Gramsci and Subaltern Struggles Today: Spontaneity, Political Organization and Occupy Wall Street

Abstract

In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci undertakes a critical analysis of subaltern groups, examining their conditions, factors contributing to their subordination, their modes of thought, culture and levels of political organization. He attempts to identify the factors that empower as well as impede subaltern groups in the transformation of their conditions. In Notebook 3, §48, entitled ‘Past and present. Spontaneity and conscious leadership,’ he argues that subaltern political struggles are often characterized by spontaneity, a factor that contributes to the ineffective and, at times, regressive aspects of subaltern political activity. ¹ By ‘spontaneity,’ he suggests that subaltern groups act according to a restless impulse or ‘instinct’ to revolt, due to crises or unacceptable conditions. Subaltern groups’ spontaneous rebellions and uprisings indicate social discontent and the desire for socio-political change, but such movements rarely succeed in transforming the conditions themselves. Thus, to be effective, he argues that subaltern struggles must be founded on ‘conscious leadership,’ which he describes as political activity informed by revolutionary theory and rooted in a systematic understanding of the historical conditions that define subalternity.