Gramsci on Bureaucracy

Abstract

This essay reconstructs Antonio Gramsci’s account of bureaucracy as it unfolds in his magnum opus, the Prison Notebooks. By adopting the “philological” way of reading this work developed in recent decades by Gramsci scholars and significantly anticipated by Joseph Buttigieg’s “Gramsci’s Method” (1990), I show how the concept of bureaucracy is closely connected to some key elements in Gramsci’s political reflections, such as the categories of “hegemony” and “organic crisis.” While drawing out the “constellation” of Gramsci’s references to bureaucratic apparatuses throughout his carceral writings, I stress in particular their relationship with his investigation of the nature and the role of political parties, as well as with his overall assessment of parliamentarism (and of its degeneration). In this framework, a further pivotal element is represented by Gramsci’s conception of “modernity,” that is, of the features that characterize the contemporary political panorama and to which the issue of bureaucracy is closely related. To conclude, I compare Gramsci’s and Max Weber’s theories of bureaucracy, showing both similarities and differences.

Keywords:

• bureaucracy
• hegemony
• modernity
• political party
• profession
• Prison Notebooks
• representative principle
• Antonio Gramsci
• Max Weber

Notes

1 This reading draws on the most recent philological achievements of the scholarship, notably the new Italian critical edition of Gramsci’s works, the Edizione nazionale degli scritti di Antonio Gramsci, which is currently being published.

2 In this regard, see Francioni (2009).

3 Useful though not exhaustive analyses of Gramsci’s conception of bureaucracy can be found in Portantiero (1981, 9–65), Filippini (entry in Liguori and Voza 2009, 90–91), Filippini (2015, 213ff), and Burgio (2007, 259).

4 Gramsci also depicts “Eastern” countries, such as China and Japan, as deeply bureaucratic. On the Chinese “struttura burocratico-militare dello stato,” see Gramsci 1975, Q5§23, 558-559. On Japan, see Gramsci 1975, Q5§50, 579-582; Q8§87, 992 and Q12§1, 1529. See also his comparison between the Chinese bureaucracy of the mandarins, the Italian bureaucratic apparatuses during the Risorgimento, and the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church (with the Papacy conceived of as the hidebound institution par excellence) drawn in Gramsci 1975, Q14§47, 1705. On the combination of feudalism and bureaucracy, see also Gramsci 1975, Q8§40: “vecchia Russia feudale e burocratica.”

5 These observations partially recall Gramsci’s pre-prison text on the Southern Question, but also echo Marx’s Lumpenproletariat; on these “sources,” see Antonini (2021).

6 The expression “civil and military bureaucracy” recurs frequently in the Notebooks, see, for instance, Gramsci 1975, Q9§89, 1156. See also Q17§53, where he refers to the “impalcatura burocratico-militare” of the Roman Empire (1949).

7 This note rewrites Q9§21, by expanding significantly on the content of the first draft text, especially regarding the characterization of bureaucracy.

8 Cf. Gramsci 1975, Q1§122, 113, where he writes that “chi è troppo minuzioso per professione, si burocratizza: vede l’albero e non più la foresta, il regolamento e non più la strategia.” See also Q1§101, 95, where, while talking about the institutionalization and impoverishment of the music festival of Piedigrotta and the transformations of their organizers into “officers,” he evokes the French tale of the bouc fonctionnaire (on this, see Gramsci 2017, 237, fn. 457).

9 On mummification and other related categories, see Jackson (2016) and Jackson (2019). Not by chance, “bureaucratize” is used as a synonym of “fossilize”; see Gramsci 1975, Q6§84, 757.

10 On this pivotal point, see, among others, Thomas (2009).

11 On Michels and Weber, see Mommsen (1981). On Gramsci and Michels, see Basile (2016) and Bianchi (2019). Among Weber’s works, Gramsci read Parliament and Government in Germany under a new Political Order (1918) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (the latter was published between 1931 and 1932 in the journal Nuovi studi di diritto, economia e politica). Filippini (2015, 214-215) argues that Gramsci’s readings also included other Weberian texts, but his hypothesis is not very compelling. It is more likely that Gramsci knew Weber’s thought indirectly through Michels’ writings.

12 On Gramsci and Sorel, see, for instance, Cavallari (2011). On Gramsci and De Man, see Mastellone (2001).

13 On this theme, see Cospito (2016, 169ff).

14 On this note and, more generally, on the final miscellaneous notebooks, see Antonini (2019).

15 See Gramsci 1975, Q6§40, where it is said that the English regime is not a representative one, since its parliament is not able to regulate the role of bureaucracy (714-715); Gramsci 1975, Q6§86, where “l’abito diplomatico” is described, with additions made later by Gramsci, “una professione subalterna, [subordinata, esecutivo-burocratica]” (762); Gramsci 1975, Q8§52: the “burocrazia […] deve essere controllata e guidata dalla classe politica” (972).

16 On this theme, see Martin (2002, 258), Burgio (2014, 161ff) and Antonini (2016).

17 This expression (Gramsci does not adopt the expression “crisis of parliamentarism”) is already used in the first draft of this note (Gramsci 1975, Q1§48, 60). In the context of the first half of the 1930s (Q13§37 is dated May 1932-November 1933), however, it assumes a deeper meaning. On the “crisis of parliamentarism” in Gramsci, see Vacca (2017, chap. 4) and Frosini (2017). This theme was widespread in public debates: in early 1933, e.g., the crisis of parliamentarism was a hot topic in Fascist journals (although mostly with reference to German politics). As to the Notebooks, Gramsci deals with parliamentarism and its crisis especially in Notebook 14 and 15.

18 A further element of the transformation of parliamentarism in the twentieth-century context is expressed by “black parliamentarism” (an unofficial form of representation of the variety of interests that continue to exist within totalitarian contexts). On this theme, see Francioni (2020) and Antonini (2021).

19 There are also more or less implicit references to Soviet Russia—on Gramsci’s “alternative modernities,” see Vacca (2017).

20 See Frosini (2016a).

21 On these transformations, see Antonini (2019).

22 See Gramsci 1975, Q4§69: “questa situazione di contrasto tra rappresentati e rappresentanti, che dal terreno delle organizzazioni private (partiti o sindacati) non può non riflettersi nello Stato, rafforzando in modo formidabile il potere della burocrazia” (513; then redrafted in Q13§23, 1602-1613).

23 Gramsci does the same with the “police”—on this point, see Gramsci 1975, Q13§27, 1619-1622; Q14§34, 1691-1692; Q2§150, 278-279.

24 On this theme, see Buci-Glucksmann (1980) and Liguori (2015).

25 See Frosini (2016b).

26 On these themes and their connection with bureaucracy, see also Gramsci 1975, Q6§166, 818-819; Q8§142, 1028-1029.

27 See Antonini (2019).

28 Such a comparison is developed in Filippini (2015), on whose work I draw in part here. The bibliography on Weber is extensive. An interesting “Gramscian” approach can be found in Rehmann (2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesca Antonini

Francesca Antonini is Fellow at the Moritz-Stern-Institut, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Previously she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. Her research interests are in intellectual history, the history of political thought, and Italian and European modern history. Her first monograph, Caesarism and Bonapartism in Gramsci: Hegemony and the Crisis of Modernity, was published by Brill in 2020. It won the Sormani International Prize 2020 and was shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize 2021.