1. Gramsci and Political Economy
Michael R. Krätke

2. Dramatis personae: Gramsci and Sraffa
Piero Sraffa ( )
Antonio Gramsci
(1891 – 1937)

3. Ricardo and Marx
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)
David Ricardo
( )

4. Croce and Bucharin Benedetto Croce Nikolai Bucharin (1866 – 1952)
(1888 – 1938)

5. Gramsci and political economy
Gramsci studied linguistics and philosophy, not economics
Rich Italian tradition in political economy
Italians among the pioneers of the ‘marginalist revolution’
Enrico Barone 1907: the first theory / model of a functioning socialist economy
Marxism – the critique of political economy at its centre
Defending Marx / Marxism against the most popular reproach: determinism, economic determinism

6. Croce and the academic Marx-critique of the 1890s
After 1894 (publication of volume III of Marx’ Capital): the first wave of academic critique of Marx by economists, historians, sociologists
Croce’s critique of Marx (1895 – 1900)
Essays on “Historical materialism and the Economics of Marx”
Taking issue with his teacher, Antonio Labriola
Croce’s critique of Historical Materialism
Croce’s critique of the labour theory of value
Croce’s critique of the Marxian Law of the falling rate of profit
Gramsci’s intention/plan in the notebooks: An Anti-Croce

7. The Southern Question
Modestly: “Some Aspects of the Southern Question”
Unfinished essay (Gramsci was arrested)
Linked to the Lyons Theses – an effort to give an analysis of the social and economic structure of Italy (weaknesses of Italian capitalism / relations between proletariat – industrial workers and agricultural workers – and the peasantry)
Analysis and explanation of the North/ South divide in Italy (and other regional divides – the Islands, the third Italy)
Backwardness / subaltern position of the South after the unification of Italy – due to internal “colonization” (as the very base for the rapid industrialization of the North)
Very different power structures (power blocs) in the North and in the South – different bourgeois classes, different intellectuals, different character of the state and the church, different structures of civil societies

8. Gramsci’s critique of economism
What is ‘economism’?
Classical liberalism – different varieties, but “free trade liberalism” the most important
Syndicalism
Workers’ council movement (Turin 1919 – 1920)
Marxism of the II. International (1889 – 1920) - Gramsci in 1917: The October revolution is a revolution against “Capital”!
What do they have in common? The separation (analytically / ideologically / practically) of the “state” and “civil society” (or the “political” and the “economic” and the “social”)
How political is the political economy of capitalism?

9. Gramsci in prison
Available sources – very poor (some books, some newspapers, journals)
Gramsci had to rely on his memory
Gramsci’s repeated remarks in the notebooks: Everything has to be revised, once I have access to the books
Available interlocutors – very few (Piero Sraffa the most important source of serious feedback)

10. Marx’critique of political economy
When Engels died in 1895: only a part (the smaller part) of his and Marx’ writings were available (a lot had remained unpublished)
What had been published afterwards (f.i. Theories of Surplus Value in 1905 – 1910) was not available in Italian or French
There was no systematic and sustained effort to study and to develop Marx’ theory (with a few exceptions, Austromarxism the most remarkable)
Also much of the writings of contemporaries remained unpublished or untranslated (f.i. Rosa Luxemburg, Alexander Bogdanov)

11. The problem of a science of economics
Classical political economy
The Ricardian school and the Ricardian socialists
Dissolution of the Ricardian school
J.St. Mill as the last of the classical political economists (a bourgeois, liberal socialist)
Marx’ critique
Pure economics – the marginalist revolt against classical political economy
The Italian School (Pareto, Einaudi)

12. The problem of capitalist transformations
Structural changes after the Great Depression
The rise of the Big Corporation
The rise of Finance Capital
The rise of Multinationals
The problem of Imperialism
The problem of the next crisis – and the problem of capitalism’s end

13. Americanism / Fordism Changes of capitalism after WWI
From a NIC and NAC to the reluctant hegemon of the capitalist world
US great industry, US ‘fordist’/ ‘taylorized’ factories as a model for the old, European capitalist powers
Gramsci’s problem: What are the necessary preconditions for introducing the “fordist” practices of mass production in Europe? Can there be a “Fordist” mode of production / accumulation without and “American” social and cultural order?
Americanism – the cultural revolution linked to the second industrial revolution (changing norms, patterns of behaviour, of thinking, bodies, sex relations, urban and other spaces, time regimes, daily routines)

14. The Great Crisis of the 1930s
The breakdown of postwar capitalism’s settlements in Europe and America (and all over the world)
The end of the gold standard and international free trade / unprecedented breakdown of the capitalist world economy in
The biggest challenge to the orthodoxy of economics and mainstream bourgeois thought on economic and financial politics
An age of turmoil – rise of fascist mass movements to power
An age of experiments (New Deal in the USA, Keynesianisms of different kinds in Europe, Industrialization in the Soviet Union)

15. Basic categories of political economy/economics
Moral philosophy and political economy – rational man, virtuous man
Economic “laws” – regulating the market and beyond
Production – Exchange – Distribution (and Reproduction)
Value and Price
Income and Wealth
Triadic Formula: Capital – Labour – Land, Profit – Wages – Rent

16. Gramsci’s reading of political economy
Three different schools – the classical, the critical, the neoclassical (pure) economics
The classical and the critical school share an historicist approach
Three fundamental concepts that all types of economics have to deal with:
homo oeconomicus
determinate markets
tendency laws

17. Homo oeconomicus
One of the basic categories of critical political economy according to Gramsci
Gramsci’s main argument: Even the homo oeconomicus of pure economics is a historically specific abstraction (rational, calculating, maximizing economic man)
It has different meaning within the different types of economics ( see the three or more ‘economic classes’ in classical political economy and in Marx)

18. The determinate market
Against the (false) abstraction of pure exchange
Historical specificity of ‘markets’, market economies and market societies
Marx (critical economy) : the ‘historicity’ of the determinate market / the ‘automatism’ of the determinate market
How are markets determinated ? And by whom?
The concept includes: societal actors (classes), the state

19. Tendence laws
The problem of economic laws – laws of motion, laws of development
Ricardo’s vice – and the contemporary critique
The Ricardo – Marx relationship (in Gramsci’s view)
The peculiarity of “laws” in critical political economy (general, but historical laws, all dealing with different conditionalities / temporalities, historical environments)

20. Gramsci’s critique of orthodox Marxism
Against the new orthodoxy (Soviet text books of political economy of the late 1920s)
How to teach Marxian political economy?
Continue the critique of political economy!
Debunking the myths and fallacies of mainstream economics?
Economics is a battlefield of ideas (contested terrain of concepts and methods with direct impact upon politics)

21. How to deal with economics
What we need according to Gramsci
A critical history of economic thought (one of Marx’ projects)
A reconstruction of the making of critical economics ( or Marx’ and Engels’ research process)
Political economy as an interdiscipline – integral and integrating part of the social sciences
A reflection upon the development of concepts and methods in economic research

22. The battle of ideas and ideologies
Political economy is crucial in the battle of ideas
Modern society is pervaded by economic thoughts and concepts (economism of everyday life and everyday thought)
Modern capitalism is a world of “insane forms” (of behaviour and thought) according to Marx
Open problem: How Gramsci dealt with the categories / theories of fetishism (mystifications of economic and social realities) in Marx