The great trasformismo

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore the commonalities and differences between Karl Polanyi and Antonio Gramsci in their assessment of the origins of fascism as located within the rise of capitalism in the nineteenth century and its structural impasse in the twentieth century. Specifically, the aim is to trace a set of associations between Polanyi and Gramsci on the transformations wrought across the states-system of Europe prior to the crises that engulfed capitalism leading to the rise of fascism in the twentieth century. Focusing on the class structures that emerged out of the expansion of capitalism across Europe in the nineteenth century reveals that there was less a ‘great transformation’ in terms of a rupture with the past through the rise of liberal capitalism. Rather, there was more a slow and protracted process of class restoration known as passive revolution, or a ‘Great Trasformismo’, referring to the molecular absorption of class contradictions marking the consolidation and expansion of capitalist social relations. In sum, it is argued that The Great Transformation is understood better if read through the epoch of passive revolution, or The Great Trasformismo, which entailed the restoration and maintenance of class dominance through state power. This approach therefore opens up questions, rather than forecloses answers, about the historical geographies constituting the spaces and places of the political economy of modern capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Fascism
• Gramsci
• passive revolution
• Polanyi

Acknowledgements

This article was presented at the international workshop ‘Questioning the Utopian Springs of Market Economy’, University of Sydney (15–16 August 2014); the 5th International Conference on Gramscian Studies, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP), Puebla/México (1–4 December 2014); the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) Seminar Series, University of Nottingham/UK (23 March 2015); the Annual Political Studies Association (PSA) Conference, Sheffield/UK (30 March–1 April 2015); and the 9th Australian International Political Economy Network (AIPEN) conference, Monash University, Melbourne/Australia (8–9 February 2018). I would like to thank all the participants in these events and, especially, Andreas Bieler, Gareth Bryant, Damien Cahill, and Chris Hesketh for their constructive feedback as well as members of the Marxism Reading Group at the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) for our shared reading of Karl Polanyi, although they may not thank me in return for our subsequent shared reading of Friedrich Hayek!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Adam David Morton http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1003-8101

Notes

1. These are now collected in the anthology Karl Polanyi, Economy and Society: Selected Writings, edited by Claus Thomasberger and Michele Cangiani (see Polanyi, 2018).

2. See Henryk Grossman, The Law of Accumulation and the Breakdown of the Capitalist System, trans. Jairus Banaji. London: Pluto Press, 1992. This was first published in 1929 and although it came to his attention in a review of 1931 it seems that Gramsci was never able to obtain a copy of the book.

3. Elsewhere significant strides have been made to affirm the production of space in the constitution of state power and passive revolution across different scales. Also drawing from Henri Lefebvre, the important contribution from Chris Hesketh, for example, is to emphasise that space is not a passive locus of social relations in the constitution of state power and conditions of passive revolution (see Hesketh, 2017a, p. 22; Lefebvre 1974/1991, p. 11).

4. An enhanced focus on the relevance of Victor Serge in understanding the struggle for space, the spatial logistics of the state, and how the modern state organises space is available in Morton (2018b).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adam David Morton

Adam David Morton is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. His research interests are shaped through interdisciplinary concerns across political economy, state theory, development, geographical studies, and historical sociology. He is the author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (Pluto Press, 2007); Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), which was the recipient of the 2012 Book Prize of the British International Studies Association (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG); and Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (Cambridge University Press, 2018), co-authored with Andreas Bieler.