Antonio Gramsci was a professional revolutionary. I have written more posts on him, perhaps, than any other person on this blog. The reason is that we must understand where the West stands in the culture wars.
We have lost. Whether this loss leads to other types of wars, I cannot say for sure, but only speculate.
When the United States lost the ideal of a confederation of independent states in charge of their own destiny, in a free union made to create a nation under God and a peaceful environment for its citizens, war was inevitable Sadly, since the killing of Able by Cain, war seems to be an option when people are divided by vision and passion.
Are there any men to fight this war? I have written on the Men of the West before and have the tags below.
Three things which Gramsci desired have occurred. One, the slow war of undermining Catholic, Christian culture has occurred. This was not accomplished by war, but by the taking over of key elements of society, which I have discussed on this blog.
People, especially Americans, are in denial. The State in the West was an organization created to protect the culture. Gramsci clearly saw that this ideal was breaking down as religion and the moral collapse of nations was undermining unity. I could never understand why both Lenin and Gramsci wanted leaders to control the very proletariat they were idolizing as the new intellectuals, the new society.
This is why and the first of the three things desired which have occurred. The elite was religious and connected to the Church. Most universities were still teaching Scholastic principles and the Catholic world view of the need for Christ and salvation. In other words, the elite were supporting orthodoxy. This does not mean these people were perfect. Far from it.
It means that most of the States were doing what these human civil societies were meant to do-protect the religion and protect the people.
Number one in the three-fold list is that the State is now the predator, not the protector. The bulging State powers over all the Western world, now look very like the tyrannies of the Far East. Predators exist for themselves. The States have become narcissistic and the leaders are narcissistic. The American president and the French president are keen examples of this.
Number two in the success of the Gramscian vision is that a revolutionary mind-set has replaced stablity and conservation.
No one is talking about this. Revolution is assumed to be a good thing and the grass-roots revolutionary principles of Marxism as seen by Alinksy and Chomsky are in the main stream of American and European politics. Look at the language, look at the pushing of the dialectic. Pull apart the language of Hollande and Obama. It is clearly always that of the constant need for the opposition of peoples.
This view is totally opposite the Catholic, Christian view of unity of all peoples. Truth does not create false barriers or false classes. In other words, "class-based politics" is normal. But, this is new and such political movements are false. Who needs to be identified with a class? Who needs the dialectic? Only those who want power create such false divisions.
Thirdly, the socialists are now Marxists and really have been from day one, but were hiding under different names. That socialism is Marxist makes the definitions more clear, but also shows the victory of Gramscian politicians In the 1970s and in Chicago in the late 1960s, these Marxists were writing about Gramscian ideals in the leftist press. Those who were not interested ignored these messages, which were bugle calls from the far left. What happened is that the far-left took over grass-roots politics in many large urban areas, particularly Chicago, but did not use the language of Marxism, as the Cold War was raging and the press was nervous about such vocabulary. What was hidden is now taken for granted and those of us who have ears to hear can follow the arguments. As Hitler knew, when one has control of the media and the use of propaganda, one has won a huge front in the war. So, too, we as Christians have lost this aspect of seeing the use of language for what it really is-gross manipulation of thinking.
Why were Catholics and Christians asleep while the culture-war was being won by the Marxists in Europe and America?
A few reasons: Marxism had invaded the Church in the form of Liberation Theology and grass roots politics in the new Social Teaching of the Church, misused and misnamed. See my tags on this from earlier articles. When a diocese can give Saul Alinksy a peace prize, one realizes the depth of the deceit. There were few voices calling for moderation or pointing to the dangers to the Church. These people were pilloried as reactionaries or old-fogies. Pat Buchanan is and was one ignored over the years. Many Catholics are socialists first and Catholics second-a dangerous position for religious freedom to thrive.
Secondly, those in power did not mind the Marxist take over of education, language, even religious institutions, as it served their purposes in creating, down the road, the new world order completely devoid of influence from religion. Freemasons, steeped in separation of Church and State, holding the heresies of indifferentism, and progressivism, and finally hating the Catholic Church as the bastion of truth against their society, allowed this take over by the far-left. The far-left and the anarchists are mere tools in the hands of those who hold the power of money and position. When push comes to shove, all these groups will undermine the same enemy, the Catholic Church, for their own purposes, as evil merely destroys and does not build. However, someone will end up holding the mace and wearing the crown.
If you do not believe this, look at the cvs of those who are in power in the European Union. The idea of hegemony and the belief that people create their own history by ideology is so sublimated that most people do not realize the dangers.
Thirdly, political fatigue in the West has allowed those who want to fill in the power vacuum to do so. This is a result of revolutionary ideals. When Gramsci writes that he wants all people to become intellectuals, he is pretending that somehow the proletariat want to think. Why he missed this point is beyond me, but it is the only reason he fell into the typical revolutionary's idea that leadership must be somewhat tyrannical and decide what is best for all. This is the schizophrenia of the West. Revolutions without leaders do not end happily. Look at what happened in Egypt, which I predicted in January of 2011. When those who want a democratic government fight in the streets without the leaders set up to take over, those who are organized will use the situation for their own seizure of power. I tried to explain this to people a long time ago. Power vacuums will be filled by someone and political fatigue among those who truly want freedoms will result in just another tyranny taking over from the old.
Egypt is much worse off than it was under Mubarak. I have tried to teach my students in the past that revolution without genius and organization leads to the take-over by those who have been waiting in the wings, planning and using a situation when it arises.
When people become politically fatigued and expect leaders to come forward in their camp, without supporting the education and promotion of such leaders, disaster follows.
Gramsci's ideal of the proletariat creating leadership has always puzzled me. He himself was a cultured, educated man. He honestly thought, according to my reading, that education would create a smart, politically acute proletariat which was not ideological but rational and creative. The problem with this idea is that both the rational ability of men and the creative instincts come not from the material, but from the soul, the very element of mankind denied by Gramsci. His revolutionaries were doomed to an endless repetition of revolution and renewal without the ability to truly creative a new society. We create what is in our souls, in our own image and likeness.
I have written here before that the constant use of revolution is the mark of Satan. As in Dante's hell, where everyone is never at peace physically, but many in constant motion or in a fixed state of pain, so too, the revolutionary must be making motion constantly, as conservatism is destroyed by his very ideology. The fixed state of pain is gross materialism--the definition of man as merely material, merely physical, so that the goal of all his efforts is the here and now.
How sad, how predicable and how victorious in our sad societies and cultures of the West is this reality.
But, the Catholic Church has a name for the original revolutionary and has a name for endless strife. The first is Satan and the second is sin.
Too bad the brilliant Gramsci ignored the interior life. Without the purity of heart and mind necessary to understand his own spirit and the Holy Spirit, he missed the point of life. But, sadly, his message is waxing as more and more people are either dead intellectually, politically fatigued, or so steeped in sin themselves that they cannot reason out the fact that we have lost the culture wars.