SUMMARY According to Gramsci every essential social group (one, that is, which arises from carrying out an essential function in the world of production) creates from within itself one or more groups of organic intellectuals who per/'orm "specialized technical" (politico-economic) "functions" that the social group, of which they are the homogeneous expression, has brought to the fore{ronl of the historical stage. In particular, through its link with progressive productive forces, the industrial proletariat (in contrast to the peasant classes) is supposed to be in a position to create its own intellectuals organically. The function of' such intellectuals is supposed to be that of giving a "conscious leadership" lo the working class: the authority they exercise does not render fi·eedom null and void, precisely by virtue of their organic identity and homogeneity with the working class itself. The goal wich Gramsci sets himself with his formulation of the concept of the organic intellectual is twofold: a) to sustain his polemic with bourgeois intellectuals by demonstrating that there do not exist intellectuals who are autonomous, that is neutral with regard lo the struggle of the classes; b) to guarantee the proletariat control over the management of the revolution and integrity of the communist revolutionary project. But his second goal is obstructed by the very historic-dialectical methodological instrumenlarium which made him formulate ii. The Marxist dialectic proceeds concentrically around contradictions, in the very same way as the Hegelian one. Both accept the same identity principle. In Marxist thought, in particular, the proletariat is equal to, and a contradiction of, the bourgeoisie, since both are supposed to be set in motion by the same logic: development of production and seizure of state power. The organic proletarian intellectual therefore exists only in the heavens of lheo1y, he is an abstract conceptual extrapolation inferred from the Hegelian identity principle. The Gramscian intellectual, if he is organic, is so with regard to Authority and not with regard to the proletariat, a class with which he has no real homogeneity. Authority is not an abstract entity, not a mechanism which is neutral in itself. On the contrary, it is -thepermanent structural binding force of the authoritarian organization of social labour: the intellectual in power is, hence, a function of power itself, an aristocracy, a technocratic class. The problem o/' modern revolutions is the wholesale and active abolition of the Stale, and the radical renewal of representative system for the fundamental transformation of the ve,y concept of political activity. The problem, therefore, lies not in the formation of a new management, but in the scuppering of the organizational patterns of present-day societies (authoritarian division of' work and scientific research) so as lo guarantee lo everybody real control over the productive and distributive processes. 58
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