Gramsci and contemporary Left strategy: The ‘historical bloc’ as a

strategic Concept.

(Paper presented at the 2013 Historical Materialism, London)

Panagiotis Sotiris

panagiotis.sotiris@gmail.com

Although ‘historical bloc’ is one of the most-well known concepts associated with

the work of Antonio Gramsci, at the same time not enough attention has been paid

to its strategic theoretical significance. In most cases, ‘historical block’ has been

taken to refer to alliances. This is most obvious in various texts from the PCI

tradition.1 Of course the identification of the concept of ‘historical bloc’ simply with

social alliances can also be attributed to a surface reading of some of Gramsci’s pre-

Prison writings, such as the famous text on the Southern Question where one can

find Gramsci’s elaborations on the question of how to dismantle the Southern

agrarian bloc and its particular intellectual bloc in order to advance the alliance of

between proletariat and southern masses.2 However, a look at Gramsci’s references

to the historical bloc in the Prison Notebooks provides evidence that the concept has

1 See for example Berlinguer 19772 “The alliance between proletariat and peasant masses requires this formation. 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 independent 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, armour of the agrarian bloc” (Gramsci 1978, p. 462).

a broader significance for Gramsci in prison than simply a reference to social

alliances.

The first reference to the historical bloc can be found in Notebook 4, in a

reference to the importance of superstructures, as the terrain where people become

conscious of their condition, and to the necessary relation between base and

superstructure. It is there that Gramsci refers to “Sorel’s concept of the “historical

bloc”.3 It is interesting that in Sorel’s work there is no reference to the concept of

‘historical bloc’. Valentino Gerratana has suggested that Gramsci, who did note have

the possibility to reread Sorel’s Reflection on Violence when in prison, had in mind

Sorel’s well known 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. 4

In Notebook 7, the concept of the historical bloc returns in Gramsci’s

criticism of Croce’s philosophy. For Gramsci the concept of the historical bloc is the

equivalent of ‘spirit’ in Croce’s idealist conception and it also refers to a dialectical

activity and a process of distinction that does not negate its real unity.5 In the second

version of this passage in Notebook 10 the concept of historical bloc (again

attributed to Sorel) is linked to the unity of the process of reality, conceived as

3 Gramsci 1977, 437 (Q4, §15).4 “In the course of these studies one thing seemed so evident to me that I did not believe that I needed to lay much stress on it: 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 analyse 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, and that we should be especially careful not to make any comparison between the outcomes and the pictures people had formed for themselves before the action.” (Sorel 1999, p. 20). For Gerratana’s comments see Gramsci 1977, p. 2632).5 Gramsci 1977, p. 854 (Q7, §1).

‘active reaction by humanity on the structure’.6 In another passage from Notebook 7

Gramsci links the historical bloc to the force of ideology and also of the relation

ideologies and material forces and insists that in reality it is a relation of organic

dialectical unity, distinctions being made only for ‘didactic’ reasons.

Another proposition of Marx is that a popular conviction often has the same

energy as a material force or something of the kind, which is extremely significant.

The analysis of these propositions tends, I think, to reinforce the conception 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.7

In Notebook 8 the concept of historic bloc returns and we have Gramsci’s

insistence on the identity of history and politics, the identity between ‘nature and

spirit’, in an attempt towards a dialectic of distinct moments (a unity of the

opposites and the distincts).8 In the second version of this passage, in Notebook 13,

the reference is on the identity between ‘structures and superstructures’.9 This

conception of the historical bloc as referring to the (dialectical) unity of the social

whole and in particular to the relation between material tendencies and ideological

representations and the importance of such a relation between material conditions

6 Gramsci 1977, p. 1300 (Q10II, §41i); Gramsci 1995, p. 414.7 Gramsci 1977, p. 869 (Q7, §210; Gramsci 1971, p. 377.8 Gramsci 1977, p. 977 (Q8, §61).9 “Concept of "historical bloc", i.e.unity between nature and spirit (structure and superstructure), unity of opposites and of distincts.” Gramsci 1977, p. 1569 (Q13, §10); Gramsci 1971, p. 137.

and ideologies as a condition for revolutionary praxis, also emerges in the following

extract from Notebook 8. It is important to note the way this passage maintains a

close dialectical relation between the social relations of production and the

‘complex, contradictory ensemble of the superstructures’ as the basis for a strategic

revolutionary political orientation that is conceived in terms of ideology but also

maintains the dialectical relation with social relations of production.

Structures and superstructures form an "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 an all-encompassing (totalitario) system of ideologies gives a

rational refection of the contradiction of the structure and represents the existence

of the objective conditions for the revolutionising 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 revolutionising : 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.10

Later in a note that first appeared in Notebook 8 but also, slightly expanded

in Notebook 10 Gramsci used the concept of historical bloc as part of his criticism of

Croce’s conception of the ethico-political history. In particular, for Gramsci it is

exactly the conception of historical bloc as the relation of social and economic

10 Gramsci 1977, pp. 1051-52 (Q8, §182); Gramsci 1971, p. 366 (translation altered).

relation with ideological–political forms that enables a theoretical relevance for the

concept of ethico-political history. “Ethico-political history, in so far as it is divorced

from the concept of historical bloc, in which there is a concrete correspondence of

socio-economic content to ethico-political form in the reconstruction of the various

historical periods, is nothing more than a polemical presentation of more or less

interesting philosophical propositions, but its is not history”11. In a similar tone, in the

summary first note of Notebook 10, Gramsci treats the concept of the historical bloc

as a crucial aspect of his attempt towards a philosophy of praxis that could answer

the questions that Croce’s conception of ethico-political history brought forward.

Moreover, 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 domination, 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 that must be always be

borne in mind in the study and detailed analysis of history as it unfolds if the

intention is to construct an integral history rather than partial or extrinsic

histories.12

11 Gramsci 1977, p. 1091; Gramsci 1977, pp. 1237-38 (Q8, §240; Q10I, §13); Gramsci 1995, p. 360.12 Gramsci 1977, p. 1211 (Q10I, <sommario>), Gramsci 1995, p. 332. The same conception of the historical bloc is obvious in the following extract again from Notebook 10: “Credit must therefore, at the very least, be given to Croce’s thought as an instrumental value, and in this respect it may be said that it has forcefully drawn attention to the importance of cultural and intellectuals in the organic life of civil society and the state, to the moment of hegemony and consent as the necessary form of the concrete historical bloc” (Gramsci 1977, p. 1235 (Q10I, §12); Gramsci 1995, p. 357).

The concept of historical bloc constantly returns in Gramsci’s confrontation

with Crocean concepts. For Gramsci the historical bloc can offer a historical and not

speculative solution to the question of the relation between the different moments

of the social whole.

The question is this: given the Crocean principle of the dialectic of the

distincts (which is to be criticised 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 exist 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?13

The concept of historical bloc also appears in the fragment on the relation of

forces in Notebook 9 but also in the well known fragment on the structure of parties

during a period of organic crisis in Notebook 13. There the main point Gramsci

wanted to make was on the importance of political initiatives in order to liberate the

economic and political potential of a new historical bloc, including the used of force.

An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the

economic thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies - i.e. to change the

political direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed if a new,

homogeneous politico-economic historical bloc, without internal contradictions, is 13 Gramsci 1977, p. 1316 (Q10, §41x) ; Gramsci 1995, p. 399-400.

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 subordinating one to the other,

the question is whether one has the necessary force, and whether it is "productive"

to use it.14

The strategic character of the concept of historical bloc and its relation to

accomplished hegemony can be found the famous fragment 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.

Here the emphasis is on the particular relation between intellectuals and the

people-nation, but also between leaders and the led, and 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’. This for Gramsci is exactly the creation of

an ‘historical bloc. It is exactly here that one might see the analogy between the

concept of the historical bloc and a condition of hegemony. The following passage

exemplifies this point.

If the relationship between intellectuals and people-nation, between the

leaders 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 relationship one of

14 Gramsci 1977, p. 1120; Gramsci 1977, p. 1612 (Q9, §40 ; Q13, §23) ; Gramsci 1971, p. 168.

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

realised which alone is a social force with the creation of the "historical bloc".15

Jacques Texier was one of the theorists that have insisted on the strategic

theoretical importance of the concept of the historical bloc, within Gramsci’s

theoretical elaboration. For Texier the concept of the historical bloc is exactly the

concept that enables us think of the unity and interrelation between economics,

politics and ideology, within Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the integral State.

“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 marxist. His 'historicism' would go no further than the historicism of

Croce.”16 Based upon this conception, Texier treats the concept of the historical block

as a theoretical node in Gramsci’s theory of hegemony.

The point of departure must be the concept of the' historical bloc' Gramsci

stipulates. What does this mean? To think the unity of the distinct aspects or

moments of superstructural activity, the moment of force and consent, of

dictatorship and hegemony and the economico-political and ethico-politicaJ

moment one must begin from the basis of the organic unity of the superstructures

and infrastructure in the historical bloc and recognise the ultimately determinant

character of economic conditions.17

15 Gramsci 1971, p. 418; Gramsci 1977, p. 452; Gramsci 1977, pp. 1505-06 (Q4, §33 ; Q11, §67).16 Texier 1979, p. 49.17 Texier 1979, p.

For Texier it is important to follow carefully Gramsci’s novel redefinition of

‘civil society’ and how this encompasses a whole series of political and ideological

practices, relations, beliefs conditioned by determinate social relations of

production.

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 and

grows lip on the base of determined relations of production. It includes the types of

behaviour of homo oeconomicus as well as of homo ethiico-politicus. It is therefore

the object, the subject and the locality of the superstructural activities which are

carried out in ways which 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.18

Therefore, the construction of a new historical bloc, a new articulation of

economic, politics and ideology, is for Texier what is the stake in a 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.”19

18 .Texier 1979, p. 71.19 Texier 1979, p. 67.

Also of particular importance is Texier’s insistence20 that in Gramsci the

concept of the historical bloc implies an ‘organic unity’ between the State and the

economy, in sharp contrast to every form of economism. In particular, Texier has

offered a forceful reading of the concept civil society, which also points towards this

particular dialectic of economics and politics within the historical bloc. For Texier

the concept of civil society does not refer simply to the field of political and cultural

hegemony, but also to economic activities. Although Texier distinguishes the

economic structure and civil society, at the same time he provides textual evidence

of Gramsci’s inclusion of the crucial aspects of economic activity and behaviour

within the field of civil society, especially around the crucial Gramscian notions of

“homo oeconomicus” and “determinate market”. In this sense we can say that a

crucial aspect of the emergence of a new historical bloc is exactly the emergence not

only of a new economic structure but also of a new “homo oeconomicus” and a new

configuration of civil society.21

Christine Buci-Glucksmann has also offered an important reading of the

theoretical centrality of the concept of historical materialism. For Buci-Glucksmann

Gramsci’s reference to structure and superstructure forming an historical bloc is the

point to begin. The first error is the “simple identification between historical bloc

and class alliances … or even the fusion … that embraces workers and

intellectuals”.22 For Buci-Glucksmann 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 20 Texier 1989.21 Texier 1989, p. 61.22 Buci-Glucksmann 1980, p. 275.

relationship between leaders and masses”.23 Moreover, the concept of historical bloc

is for Buci-Glucksmann not s a materialist position and anti-economistic answer to

the relation between the different instances of the social whole; it is mainly an

attempt to rethink a revolutionary strategy within the transition period.

Compared with Bukharin’s worker-peasant bloc of 1925-26, the Gramscian

historic bloc demonstrates 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.24

For Buci-Glucksmann Gramsci’s conception of revolutionary strategy as

construction of a new historical bloc25 leads to a “reformulation of the entire Marxist

problematic of the withering away of the State as a passage to a regulated society,

where political society is reabsorbed by civil society”.26 Therefore, it is much more

than a simple reference 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 construction of long duration of new

23 Buci-Glucksmann 1980, p. 276.24 Buci Glucksmann 1980, p. 286. 25 Buci-Glucksmann (1982) 1999, p. 102.26 Buci-Glucksmann (1982) 1999, p. 104.

hegemonic system, without which classes become only a mechanical aggregate,

managed by the State or a bureaucracy”.27

From the above elaboration it is obvious that historical bloc is a strategic not

a descriptive or an analytical concept. It defines not an actual social alliance, but a

social and political condition to be achieved. Historical bloc does not refer to the

formation of an electoral alliance or to various social strata and movements fighting

side by side. It refers to the emergence of a different configuration within civil

society, namely to the emergence, on a broad scale, of different forms of politics,

different forms of organization, alternative discourses and narratives, that

materialize the ability for society to be organized and administrated in a different

way. At the same time it refers to a specific relation between politics and economics,

namely to the articulation not simply of demands and aspirations but of an

alternative social and economic paradigm. Therefore, a new historical bloc defines

that specific historical condition when not only a new social alliance demands

power but is also in a position to impose its own particular economic form and

social strategy and lead society. It also includes a particular relation between the

broad masses of the subaltern classes and new intellectual practices, along with the

emergence of new forms of mass critical and antagonistic political intellectuality,

exactly that passage from knowledge to understanding and passion. 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

27 Buci-Glucksmann (1982) 1999, p. 104.

hegemony implies a condition of mass politicization and collective elaboration. It

also implies the actuality of the new political and economic forms, and the full

elaboration of what can be defined as a ‘dual power’ strategy conceived in the

broadest sense of the term.

In this sense, it is obvious that the concept of the historical bloc, when used in

relation to the politics of the subaltern classes, refers to a strategy of

(counter)hegemony. A potential hegemony of the forces of labour, namely their

ability to become actually 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 between social forces, alternative

economic forms in rupture with capitalist social relations of productions, new

political forms of organization and participatory democratic decision-making. The

struggle for hegemony means a struggle for the formation of a new historic bloc.

That is why the concept of the historical bloc is more than ever pertinent to

contemporary discussions within the Left. The reasons for this are above all political

and have to do with the dynamics of the conjuncture. The long retreat of the Left

through 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 questions Daniel

Bensaïd talked about in 2006,28 has yet to produce some specific strategic

recommendations.

However, recent developments have made us all realize the urgency of these

questions. The developments include the global economic crisis of the end of the

2000s, the crisis of neoliberalism, the impressive return of mass protest politics,

from 2011 until now, and the evidences of an open hegemonic 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's hegemony, which occurs

either 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 political passivity to a certain

activity, and put forward demands which taken together, albeit not organically

formulated, add up to a revolution. A "crisis of authority" is spoken of: this is

precisely the crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the State.29

At the same time, we have the possibility that the Left can lead an impressive

reversal in the political balance of forces in countries such as Greece, and face the

possibility of arriving at governmental power.

I would like to insist that the debate is more urgent than before. Recent

developments, such as the Gezi Park protests in Turkey have shown that what

28 Bensaïd 2006. 29 Gramsci 1977, p. 1603 (Q13, §23); Gramsci 1971, p. 210.

would be called the new age of insurrections is far from over. However, especially

the developments regarding the developments within what has been termed the

‘Arab Spring’ has shown that when mass popular insurrections cannot be

‘translated’ politically into autonomously defined democratic and emancipator

political projects, then the results can be tragic. At same time, regarding the crisis of

neoliberalism and the current authoritarian, disciplinary turn of neoliberal

governance, the only contribution the dominant elites can make is to only prolong

the crisis. This situation is similar to one described by Gramsci.

What makes things worse, is that it is about a crisis for which the elements

of its resolution are prevented from being developed with the necessary speed;

those that are dominant can no longer resolve the crisis but have the power (to

impede) others from resolving it, namely they have the power only to prolong the

crisis.30

This means the need to think in terms of the necessary renewal of a

revolutionary strategy. The fact that there are perhaps no ‘ideal types’ for

revolution, does not mean that we do not need revolutionary changes. A new

historical bloc refers exactly such a revolutionary process.

In light of the above, a strategy for a new ‘historical bloc’ suggests that we

must elaborate upon an alternative productive paradigm, in a non market and non

profit-oriented direction, an alternative non capitalist developmental path (as an

aspect of the dialectics of economy and politics within the historical bloc). We refer

30 Gramsci 1977, p. 1718 (Q14, §58).

to a developmental paradigm neither in the sense of quantitative growth, nor in the

sense of an alternative capitalist development, but in the sense of a new conception

of how to make good use of collective social productive capabilities and resources.

This could include new forms of democratic social planning along with a new

emphasis on self-management, reclaiming currently idle productive facilities,

creating non commercial networks of distribution, regaining the public character of

goods and service that are currently under the threat of the tendency for ‘new

enclosures’. It could also include a new emphasis on self-reliance and decreased

dependence upon international flows of commodities and resources, along with a

break with consumerist conceptions of well-being.

Such a thinking of the ‘economic program’ of process of transformation, as

part of a strategy for a new historic bloc, should not be seen as an attempt to simply

devise or think of alternative economic forms. In reality, it is a process of collective

experimentation based upon the emergence of alternative economic forms within

movements, collective struggles and resistances to the commercialization of social

goods. From the defence of public services and the new forms of solidary economy,

to the new forms of self-management and worker’s control (from occupied factories

in Argentina to Public Television in Greece), we have many important experiences.

These have not been simply “resistances” but also collective experimenting sites

that can help us understand how things can be organized in a different non-

capitalist way. In a way, it means taking hold of the ‘traces of communism’ in actual

movements and social resistances to the violence of capital and the markets. The

Left should not consider these experiences to be simply “movements” and think of

economic policy only in terms of non-austerity macroeconomics, however

important these are.

Moreover, thinking in terms of a new “historical bloc”, means that the Left

attempts to elaborate on the possibility of an alternative narrative for society, in an

attempt exactly for the forces of labour to be leading (dirigente). And in this we

must also think how the very experience of today’s’ forces of labour, despite their

fragmentation into multifarious employment situation and prospects, with their

unity undermined by precariousness, offers the basis for such a (counter)hegemony.

Today’s collective labour force is not only more fragmented, it is also more

educated, with more access to knowledge and communication recourse, and in an

ability to voice its grievances in a more articulate way. Moreover, all over the

advanced capitalist societies, those social strata that traditional sociology describes

as middle class, in reality segments of intellectual labour or what Poulantzas

described as the salaried new petite-bourgeoisie,31 are under attack by stagnant

wages, increased barriers to ‘upward social mobility’, private debt burden,

workplace precariousness. Consequently, they have seen the class divide with

various segments of the capitalist class grow, and have moved closer to working

class demands and aspirations. All these developments are also reflected in the mass

unemployment (and precariousness) of youth an element that has produced social

explosions, and probably will in the future. This brings together, in mass collective

practises, all those social forces that, one way or the other, depend upon selling their

labour power to make ends meet. This offers not the only the material ground for

31 Poulantzas 1975.

social alliances, exemplified in the co-presence of all these strata in contemporary

protests from the Indignados to the Syntagma to Occupy!, but also of collective

experiences, aspirations and demands. New forms of “public spheres’ emerge that

enable not simply tactical cooperation within protest movements, but the potential

of collectively elaborating a new vision and perspective beyond “actually existing

neoliberalism”.

This means that today rethinking socialist and revolutionary politics is not

only about ‘injecting’ socialist consciousness into the movement – however

necessary the defence of the socialist and communist tradition might be in a period

of ideological erasure. It is also about elaborating upon collective aspirations,

demands and ideological representations that emerge from the very materiality of

today’s condition and struggles of the forces of labour. Creating conditions for a new

historical bloc is not only about articulating a political project; it is about working

upon actual social and historical tendencies and dynamics, in order to create new

political forms that would enable a new dialectical relation between ‘structure’ and

‘superstructures’.

This gives a new importance to the question of the program. Contrary to the

tendency to ignore the program in the name of a simple unity around the negation

of austerity, it is important to insist that a strategy for a new historical bloc requires

articulating an alternative narrative for society, not just a sum of grievances and

demands. Such a program should not restrict itself to income redistribution,

increased public spending and nationalization. It should also include experiments

with new productive forms and relations based upon self-management, new forms

of workers’ control, and alternative forms of economic coordination and planning, in

sum a collective to move beyond the capitalist logic. This is in contrast to the

‘pragmatist turn’ of some parties of the European Left that make a distinction

between an anti-austerity politics aiming at ‘saving society from austerity’ and

social transformation. On the contrary, it is now time to think of the transition

program as offering at the same time an exit from austerity and the beginning of a

process of transformation in sharp break not only with neo-liberalism but also with

aspects of capitalist relations. This is today one of the most crucial aspects of a

potential revolutionary strategy today.

In an era of increased forms of capitalist internationalization, this also means

taking a stand regarding a country’s place in the international plane. In this sense,

recent debates within the European Left, such as the ones pertaining to the relation

to the Eurozone and the European Union should be read in a strategic manner.

Breaking away from the Eurozone and the European Union, for the peripheral

countries of the European South, such as Greece, is not simply about monetary

sovereignty (which per se is a necessary aspect of regaining democratic control of

economic policy). It is about the forces of labour offering an alternative orientation

for society, especially since in countries such as Greece, the bourgeois ‘historical

bloc, based both its strategy and its legitimacy, upon the ‘European Road’ as a road

to capitalist modernization.

Moreover, a politics of a potential new ‘historical bloc’ means exactly aiming

at political power, both in the sense of a left wing government but also and mainly in

the sense of a change in actual social power configuration. If we are fully aware that

it will be part of a long and contradictory process of transition and transformation

and struggle ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, then a ‘government of the Left’ can be

indeed be part of a modern revolutionary strategy. This would require making use

of both governmental power (the radicalization of current institutional and

constitutional framework) and forms of ‘popular power’ from below, without

underestimating the constant confrontation with the forces of capital. This has been

an open question in the communist movement, from the ‘Workers’ Government’

described in the 4th Congress of the Communist International,32 to Gramsci’s

proposal for a ‘Constituent Assembly’ of the anti-fascist forces,33 to Poulantzas’

confrontation with a possible ‘democratic road to socialism’,34 to the contradictions

of contemporary experiments in left governance such as the one in Bolivia.

However, without a strong labour movement, without radical social movements,

without the full development of all forms of people’s power and self-organization,

any government of the Left will not manage to stand up to the immense pressure it

will get from the forces of capital, the EU and the IMF. That is why it is necessary to

experiment with new forms of social and political power from below and to create

new forms of social practice and interaction based on solidarity and common work,

new forms of direct democracy.

In this sense, a strategy for a new historical bloc also requires a new practice

of politics, new social and political forms of organization beyond the traditional

Party-form, beyond traditional trade unionism and beyond the limits of traditional

parliamentary bourgeois politics. This corresponds exactly to the need for new 32 Comintern 1922.33 Lisa 1933. 34 Poulantzas 1980

forms of civil society organizations, in the broad sense that Gramsci gave to this

notion. In a way, Louis Althusser pointed to this direction of the political forms

associated with a potential historical bloc in his intervention in the debates of the

22nd Congress of the French Communist Party.

In the best of cases, it is conceivable that the union of the people of France

may become something quite different from the means to a new electoral balance,

but is rather aimed, over and above the organizations of the Left, at the popular

masses themselves. Why address the popular masses in this way? To tell them, even

if still only as a hint, that they will have to organize themselves autonomously, in

original forms, in firms, urban districts and villages, around the questions of labour

and living conditions, the questions of housing, education, health, transport, the

environment, etc.; in order to define and defend their demands, first to prepare for

the establishment of a revolutionary state, then to maintain it, stimulate it and at the

same time force it to ‘wither away’. Such mass organizations, which no one can

define in advance and on behalf of the masses, already exist or are being sought in

Italy, Spain and Portugal, where they play an important part, despite all difficulties.

If the masses seize on the slogan of the union of the people of France and interpret it

in this mass sense, they will be re-establishing connections with a living tradition of

popular struggle in our country and will be able to help give a new content to the

political forms by which the power of the working people will be exercised under

socialism.35

35 Althusser 1977.

Moreover, it is exactly this combination of popular power from below and

new forms of self-management, workers’ control and alternative forms of economic

coordination that can create the conditions for a modern form of ‘dual power’,

namely the actual emergence of new, non capitalist social and political forms. Both

Lenin and Gramsci thought that there can be no process of social transformation

without a vast social and political experimentation, both before and after the

revolution, which will guaranty that within the struggles we can already witness the

emergence of new social forms and new ways to organize production and social life.

It is not going to be an ‘easy road’. It would require a struggling society

actually changing values, priorities, narratives. It would also require a new ethics of

collective participation and responsibility, of struggle and commitment to change, a

transformed and educated common sense. In this sense, the promise of Left-wing

politics cannot be a simple return to 2009, not least because it is materially

impossible, but because we want to go beyond confidence to the markers and debt-

ridden consumerism. In such a ‘world-view’ public education, public health, public

transport, environmental protection, non market collective determination of

priorities, and quality of everyday sociality, are more important than imported

consumer goods and cheap credit.

At the same time, a strategy for a new historical block also implies an attempt

towards a re-appropriation and redefinition of the very notion of the people. This

refers to the complex process, political, ideological and social, through which the

people can re-emerge in a situation of struggle, neither as the abstract subject of the

bourgeois polity, nor as the ‘imagined community’ of the ‘nation’, but as a potentially

anti-capitalist alliance of all those social strata that one way or the other depend

upon their labour power in order to make ends meet. This also means a new form of

people’s unity, especially against the dividing results of racism and the varieties of

neofascism.36

Such a process can (and should…) also be a knowledge process, both in the

sense of using the knowledge accumulated by people in social movements (who can

run better a hospital or a school? Appointed technocrats or the people actually

working and struggling there) and also in the sense of struggle, solidarity and

common practices being forms that help people acquire knowledge, learn how to do

things differently and collectively re-invent new forms of mass intellectuality and a

new cultural hegemony. Moreover, if political organizations cannot learn from

actual experiences, if they are not themselves collective processes of learning and

transforming the experiences from the struggles into political strategy, then they

cannot contribute to a process of social transformation.

Such a strategy (and dialectic of strategy and tactics) can transform current

emerging alliances, changes to the relations of representation, struggles, resistances

and proposals for ‘concrete utopias’, into a new and highly original ‘historical block’,

the necessary condition for an open-ended process of social transformation. It is an

attempt to actually rethink revolutionary strategy, not as phantasy but as an open –

ended sequence of transformation and experimentation. Talking today about

socialism cannot be simply about “catch phrases” on worker’s power and worker’s

control or worker’s democracy, however necessary it is to revisit in a self-critical

36 On this see Sotiris 2013.

manner the socialist experiences of the 20th century. Talking about socialism today

means building upon the dynamics of struggles, upon the new forms of democracy

and popular sovereignty from below emerging within struggles, upon the attempt at

re-appropriating public space and creating new public spheres, upon what

Althusser described as ‘virtual forms of communism in contemporary movements

and aspirations.37

Finally, all these also require a fresh thinking of the collective political

subject. All recent developments have shown the importance of front politics.

Contrary to the metaphysics of the Party as a guarantor of truth and the correct line,

we need a more broad conception of the left political front that is not only unity but

also dialectical process, a terrain of struggle itself, a collective democratic process,

and a laboratory of ideas, projects and sensitivities.

One should stress the importance and significance which, in the modern

world, political parties have in the elaboration and diffusion of conceptions of the

world, because essentially what they do is to work out the ethics and the politics

corresponding to these conceptions and act as it were as their historical

‘laboratory’. [...] The relation of theory and practice becomes even closer the more

the conception is vitally and radically innovatory and opposed to old ways of

thinking. For this reason one can say that the parties are the elaborators of new

integral and all-encompassing intellectualities and the crucibles where the

37 “Marx thinks of communism as a tendency of capitalist society. This tendency is not an abstract result. It already exists, in a concrete form in the “interstices of capitalist society (a little bit like commodity relations existing “in the interstices” of slave or feudal society), virtual forms of communism, in the associations that manage … to avoid commodity relations.” Althusser 1998, p. 285.

unification of theory and practice, understood as a real historical process, takes

place. 38

Contrary to a traditional instrumentalist conception of the political

organization based on a distinction between ends and means, a revolutionary

strategy must be based on the identity of means and ends, and this means that the

democratic form of this front must also reflect the social relations of an emancipated

society.

To conclude recent developments have shown the potential for political change

and breaks with “actually existing neoliberalism”. For the first time after a long time

the forces of the Left are facing the challenge of political power and hegemony. We do

not have the luxury of avoiding the discussion on a revolutionary strategy and a

socialist perspective for the 21st century. Concepts such as Gramsci’s historical bloc

offer us the possibility to rethink politics in a strategic way.

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