PAST AND PRESENT. Philosophy, Politics, and History in the Thought of Gramsci.

International Conference. 18-19 June 2015. King’s College, London.

Time and Revolution in Gramsci’s “Prison Notebooks”

Fabio Frosini

University of Urbino

fabio.frosini@uniurb.it

1. Past and Present

One can say, as a first approximation, that for Gramsci “past” and “present” coincide

respectively with “history” and “politics”: the past is past history and the “historiography” that

recounts it; while the present is politics “in action” – the real clash of organized forces – and, at

the same time, is the strategic reflection that helps these forces to “assume positions” within this

clash, and to prevail. But historiography is also a political act, a political intervention in the

present, inasmuch as it critically interprets the present as an outcome of a determinate past; and

political practice is also a form of reflection on the struggle, inasmuch as it criticizes the projects

of other political forces and strategically elaborates its own.

In short, from a gramscian perspective it is impossible to separate the subjective aspect

from the objective of the times “past” and “present”: the objectivity of past events is reflected in

the subjectivity of historiographical intervention, and the subjectivity of strategic elaboration is

incorporated in the objectivity of the struggle unfolding. Real events and ideas of these events

are two interlinked aspects; not however in a static way, but functional: the victories (or defeats)

of the past reaffirm themselves in the present thanks to historical account, while the conflicting

critical and strategic elaborations realized by the forces in struggle help these to “resolve” the

conflict in one or another direction.

The reciprocal or mutual immanence of “events” and “ideas of these events” is not an

evident fact; on the contrary, it is the result of the central philosophical nucleus of Gramsci’s

thought. Gramsci calls this nucleus the “unity of theory and of practice”. To be precise: the

version of the unity of theory and practice that Gramsci places at the center of the renewal of

marxism, defined by him as the “philosophy of praxis”, is that which he calls “translatability of

languages”.

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This theory is a particular development of the gramscian theory of ideologies. To

ideologies, affirms Gramsci, should be assigned a gnoseological and not merely psychological or

moral value. Ideologies, in other words, are the terrain on which the knowledge of truth occurs.

But given that these are always both instruments of social and political organization, and

interpretations of reality, their functioning is simultaneously of a theoretical-cognitive and

practical-organizational character. Declaring ideologies as the only point of access to truth,

Gramsci also establishes that there does not exist an “interpretation” that is not also, in some

way, a “transformation” of reality.

The distinction will then be between ideologies that, organizing social forces and

interpreting the “position” occupied by these in the conflict with other social forces, succeed in

prevailing over the others; and ideologies that, incapable of organically “connecting”

interpretation (theory) and organization (practice), consign the social forces they represent to a

subaltern position. The distinction lies in short in the degree of “power”, which coincides with

the “truth”: it will not be a qualitative type (in the sense of truth/error), but “quantitative” (in the

sense of the different degrees of capacity to organize practical reality and, in this way, to produce

a new reality).

This equalization of “truth” and “power” and this conception of “ideology” as “practical

power” can appear heterodox from a Marxist point of view. In reality Gramsci draws it from a

contextual reading – highly original, it is true – of the Theses on Feuerbach with the Poverty of

Philosophy. In this way, the thesis, according to which “it is in practical activity that man must

demonstrate the truth, that is the reality and power, the worldly or earthly character of his

thought (Wahrheit, i.e. Wirklichkeit und Macht, Diesseitigkeit seines Denkens)” (Thesis 2) is

linked by Gramsci to the way in which, in the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx considers the

practical power of the political economy of Ricardo. The latter, thanks to a precise idea of “laws”

as those which occur only given certain premises or conditions, expresses a precise political

project, consisting in the occurrence of conditions given by the affirmation of the bourgeoisie as

the dominant class. In other words: Ricardo shows the way in which from a political struggle

“springs” a terrain on which there occurs a series of scientific regularities.

2. Translatability

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But how will it be possible to understand in what specific way this intertwining of truth and

power is realized? The answer lies in the theory of translatability, which establishes that any

“theoretical” position cannot really be understood, if it is not “considered” from the point of view

of its “practical” implications, and vice versa, that of no “practical” position one understands the

true meaning, if one does not “extract” the “theory” which is present in it. Theory and practice

are united not insofar as they are parallel or identical, but insofar as they are mutually

“translatable”: theory is inside practice, and practice is inside theory. Or better: one sees the true

meaning of theory only if one translates theory in practice, and vice versa.

This formulation can appear abstract. In reality, nothing could be further from that. An

example taken from the Prison Notebooks will be sufficient to show it. This example is crucial,

because it is precisely on its basis that Gramsci develops the theory of translatability. It concerns

the great alternative between France and Germany in the Europe of the age of the Revolution and

the Restoration. German philosophy and French politics, notes Gramsci, are two distinct

languages – respectively “theoretical” and “practical” – which in appearance are wholly

opposites and not in communication with one another. But this is true, only if they come to be

considered in themselves, as if they were complete and self-sufficient phenomena, that have

within themselves the criteria to be understood. In reality, national history is incomprehensible if

it gets separated from international history, or better: the national “moment” acquires its true

significance (that is its meaning of “truth-power” in the sense of Marx) only if it comes to be

seen as a “national/international nexus”. The “nation” in relation to the international context,

exactly as the individual compared to society, are “nodal points”, whose identity and autonomy

(which are not denied by Gramsci) derive from a work of translation; they are in other words the

effect of a praxis and not an initial “given”, a contingent (historical) result and not an ontological

characteristic.

In this sense, French politics and German philosophy, as “national” expressions that

characterize in an original and unmistakable way France and Germany between Revolution and

Restoration, acquire their real meaning only if they are translated into its “opposite”. Thus, in

Jacobin politics there is implicitly contained a “philosophy”. Gramsci recognizes the subsequent

developments of this philosophy in the great historical experiences of 1848 and of 1917,

respectively in the “slogan”, launched by Marx, of “revolution in permanence”, and in the theory

and practice of “hegemony” developed by Lenin. Vice versa, in German classical philosophy

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there is contained a politics, that consists in the theoretical comprehension of the meaning of the

Revolution, a comprehension that realizes, at the same time, its speculative translation, i.e. an

“absorption” of the practical effects of the Revolution within the frameworks of liberal

civilization and State. This opposite “translation” in respect to Jacobinism, not of practice into

theory but of theory into practice, is, as will be seen later, that which Gramsci at a certain point

calls “passive revolution”.

3. “Personality” and “human reality”

Translatability is, as has been seen, a development of the thesis of Marx, according to which the

truth and power of thought are demonstrated in praxis. Translatability in other words renders

comprehensible how the unity of truth and power is concretely realized, without the truth getting

reduced to power nor vice versa, that power becomes a mere expression of truth. This

“equilibrium”, this “dialectic” between the two moments of universality and particularity

explains the way in which Gramsci interprets the relation, which I recalled at the beginning,

between subjective time and objective time: the relation between subjective intervention, i.e. the

element of politics in action, and that of the identification of the real conditions, i.e. the narration

of history.

Between subjective time and objective time there is not, according to Gramsci, a real

separation; they are “abstractions” made within a single reality. For the philosophy of praxis,

between the sphere of the individual and that of society (and of the State) there does not exist a

substantial disparity; rather: resuming a tradition of thought that goes back to Machiavelli and,

passing through Bruno and Spinoza, arrives to Hegel and to Marx, Gramsci rejects any notion of

an “internal” experience (only individual), that could be separated from external expression,

from the concrete practice of the individual, that are always already social practice and in some

sense “political”.

This concept emerges in a text of Notebook 9, belonging to the section on the

Risorgimento: “The national personality (like the individual personality) is an abstraction if it is

conceived outside the international (and social) nexus. National personality expresses a

‘distinction’ of the international complex, therefore it is linked to international relations”.1

1 A. Gramsci, Quaderni del Carcere, edizione critica dell’Istituto Gramsci a cura di V. Gerratana, Torino,

Einaudi, 1975, p. 1161.

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We are in the presence of a very complex text, which I try to analyze by points:

a) the word “personality” indicates the unmistakable “composition” that

constitutes the “person” and which is much more than the mere “individual”: the

“person” is not serial, but has a structure at the single limit;

b) the term “personality” is used to designate the nation exactly like the

individual, in the sense that the individual with respect to society is a “person” exactly

like the nation with respect to international relations;

c) if one separates the nation from the “international nexus”, or the individual

from the “social nexus”, one falls into “abstractions” without meaning;

d) this structural connection of the “person” with the “nexus” does not nullify the

uniqueness of the “person”; on the contrary, it is its foundation; in fact, it is on the basis

of this connection that the “distinction” is produced;

e) it follows that only recognizing the primacy of the “nexus” and of the

“complex” in relation to the individual elements that constitute it, will these elements be

recognized in their originality and real, authentic uniqueness; in other words: “relations”

precede the “distinct”, they constitute it as “distinct”, i.e. as an autonomous element;

f) there is not a real difference between the individual moment and collective or

national moment; on the contrary, the original “personality” is produced at all levels,

individual and collective, but can be recognized only if one abandons the point of view

according to which the individual precedes society;

g) but Gramsci also implicitly criticizes the opposite idea, that society precedes

the individual: the term “distinct” is an index, written by Gramsci in quotes to signal a

specific, technical usage.2 The reference is evidently to the Crocian theory of “distincts”,

according to which the unity of reality does not nullify its constitutive elements, but on

the contrary it exists as a unity of this elements only thanks to the independence and

autonomy of each of these. In this way Gramsci is opposed to the holistic approach, as in

the Italy of those years it had come to be developed by the actualism of Gentile.

Against Gentile, Gramsci uses “distinction”; but, thinking the latter as an aspect that gets

produced by the “nexus” or “complex”, outside of which it is a mere “abstraction”, he redefines

2 Cfr. G. Guzzone, La nozione crociana di “distinzione” nei “Quaderni del Carcere” di Antonio Gramsci.

Osservazioni testuali e ipotesi interpretative, unpublished text. I thank the author for allowing me to read his article.

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in a materialistic way the Crocian concept. This double distancing leads to conceiving the

“singularity” of the elements of reality as, on the one hand real and effective, but on the other as

transitory products of a complex of relations, which the elements “express”. Individual and

collective, also like active and passive, are not opposed, but necessarily imply each other.

The idea that the philosophy of praxis is born as a complete rupture with the traditional

alternative of materialism and idealism, is enunciated by Gramsci in relation to the Theses on

Feuerbach, in which he – following Engels – identifies the “brilliant germ”3 of the new

philosophical position of Marx. Also in the passage of Notebook 9 discussed just now on

national and individual “personality”, the double critique of individualism and holism is justified

with an implicit reference, but very clear, to thesis 6 on Feuerbach, in which (in the Italian

translation by Gramsci) recurs not accidentally the same word – abstraction – also used by him

in the text of Notebook 9: “But human reality is not an abstraction immanent in the single

individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations” (“Ma la realtà umana non è una

astrazione immanente nel singolo individuo. Nella sua realtà è l’insieme dei rapporti sociali”).4

4. Present time and hegemony

The past-present nexus signifies therefore, if not understood in an abstract way, that a series of

“elements” that compose a determinate “personality” – whether individual, collective or national

– are reorganized on the basis of a determinate project. This reorganization coincides with that

which Gramsci – referring to the experience of the individual – calls “adherence to the present”.

The present, he writes, is not only an “overcoming” of the past, but is, specifically, its “critique”.

This critique must also be a critique of “that part of ourselves” which corresponds to the past. It

is necessary in short “to have an exact consciousness of this real critique and to give it not only a

theoretical, but political expression. In other words we must be more adherent to the present,

which we ourselves have contributed to creating, having consciousness of the past and its

3 “Es sind Notizen für spätere Ausarbeitung, rasch hingeschrieben, aber unschätzbar als das erste

Dokument, worin der geniale Keim der neuen Weltanschauung niedergelegt ist” (K. Marx-F. Engels, Werke, Bd. 21,

Berlin, Dietz 1962, p. 264). 4 Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, cit., p. 2357. On this notion of “ensemble” cfr. C. Luporini, Introduzione

a K. Marx, F. Engels, L’ideologia tedesca, trad. it. di F. Codino, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1967, pp. XI-LXXXVIII:

LXXXIII-LXXXIV; Id., Dialettica e materialismo, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1974, pp. 382-384; E. Balibar, La

filosofia di Marx, trad. it. di A. Catone, Roma, manifestolibri, 1994, p. 36; P. Macherey, Marx 1845. Les «thèses»

sur Feuerbach, Paris, Éditions Amsterdam, 2008, pp. 150-160.

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continuation (and reliving)”.5 The past-present nexus poses in short a problem of

contemporaneity (or anachronism).

However this problem of political articulation of the past/present nexus exists for

Gramsci, as has been seen, on both the individual and collective plane. The single human being,

the political party, the entire nation: the political necessity to “adhere to the present” makes itself

felt on all these levels. Only connecting organically actual practice to past history, and vice

versa, does it become possible to be “contemporary”. However, this does not mean making a

given element coincide with a presumed “course of history”. Just the opposite: the “course of

history” is none other than the “effect of necessity” produced on the national and international

plane by a given hegemonic articulation, and this latter, in turn, is the result of the capacity, that

a determinate national class possesses, to realize coherent “translations”, i.e. capable of

“universalizing” its own ideology, organizing to its own advantage the national/international

nexus.

Consequently, “present time” can be defined as the intertwining of hegemonic practices,

an intertwining that realizes itself in distinct ways at the local, national and international level.

Therefore, present time is never a unitary fact, but, structurally, it is the contingent unitary effect

– on different spatial levels – of a plurality of relations always in movement, and which only

temporarily acquire a certain stability. It also follows that, when Gramsci (in the just quoted

passage concerning the “adherence” to the present time) affirms the necessity to critique

politically the past/present nexus, he is not referring to an adjustment to a “present” understood

as a unitary and static space. He thinks, instead, of a hegemonic kind of intervention, thanks to

which the relation between the “complex” of relations and a determinate “distinct”, that

expresses this nexus, comes to be rearticulated in a manner to render this “distinct” less

dependent on the complex, and therefore much more capable of contributing to determining the

balance of the forces in the overall context.

The mere “flow” of time does not “decide” the changes that can occur in its interior.

Time, inasmuch as it is a bearer of a determinate meaning or significance, is always incorporated

in a series of spatial (geographical) determinations, that in turn result from the way in which the

various hegemonic articulations mutually and reciprocally dispose themselves. Therefore one

can really speak of “past” and “present” (i.e. of genuinely temporally distinct dimensions), only

5 Notebook 1, § 156: QC, 137.

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if one is in the presence of a, real or possible, modification of the relations among the elements

that one finds in this time/space (or pluralized time).

5. The “two principles of historical materialism”

The modification, real or possible, of the relations between the elements of space-time is that

which Marx, in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, calls “an era

of social revolution”.6 It arises, Marx maintains, at the moment in which the “social relations”

within which the “productive forces” were up to that moment developed, turn (umschlagen) from

“forms of development” into their “fetters”.7

It is in this moment, and only in this, that the question is posed of a “revolution” of the

entire society: each “stage” (Stufe) of development of the nexus between productive forces and

relations of production must have reached its limit, and it is at that point that the alternative

between the “past” and the “present” is concretely posed: “Mankind thus – concludes Marx –

inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve”.8

Marx postulates therefore two distinct “times”: one of development and one of crisis. In

the time of development one has the quantitative expansion of a given structure constituted by a

certain relation between productive forces and relations of production; in the time of crisis one

has the qualitative reorganization of these elements in a new structure, in the sense that, new

relations of production “replace” the old, but these must already be formed within the old

society. The role of politics is circumscribed to periods of crisis. Also here, however, to politics

belongs a function of support to those relations that “already” must have been formed within the

old society, and this formation is a “natural” process exactly like that of the development of the

productive forces.

The property relations change, therefore, only as a consequence of the change of the

relations of production. Said otherwise: the same swerve from “development” to “crisis” is an

element internal to “development”. Consequently, the modification between the elements of

space-time is also an expression of the logic of continuity. On this basis, the relation between

“past” and “present” is dominated by the “past”. And it is this, i.e. the material base of society,

6 K. Marx, F. Engels, Werke, Bd. 13, Berlin, Dietz, 1961, p. 9 (K. Marx, A contribution to the Critique of

Political Economy, transl. by S. V. Ryazanskaya, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1971). 7 Ibidem.

8 Ibidem, p. 8.

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that produces in its interior the “conditions”, and the “tasks” corresponding to these. In short, the

clear distinction between development and crisis, postulated by Marx, resolves itself in an

“absorption” of the crisis within development, in the sense that the crisis is explained departing

from development, but one cannot say the converse: development is not comprehensible

departing from crisis.

Now, if we return to the initial question, and namely to the past/present nexus as the key

for understanding the relation between time and revolution, we must recognize the profound

distance between the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and the

approach of Gramsci. And yet this is precisely one of the texts to which he appeals with greater

conviction, to delineate the contours of his “return to Marx” and, through this, to define the

“philosophy of praxis”. This attention can be considered a strategic choice, dictated by the fact

that the Preface was commonly considered as the distillate of historical materialism, and was

therefore read in a deterministic and economistic key.

The point of attack of Gramsci is precisely the nexus between the “maturation” of

“conditions” in the womb of the “old” society, and the “tasks” that are born from and depend on

this “maturation”, in which we have recognized the foundation of the primacy of “development”

over “crisis”. In the Preface this nexus is presented as that between a premise (the “conditions”)

and a consequence (the “tasks”). In connecting the two moments, Marx in fact uses the adverb

daher, “that’s why…”.

It is on this point that Gramsci intervenes, transforming the gap between premise and

consequence into an organic interlacing between “two principles” which it is necessary to

mediate dialectically.9 Gramsci conceives the relation between conditions and consequences, or

between material premise and political initiative, as a pair of opposites that return to some form

of dialectical unity. This idea is justified by his approach to marxism: according to Gramsci

Marxism is born, as has been seen, with the Theses on Feuerbach, as a dismissal of the

speculative alternative between materialism and idealism and, therefore, of the same idea of a

“speculative” philosophy. The primacy of real “conditions” on political “praxis” is, from this

point of view, inadequate to express the theoretical revolution of Marx, and risks throwing

Marxism backwards, towards the old forms of reductionism. The intertwining of truth and

9 This difference was noted and commented upon by V. Gerratana, Sul concetto di “rivoluzione”(1977), in

Id., Gramsci. Problemi di metodo, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1997, pp. 83-118: 109-112.

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power, the conception of ideologies as jointly the site of knowledge and practical transformation,

in the end the theory of translatability: these elements, that constitute the marxism of Gramsci,

prevent the detachment, if not by abstraction, of the objective side from the subjective.

6. “Permanent revolution” and “passive revolution”

The truth-power of the “two principles” of historical materialism will only result from their

mediation. About this Gramsci makes two apparently inconsistent affirmations. The first dates to

October of 1930, and is resumed, in the second draft, in 1932. In its first version, Gramsci

affirms: “Meanwhile one can say that the dialectical mediation between the two principles of

historical materialism reported at the beginning of this note is the concept of permanent

revolution”.10

The second affirmation dates to April-May of 1933: “The concept of passive

revolution must be rigorously deduced from the two fundamental principles of political science

[…] This means that these principles must first be critically developed in their full extent and

purified of any residue of mechanicism and fatalism. They must therefore be referred back to the

description of the three fundamental moments into which a ‘situation’ or an equilibrium of forces

can be distinguished, with the utmost stress on the second moment, or equilibrium of political

forces and especially on the third moment or politico-military equilibrium”.11

The two texts date back to different moments of elaboration in the Prison Notebooks and

partly reflect distinct preoccupations: the first belongs to a crucial moment in the development of

the concept of hegemony, while the second is one of the points of arrival in the reflection on the

concept of “passive revolution”. These belong however to the same, fundamental problematic, as

is apparent not only from the common reference to the Preface of Marx, but also from the fact

that passive revolution is a type of hegemony. Finally, in the text of Notebook 4, immediately

after the passage I cited, Gramsci elaborates for the first time that notion of “relations of

forces”,12

which in the text of Notebook 15 is recalled as the conceptual framework that permits

a non fatalistic or mechanistic understanding of the two “principles” of the Preface.

10 Notebook 4, § 38: QC, 456-457. The second version contains a few variations which are not secondary

and unimportant: “Meanwhile one can say that the dialectical mediation between the two methodological principles

enunciated at the beginning of this note can be sought in the historical-political formula of permanent revolution”

(Notebook 13, 17: QC, 1582). 11

Notebook 15, § 17: QC, 1774. 12

Cfr. Notebook 4, § 38: QC, 457-459.

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Hegemonic processes, relations of forces, theory of history: herein lies the common

horizon of these two notes. There exists however a trait that clearly distinguishes them, and on

this we will now concentrate attention. In one case Gramsci speaks of “dialectical mediation” of

the two principles, while in the second he speaks of a “rigorous deduction”. In essence: if the

nexus between past and present (between “conditions” and “political action”) is dialectically

mediated, one has the concept of “permanent revolution”, while if from this same nexus one

carries out a simple “deduction”, that which results is “passive revolution”. In fact, in the same

Notebook 15, in a text of June-July 1933, significantly entitled Past and Present. First epilogue,

Gramsci again recalls that: “It seems that the theory of passive revolution is a necessary critical

corollary of the Introduction to the critique of political economy”.13

What exactly does “necessary critical corollary” mean? A corollary is a “consequence”.

Therefore, we are confronted here by a clear and precise warning on the part of Gramsci: the way

in which the past/present nexus is presented in the Preface, per se, propels one to think history as

a process of molecular accumulation, that by definition always assigns a preponderant role to the

“past”. Historical innovation “springs” from an internal dynamic of the already dominant

elements. This happens because, if “past” and “present” – i.e. theory and practice, history and

politics – are not understood in their dialectical unity, history tends to appear as an objective

flux, in which the only political action is that of those who, wanting to “revolutionize” the

existing conditions, will act on the basis of these, or else be confined to an unrealistic

subjectivism.

Herein lies therefore the “necessity” of that “corollary”, and the “critical” character of

this consequence of the theory of Marx. That consequence must be drawn, and in other words the

“theory of passive revolution” must be developed, in order to demonstrate the risks of that way

of understanding history. And that is, in the terms of Gramsci, to show that, so long as the “two

principles” of the Preface are treated separately, the first will have the upper hand and the

“present” will be the continuation of the past. Passive revolution arises, in fact, when (as has

been seen above regarding Germany and France) the “translation”, i.e. the unity of philosophy

and politics, is realized departing from philosophy; when a class of intellectuals succeeds in

“absorbing” within its own discourse the political dimension of the class struggle, rendering

possible a development devoid of deep and profound trauma.

13 Notebook 15, 62: QC, 1827.

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But, in its own way, the passive revolution is also a “translation”, that is a form of the

unity of theory and practice, i.e. of hegemony. Herein lies the proximity between passive

revolution and revolution in permanence. The latter emerges, as Gramsci writes, when the

struggle and the practices of insubordination of the dominated classes are unified in a

“hegemony”, i.e. when it is understood – at the price of bloody struggles and of many defeats –

that the subalterns can escape from their condition, only when they will have learned to realize,

from their point of view, the “translation” of theory and practice. From their point of view: i.e.

departing from practice, that is as a process of real, political unification of their mentality in a

coherent praxis. This development is also present in the Preface of Marx: in the dialectical

mediation of the two principles, in other words in the capacity, which only thanks to the organic

intellectuals and to the “modern prince” is it possible, to rethink the past as political struggle and

the present as the site of the constitution of truth-power.

Both revolution in permanence and passive revolution are therefore forms of hegemony.

But it matters whether the translation occurs departing from theory or departing from practice.

Departing from theory leads inevitably to the production of the representation of a unitary time,

whose own unfolding brings forth the “revolution”. This risk is present in Marx, not incidentally,

at the moment of the defeat and diminishing of the whole proletarian front. The “laws” of

political economy, like the “laws” of history, are the crystallizations of hegemonic processes, but

they “express” these processes from the point of view of theory, not of practice. This is the

reason why Gramsci considers Ricardo highly precious as “one of the points of departure for the

philosophical experiences of Marx and Engels that contributed to the development of historical

materialism”14

: his method of “let’s suppose that” expresses this political conditionality of the

necessity of law, this hegemonic origin of truth: this method does not deny “necessity” but

rethinks it departing from the contingency of politics, and which therefore helps (as Gramsci

maintains) to “reduce the ‘immanentist’ conception of history, – expressed in idealistic and

14 Notebook 8, § 128: QC, 1019. And cfr. The letter to Tania of May 30

th 1932: “can one say that Ricardo

has been important to the history of philosophy besides the history of economics, in which he’s certainly a figure of

primary importance? And can one say that Ricardo helped to direct the early theoreticians of the philosophy of

praxis toward going beyond Hegelian philosophy and toward constructing their new historicism, purified of every

trace of speculative logic?” (A. Gramsci-T. Schucht, Lettere 1926-1935, a cura di A. Natoli e C. Daniele, Torino,

Einaudi, 1997, p. 1015).

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speculative language by German classical philosophy, – to an immediately historical and realistic

‘immanence’”.15

15 Ibidem.