Unpublished writings of Gramsci on the education.

Hernn Ouvia.

The following texts are in their entirety, and up to where we have been able to verify, unpublished in Castilian. Except for the editorial of the newspaper "The new order" that takes for title "to create a school" (edited by Palmiro Togliatti and published originally without signature), the rest of the articles, as well as the letter, they were written by Antonio Gramsci. Although some few anthologies that try to systematize those passages exist where the Italian thinker meditates on the educational question- such as the one compiled by Mario Manacorda under the title The pedagogic alternative -, the certain thing is that they are extremely scarce the books that give bill of the abundant quantity of journalistic notes edited by Gramsci during his intense juvenile period in the convulsed Turn that are met to this problem. In general, his interpreters have reduced between 1929 and 1935, devaluing those reflections that go, especially, of 1916 until 1922. Nevertheless, we think that this one is a moment of supreme creativity and theoretical - practical experimentations in the cultural and educational plane, which therefore he deserves to be re-examined in the light of new sources and investigations. As a whole, it constitutes a brief selection of journalistic articles and epistolary exchange, all of them doomed to the pedagogic problem. From already, we do not try to exhaust the subject matter, but simply to put in evidence the existence of a permanent interest for the educational question in the young person Gramsci and, in a more general plane, in the group ordinarista of that it was forming a part. (Hernn Ouvia)

I.

The privilege of the ignorance

The set Goad, to the categorical imperative " first: to educate the proletarians ", it wants that it follows other one: " I come second: to educate the bourgeoises ". We accept all that that the companion Goad writes on the ignorance and on the Philistinism of the bourgeoises. But we do not worry about this ignorance and about this Philistinism. The bourgeoises can be up to ignoramuses in the immense majority: the bourgeois world follows forward the same thing. It will be personified in such a way that coarse sewing that there is a minority of intellectual, of scientists, of experts, in order that the businesses prosper. The ignorance is also a privilege of the middle class, since it is his privilege not to do anything and the intellectual laziness. That bourgeois regime is a regime of guardianship; the control, he detests the discussion. The crisis in which the democracies are debated is a product of great part of the contrast between the beginning of authority, between the necessary jacobinismo to every bourgeois condition, and the trend to extend increasingly the own task of control on behalf of the popular, socialist and democratic masses. The theoretical ones of the middle class have felt at some time this contrast between the needs of the conservation of the bourgeois power and the electoral need to be served the propaganda for the accomplishment

of an immediate program. Alberto Caroncini, for mentioning one of theoretical these, was holding that the intellectual groups must fight against the tax on the wheat and give the bread to good price to the "cafoni", but they must look after well of inciting the "cafoni" to the theoretical battle, of making inform the "cafoni" in the fight, because if the "cafoni" begin to be interested in such questions, there can be problems, and there is not known where it is possible to end. The protection on the wheat can be compared to the protection on the private property, and the will that has managed to bring down a particular protection, of categories, can propose, with the safety of managing to bring down also the protection of class. The bourgeoises also can be ignoramuses. The proletariats not. For the proletariats it is a duty to be ignoramuses. The socialist civilization, without protection of caste and of category, to be realized completely it is necessary that all the citizens can control what his agents chief executive every time decide and do. If the wise persons, if the technical personnel, if those that can stamp on the production and on the exchange a more ardent and rich life of possibilities, are an exiguous minority, not controlled, for the logic itself of the things, this minority will develop favoured, it will impose to his own culture. There must exist a way of choosing between a number bigger possible being of individuals to send to the public charges, in order that beech was guaranteeing of freedom, in order that the choice relapses on the best and does not have necessarily that to relapse always on the same ones: it is necessary that nobody is absolutely indispensable. The problem of education of the proletariats is a problem of freedom. The proletariats themselves must solve it. That the bourgeoises think about his matters, if they want to think.

II.

Letter to Giseppe Lombargo Radice.

Turin, March, 1918 Estimated gentleman, I attach an article that my collaborator Andrea Viglongo has written for " Il Grido of the Popolo " on his opuscule The concept of the education. Viglongo is a youngster self-taught, which will explain to him any contradiction and imprecision of his writing. I know and admire the work that he has developed for a spiritual renovation of the Italian youth, because of it I write to him, querindole to inform of little work that we the Socialists seek to develop here in Turin, which probably happens in Italy for the kingdom of the bestiality and of the proletarian imbecility and defeatist. His kindness and gentility I believe that they have preserved it from the contagion of the perversion that has developed epidemic: to have a different conception on the task that the socialist proletariat must carry out during the war can annul the reciprocal respect. In Turin we believe that it is not enough with the verbal proclamation of the beginning and of the moral maxims that necessarily will have to be restored by the advent of the socialist civilization. We have sought to organize this proclamation: to give new examples (for Italy) of asociacionismo. And this way it arises for little a Club of the moral life. With him we propose to

accustom, to the young persons who adhere to the political and economic socialist movement, to the discussion disinterested in the ethical and social problems. We want to accustom them to the investigation, to the reading done with discipline and method, to the simple and serene exhibition of his convictions. The works are realized this way: I, that I have had to accept the coordinator's task, as initiator of the association, assign a task to a young person: his opuscule on the education, a chapter of Culture and moral life of B. Croce, of the educational and social Problems of Salvemini, of the French Revolution or of Culture and laicism of the same Salvemini, of the Manifest of the communists, Croce's annotation on the "critique" or other one, which nevertheless comes from the idealistic current movement. The young person reads, does a scheme, and then in a meeting it exposes to the presents the result of his investigations and of his reflections. Someone of the presents, if it has been prepared, or I itself, let's sense beforehand objections, we propose diverse solutions; extend the domain of a concept or of a reasoning. There is opened this way a discussion, which seeks not to be closed until all the presents have had the possibility of understanding and of making own the most important results of the common work. Other times, the Club has between his ends the acceptance of the reciprocal control on the daily, familiar activity, of office, civilian, of each one. We want that anyone has the sufficient courage and the energy moral to confess publicly, accepting that the friends advise it and control it: we want to create the reciprocal confidence, an intellectual and moral communion between all. Viglongo's article is the result of a meeting: Viglongo is 17 years old, is a private employee, and has completed the technical low studies. In the "Grido" they have turned out to be like that: an investigation on Faith and programs of B. Croce, other one on sensual Nationalisms of the same Croce. Viglongo is preparing other one on "Southern Question following Salvemini's writings. It be very grateful if you, who follows with interest all the new pedagogic experiences, had the kindness of writing to me his opinion about our experience, which certainly it does not steady itself and develops without difficulty. The young persons are all workers: the socialism turins is fundamentally working; few university young persons are far for military obligations. Though they are intelligent and of good will, it is necessary begin for the simplest and elementary things: for the language itself. You might help me with some advice, indicating to me a direction that should include and completes my intentions, showing me the mistakes in which I can fall down? I it is am very grateful, and my young friends would obtain of his words new energy to preserve and to strengthen his will. With the major gratitude, Antonio Gramsci. III. First free

The thesis is not true that you have supported Il Grido always and the readers who have followed us can see easily where there is the weakness of Leonetti's article. Leonetti does abstraction of the organization; this is, of the social phenomenon across which the socialism is realized. And it does not reflect that the organization is, after all, a way of

being that it determines a form of conscience; that form of conscience that Leonetti supposes that it will not be able to develop even so much let's be "free", up to so much we have conquered the power of the State and restored the dictatorship of the proletariat. Leonetti therefore speaks about "us" and of "people" like of two divided entities: We (who if not) , divided from action; the people, Herd of blind persons and ignoramuses. And he understands party of action like it they understood the carbonarios of ' 48, not how it is nowadays, since it is formed by the political modern fight, to fills of advertising, of which they inform innumerable multitudes and not a factious group of shock of four conspirators as four policemen. The problem for the Socialists is other. That one that he respects to the development of the individuality is exposed by rigor and precision by Carena. But for us, this one is also, particularly, a social problem and in this respect it can be solved only by means of the organization. The economic individualism of the capitalist regime determines to the political socialism. This immanent need of the regime Marx has synthesized it in the shout "Workers of the world, unite!. Marx has done of the need a desire, of the dark and vague inclination a critical conscience: the instinct has developed and will develop, across the socialist propaganda, spirituality. This implicit activity in the economic and political organization tends to be defined, to assume own form. The "union" is not only an approximation of physical bodies, is a communion of spirits, is an intellectual collaboration, is a mutual support in the work of individual development, is reciprocal education and reciprocal control. This implicit activity in the economic and political organization tends to be defined, to assume own form. The socialist movement develops, groups multitudes, which individuals have different degrees of preparation for the conscious action, they possess different degrees of preparation for the social conviviality in the future regime. So much minor is our preparation in Italy has not crossed the liberal experience, has known little freedoms and the illiteracy is more spread still today about what they inform the statistics. Major it is in the organized proletariat the duty to be educated, to detach of his association the necessary prestige to assume the social management without worry for Vandal revolts that destroy the conquests of the party of action. The education, the culture, the organization arisen of to know and of t The most intelligent phase of the fight against the despotism of the intellectual ones of career and of the competitions for divine right is formed by the action to intensify the culture, to deepen the conscience. He experience, is the independence of the masses respect of the intellectual ones. The most intelligent phase of the fight against the despotism of the intellectual ones of career and of the competitions for divine right is formed by the action to intensify the culture, to deepen the conscience. And it is not possible to leave this work for tomorrow, for when we are politically free. Stimulus is in yes same for the action and condition of the action. The conscience of the own immaturity, the dread of failing in the attempt of reconstruction, is not it so the most ferrous of the hobbles that prevent the action? And it cannot be another way;

socialism is an organization and not only political and economic, but also and specially of knowing and of will obtained across the cultural activity.

The IV th. To create a school. In Turin, on initiative of the Federation of the Socialist Circles, it is for the project beginning to be implemented, often presented and discussed in the rows of our movement, in congresses of young women and adults, of giving life to an organ dedicated exclusively to doing works of culture and of study. For express will of the initiators, the new institute will forge leaders and it is possible to say that for the present it will assume almost exclusively the form of a school of socialist propaganda. It is not excluded, though it will try to do so that concerning this central institution others develop with related aims, for the present, nevertheless, the activity of the companions who prepare themselves for the new work, as guide and organizers on the one hand, like pupils for other one, must tend to this aim: to create a school. We want to expose brief the fundamental beginning, the managerial concepts to which it will have abide, it fixes in his big lines the one that will have to propose, to strain of seeing under what conditions and up to what point it will be able to be realized. It is a question of doing a small examination of conscience to him: to examine the possibilities and our capacities and of the future pupils and to adapt to them the program. The important thing, in these things and it is this moment and in a context as ours, it is not to advance with the words and with the projects beyond what it will be possible to manage, of having especially, a precise sense of reality. Remaining faithful to the reality, adhiriendo to the things as really they are, we will be in conditions to control them and of dominating them, exercising across them an effective action of transformation. It is necessary that the word does not exceed the work ". The words, in our case, are really big. To create a school? The value of this expression does not appear probably to all, immediately, in all his extension, and in exact way. It will not be left to perceive in her the sign of a vain and harmful intention of pedantic, unable to embrace horizons more wide than those that can be glimpsed of a chair, behind a heap of printed papers, in a classroom full of boring boys. There is not so this the concept that most of the men does to herself of a school? This word does not associate of for yes with the dusty image of a tedious place, where a legacy of lazy instructs and learns, that is to say, one sees compelled to do a work that does not correspond to him and he does not like it; to mumbling concepts; to turning the pages of books, to scribbling notebooks? And opposite to this image, spontaneously, since in the spirit of a prisoner the recollection of a day of freedom and of the Sun, other one, that one arises from the life, which him is opposed as antithesis, of the life that is a green tree and do not fry and gray matter, which is spontaneity and sincerity, not either obligation or pedantry, of the life that is a search of the own truth and of yes same, for the big and free routes of the world, and there rebels who it wants to catch between the walls of a classroom, to condemn it in the pages of a book. Actually both terms, the school and the life, they are opposed in a way that seems to be insurmountable only when there is head of one, one academic and bookish idea, and of other one, a superficial and illusory idea. We already have had the opportunity to react, speaking

about the value that we assign to him to the word culture, respect of these mistakes. To create a school wants to say to educate, to educate wants to say to form men, educational activity is any human activity in all that it develops under the form of collaboration in a common work. Especially where there is chased an end that goes mas there of the limits of our individuality, where one obeys a beginning and a law - and that one costs it for us of denying and of abolishing all the laws that exist today in day-, where it is known that in wanting harmonious this one there is the essence and the best part of our personality, in a word, especially where there exists a center of common action, where there is a center of education, where men are formed, there is a school. And the schools themselves, the institutes created with an educational explicit end, should not stretch to another thing that to this: to turning white of egg, to turn conscious this preexisting unit of spirits; every education will have to come down to being an active collaboration to extract to the light that one that before was in the shade, an effort for unifying, for giving to the liberating common activity an organic and systematic character. The real teacher is not the one who says to us: "come to me that I have and I will give them the real truth ", but the one who wants to look for her, the truth, with you, for the ways of the action and of the life. The real and only teacher of all only is the life in all his forms. There it takes root for us in the need to stick to her, to extract of her the exact measure of the limits and of the manners of our action. In general, all the schools that they have done and they are done for the people are corrupted by a fundamental mistake, which derives from the loss of sight of the beginning of that the school, must be a collaboration, and that for which one works. The courses of the popular universities diminish to a series of conferences, of learned and sometimes magisterial, but separated exhibitions some of others, disintegrated, often discordant. The beginning unifier is exterior, is not the interest and the need of the pupil, but a pre-established program, when not simply the pretense of the one who teaches. One appeals to the village doing ostentation of many notions as of a multicolored goods and they are thinking of such a way about imposing, about being interested, to do a useful work. But, for whom he listens, all that merchandise is a dead thing: each one takes to the school an own, different problem of the others and none finds that one that encourages it, that one that had been going to search. The unit is absent at first. We will reach the unit because we will do a Socialists' school. The workmates who will assume the task of teaching and those that will assume it as pupils, different in age, in customs, in kind, in social condition, will be and they are tied after all by the fact of working with the same intentions and of feeding the same faith. Yesterday in a barrack, today in an office or an desk, tomorrow in the revolted street: we want that our life, the action and the thought, are unified by the aim that we have noticed and that is before us. If a bit of this will it was entering our school, we would be already closely together of reaching that one that we propose ourselves. Even if we were not managing to teach big things, in the real sense of the word, we will manage at least to moderate in the common work our faith. But also in the education, if not big things, for which we would be neither suitable nor capable, something we are sure that it will be possible obtain.

We live in a period of crisis, not only for our enemies and for the world that they had constructed and that now crumbles, but also, in certain way, for us. Our crisis is different: that one is a crisis of destruction, this one of new creation. But the uncertainty is shared: they see destroying little by little the domain of the things and of the world and of yes same, we do not manage still to affirm fully, since we wanted, our domain and our will. We need to see increasingly clearly, of knowing every time better, what we must do. The worker in the office does not conform with any more to the old forms, but it wants to approach ado to the task, on a virgin area, the way of the future to be opened. The political man seeks to establish the first limits of the new institutes, the expert approaches the man of action, cannot remain indifferent to the work that begins. If we look at the writings of our teachers, so much more we realize that the critiques and the forecasts have found a response in the reality, so much more anxiously we search in his pages a guide for the positive work that it tries of undertaking now. We believe that the socialism today stops being a critique or an expectation to develop construction, creation of operative will. We feel increasingly nearby in the day of the test and do not want to be taken by surprise. On the results, though we feed some hope, we do not do illusions to ourselves. We know of the material inability to become accustomed to a long and methodical work of office in an office. But we are sure of a thing: the one who comes to our school from his daily work will not bring with it only the physical weariness, the depletion of the routine, but also a bit of the will, of the intention that has ripened in his spirit, from his place of work, of be liberating of every constriction of the body and of the spirit, of fighting against ardor always renewed and tenacious to obtain full recognition, to have full possibility of personal development. And we will take to the school the desire to collaborate with this great effort of human emancipation, of giving him increasingly regularity and clarity, of returning increasingly surer of more sweeping. If our wills were managing to fuse and to join completely, if some were extracting to him renewed faith and another thin and shrewd critical spirit, if we were obtaining both though a better knowledge is alone as proved of us themselves, of valuing in a more exact way the ends and the means and the possibilities of our action, we will not have acted uselessly. We will have given life to a small center of common action, will have improved a small part of the humanity, will have worked for educating and to educate ourselves, will have really created a school. V. Chronic of the "New Order " the XXIInd.

The first course of the school of culture and socialist propaganda has begun last week, with the first class of theory and the first practical exercise, so that it has not stopped filling us with satisfaction. From the beginning we feel authorized to shelter the biggest hopes for the success. Why to deny that any of us doubted? We were doubting that, being alone one or two times a week, each one tired by his own work, us it was possible to find in all that freshness without which the minds cannot communicate, the spirits cannot join and the school cannot be realized, as series of educational acts lived and felt jointly. Probably we were turned

sceptics by the experience of the bourgeois schools, the pupils' tedious experience, the educators' hard experience: the cold, opaque environment to all lights, resistant to every effort of ideal unification, that one young persons joined in those classrooms not for the desire to improve and to deal, but for the aim, implicit, but clear and shared for all, to go out forward, to reach a "title", to place his own pretense and his own vagrancy, of deceiving itself today to yes same and tomorrow to the others. And we have seen close to us, abundances, stuck some to others in the inconvenient banks and in the narrow space, these unusual pupils, most of not very young them, externally so of the age learning it is something simple and native, all so debilitated after an office day, to follow with the deepest attention the course of the lesson, to strain for taking notes, feeling authentically that between that one who speaks and that one who listens there has been established a vivacious channel of intelligence and sharm. This would not be possible if in these workers the desire to learn was not arising from a conception of the world that the life itself has taught them and that they feel the need to dawn, to possess it completely, to be able to live through it fully. It is a unit that preexiste and that the education to seek to revive, is a living unit that in the bourgeois schools uselessly seeks to be created. Our school is alive because you, workers, take the best part of you, that one that the weariness of the office cannot become lethargic: the will to be better. The whole superiority of his class in this turbid and stormy moment, us we see her expressed in this desire that it encourages to a part increasingly big of you, I wish of acquiring conscience, of becoming capable, owners of his thought and of his action, direct makers of the history of his class. Our school will continue, and will harvest the fruits that it him is possible: it is opened for all the events, a fact anyone will be able to remove and to disperse tomorrow to all of us that today we met concerning her and spread and take it of her a bit of the warmth, of the faith that is not necessary to live and to fight, we will do the balance sheets later, but for the present we indicate this, forthwith we indicate this sensation of confidence that us comes given from the first classes, of the first contact. With the spirit of these first classes we want to continue.

The VI.th

Men of meat and bone

The workers of the FIAT have returned to the work, treason? Denial of the ideal revolutionaries? The workers of the FIAT are men of meat and bone. They have resisted for one month. They knew of fighting and of resisting not only for yes, only for the rest of the working mass turinesa, but for the whole Italian working class. They have resisted for one month. They were debilitated physically because for many weeks and for many months his wages had been reduced and were not more sufficient for the familiar maintenance, nevertheless they have resisted for one month. They were completely isolated in the nation, immersed in a general environment of weariness, of nonchalance, of hostility, nevertheless they have resisted for one month. They knew that they could not wait for any help of them of out: they knew that already to the Italian working class him the tendons had been cut knew

that they were condemned to the defeat of the operatives of the Fiat. It is not possible to ask to a men's mass submitted to the hardest needs of the existence, which takes responsibility as the existence of a population of 40.000 persons, it is not possible to ask any more than there have given these companions who have returned to the work, sadly, grieved mind, conscious of the immediate inability to continue resisting or to react. Specially communist we, that we live through elbow to elbow with the workers, that we know his needs, that we have a realistic conception of the situation, we must understand because of this conclusion of the fight turinesa. For many years the masses fight, for a lot of time they become exhausted in actions of detail, wasting his means and his energies. .Has been this one the test that, from May, 1919, we, from L'Ordine Nouvo, have exposed senselessly to the head offices of the labor and socialist movement; do not abuse much the resistance and the virtue of sacrifice of the proletariat; it is a question of royal men, man, submitted to the same weaknesses of all the common men who see passing in the streets, to drink in the taverns, to report in the squares, which get tired, that are hungry and a cold, which they affect on having been sorry to weep for his children and to complain tartly to his wives. Our revolutionary optimism has been always founded on this vision crudamente pessimistic of the human reality, with which inexorably it needs to pay accounts. And already in April, 1920 when the first offensive freed itself against the proletariat turins, in the first days of the metallurgical capture caused by the matter of the gujas, we from Ordine Nouvo were opening for the socialist section turins the relation that it must be presented to the National Advice of the socialist party and were noticing: "The manufacturers and the landowners have reached the maximum concentration of the discipline and of the power of class: an order thrown by the General Federation of the Italian Industry finds his immediate concretion in each of the factories. The bourgeois State has created an armed mercenary body arranged to work as executive instrument of the will of this new and strong organization of the proletarian class, which tends, by means of the applied lock-out and the terrorism, to restore on a large scale his power on the means of production, forcing the workers and the peasants to be leaving to expropriate of one every time major quantity of not full work. The last lock-out in the metallurgical establishments turineses has been a sample of this will of the manufacturers of treading on the nape of the working class: the manufacturers he has taken advantage of the lack of coordination and of revolutionary concentration in her of working Italian forces to try to divide the organization of the proletariat turins and to annihilate in the conscience of the proletarians the prestige and the authority of the institutions of factory (councils and commissioners of section) that had begun the fight for the working control. The prolongation of the agricultural strikes in the regions of Nonrod and the Lomellina proves that the owners of the land are ready to destroy the production to reduce to the desperation and to the hunger to the agricultural proletariat and to subdue it implacably to the hardest and humiliating conditions of work and existence. The current phase of the class struggle in Italy is the phase that it precedes: or the conquest of the political power on the part of the revolutionary proletariat, by means of the passage to new manners of production and of distribution that allow a recovery of the productivity, or a tremendous reaction on behalf of the proprietary class and the governing caste. No violence

will be left the ends of subduing to the industrial and agricultural proletariat to a servile work; it was trying to divide inexorably to the organisms of political fight of the working class (Socialist party) and to incorporate to the organisms of economic resistance (the unions and the cooperatives) to the gears of the bourgeois State. Already one year behind we had foreseen the conclusion that would have had the Italian situation if the responsible leaders had persisted in his tactics of revolutionary agitation and of practical opportunist. And we have fought to carry these persons in charge back desperate to a more royal vision, to a practice more coherent and more adapted to the development of the events. Today we pay the price, even we, of the incompetence and of the foreign blindness; today even the proletariat turins must resist the blow of the adversary, reinforced by the lack of resistance of the others. There is no shame in the surrender of the workers of the Fiat. That one that had to happen has happened implacably. The Italian working class is submitted to the oppressive role of the capitalist reaction. In how much time? Nothing is lost if they remain intact the conscience and the faith, if the bodies give up themselves, but not the spirits. The workers of the Fiat for years and years have fought bravely, have bathed with his blood the streets, have suffered the hunger and the cold, they remain, for this glorious his past, to the forefront of the Italian proletariat, they persist politically active faithful and devout how of the revolution. They have done all that is given to do men of meat and bone, we us cut the hair opposite to his humiliation, because also in this one there is something of big that imposes the sincere ones and the honest ones on himself.