• Science & Society , Vol. 82, No. 1, January 2018, 94–119 94 Gramsci and the Challenges for the Left: The Historical Bloc as a Strategic Concept PANAGIOTIS SOTIRIS ABSTRACT: The historical bloc is one of the central concepts of Antonio Gramsci’s theoretical elaboration in the Prison Notebooks It is not a descriptive, nor an analytic, concept. It is a strategic concept. It does not refer to social alliances, but to the intersection between analysis and strategy, representing Gramsci’s attempt to theorize the possibility of hegemony in its integral form, namely in the dialectical unity of structure and superstructures. Therefore, in terms of strategy, it implies that the struggle for hegemony is the struggle for a new historical bloc, namely an articulation of transition programs emanating from the collective struggle, inge- nuity and experimentation of the subaltern classes, organizational forms, new political practices, and new political intellectualities. Consequently, it offers a way to rethink the strategic challenges that the left faces, in periods when questions of political power and hegemony are indeed becoming crucial. Introduction R ECENTLY, THERE HAS BEEN a renewed interest in the work of Antonio Gramsci and a proliferation of books and articles on his thinking, based upon the important philological work that has been done since the appearance in 1975 of the Critical Edition of the Quaderni di Carcere . In this article, I will try to deal with one crucial concept in the evolution of Gramsci’s “work-in-progress,” the historical bloc, and see its place in the conceptual architecture of Gramsci’s work and its importance for contemporary debates regarding left strategy. Giuseppe Cospito (2016) has suggested that the historical bloc does not represent Gramsci’s final word on the question of the relation GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 95 between structure and superstructures, because despite its theoretical development especially in notes around 1932 it does not appear in the later 1933–35 notes. However, 1932, as Peter Thomas (2009) has suggested, is exactly the “Gramscian moment,” the moment of the emergence of Gramsci’s thinking in all its creative force. Consequently, even as a “concept in progress,” part of broader “work in progress,” it retains its importance. My basic hypothesis is the following: The historical bloc is a stra- tegic, not a descriptive or an analytical, concept. It does not define a social alliance, 1 but a social and political condition, namely the condi- tion when hegemony has been achieved. The concept of the historical bloc refers to a strategy for hegemony. The struggle for hegemony means a struggle for the formation of a new historical bloc. A potential hegemony of the forces of labor, namely their ability to become actu- ally leading in a broader front, that would make possible a process of social transformation, means exactly creating the conditions for a new historical bloc. This means a new articulation among social forces, alternative economic forms in rupture with capitalist social relations of production, new forms of political organization and participatory democratic decision-making. It is in this sense that the historical bloc refers to a unity between structure and superstructures. In terms of contemporary left strategy, the emergence of a new historical bloc refers to the potential for the emergence of real alter- natives to capitalism, of different forms of politics and of organiza- tion, and of alternative discourses and narratives that materialize the ability of society to be organized and administered in a different way. It refers to a specific relation between politics and economics: A new historical bloc defines that specific historical condition when not only a new social alliance reaches power but is also able to impose its own particular economic form and social strategy and lead society. The historical bloc includes a particular relation between the broad 1 The identification of the concept of “historical bloc” with social alliances can be attributed to a surface reading of some of Gramsci’s pre-prison writings, such as the text on the Southern Question where one can find his elaborations on how to dismantle the Southern agrarian bloc in order to advance the alliance between proletariat and southern masses. “It is all the more required by the alliance between proletariat and peasant masses in the South. The proletariat will destroy the Southern agrarian bloc insofar as it succeeds, through its party, in organizing increasingly significant masses of poor peasants into autonomous and inde- pendent formation. But its greater and lesser or lesser success in this necessary task will also depend upon its ability to break up the intellectual bloc that is the flexible, but extremely resistant, armor of the agrarian bloc” (Gramsci, 1978, 462). 96 SCIENCE & SOCIETY masses of the subaltern classes and new intellectual practices, along with the emergence of new forms of mass critical political intellec- tuality. Regarding political organizations, it refers to that particular condition of leadership, in the form of actual rooting, participation, and mass mobilization that defines an “organic relation” between leaders and led, which when we refer to the politics of proletarian hegemony implies a condition of mass politicization and collective elaboration of alternatives. It implies the actuality of the new political and economic forms, and the full elaboration of what we can define as a revolutionary strategy conceived in the broadest sense of the term. In order to substantiate this hypothesis I will offer an interpreta- tion of the references to the historical bloc in the Prison Notebooks I will begin with the association of the historical bloc to Gramsci’s reading of the notion of myth in the work of Georges Sorel. I will then retrace the elaboration of the historical bloc conception in the Prison Notebooks in order to support my hypothesis that it actually refers to a strategy for hegemony. Finally, I will examine the usefulness of this conception regarding contemporary strategic debates in the left. 1. From the Sorelian Myth to the Historical Bloc The “philological” question of relation between the concept of the historical bloc and the Sorelian “myth” arises because of the refer- ence to the historical bloc in a passage in Notebook 4 dealing with the importance of superstructures, as the terrain where people become conscious of their condition, and to the necessary relation between base and superstructure. Here Gramsci refers to “Sorel’s concept of the ‘historical bloc’” (Gramsci, 1977a, 437; Q4, §15). 2 To address this question I will follow Fabio Frosini’s (2003, 93) suggestion that “for Gramsci the bloc does not serve in thinking the psychological validity of ‘myths,’ but in thinking the way in which this validity acquires a gnoseological dimension, that is an effective historical reality.” Gramsci’s concept is not limited to ideological constructions that mobilize mass political action, but rather refers to political strategy. In Sorel’s work there is no reference to the concept of “histori- cal bloc.” Valentino Gerratana has suggested that Gramsci, who in 2 In all quotes from the Prison Notebooks , I will give the reference to the Notebook (Q) and the Note (§). GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 97 prison did not have access to Sorel’s Reflections on Violence , had in mind Sorel’s references to myths, and in particular Sorel’s insistence that these images should be taken as a whole (in Italian: “ prenderli in blocco ”) , as historical forces , probably from a reference in a book by Giovanni Malagodi (Gerratana, in Gramsci, 1977a, 2632) Here is the full quote from Sorel’s introduction to his Reflections on Violence : Men who are participating in great social movements always picture their coming action in the form of images of battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. I proposed to give the name of “myths” to these constructions, knowledge of which is so important for historians: the general strike of the syndicalists and Marx’s catastrophic revolution are such myths. . . . I wanted to show that we should not attempt to analyze such groups of images in the way that we break down a thing into its elements, that they should be taken as a whole, as historical forces. (Sorel, 1999, 20.) Georges Sorel was indeed an influence on the young Gramsci and in 1920 Gramsci stressed that “Sorel is in no way responsible for the intellectual pettiness and crudity of his Italian admirers, just as Karl Marx is not responsible for the absurd ideological pretensions of the ‘Marxists’” (Gramsci, 1977b, 330). 3 In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci sees more clearly the limits of Sorel. However, as Liguori (2009b) has stressed, despite Gramsci’s critical stance towards Sorel’s spontaneism or his rejection of Jacobinism (positive reappraisal of Jacobinism is a characteristic trait of the Prison Notebooks ), he continued his dialog with Sorelian themes. In the Prison Notebooks the Sorelian myth becomes part of a broader attempt by Gramsci to think questions of ideology and politics and a novel theory of political subjectivity and action. “The Sorelian myth is included by Gramsci in that family of lemmas and concepts that define his idea of ideology as a conception of the world and of the sum of beliefs from which collective subjectivity as basis of political action, is formed” (Liguori, 2009a, 543). For Gramsci, the Sorelian myth can be related to Croce’s use of the notion of passion, insisting: “. . . nor can one say that Croce’s passion is something different from the Sorelian ‘myth,’ that passion means the category, the spiritual moment of practice” (Gramsci, 1995, 389; 1977a, 1307–8; Q10II, §41v). However, he finds Croce’s formulation “intellectualistic and illuministic” (Gramsci, 1995, 389–90; 1977a, 3 On Sorel’s influence on Gramsci during the 1919–1920 period, see Rapone, 2011, 340–5. 98 SCIENCE & SOCIETY 1308; Q10II, §41v) and insists that Sorel’s conception had more theo- retical depth, despite the fact that Sorel’s political recommendations have been superseded. This attests to Gramsci’s own theoretical devel- opment, from his 1919–21 positions towards the theory of proletar- ian hegemony, in which his earlier intuitions on the role of factory councils as forms of proletarian self-organization are not discarded but superseded in his theory of a potential proletarian hegemonic apparatus. Guido Liguori has stressed how Gramsci’s relation to Sorel’s work was crucial in the former’s insistence on grounding revolution- ary politics upon social reality and the spontaneous feelings of the subaltern masses, and how the evolution of Gramsci’s thinking led to a reformulation of these thematics in a manner that went beyond Sorel. The necessity of founding revolutionary political action upon social reality, upon the spontaneous feeling of the masses, beginning from the situation of the subaltern in order to increase the potentiality of understanding and of self-government: all these are Sorelian thematics that remained valid, but had been separated from the “intellectualistic and literary elements” that constituted one of the limits of Sorel. The communist movement to which Gramsci adhered in an always more conscious way and always in an eman- cipation from the Sorelian infusions . . . was not for Gramsci the negation of the previous phase but the concrete reformulation, without arrogance and aiming at coherence, even of the positive aspects present in Sorel’s thinking. (Liguori, 2009a, 783.) As part of his conceptual experimentation and attempt to reformulate historical materialism Gramsci is rethinking and at the same time superseding Sorelian themes in the Prison Notebooks . This is evident in Notebook 13 ( Notes on Machiavelli ), where Gramsci defines Sorel’s limit as his inability to think the organization of proletarian collective political action (and intellectuality) in the form of the party, remain- ing within the limited scope of the trade union and the general strike as the highest forms of political action. Sorel never advanced from his conception of ideology-as-myth to an un- derstanding of the political party, but stopped short at the idea of the trade union. It is true that for Sorel the “myth” found its fullest expression not in the trade union as organization of a collective will, but in its practical action-sign of a collective will already operative. The highest achievement of this practical action was to have been the general strike — i.e. , a “passive GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 99 activity,” so to speak, of a negative and preliminary kind . . . an activity which does not envisage an “active and constructive” phase of its own. (Gramsci, 1971, 127; 1977a, 1556–57; Q13, §1.) We can conclude that although the notion of the historical bloc has as one of its origins a confrontation with Sorelian themes, its scope moves beyond the limits of the conception of the myth, towards a more strategic conception of political practice. 2. Gramsci’s Elaboration of the Concept of Historical Bloc Having clarified the theoretical and gnoseological status of the concept of the historical bloc in relation to the Sorelian “myth,” we can retrace how its conceptualization evolves in the Prison Notebooks First, the historical bloc refers to the (dialectical) unity of the social whole 4 and to the relation between material tendencies and ideological representations and the importance of such a relation as a condition for revolutionary praxis. In Notebook 7, the concept of the historical bloc forms part of Gramsci’s broader critique of Croce’s philosophy. For Gramsci the concept of the historical bloc is the equiv- alent of “spirit” in Croce’s idealist conception referring to a dialectical activity and a process of distinction among the different instances of the social whole that does not negate their real unity. In contrast to Croce’s conception of the autonomy of the distinct instances of the social whole (his “dialectic of the distincts”), 5 Gramsci opposed the dialectical conception of the relation between structure and super- structures to any idealist conception of the autonomy of politics. It is a materialist conception of history and politics that accentuates the specificity of politics, and in particular revolutionary politics, without falling back into the idealism of treating politics as an autonomous activity. Concept of historical bloc; in historical materialism it is the philosophical equivalent of “spirit” in Croce’s philosophy: the introduction of dialectical activity and a process of distinctions into the “historical bloc” does not mean negating its real unity. (Gramsci, 2007, 157; 1977a, 854; Q7, §1.) 4 On the importance of the notion of the historical bloc as a part of a dialectical conception that moves beyond any monism and any dualism, see Prestipino, 2004. 5 On Croce’s conception of the “distincts,” see Finocchiaro, 1988. 100 SCIENCE & SOCIETY In the second version of this passage in Notebook 10, the historical bloc is linked to the unity of the process of reality, conceived as “active reaction by humanity on the structure” and in opposition to any dual- ism and any metaphysical conception of the structure: Croce’s assertion that the philosophy of praxis “detaches” the structure from the superstructures, thus bringing back theological dualism and positing “the structure as hidden god” is not correct. . . . it is not true that the philosophy of praxis “detaches” the structure from the superstructures when, instead, it conceives their development as intimately bound together and necessarily interrelated and reciprocal. Nor can the structure be likened to a “hidden god” even metaphorically. . . . Does not the statement in the Theses on Feuer- bach about the “educator [who] must be educated” posit a necessary relation of active reaction by humanity on the structure, thereby asserting the unity of the process of reality? Sorel’s construction of the concept of “historical bloc” grasped precisely in full this unity upheld by the philosophy of praxis. (Gramsci, 1995, 414; 1977a, 1300; Q10II, §41i.) The same attempt at using the notion of the historical bloc as a way to answer Crocean idealism without falling back into some determin- istic or metaphysical conception of the structure can also be found in Notebook 8. There, Gramsci insists on the identity of history and politics, the identity between “nature and spirit,” in a dialectic of the distinct instances of the social whole, that would offer a materialist theory of the — relative — autonomy of politics. What place should political activity occupy in a systematic, coherent and logical conception of the world, in a philosophy of praxis? . . . Croce’s approach is based on his distinction of the moments of the spirit and his affirmation of a moment of practice — a practical spirit that is autonomous and independent, albeit circularly linked to all of reality through the mediation of the dialectic of distinct. In a philosophy of praxis, wherein everything is practice, the distinction will not be between the moments of the absolute spirit but between structure and superstructures, it will be a question of establishing the dialectical position of political activity as distinction within the superstructures. . . . In what sense can one speak of the identity of history with politics and say that therefore all of life is politics? How could one conceive of the whole system of superstructures as [a system of] political distinctions, thus introducing the notion of dis- tinction into the philosophy of praxis? Can one even speak of a dialectic of distincts? Concept of historical bloc; that is, unity between nature and GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 101 spirit, unity of opposites and of distincts. (Gramsci, 2007, 271; 1977a, 977; Q8, §61.) 6 In Notebook 7 Gramsci links the historical bloc to the force of ideology and also to the relation between ideologies and material forces, and insists that in reality it is a relation of organic dialecti- cal unity, distinctions being made only for “didactic” reasons, thus offering an “anti-deterministic and anti-economistic reading of Marx” (Liguori, 2015, 74). The analysis of these propositions tends, I think, to reinforce the concep- tion of historical bloc in which precisely material forces are the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction between form and content has purely didactic value, since the material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces. (Gramsci, 1971, 377; 1977a, 869; Q7, §21.) The close dialectical relation between the social relations of pro- duction and the “complex, contradictory ensemble of the super- structures” offers the basis for a strategic revolutionary orientation. Although Gramsci seems to think mainly in terms of systems of ideologies, I think that here we see the shift, within Gramsci’s con- ceptual experimentation, from “historical bloc” as theorization of the relation between structure and superstructures, to “historical bloc” as strategic concept. On the one hand, social antagonism runs through both superstructures — hence their “complex, contradictory and discordant” character — and through the social relations of pro- duction. On the other hand, the reference to ideologies should not be read in as a simple “reflection” but rather as the kind of political intellectuality and strategic thinking that enables the “revolution- izing of praxis.” 6 In the second version of this passage, in Notebook 13, a reference to the unity between “structure and superstructure” is added (Gramsci, 1971, 137; 1977a, 1569; Q13, §10). See also the following passage from Notebook 10: “The question is this: given the Crocean principle of the dialectic of the distincts (which is to be criticized as the merely verbal solution to a real methodological exigency, in so far as it is true that there exist not only opposites but also distincts), what relationship, which is not that of ‘implication in the unity of the spirit,’ will there be between the politico-economic moment and other historical activities? Is a speculative solution of these problems possible, or only a historical one, given the concept of ‘historical bloc’ presupposed by Sorel?” (Gramsci, 1995, 399–400; 1977a, 1316; Q10, §41x). 102 SCIENCE & SOCIETY Structure and superstructures form a “historical bloc.” That is to say, the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production. From this, one can conclude: that only a totalitarian system of ideologies gives a rational reflection of the contradiction of the structure and represents the existence of the objective conditions for the revolutionizing of praxis. If a social group is formed which is one hundred per cent homogeneous on the level of ideology, this means that the premises exist one hundred per cent for this revolutionizing: that is that the “rational” is actively and actually real. This reasoning is based on the necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructure, a reciprocity which is nothing other than the real dialectical process. (Gramsci, 1971, 366; 1977a, 1051–52; Q8, §182.) Consequently, we can say that the historical bloc is exactly the concept that enables us to think the unity and interrelation between econom- ics, politics and ideology, within Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the integral State, a point stressed by writers such as Jacques Texier 7 and Fabio Frosini. 8 In a note that first appeared in Notebook 8, slightly expanded in Notebook 10, Gramsci used the concept of historical bloc to criti- cize Croce’s conception of ethico-political history. Gramsci’s dialog with this conception was an important part of his attempt to rethink revolutionary politics as a politics of hegemony. Ethico-political his- tory was Croce’s idealist answer to what he perceived as the economic reductionism of Marxism. Gramsci transforms this notion in order to present his own version of a non-economistic historical materialism that does not underestimate the importance of politics, ideology and hegemony. The historical bloc as the relation of social and economic relations with ideological–political forms enables a theoretical rele- vance for the concept of ethico-political history. Ethico-political history, insofar as it is divorced from the concept of historical bloc, in which there is a concrete correspondence of socioeconomic content to ethico-political form in the reconstruction of the various historical periods, 7 “Without the theory of the ‘historical bloc’ and the unity of economy and culture and culture and politics which results from it, the Gramscian theory of superstructures would not be marx- ist. His ‘historicism’ would go no further than the historicism of Croce” (Texier, 1979, 49). 8 “The historical bloc indicates first of all the intrinsic relation between structure and super- structures in the concrete situation connecting it to the theory of hegemony, that is to the historic–realistic value of superstructures, which later on, gradually, becomes synonymous with a situation in which a perfect adherence is forged between ideology and economy, theory and practice” (Frosini, 2003, 132). GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 103 is nothing more than a polemical presentation of more or less interesting philosophical propositions, but it is not history. (Gramsci, 1995, 360; 1977a, 1091, 1237–38; Q8, §240; Q10I, §13.) In the summary first note of Notebook 10, Gramsci treats the concept of the historical bloc as a crucial aspect of a philosophy of praxis that could answer the questions that Croce’s conception of ethico- political history brought forward. Hegemony and historical bloc are theoretically linked in the most emphatic way in this passage. Credit must therefore be given to Croce’s thought for its instrumental value and in this respect it may be said that it has forcefully drawn attention to the study of the factors of culture and ideas as elements of political domina- tion, to the function of the great intellectuals in state life, to the moment of hegemony and consent as the necessary form of the concrete historical bloc. Ethico-political history is therefore one of the canons of historical interpretation. (Gramsci, 1995, 332; 1977a, 1211; Q10I, sommario. ) The historical bloc also plays an important role in Gramsci’s attempt to offer a critique of any ahistorical and individualistic theory of “human nature” and “man in general,” exemplified in his highly original (and profoundly relational) assertion that “man is to be conceived as a histori- cal bloc.” This passage combines the insights of Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach (“the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations”) with the active and political aspect of the struggle towards social transformation, stressing the strategic character of the concept of the historical bloc. Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and subjec- tive elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which the individual is in an active relationship. . . . the synthesis of the elements con- stituting individuality is “individual,” but it cannot be realized and developed without an activity directed outward, modifying external relations both with nature and, in varying degrees, with other men, in the various social circles in which one lives, up to the greatest relationship of all, which embraces the whole human species. For this reason one can say that man is essentially “political” since it is through the activity of transforming and consciously directing other men that man realizes his “humanity,” his “human nature.” (Gramsci, 1971, 360; 1977, 1338; Q10II, §48.) 9 9 See the comments in Voza, 2009. 104 SCIENCE & SOCIETY In a letter to Tania Schucht, dated May 9, 1932, Gramsci outlined his critique of Croce’s idealist conception of “ethico-political history.” For Gramsci “ethico-political history is not excluded from historical mate- rialism since it is the history of the ‘hegemonic’ moment.” However, “Croce is so immersed in his method and in his speculative language that he can only judge in accordance with them; when he writes that in the philosophy of praxis structure is like a hidden god, this might be true if the philosophy of praxis were a speculative philosophy and not an absolute historicism” (Gramsci, 2011, Vol. II, 171). Gramsci accused Croce of being unable to write a history of Europe as the formation of a historical bloc. Is it possible to think of a unitary history of Europe that begins in 1815, that is with the restoration? If a history of Europe can be written as the forma- tion of a historical bloc, it cannot exclude the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars that are the “juridical–economic” premise of the entire European historical complex, the moment of force and struggle. Croce takes up the following moment, the moment in which the previously unleashed forces found an equilibrium, underwent “catharsis” so to speak, making of this moment an event apart on which he constructs his historical paradigm. (Gramsci, 2011, Vol. II, 171–72.) The role of the historical bloc in the conceptual architecture of the Prison Notebooks is not limited to the critique of Crocean idealism. The politics of a potential proletarian hegemony is the politics of work- ing towards a new historical bloc. It is in this sense that the historical bloc appears in the note on the relation of forces in Notebook 9 but also in the note on the structure of parties during a period of organic crisis in Notebook 13 (which Gramsci links to note 17 from Q13 on the relation of forces). 10 Gramsci stresses the importance of political initiatives in order to liberate the economic and political potential of a new historical bloc: An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies — i.e. , to change the politi- cal direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed if a new, homoge- neous politico-economic historical bloc, without internal contradictions, is 10 Giuseppe Cospito (2016, 31) has suggested that it is here that we see Gramsci moving from a theoretical to a practical–operational conception of the relation between structure and superstructures. GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 105 to be successfully formed. And, since two “similar” forces can only be welded into a new organism either through a series of compromises or by force of arms, either by binding them to each other as allies or by forcibly subordinat- ing one to the other, the question is whether one has the necessary force, and whether it is “productive” to use it. (Gramsci, 1971, 168; 1977a, 1120, 1612; Q9, §40; Q13, §23.) This passage underlines Gramsci’s insight that the emergence of a new historical bloc, as a dialectical unity of economic and politi- cal/ideological forms, is not simply the outcome of an “objective” tendency but the potential result of a political project and initiative within the contradictory and antagonistic terrain of class struggle. The emergence of a new historical bloc requires political initiative, formation of a collective will, and intervention on the terrain of social and political antagonism. 11 Following Frosini, we can say that the Crocean “dialectic of the distincts” and the Gramscian notion of the “historical bloc” offer two alternative conceptions of hegemony: one that comes as the “occulting of conflict” and one that instead comes as the “theoretical elaboration and practical development” (Frosini, 2003, 135) of conflict. 12 The reference to a “politico-economic” historical bloc is also important, since it makes evident that the scope of the concept is not limited to the level of the superstructures but also includes the economic structure and the class strategies deployed there. It refers to the ensemble of economic, political and ideological relations. Jacques Texier has pointed to the need to follow carefully Gramsci’s novel redefinition of “civil society” and how this encompasses a series of political and ideological practices, relations, beliefs conditioned by determinate social relations of production. 13 Civil society does not 11 “But now the historical bloc will be no other than the construction of a collective will on the basis of determinate relations of production in the sphere of the notion of hegemony. Whereas Croce only sees the moment of unity (which for him was not historical , it was history ), the philosophy of praxis sees how unity becomes constructed . . . on the terrain of contradictions, of scissions, not from unity” (Frosini, 2003, 134). 12 See also the comments in Frosini, 2010, 84–6. 13 “In other words, what does civil society represent for Gramsci? It is the complex of practical and ideological social relations (the whole infinitely varied social fabric, the whole human content of a given society) which is established on the base of determined relations of production. It includes the types of behavior of homo economicus as well as of homo ethico-politicus. It is therefore the object, the subject and the locality of the superstructural activities which are carried out in ways that differ according to the levels and moments by means of the ‘hegemonic apparatuses’ on the one hand and of the ‘coercive apparatuses’ on the other” (Texier, 1979, 71). 106 SCIENCE & SOCIETY refer simply to the field of political and cultural hegemony, but also to economic activities. Although Gramsci distinguished economic structure and civil society, the crucial Gramscian notions of “ homo economicus” and “determinate market” point towards the inclusion of aspects of economic activity and behavior within the field of civil society The emergence of a new historical bloc is also the emergence of a new “ homo economicus ” and a new configuration of civil society (Texier, 1989, 61). Therefore, the construction of a new historical bloc, as a new articulation of economic, politics and ideology, is at stake in the struggle for hegemony: “The winning of hegemony is a social struggle which aims to transform the relation of forces in a given situation. A historico-political bloc has to be dismantled and a new one constructed so as to permit the transformation of the relations of production ” (Texier, 1979, 67). Christine Buci-Glucksmann has stressed the need to avoid the error of the “simple identification between historical bloc and class alliances . . . or even the fusion . . . that embraces workers and intel- lectuals” (Buci-Glucksmann, 1980, 275). For Buci-Glucksmann, the historical bloc goes beyond social alliances, since it implies both a specific form of hegemonic leadership but also the development of the superstructures, “an ‘integral state’ rooted in an organic relationship between leaders and masses” ( ibid ., 276). The concept of the histori- cal bloc is for Buci-Glucksmann not simply a materialist position and anti-economistic answer to the relation between the different instances of the social whole; it is an attempt to rethink a revolutionary strategy within the transition period. Compared with Bukharin’s worker–peasant bloc of 1925–26, the Gramscian historical bloc demonstrates a major new feature. This bloc is cultural and political as much as economic, and requires an organic relationship between people and intellectuals, governors and governed, leaders and led. The cultural revolution, as an on-going process of adequation between culture and practice, is neither luxury nor a simple guarantee, but rather an actual dimension of the self-government of the masses and of democracy. (Buci Glucksmann, 1980, 286.) This reference to the cultural revolution is important. Frosini (2003, 95–97) and Thomas (2009, 232–234) have stressed how Gramsci’s thinking on hegemony was also conditioned upon his read- ing of Lenin’s preoccupation with the question of cultural revolution GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 107 during the NEP period, namely the possibility of offering to the masses the forms of political intellectuality necessary for the process of social transformation. I think that this also is an important aspect of the conceptualization of the historical bloc. The strategic character of the concept of historical bloc can be found in the note on the Passage from Knowing to Understanding and to Feeling and vice versa from Feeling to Understanding and to Knowing, from Notebook 4 and reproduced in Notebook 11. The emphasis is on the particular relation between intellectuals and the people–nation, but also between leaders and the led. It is also on the need for intellectuals not only to interpret the conjuncture, in an abstract way, but also to understand the “passions” of the subaltern classes and dialectically transform them into a “superior conception of the world.” Passion is for Gramsci a crucial yet inadequate Crocean notion, one that touches upon questions of a politics of hege- mony, the combination of material forces and ideological forms, yet it has to be superseded in new forms of political intellectuality and action. It is exactly here that one might see the analogy between the concept of the historical bloc and a condition of hegemony. If the relationship between intellectuals and people–nation, between the lead- ers and the led, the rulers and the ruled, is provided by an organic cohesion in which feeling–passion becomes understanding and hence knowledge (not mechanically but in a way that is alive), then and only then is the relation- ship one of representation. Only then can there take place an exchange of individual elements between the rulers and ruled, leaders [ dirigenti ] and led, and can the shared life be realized which alone is a social force with the creation of the “historical bloc.” (Gramsci, 1971, 418; 1977a, 452; 1977a, 1505–06; Q4, §33; Q11, §67.) 14 It is here that the conception of revolutionary strategy as construction of a new historical bloc fully emerges. We are no longer dealing simply with the unity of structure and superstructures, but with the condi- tion for a profound social transformation, a transition to Gramsci’s reformulation of communism as regulated society, as absorption of political society by civil society. 15 It is more than a simple reference 14 On the importance of the notion of the historical bloc as a reference to hegemony as capac- ity to elaborate “organically” a social system, see Filippini, 2015, 84–92. 15 “The historical bloc leads to a reformulation of the entire Marxist problematic of the wither- ing away of the State as a passage to a regulated society, where political society is reabsorbed by civil society” (Buci-Glucksmann, 1999, 104). 108 SCIENCE & SOCIETY to a social alliance that manages to capture political power, since it entails the construction of new hegemonic apparatuses, new social, political, ideological and economic forms. In opposition to a simple “bloc in power,” the historical bloc “presupposes the historical con- struction of long duration of a new hegemonic system, without which classes become only a mechanical aggregate, managed by the State or a bureaucracy” (Buci-Glucksmann, 1999, 104). The historical bloc is indeed a central node in the conceptual architecture of the Prison Notebooks , despite its disappearance in the last phase of Gramsci’s elaborations. It is situated at the intersection of analysis and strategy, representing Gramsci’s attempt to theorize the possibility of hegemony in its integral form, as the dialectical unity of structure and superstructures. Therefore, in terms of strategy, it implies that the struggle for hegemony is the struggle for a new his- torical bloc, namely an articulation of transition programs emanating from the collective struggle, ingenuity and experimentation of the subaltern classes, organizational forms, new political practices, and new political intellectualities. 3. The Historical Bloc and Its Strategic Significance In this section, I will consider how the historical bloc as a stra- tegic theoretical node can help us in the contemporary debates on left strategy. The long retreat of the left as the combined result of the triumph of neoliberalism and the collapse of “actually existing socialism” for a long time seemed to make questions of strategy unimportant. What seemed to be necessary was the unity around basic struggles and movements of resistance. Strategic discussion was left either to theoretical elaborations or was postponed for a better day. Even after the return of mass protest movements after Seattle 1999, the return of the strategic question Daniel Bensaïd talked about in 2006 (Bensaïd, 2006) has yet to produce some specific strategic recommendations. However, recent developments have made us all realize the urgency of these questions. These include the global economic crisis of the end of the 2000s and the crisis of neoliberalism (Duménil and Lévy, 2011), the impressive return of mass protest politics, from 2011 until now, the open crisis of the European Integration process (Lapavitsas, et al., 2012), and the evidences of an open hegemonic GRAMSCI’S HISTORICAL BLOC 109 crisis in various “weak links” of the imperialist chain, a crisis that can be described in Gramscian terms. And the content is the crisis of the ruling class’ hegemony, which occurs ei- ther because the ruling class has failed in some major political undertaking for which it has requested, or forcibly extracted, the consent of the broad masses (war, for example), or because huge masses (especially of peasants and petit-bourgeois intellectuals) have passed suddenly from a state of po- litical passivity t