During the past year, Socialism and Democracy, the semi-annual journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy, published two important essays that are of special interest to readers of IGS Newsletter. Each essay deals with a concept or category--"civil society" in one case and the "philosophy of praxis" in the other--that resides at the very core of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks.
Jan Rehmann's "'Abolition' of Civil Society? Remarks on a Widespread Misunderstanding in the Interpretation of 'Civil Society'"--in vol. 13, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1999)--is especially noteworthy for its lucid exposition and explication of the term "civil society" as it is used by Marx and Engels in the wake of Hegel, and later by Gramsci. As Rehmann points out, "Marx himself, writing mostly in German, did not use the term 'civil society,' but the expression bürgerliche Gesellaschaft." Rehman then goes on to show that "these two terms are not at all synonymous, and that the difference is one of not only philological, but of theoretical and political importance." Through careful textual analysis, Rehmann is able to show that although Marx's and Engels' use of the term bürgerliche Gesellaschaft is "not always consistent" and in their work they primarily focus on "bourgeois society and its capitalist relations of production," they nonetheless evince an interest in "a social sphere which is not totally absorbed by bourgeois society but encompasses it." Their views on this broader social sphere remained rather vague and unelaborated. "Gramsci," Rehmann persuasively argues (again, basing his views on textual evidence), "picks up the civil aspect of bürgerliche Gesellaschaft at the point at which Marx left it behind when he [i.e., Marx] turned away to analyze its bourgeois character. He [i.e., Gramsci] recaptures what Marx's treatment had lost, and elaborates the concept in explicit opposition to bourgeois society."
The other essay, by Wolfgang Fritz Haug is entitled "Gramsci's 'Philosophy of Praxis'"--vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 2000). German readers may already be familiar with this essay; it first appeared as the "Introduction" to volume six of German critical edition of the Prison Notebooks [Gefängnishefte]--the volume that contains Notebooks 10 and 11, in which Gramsci discusses at great length the specific and distinctive character of Marxist philosophy. Haug's essay dispels the misconception that Gramsci employed the phrase "philosophy of praxis" merely as a ruse to deceive the prison censor. According to this widespread misconception, "philosophy of praxis" in Gramsci means quite simply "Marxism." One of the many valuable aspects of this essay consists [END PAGE 55] precisely in Haug's careful tracing of the somewhat tentative emergence of the term in the earlier notebooks and the way in which it gains great resonance and importance as Gramsci proceeds with his elaboration of Marxist political philosophy. In the course of his essay, Haug argues quite convincingly that it was precisely through the concept of "philosophy of praxis" that Gramsci was able to mount his critique both of Croce's putative refutation of Marx and of the debilitating dogmas of post-Lenin "official" or "orthdox" marxism. For Haug, understanding how Gramsci conceived of the "philosophy of practice" is the necessary starting point for appreciating why and how Gramsci's project constitutes in nothing less than the radical renewal of Marxian theory--a renewal that opens up the possibilities for its dialectical, and open-ended future development.
Both Rehmann's and Haug's essays are the product of attentive readings of the integral text of the Prison Notebooks; hence, they not only serve to correct some longstanding misunderstandings that have their origins in partial or selective reading of Gramsci's writings, but they also function as reliable introductions to the study of some of the most important parts of the notebooks.
The editor of Socialism and Democracy has graciously provided the International Gramsci Society with several copies of the two issues that contain the essays by Jan Rehmann and Wolfgang Fritz Haug. These copies are available free of charge to members of the IGS--on a first come, first served basis.
If you would like to receive a free copy of either one or both of these issues, please send your mailing address to Joseph A. Buttigieg; Dept. of English; University of Notre Dame; Notre Dame; IN 46556; USA. E-Mail: buttigieg.1@nd.edu