2
The Absolute Empiricism of Antonio Gramsci

The obvious advantage of the historicist conception of Marxist theory is that it avoids the very serious danger of conceiving of knowledge of the concrete as the simple 'application' of a philosophical 'theory' which is possessed in advance of knowledge of the concrete, or the principle of such knowledge. It is clear that, by explicitly referring to Gramsci's thought and 'actively construing' it as an 'absolute historicism', the Italian Communist Party, under Togliatti's lead,1 very largely succeeded in steering clear of a conception of the truth of the concrete as application of an absolute theory, the defining feature, precisely, of one of the forms of the Stalinist deviation in both theory and also politics of the most 'concrete' kind. Without this official recourse to Gramsci and the good fortune of being able to refer to the thought of an Italian political leader who, even before the war, during his prison years, proved capable of struggling practically single-handed against the tendencies of his own party's leadership in order to propose a conception of Marxist theory that broke with the dogmatism of truth and its 'application', there is no understanding the Italian Communist Party's post-war history or its profound originality in a world that was to be dominated by Stalinist ideology and practices for a long time to come. We may say that historicism is, in Gramsci, an indeterminate form of anti-dogmatism.

I say 'an indeterminate form', because dogmatism has several possible contraries, of which historicism is only one. What is more, historicism is 'indeterminate' in the sense that it is sound only by virtue of what it rejects; it is weak as far as what it affirms is concerned. I say this to bring out, alongside the ideological and political merits of the historicist interpretation of Marxist theory, its theoretical weak spot (hence also, possibly, its ideological and political weak spot). For when one says that the concrete is always changing, and when one equates change with history in order to maintain that the concrete is historical, historical through and through, one falls back on a very impoverished idea of history, which is considered to be mere change. It is not true that history is, and is nothing but, change. There are, in history, relatively stable structures that subsist for long periods beneath the changes that affect them. We may even, going further, maintain that these changes not only are changes of these stable structures, but that they are produced by these stable structures - not as their gratuitous expressions, but as so many means of producing and reproducing their stability.

Thus Marx has shown that the capitalist mode of production, the mode of production that continually and ever more rapidly 'revolutionizes'2 its productive forces, the one that produces impressive, ever-increasing speed, is intelligible only on the basis of a relatively stable structure, that of the capitalist relation of production.3 We have, then, a paradox: this stable structure is antagonistic, it is the structure of the antagonism which divides the classes into classes; yet it is this antagonism which makes it possible to understand that all the changes in the history of capitalist social formations - not in their details, which, at the limit, may also be due to chance, but in their essence - are so many means of perpetuating this stable structure of the class relation of capitalist exploitation, the stable structure of the conflictual division of all of society into two basic classes, one of which possesses [détient] the means of production, while the other sells its labour-power. What is quite remarkable in the views that we owe to Marx is the idea that this antagonistic structure cannot remain stable, remain the same, unless it produces change in its own antagonistic poles as the means of perpetuating its stability.

Thus it is that there is a history of the capitalist mode of production.4 This history is, above all, the history of the means and forms of exploitation and class struggle and, at the same time, the history of the transformation (change) of the classes that are party to the basic antagonistic relation. Thus it is that the bourgeoisie changes: once 'competitive', it becomes monopolistic and imperialist, and this brings with it, by a domino effect, a whole series of changes in the class fractions dependent on the bourgeoisie. Thus it is that the working class changes, transformed by the means of extracting, incessantly, more and more surplus value. Thus it is that, in the intermediate zones between the two antagonistic classes (in the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie), the boundary-lines shift: whole sections of the middle classes sink into the ranks of salaried workers [le salariat] or the working class. Thus it is that the bourgeoisie's class struggle alters strategies, means and forms as a function of the resistance of the workers' class struggle.

When we have arrived at this viewpoint, which is Marx's (and who has offered us a better one, one that effectively accounts for this set of phenomena?), we are no longer in historicism. We no longer define history as mere change or, a fortiori, as a change in viewpoints on history, and even less as the sum of the whole set of viewpoints on it. (What allows us, in accordance with the logic of historicism, to add them up and talk about their sum?) History is indeed defined by change, but as the condition and means, produced by a stable structure, of that stable structure's reproduction. Change accordingly appears as, simply, the very form by means of which the relatively stable structure (that of the mode of production) reproduces itself.

Under these conditions, to understand 'concrete' change 'concretely', we must first come to understand and define this stable structure, for only the conditions of its stability make it possible to understand change as that which allows this structure to perpetuate itself beneath, and in, and through, change itself.

Things are not all that complicated or hard to grasp. If the extortion of surplus value (the core of exploitation) takes place within a relationship of antagonistic class struggle, anyone can see that, to maintain this exploitation, hence to perpetuate the stability of the capitalist relation of production in the confrontation of class struggle, it is necessary to face the consequences of this confrontation: the forms of class struggle must change, and the classes party to it must therefore change as well. That is why there is a history of the capitalist mode of production, although the antagonistic structure of this mode of production remains relatively stable, remains the same, beneath the transformed forms of exploitation and class struggle, which never stop changing in order to perpetuate the stability of the mode of production.

It is well known that Marx sometimes speaks of the 'eternity' of a mode of production in order to give forceful expression to this stability.5 It is, however, also well known that the same Marx who thus speaks of the 'eternity' of the capitalist mode of production never tires of pointing out the historical changes required or produced by the class struggle, whether it is a question of the history of the working day or the history of the transformation of labour-power (women and children, etc.). In the process, Marx discusses the 'concrete': he sketches a 'concrete analysis' of working conditions, the length of the working day, the reason for it, and the struggles to limit it, and he explains why the bourgeoisie itself ultimately changed its strategy, why it had the Ten Hour Bill voted through and, the better to exploit its workers, turned towards 'relative surplus value', in other words, the mechanization of production, which, by bringing a greater number of products onto the market at lower prices, made it possible to lower wages in the same, if not in greater proportion, and so on. Marx can sketch this 'concrete analysis' of these 'concrete' changes, however, only on condition that he relates them to the relatively stable structure that produces them as the condition for the perpetuation of its stability.

I mention only this argument, because I do not want to embark on a properly philosophical discussion of historicism, which embroils Marxism in absurd problems, such as that of knowing, since everything is historical, whether the proposition 'everything is historical' is also historical and, if so, what the word 'historical' might signify: if the only meaning it has is historical, we find ourselves going round in circles.6 Put simply, this means that historicism reduces the whole of the real to the historical; only the historical exists. This reduces not just all knowledge, but also every signification and every word to the historical, which, consequently, no word is capable of explaining or even saying, since every word and every meaning are, in advance, historical. You are familiar with ordinary bicycles, which have two wheels: you pedal away and you get somewhere. There are bicycles in rehabilitation centres as well, but they have no wheels. You pedal away and you get nowhere. Historicism is a bicycle with no wheels....