with a plea for positive alternative articulations of biotechnology that would integrate it with more egalitarian scenarios for future.
A book based on this productive conference is forthcoming from the Argument publishing house in Germany.