Human Classes

Edwin Martinez

Gramsci’s theories on class formation appear as a more as a slightly more evaluated form of the multiple class idea, than what we experienced in the previous week with the Ehrenreich piece. From his experiences and research into his own environment of Italy he was able to extract multiple classes from the basic two which Marxist theory is composed of. The most interesting of these extractions to me was the division of the bourgeoisie into the two classes of Capitalists and Landowners. In other readings on class divisions, the bourgeoisie is given agency as a group focused on a continuous accumulation of their own assets at the expense of others (the lower classes) however, I enjoyed the far more damning rhetoric of Gramsci in this instance: “Their capacity to ‘organize, coldly, objectively, without worrying about whether [their] path is paved with famine-ravaged bodies or with the dead of battle’, meant before the War, ‘60 per cent of labour produced wealth was in the hands of this tiny minority and the State’” (6). This particular statement, as well as others, added the “organic” quality that was highlighted early on by Donaldson in his essay. Gramsci appears to utilize the abstractions put forth by Marx and mold them into a personal statement on class within the environment that he was most accustomed to.

Something that was in common with the Ehrenreich reading however, was Gramsci’s focus on class alliances in order to guarantee a successful revolution. Without alliances, Gramsci notes that “the proletariat cannot hope to undertake serious revolutionary action” (18). His focus on the Communist Party as a possibly “highly developed form of…consciousness” is indicative of the importance he placed on class alliances. For him the party is not only a resource of anti-capitalist sentiment, but holds the possibility of cooperative evolution and growth. Yet in this idealized view he falls short of mentioning the antagonism that is likely to be present, which the Ehrenreich piece frequently touches on. His view nonetheless is interesting for its humanizing approach to the ideas of Class formation.