Femia writes that as Gramsci grew older, his focus changed to emphasizing “the self-education of the workers”: “The task of the revolutionary party, therefore, should be not to tutor the proletariat but to promote the formation of the consigli di fabbrica” (5). Now, I’ll be quite honest: I have no idea what the consigli di fabbrica is, but I’ll hopefully find out as I read more. However, I do like that he changed from tutoring, a somewhat paternalistic “I’m the enlightened on in the know” view to somethign else…
Femia notes that one concept stayed consistant throughout Gramsci’s work, “the notion that successful must be complemented by a transformation in the spirit of the age” (7).
Femia also discusses in the introduction to his chapter the way Gramsci is often misunderstood, how some commenters have left such convoluted comments to actually make Gramsci’s work more difficult than it is, and that is work is often interpreted in various ways, often because, over the span of his life, and even just within the works that he wrote while in jail, his works contradict each other at times. This is partially because his work written in jail was never edited and polished by him to be “finished,” but were rather Notebooks (8+).
Femia, Joseph V. Gramsci’s Political Though: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.
