hegemony before gramsci

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Hegemony before Gramsci: The Case of Benedetto CroceAuthor(s): Edmund E. JacobittiReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 66-84Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1877955 .

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Hegemony before Gramsci: The Case of Benedetto CroceEdmund E. JacobittiSouthern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Persons familiar with the thought of Antonio Gramsci will recall hiscelebrated idea of "culture" set out in Letteratura e vita nazionale:"But what does 'culture' mean in this case? Undoubtedly it means acoherent, unitary, nationally diffused 'conception of life and man,' a'lay religion,' a philosophy that has become precisely a 'culture,'that is, it has generated an ethic, a way of life, a civil and individualconduct."' A "culture," in other words, provided the parameterswithin which the otherwise open-ended worlds of theory and prac-tice were confined. It was similar to what Vico in his Scienza nuovacalled "common sense." "Common sense is judgment withoutreflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entirenation, or the entire human race."2Common sense and culture were for Gramsci, as for Vico, the notso solid foundations on which nations rested. Without these foun-dations theory and practice came unhinged, flying off in separatedirections, making behavior unpredictable, and bringing the "un-heard of" on an equal footing with what was customary and tradi-tional. Without common sense the king would indeed have noclothes, and civil institutions hitherto armored in that commonsense would crash down.To Gramsci, however, "culture" and "common sense" consti-tuted not simply a defense against chaos but a major element in whathe saw as the "hegemony" of the dominant class of society over thewhole, an element of the "superstructure" used to shield societyfrom the critical analysis of its opponents. Far from sneering at thishegemony Gramsci had for it a singular appreciation, seeing therenot only the defensive weapon of the middle class but an example, amodel to be emulated in forging an offensive weapon for the pro-letariat. In the notion of cultural hegemony Gramsci saw the powerof an ethical-political atmosphere which, though supposedly servingthe interests of only a single class, had come to be the commonsense of the whole society.3

1 AntonioGramsci,Letteratura e vita nazionale (Rome, 1971), p. 20.2 GiambattistaVico, Scienza nuovaseconda, ed. Fausto Nicolini (Bari, 1953), 1:77.3 Gramsci, of course, was to devote the rest of his life to replacing that dominantculturalhegemony with his own hegemony-one he envisioned as serving the interest[Journal of Modern History 52 (March 1980): 66-84]?) 1980 by The University of Chicago. 0022-2801/80/5201-0050$01.51

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Hegemony before Gramsci 67Cutting throughthat "bourgeois hegemony" which insulated theworker from "historicalreality" and establishinga "practical" polit-ical theory in the minds of the workers were the themes which

dominated the works of Gramsci. Indeed the scraping away of"outdated" and "abstract" prohibitions, natural laws, and othereternal verities which supposedly masked the forces of the realworld has enjoyed a rich traditionin Italy, dating back at least toMachiavelli'sattempt to set aside Christian"abstraction"in ordertoreveal to the Prince the true nature of the world.4 It was only at theof the proletariat. The thinker thus turned his attention to the interest of theproletariat o as to overcome the historicalgap between elite and mass. In that unionof thinkerand workerwould be constituteda living example of the unity of theoryand practice, a marriageof thought and action that was to shatter the "illusion" ofthe autonomous intellectual who elaborated a classless and impersonalintellectualpatrimonywhile remainingabove sordid practicalinterests (see, e.g., Gli intellettu-ali e l'organizzazione della cultura [Rome, 1971], p. 16). This elaboration of aproletarianhegemony would disperse those historically"outdated" concepts of reli-gion, patriotism,and bourgeois "common sense" which had prevented the workerfrom operating coherently in a world where theory coincided with (proletarian)practice: "An active member of the masses operates practically, but has no cleartheoretical conception of this. . . . His theoretical consciousness rather can behistorically in contrast with this activity" (II materialismo storico e la filosofia diBenedetto Croce [Rome, 1971], p. 13). For Gramsci, theory was to derive from"real" practice and was to aim at hurryingalong those forces of history he saw asinevitable: "If the problem of identifying heory and practice is posed, it is posed inthis sense: constructingupon a determinatepractice, a theory which, coinciding andbeing identifiedwith the decisive elements of practice itself, accelerates the historicalprocess in being, making practice in every way more homogeneous, coherent, andefficient" (ibid., p. 45). How to hurryalong the forces of history-how to shatter theillusions which concealed "reality" became the central passion of Gramsci's workwhether one reads the Note sul Machiavelli (Rome, 1971), p. 17: "The process offorminga determinedcollective will for a determinatepoliticalend is representednotthroughdisquisitions and pedantic classifications of principles and criteria . . . ofaction, but as quality, characteristicdeeds, necessities of a concrete person, . . .which give a more concrete formto politicalpassion"; or II materialismostorico, p.12: "The position of the philosophy of prassi [i.e., Marxism] s antithetical o [thatofRomanCatholicism]: he philosophyof prassi does not aim at maintainingthe simple'in their primitivephilosophy of common sense, but instead at conducting them to asuperiorconception of life. . . . The contact between intellectualsand simple men isnot to limit scientific activity in order to maintaincontact with the low level of themasses, but precisely to construct an intellectual-moralbase to render politicallypossible an intellectual progress of the masses rather than of isolated intellectualgroups";or Gli intellettuali,p. 18: "The mode of beingfor the new intellectualcannotconsist in eloquence . . . but in the active mixingwith practical ife, as constructor,organizer 'permanent persuader.' . . . From the techniques of work come thetechniques of science and [then] the humanisthistoricalconception, without whichone remainsa [mere] 'specialist,' [ratherthan] a ruler (specialist + politician). . ..One of the most relevantcharacteristicsof every groupthat has become dominant sits struggle or the assimilationandideologicalconquest of the traditionalntellectuals,an assimilationand conquest that is more rapidand efficacious when the given groupspawns its own organic intellectuals."

4 Later,while Europefell underthe sway of an abstractCartesianhegemony, it wasVico who recalled the Machiavellianconception of a world made by man, a world



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68 Edmund E. Jacobittibeginning of the twentieth century, however, that Gramsci saw forthe first time in modern Italy an example of how one "culture"might supplant another, how one "common sense" might be used toassault and then replace an opposing order.In the hegemony of Benedetto Croce over Italian intellectual lifeGramsci glimpsed the method and the practice of hegemony. "Notsince Goethe," wrote H. Stuart Hughes, "had any single individualdominated so completely the culture of a major European country."5No one, Gramsci, or any other, was immune to the impact of theNeapolitan idealist whose criticisms of Italian positivism andpioneering work in aesthetics had made him, by the turn of thepresent century, one of the leading intellectual figures of Italy andindeed of Europe as a whole. "I and . . . many other intellectuals ofthat period," wrote Gramsci, "you could say for the first fifteenyears of the century, participated entirely or in part in the moral andintellectual reform promoted in Italy by Benedetto Croce. "6where there exists "a truth beyond all question: that the world of civil society hascertainlybeen madeby men, and that its principlesare thereforeto be found with themodificationsof our own minds" (Vico, pp. 117-18; emphasis added). In the Risor-gimento, men like Francesco De Sanctis and Bertrando and Silvio Spaventa, theleadingthinkersof the Destra Storica, returned o the worldly humanismof Vico andMachiavelli, elaborating n literature and political theory an immanentistand anti-transcendent ustificationfor the unificationof Italy and the new Italian state. (Theliteratureon De Sanctis and the Spaventa brothers s too overwhelming o cite but atleast one work of Guido Oldrini must be mentioned, for here one finds not only acomprehensive-though hardly unbiased-analysis of nineteenth-century HegelianItalianthoughtbut also a comprehensivebibliography.See his La cultura ilosoficanapoletana dell'ottocento [Bari, 1973].) Yet all these thinkers-with the possibleexception of De Sanctis (who had become, as Luigi Russo put it in his Francesco DeSanctis e la cultura Napoletana, 3d ed. [Florence, 1958], pp. 343-44, a kind of"nationalconscience")-had been ill received, establishingno enduring culture, nohegemony. Nearly everywhere Machiavelli'sworks were banned and he burnedineffigy. Vico and his works only today have found a wide audience, his publicationofthe New Science occasioning,on the whole, a contemptuous, f uneasy, yawn: "Thebook appeared,"he wrote in a letter of 1726,"in an age which, to use the expressionof Tacitusas he reflectedupon his own times-times which are so very similar o ourown-corrumpere et corrumpi 'saeculum vocatur, and therefore, being a book whichdismays or disturbs the multitude, cannot receive universal applause" (Vico,L'autobiografia, il carteggio, e le poesie varie, ed. Benedetto Croce and FaustoNicolini [Bari, 1911], p. 185, Letter to the Abby GiuseppeLuigi Esperti). BertrandoSpaventa's lectures at the University of Naples were hooted, and during his life hewas unable to awaken the interest of a publisherfor his extraordinaryworks (seeBertrandoSpaventa, Opere, ed. Giovanni Gentile [Florence, 1972], 1:5; and alsoEugenio Garin,Cronachedifilosofia italiana [Bari, 1966],1:18ff.). With the collapseof the Destra Storica in 1876 the parabolaof worldly humanismwent into decline.5 H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (New York, 1958), p. 201.

6 Antonio Gramsci, Lettere del carcere (Turin, 1950), p. 132. And NorbertoBobbio,far off fromNaples at the Universityof Turin, similarlynoted: "I belongto ageneration hat was, at least at the Universityof Turin,naturaliterCrocean.We wereCrocean with the same assurance and the same ingenuousnessthat our parents hadbeen positivists" ("Benedetto Croce a dieci anni dalla morte," Belfagor 17



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Hegemony before Gramsci 69Gramsci, of course, did not long remain-if ever he whollywas-an orthodox Crocean.7Indeed the two men stood, on socio-economic grounds, leagues apart. Yet in Croce's dominationof the

Italian culture, in his role as a kind of "lay Pope" as Gramscicalled him-Gramsci saw not only the power of Croce but the needto open, alongside the "merely economic and political fronts," a"culturalfront."8This article is not concerned with the content of the "cultures"proposedby eitherGramscior Croce but with a techniqueemployedby Croce-and later absorbed by Gramsci-for establishing thatculturein the minds of his contemporaries.It is concernedwith theaccess to and diligent use of scholarly journals and the scholarlypress to saturate the intellectual life of Italy with a single point ofview, a particularculture, in order to bringabout what Croce likedto call the "cultural rebirthof Italy."The aim of this culturalrebirthwas the annihilationof the vestigesof eighteenth-centurythought, the annihilationof "masonic senti-mentality" and natural-lawphilosophy, but especially it was aimedagainstpositivism,9that heir to the Enlightenment hroneof abstract[November 30, 1962]:622). One can gauge the impact of Crocean (and Gentilean)idealism on Italian intellectual life from the words of Eugenio Garin, the greateststudent of the period. Closing his two-volume study of twentieth-centuryItalianculture, he warned the reader that "the names of Croce and Gentile have beenexcluded from the index due to the frequency with which they appearin the text"(Garin, 2:621).

7 To Gramsci, Croceanismwas the Hegelianismof the twentieth century. In hiswork on Croce Gramsci wrote: "It is necessary to make of the philosophicalconception of Croce the very same reduction hat the first [Marxist] heoristsmade ofthe Hegelian conception. This is the only historicalpossibility which will permitanadequaterebirthof Marxism. . . For we Italians,to be the heirsof classical Germanphilosophy means to be the heirs of Crocean philosophy which is the contemporaryworld momentof classical Germanphilosophy"(II materialismo torico, pp. 236-37).Nevertheless, the debate over the Croceanismof Gramsci continues, the search forthe "authentic" Gramscicontinues to dominate the intellectual ife of Italy whetherMarxist or anti-MarxistCrocean or anti-Crocean,and a glance at contemporaryscholarly ournals indicates the enormousproportionsof the debate. Indeed in 1958the Istituto Gramsciheld a conferenceto search out the authenticGramsci,publishingthe (inconclusive) results in a 592-page text (see Studi Gramsciani [Rome, 1958]).

8 And he saw, too, the error of any Marxisttheory which ignored culture, ignoredwhat Croce called "ethical-politicalhistory." "The most importantelement to bediscussed," in this evaluation of Croce, Gramsci wrote, "is this: whether thephilosophyof prassi excludes ethical-politicalhistory, that is, ignores the reality ofthe momentof hegemony, the importanceof the culturaland moral direction, reallyjudges as 'appearance' he facts of the superstructure. t can be said that not onlydoes the philosophyof prassi not exclude ethical-politicalhistory, but that the mostrecent phase of [its] development consists precisely in vindicatingthe moment ofhegemony as essential to its conception of the state, and in increasing he evaluationof the cultural act, of culturalactivity, [and]of a cultural ront as necessary alongsidethe merely economic and political fronts (II materialismostorico, p. 233).9 At the turn of the century, Croce explained in 1918, "the philosopher who



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70 Edmund E. Jacobittithought.10 Against the positivist scientific culture (as well as againstthe positivist Marxism of the Italian Socialist party)1" Croce soughtto establish a new consensus, a new cultural rebirth based on aconcrete and immanent historical idealism:12 "In the last half centuryenjoyed the greatest fame and following in Italy was Spencer (now almost entirelyforgotten)and with him manyotherpositivists and evolutionists. . . . My first criticalaffirmationsherefore ook the formof oppositionto thatdisoriented,momentary,andimpetuousfad, and especially to those forms of it that collided with or swept awaythe very reasons for studyingliteratureand history which I had cultivated" (Primisaggi, 3d ed. [Bari, 1951], p. ix).

10 The negation of positivism and with it the negation of every form of transcen-dence and belief is what is now called the 'rebirth of idealism.' . . . In its rebirth,philosophical dealism must recognize and take up again its historicaltradition. . .interrupted or some decades by the positivist interregnum.Those four thinkerswhoform the philosophical quadrilateralof Germany-Kant, Fichte, Schelling, andHegel- . . . must be recalled to life" (Benedetto Croce, "Per la rinascitadell'idealismo,"Culturae vita morale, 3d ed. [Bari, 1955],pp. 33-37). Positivismwasas French, and thereforeas foreignto Italy, as ever the Encyclopedistshad been. OneFrench invasion was enough for Croce! "The Masonic mentality used to be calledEncyclopedismand Jacobinism n the 18thcenturyand Italy suffereda sad experienceat its hands at the time of the Frenchinvasions. . . . It can be said [in fact] that theentire Italian Risorgimento developed as a reaction against that French, Jacobin,Masonic, direction. . . . [And] it now seems impossible that at the beginningof the20th century, simply to imitate the French, we again import among ourselves thatcalamity from which we have [already]suffered more than a century ago" ("Dueconversazioni," Cultura e vita morale, pp. 145-46).11EdmundE. Jacobitti, "Labriola, Croce, and Italian Marxism,"Journal of theHistory of Ideas 36, no. 2 (April-May 1975): 297-318.

12 Althoughany attemptto reduce the complexity which is Croce'sphilosophy to afootnote is apt to produce (at least it ought to produce) irreverentsnickers, someattempt to at least outline his thought is necessary if we are to understandthetechniqueshe employed in the disseminationof what he called "modernphilosophy."For Croce, as for Gramsci, this philosophy had begun with Machiavelli and Vicowhose respective assaults on abstract Christianand Cartesian theories envisionedconcrete man grounded in historical reality, a worldly humanism opposed to"theologizingphilosophy" (filosofia teolgizzante) whether that philosophy was reli-gious or secular, whether it worshippedGod or Nature. The successful constructionof the eighteenth-centuryHeavenly City, however, with its abstract natural aws andits hostilityto historyand development,had obscured the Wisdomof the early Italianhumanists.Then in the nineteenthcenturypositivism-that offspringof Enlightenmentmaterialism-threatened again to dim the truths revealed in historical idealism bytrundlingout, only slightlydisguised, the notions of eighteenth-centuryree masonryand natural-lawphilosophy. In the ClassicalGermanthoughtof Fichte, Kant, Schel-ling, and especially Hegel, Croce saw the foil to static materialism, saw again thatappreciationor history and developmentwhich he revered in Vico, and saw renewedin the Hegelian unity of the real and the rational. Yet Germanphilosophywas alsomarred, accordingto Croce, by its tendency to become an orthodoxy, a religionwhich seemed to harness the true spontaneityof creative man withina preconceiveddialectic. It was because of this rigidity that by the mid-nineteenth centuryHegelianismwas in crisis, its right wing lapsing into insignificance, ts left-havingbroken with transcendentHegelian Logos-succeeding only in imprisoningman inanother Logos, a materialist and worldly "philosophy of history." For CroceMarxism-despite its hostility to abstractschemes-had enchainedman in an "inevi-table" history as effectively and ruthlesslyas ever orthodoxHegelianism had done.Still, in Marx'srevision of Hegel Crocehad foundan antidote to dominantpositivism,



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Hegemony before Gramsci 71the naturalist and mathematicalculture has been raised to the levelof the supreme cultural ideal. . . . These new directors of social lifeare entirely insensitive to art, they ignore history, they sneer likedrunken bumpkins at philosophy and they satisfy their religiousneeds, if at all, in . . . masonic lodges and electoral committees. Thephilosophical and cultural reawakening will have to put the natu-ralists, doctors, physiologists, and psychiatrists in their place anddestroy their arrogance."'13To put the opposing culture "in its place" Croce saw that it wouldbe necessary to appeal to intellectuals outside the "official culture"and especially outside those citadels of official culture, the univer-sities of Italy. Instead Croce appealed to those private men of letterswho throughoutItaly, but especially at Naples, regardedthe univer-sities not only as threats to their own roles as private tutors but asthreats to learningin general. "The cultural rebirthof Italy, Croceannounced, "will have to be [made] by the laity, that is not by theuniversity men, or by the university men only in so far as they feelthemselves of the laity.'14To sustain the culturalrebirth Croce determinedto found a schol-arly journal in order to put forth an order of ideas which would besingle minded in their orientation. "I intend," Croce wrote in 1902to his friend Karl Vossler, the German-languagephilosopher, "tobegin the publication of a small critical magazine. . . . The magazinewill be written, at least at the beginning, mostly by myself in orderto give it a determinatedirection.'"15By definition the idea of hegemony implied a hostility to anynotion of the "free market place of ideas." This was so not onlybecause Croce was not writing to man in the marketplacebut be-cause he did not share the view that man would be willing to payand in Marx himself a kindredspiritwhose rejectionof abstractHegelian thoughtaswell as the ahistorical materialismof the eighteenth century resembled that earlierMachiavellian-Vichian ejection of abstract Christian and Cartesian thought. ThatCroceremainedanidealistrefusing o acceptMarx'smaterialism,hatCrocewas later aviolent critic of Marx's "unilateral" nd"one-sided" economicapproach o man, oughtnot to obscure for us the similaritiesof their positions: their mutualhostilityto eternalabstract hought,theirappreciation or historyand the historicaldevelopmentof man,the ambiguityof their mutualcontactswithHegel. If it were possibleto reduceCroce'sintentionsat thebeginningof thepresentcentury o a singlesentence it would have to bethis: to defeat thepositivistdomination nd establish n its placea worldly mmanentism,an antideterministhistoricismwhich was idealist rather than materialist and whichrefusedto reduce man to any unidimensional cheme and especially not to the homoeconomicus of Marx.

13 Croce, "Il risveglio filosofico e la cultura italiana," Cultura e vita morale, pp.22-23.14 Ibid., p. 28.15 Benedetto Croce, Carteggio Croce-Vossler (Bari, 1951), p. 22.



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72 Edmund E. Jacobittithe price for the best idea even if it were to be found in themarketplace. Indeed he held to a kind of Gresham' s law in thematter of ideas, maintaining that bad ideas would always drive outgood ones, for man had an invincible ability to comfort himself inany pleasant theory which masked the harsh reality of life. To cutthrough these sentimental theories and expose the raw flesh ofhistorical reality there came the journal La critica. The openingsalvo in its first issue made public its opposition to any misguidednotions of tolerance: "We propose to sustain a determinate point ofview. Nothing is, in fact, more dangerous to the healthy develop-ment of scholarship than that misunderstood sentiment of tolerancewhich is in fact indifference and scepticism." 16Founded in 1903, the magazine immediately declared war "with-out quarter" against naturalists, free masons, positivists, and the"Voltairean Jesuits" of the Enlightenment.17 La critica was to be aninstrument of battle rather than a forum. To his friend GiuseppeLombardo-Radice, the famous pedagogical theorist, Croce wrote thatthe journal would be partisan and hostile to the disparate points ofview tolerated by "false liberalism": "My little magazine will beexclusive, partisan. . . . We have been ruined in Italy by falseliberalism. . . . On principle we will limit ourselves to a fewcollaborators. ' 18La critica was to concentrate on the history of Italian culture,pointing out its errors and divergences from the modern way, point-ing out the hitherto unnoticed relevance of such idealists as Vico, DeSanctis, and the Spaventa brothers. Though the magazine was al-ways Croce' s, Croce invited the young idealist thinker GiovanniGentile to assist him. Hitherto almost unknown save for a fewunique criticisms of Marx, Gentile wrote almost half the journal. Yetfor the first decade of the century he was viewed as-and seemed tobe content to be viewed as-a minor partner jostled by the Croceanwake into collaboration on La critica. It was Antonio Gramsci who,in a discussion of the advantages of "disciplined" and "homogene-ous" journals, journals with a "very single-minded intellectual orien-tation,"19 put "Critica of B. Croce" first on his list, for in La

16 "Introduzione,"La critica 1 (January20, 1903): 3.17 "Rejecting the prudence of divide et impera," as Alfredo Parente put it, thejournal "struck out simultaneously n every direction;and in this way solicited themost reluctant and hesitant spirits" (La critica e il tempo della voce [Naples, 1953],p. 14; and see Fausto Nicolini, Benedetto Croce [Turin, 1962], pp. 205-12).18 See letter of July 24, 1902,in Raffaele Colapietra,"Lettere inedite di BenedettoCroce a GiuseppeLombardo-Radice," I ponte 24 (August 31, 1968): 977-78.19 "The editorial orientationought to be vigorouslyorganized so as to produceanintellectuallyhomogeneouswork . . . for example the contents of every issue oughttobe approvedby the editorialmajoritybefore publication"(Gli intellettuali, p. 175).



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Hegemony before Gramsci 73critica "the combinationof directingelements agree." And "agree"Croce and Gentile most certainly did, for if there were differencesbetween them, a concordia discors as Harris put it,20 when facedwith a common enemy it was the "determinatepoint of view" whichinvariably prevailed. Other contemporaryjournals, La nuova an-tologia, La rassegna contemporaneo, La rivista d'Italia, seemed, asRenato Serra, the young Carducci scholar and admirerof Croce,once put it, "to have been writtenby a committee." "If you want tobegin a journal," he wrote to his friend Luigi Ambrosini of Lastampa, "think of La critica": "A single issue can appear a littlepedantic, arid, curt. But take a whole year: Croce and Gentile,Gentile and Croce. That is their power. It is them. They havebecome familiar, friends to their readers. Every [two] months youawait their feelings on books and events.'"21In the early La critica it was not uncommonto find entire issueswrittenby Gentile and Croce alone, and only graduallywere otherspermittedto write in the magazine-so long as they maintainedtheproper perspective. One then began to see appear in the journalsome of the more famous names associated with the Idealist move-ment (Adolfo Omodeoand GuidoDe Ruggiero,for example) as wellas some of the more obscure but fedelissimi crociani.It is testimony to Croce's success that twentieth-centuryItaly isfar more acquaintedwith the thoughtof Spaventa,De Sanctis, Vico,and others of its Idealist philosophers than ever was the Italy inwhich those men lived. That these early thinkerswere presentednotalways as they were, but as precursorsof Croce's own thought, thatthey were dissected always according to the formula of "what isliving and what is dead" in their philosophies, and that only now, aquarter-centuryafter Croce' death, are those orthodox Croceaninterpretationsbeing challanged22 s simply further proof of theCrocean hegemony which began at the turn of the century.For Croce the effort of La critica was political, "political," as heput it, "in the widest sense."23 And indeed it was, for it seemed toenvelop politics as a whole, establishingthose parametersof culturalhegemony which Gramsci so admired in the skill of his teacher,predecessor, and rival. "Croce's real political strength," noted

20 Henry Stilton Harris, The Social Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (Urbana, Ill.,1960), p. 22.21 Renato Serra,Epistolariodi Renato Serra, ed. Luigi Ambrosini,2d ed. (Milan,1953), p. 310.22 Thatis, challengedby a new orthodoxywhich seeks to makethem all precursorsof Gramsci.23 Benedetto Croce, "Contributoalla critica di me stesso," Etica e politica (Bari,1967), pp. 334-35.



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74 Edmund E. JacobittiGarin, "is not to be sought in his participation in the Senate, in thenational government, in local administration, in the marshalling ofparties, groups, and bands ... [but] in opinions diffused through [Lacritica], in collaboration with newspapers, or through the medium ofperiodicals inspired by him. . .. In a nation of prevalent literaryformation, or as is usually said, 'humanistic,' [formation], the reso-nance of [Croce's] views was decisive."24It was in fact exactly the strategy needed to guide a disorientedculture into a determinate point of view. "The journal," as Gullacenoted, "gave the two men a powerful instrument for the dissemina-tion of the Idealist philosophy which was to revitalize the Italianculture. 25 One can sense a little of the drama the journal producedin the words of those men who later recalled their early discovery ofLa critica. Mario Vinciguerra, for example, once a young Croceanenthusiast and later editor of La nuova Europa, reminisced: "Thatday . . . I discovered La critica, but I had no need of discoveringCroce. On the contrary, I stood ecstatic for a few minutes before thejournal for I now had the indubitable proof that the star to which weadolescents were already looking as a guide, was now approachingits zenith."26Vinciguerra was not unique. It was not, as he put it whilecommenting on his discovery, a year earlier, of Croce's book onaesthetics, "the case of a boy of acute sensitivity; it was, rather thespiritual disposition of a great part of our generation."27Doubtless also important for the young was the constant polemic,the vituperation poured upon "eminent figures," upon scientists anduniversity professors ("i signori professori who for years and yearshave furnished us with books devoid of any thought or passion")28whose books were reviewed at the end of each issue with devastat-ing sarcasm. Giuseppe Prezzolini, editor of another journal,Leonardo, and friend of Croce, chuckled at the reviews and theembarrassment of the professors as they stood before their students:"At least now, before publishing, on the basis of the documents intheir butcher shops, a rehash of ten German authors or an approvalof some author, the philosophy professor or the student of letters

24 Eugenio Garin,Intellettuali italiani del XX secolo (Rome, 1974), pp. 3-4.25 See Giovanni Gullace in the introduction o G. Gentile, The Philosophyof Art,trans. GiovanniGullace (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972), p. xii.26 Mario Vinciguerra,Croce: Ricordi e pensieri (Naples, 1957), p. 11.27 Ibid., p. 72.28 Croce, "Ho letto ...," Cultura e vita morale, p. 125; and, in a 1904 La critica: Iwrite, Croce explained,only to the few, for the majorityof professors, "were they ina position for an instant to comprehend he gravity of the charges that I have madeagainst them, would no longer deserve them" (La critica 2 [1904]: 520).



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Hegemony before Gramsci 75will think more than twice as he sees rise before him the vengefulvision of a review signed 'B.C.' or 'G.G.' "e29The point of the reviews, aside from directingthe reader towardidealism, was to discredit the "official culture" in the minds of theyoung students.Thus of his polemic with the Florentine professor De Sarlo30Croce wrote to his friend GiuseppeLombardo-Radice,"I know thatI am right and I know that De Sarlo, because of his position atFlorence has influence and aspires to take authority .... He will notlike my repy [to him] which is already at the printer .... [But] I aimnot at him but at the young who hear and read him."'31

Every two months, year after year, throughfirst one world warand then another, La critica appeared on schedule, reassuring itsreadersby its very presence that althoughall else had ceased to befamiliar the solidity and dependabilityof the journal remained un-shaken. From one end of the peninsulato the other the journal wasread-passed from hand to hand duringthe Second World War32-bringingabout a transformation,a "reform." "There has been areform in Italy," wrote ArmandoCarlini, "and the decisive begin-ning of it was signalled by the appearanceof La critica in 1903. 3329 Giuseppe Prezzolini, "La critica," Leonardo 4 (October-December1906): 362.30 Francesco De Sarlo (1854-1937), from 1900 to 1933 professor of theoreticalphilosophy at the Istituto de Studi Superiori in Florence, founder in 1903 of theGabinetto di Psicologia Sperimentale, founder in 1907 of the journal La culturafilosofica which he directed until 1917. De Sarlo was an important hinker n Florencewho between 1905and 1917enjoyed a devoted following, amongthem the editor ofLogos, Antonio Aliotta; the senator and undersecretary of public instruction,GiovanniCal6; Guido Delle Valle, and others. He and his school were opponents ofboth positivismand idealism, attempting o reconcile philosophywith the "science"

of psychology. On De Sarlo's view of Croce and Gentile, see his Gentile e Croce:Lettere filosofiche di un 'superato' (Florence, 1925). For a taste of Croce and Gentileon De Sarlo, try Benedetto Croce's Review of I dati della esperienza psichica(Florence, 1903)in La critica 2 (1904): 142-43, or better yet, his "Il professoreDeSarlo e i problemidella logica filosofica," La critica 4 (1907): 165-69, and "Unaseconda riposta al professore F. De Sarlo," ibid., pp. 243-47. Before Croce's ownstar had begun to rise he had in fact a rather amiablerelationshipwith De Sarlo,writingto him on one occasion: "I . . . see with great satisfactionthat you see andkeenlyfeel the moralproblem.It is truly consolingthat students and thinkers ike youare emerging [!] after the period that has passed when it was, especially in Italy,absolutely forbidden to pronounce words like moral ideas, absolute value, duty, etc.One riskedbeing taken for an innocentor sent to Berlinby the so-called positivists"(see "Un' ineditaletteradi Croce a De Sarlo su marxismoe vita morale,"Revista distudi Crociani 5 [1968]: 76).

31 Colapietra,"Lettere inedite di Benedetto Croce," p. 981.32 Florianodel Secolo, "Croce e la sua casa nel ventennio,"La rassenga d'Italia 1(February-March 946): 235.33 ArmandoCarlini, "Benedetto Croce e il fascismo," La nuovapolitica liberale2(February 1924): 34. See, too, Alfredo Parente's description of La critica: "Anoriginalmovement, in fact revolutionary n its thoughts . . . with a disconcerting



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76 Edmund E. JacobittiNo modernItalianjournal quite equaled the prestige or commandedthe allegianceof La critica: "[It] will remain in the historyof culturean example, perhaps unique, of the formative and reformativepowerof a journal. He who examines the state of studies in 1903 and thepresent state and examines their development during these fortyyears will see that philosophy and particularly aesthetics, literarycriticism, history and historical criticism, the criticism of art, lin-guistics, law, have all felt the influenceof the thoughtthat every twomonths was spread by that journal."34And yet a journal, even a journal like La critica, was still only ajournal, its views-its instructions-appearing only once every twomonths and then only to a limited, if highly influential, clientele. Topress forward the idealist view, to discredit the opposition, and,most importantlyof all, to demonstratethat past thinkers-or at anyrate the "living" part of past thinkers-all pointed to the idealistcrescendo, required more than a journal.The arrival of Giovanni Laterza in Naples at the end of 1901provided Croce with an opportunityto widen his own role in Italianlife. Young Laterza had recently founded a publishing firm acrossthe peninsulaat Bari, a firmwhich was, within less than a decade, tobecome the largest in the south and one of the most prestigious in allof Italy. Laterza wanted advice on publishinga series of books onsocial and political problems, a series he proposed to call "The LittleLibraryof Modern Culture."35He had already spoken with otherintellectuals,36who had proposed a text or two within the series,37but they did not appreciate the significance-the political sig-nificance-of the series as a whole. In Croce Laterza found pre-cisely what he needed, an intellectual with a grand design, not for abook but for an entire press, and in Laterza Croce found preciselynovelty in its historical and critical methodology,with the richness of its investiga-tions" (La critica e il tempo della voce, p. 9). Luigi Russo put it even moreemphaticallyas he recalled his first reading of Critica: "It was a fascinating anddisturbingreading for me. . . . When I read Croce I felt like a loaded powdermagazine" ("Conversazionicon BenedettoCroce," Belfagor 8 [January31, 1953]:1).

34 Attilio Momigliano,"La critica,"La rassegna d'Italia 1 (February-March, 946):235.35 Tullio Gregory, "Biblioteca di cultura moderna," in Catologo generale delle

edizioni Laterza 1973 (Bari, 1973), p. 125.36 The Neapolitanradical Francesco SaverioNitti, later prime ministerof Italy, themilitantsocialist deputy Ettore Ciccotti (who broke with the party in 1905 and in thetwenties and thirties became a militant fascist), as well as Gaetano Salvemini, thatnever easily pigeonholedrebel whose struggle o aid the south and undo "Ministerofthe Underworld"Giolitti, et him througha long list of oppositiongroups includinghisown Lega.37 AlthoughNitti proposed a series on its own which would deal with the problemsof the South, a series which lasted only al single year.



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Hegemony before Gramsci 77what he needed. "The collaborationbetween Benedetto Croce andGiuseppeLaterza ... [although]on different evels aimed at a singleend, not to passively furnish what the Italian culture requested butto orient it with a precise criterionfor nearly 50 years."38Six months after their initial encounter Croce wrote to Laterza.You ought, he said "to make yourself an editor with a determinatephysiognomy, in other words an editor of political and historicalworks, of the history of art, of philosophy, etc., an editor of seriousstuff."39The emphasis was upon the word "serious." It meant, asTullio Gregoryexplained in 1973, that Laterza was to remain "out-side the academic culture as well as the 'avantguarde'culture"; itmeant, in short, "adherenceto the programof cultural renewal thatCroce hoped to promote in those years through La critica. "40Laterza, at least accordingto the funeraloration deliveredby Crocein Giovanni's honor in 1944, responded to Croce's invitation withhumble deference: "To me," Croce intoned, "you said simply:I willfollow you in whatever you wish to do; do not give a thought forme. . ."41 Laterza indeed did follow Croce, and in Croce's aim toremake Italian culture he proved invaluable. In 1906 he took overthe publication of La critica and, as Riccardo Zagaria noted, theLaterza press quickly became "the ready, diligent, and preciseinstrumentof that active spiritof a manto whom today all Italy payshonor,"42namely, Benedetto Croce. Forty years later Gregory, in anarticle celebrating the sixtieth anniversay of the publishing firmwrote, "Speakingof the activity of the Laterzapublishinghouse oneis tempted to consider it as a moment or an aspect of the complexactivity of Benedetto Croce-so lasting and profound was the as-sociation between Giovanni Laterza and Croce, so precise the orien-tation that the Neapolitan philosopher imprintedon the activity ofthe Apulian publisher. Croce himself saw his collaboration withLaterza as a prosecutionand widening of the work he was doing inLa critica."43Enlarging upon Laterza' idea of the "Little Library," Croceproposed an expansion of the program. He, himself, would be thedirector, and the title of the series became the Library of Modern

- "La mostrastoricadella casa editrice Laterzaa Milano,"Culturamoderna, no.5 (December, 1961),pp. 25-26. Culturamoderna is the journalof the LaterzaPress.Its lead articles, being written by the editorial staff, are frequentlyunsigned.39 TullioGregory,"Per i sessant'annidella casa Laterza,"Belfagor 17 (November30, 1962):702.40 Gregory,"Biblioteca di culturamoderna,"pp. 125-26.41 Benedetto Croce, "Proemio," Quadernidella Critica 1 (1944): 1.42 RicardoZagaria, "Bari," La voce 4 (February15, 1912):757-58.43 Gregory, "Per i sessant'anni," p. 701.



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78 Edmund E. JacobittiCulture, the diminutive Little Library being deemed insufficientlyambitious-and rightly so, for by 1920 over 100 titles had appeared,by 1930 200, by the time of Croce's deathin 1952 500. Croce himselfhad written twenty-one of the series, edited or introduced anothertwenty. Gentile had written three, introduced another half dozen,while Guido De Ruggiero, then still a follower of Gentile, contrib-uted another handful. Indeed a list of the writers in the Library ofModern Culture bears a marked resemblance to the list of thewriters in La critica and otherjournals inspired by Croce. The toneof the Libraryof Modern Culture series was set by one of its firstpublications, Croce's own (1907) What Is Living and What Is Deadin the Philosophy of Hegel, an irreverent denunciation of Hegel'sdialectic in favor of Croce's. There was, as well, the publicationofthe works of De Sanctis with interpretive introductions by Crocewhich have set, until the last decade, the standard view of thenineteenth-centurycritic and political leader. Gentile likewise pro-vided, for the same period of time, the orthodox view of Spaventa.In 1907 came, also, the Reflectionson Violence, Sorel's antipositivistand antimaterialistrevision of Marx enthusiastically introduced byCroce. There was, too, the publicationof many of the works of thegreat Marxist thinker Antonio Labriola along with the critical re-marksof Croce. "They were [those texts on Marxism, Labriola, andSorel] works which for a long period of time introduced and con-ditioned the discussions of Marxism in Italy."44 Indeed not onlywere the discussions of Marxism "conditioned," but Marx himselfwas absorbed into that long itinerary of thinkers who pointed theway to Croce. Even after Croce had become persona non grata inthe fascist regime, noted Norberto Bobbio at the University ofTurin, any discussion of Marxism "intended not to arrive at Marx,but to better understand Croce. I don't ever recall having heard ofMarx or Marxismin either philosophy or jurisprudence classes."45How profoundly Croce has affected Marxist studies may yet begauged today by glancing through contemporary Marxist journalswhere the names of Croce, Labriola,and Gramsci are intertwined na kind of holy-and inextricable trinity.As director of the Library of Modern Culture Croce was in aunique position to affect what the literary public read. EdmundoCione recalled, for example, during his days at Croce's house theenormous correspondenceof Croce "with the innumerable[youngscholars] that turned to him . . . when they hoped to see [their

44 Gregory, "Biblioteca di cultura moderna," p. 127.45 Bobbio (n. 6 above), p. 622.



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Hegemony before Gramsci 79works] published by Laterza. "46 Clearly the doors were not open toanyone to write in the series nor even to publish at Laterza, unlessof course they had that "determinate point of view." Of the workswhich were accepted Croce occasionally found himself forced torewrite and edit parts which did not meet the standards he required.Giovanni Castellano, for example, had come to Croce's house at theend of the first decade of the new century and at the age of thirtyhad developed a zeal, not to say an obsession, with the life andworks of the Neapolitan philosopher. In 1919 he managed to puttogether a work, Ragazzate letterarie which was published by Ric-ciardi, another of Croce's friends. Following this, Castellano wrote awork on Croce called Introduzione allo studio delle opere de Bene-detto Croce which was published by Laterza, a work which, asCroce's biographer put it, included certain "elucidations" and"short critical notes written or sketched by 'the philosopher.'Encouraged by his "success" Castellano decided to write a work forthe Library of Modern Culture-a more detailed and philosophicalwork on Croce. The manuscript, however, did not please Croce; andso it "became necessary to entrust that badly elaborated work . . .to the hand of Enrico Ruta," another frequenter of Croce's house.Butwith his confused mind, . . . and his inclination to exaggerate, to beparadoxical,to the outrageous, to the complicated, to the theatrical,Rutawas the manleast adaptedto give the appropriateiteraryformto a series ofconcepts; [and so it was necessary to] resort to the heroic remedy thatCroce, while makinguse of the name of Castellanoand, thereforespeakingof himself in the third person, became critic and historian of himself. Thiswas done in no morethantwo weeks and from it came the little masterpiece,with the title, GiovanniCastellano,Benedetto Croce, ilfilosofo, il critico, lostorico. 7

And indeed so penetrating was the analysis, so Crocean the style,that Pietro Pancrazi, in reviewing the work for II resto del Carlino,commented that "the long familiarity of Castellano with Croce hascaused the former to acquire the very same style as the latter."48Buoyed up by the success of the Library of Modern Culture, Croceturned to the formation of other and more powerful libraries. InJanuary of 1905 the plans for the Classics of Modern Philosophy46 Edmondo Cione, Benedetto Croce ed il pensiero contemporaneo (Milan, 1963),p. 39.47 Nicolini (n. 17 above), pp. 202-5; Cionne,pp. 14-15.48 PietroPancrazi,in II resto del Carlino(December30, 1923);and see Nicolini, p.205. The remarksof Gramsci on the "certainly authorized" works of Castellano,FrancescoFlora, andothers are also interesting see Gramsci, I materialismo torico,p. 204).



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80 Edmund E. Jacobittiwere drawn up. This series was to be directed by Croce and Gentile,an editorialpartnershipwhich lasted until 1925 when the two menwent their separate ways. At the time that the plans for the Classicswere drawn up, it was difficult to obtain a translatededition of aforeign philosopher, difficult, for that matter, as Croce noted, toobtain the works of the Italian masters like Bruno and Vico in agood edition.49The Classics of Modern Philosophy was to fill thatgap, and the impact of the series must be viewed always in light ofthat gap as well as in light of the scant knowledge of foreignlanguages-especially German-among many Italian students.The series was, as Croce noted, to be "no ordinarycollection oftranslationswithout a principleor an order," but was to aim againatthat new order envisionedby Croce. The Classics "is designed, as isnatural, according to our way of thinking and is informed by theprinciples that are propounded in the journal La critica."50 Theseries was to contain twenty-five or thirty volumes beginningwithCroce's own edition of the Encyclopedia of Hegel, beginning,moreprecisely, with Croce's "Preface" to the Encyclopedia in which thereaderwas told-now that the muddied course of Western intellec-tual development had, at last, been clarified- "that each of thevolumes which follow this one will be assigned, as this one has beenassigned, its place in the history of thought.''51 It was that "a prioriconstruction of a history of philosophy," noted Eugenio Garin-speakingfor a generationof Italians- "that then became our historyof modernphilosophy."52The Encyclopedia appearedin 1907, sideby side with Croce's What Is Living and What Is Dead in thePhilosophyof Hegel. Otherworks of Hegel came later. In 1913camethe Philosophy of Right and in 1925 Hegel's Logic. "In accordancewith the 1905 program the Phenomenology did not appear. Thatother Hegel came at another time and underdifferentauspices. ...Thereforethe Hegel that manyeducated Italiansknew and meditatedupon, was for a long time . . . that of the Logic and the Philosophyof Right: which may, perhaps, explain a numberof things."53Along with Hegel, Italianswere now exposed-and in a real senseexposed for the first time-to the works of Fichte (1910), Kant(Critique of Judgment, 1906; Critique of Practical Reason, 1909;Critique of Pure Reason, 1909-10), Leibnitz (1909-12), Schelling

49 As quoted by Eugenio Garin, "I classici della filosofia," Cultura moderna, no. 13(March 1953), p. 6.50 Ibid., p. 5.51 Ibid., p. 652 Ibid.53 Ibid., p. 7.



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Hegemony before Gramsci 81(1908), Schopenhauer (1914-16), and Spinoza (1915). But of theEmpiricistschool of Great Britain there was no Bacon (until 1965),no Locke (until 1951), no Shaftesbury (until 1962). Berkeley ap-peared in 1909-but introduced and utilized by those Florentine"MagicalPragmatists"momentarilyendorsed by Croce, the Englishbishop was made to appearas a foil to Charles SaundersPeirce andthe forerunnerof WilliamJames's Willto Believe.54As to the French thinkers of the eighteenth century with theirnaturallaws and their antihistoricalbias there was nothing at all,Diderotand D'Alembertappearingonly in 1968 and Voltairein 1962.The Left Hegelians with their assault upon Idealism appeared in1960and the works of Feuerbachin 1965, which is to say that theyappearedat Laterza only after they had been popularizedelsewhereand much later by anti-Idealistpresses, and the cat, so to speak, wasout of the bag.The singular perspective of the Classics was, however, not per-ceived, and even those hostile to Croce and Gentile welcomed theopportunityto devour at last and in their own languagethe editionswhich flowed out of Bari. They did not note that their welcome hadbeen extendedto-in Garin's nimitablewords- "a Trojanhorse": "Ifempiricismand the Enlightenmentwere to remain for decades on thefringes of Italianphilosophicalculture;if Kant was to appearas theauthorof the three 'Critiques,'that is, as the meeting groundfor thenecessary synthesis of rationalismand empiricism,destined to leadthrough Fichte and Schelling to the logical crescendo of Hegel'sEncyclopedia-if this was the historical perspective of Europeanthoughtwhose maturefruit had to be the new idealism[of Croce andGentile]- . . . perhaps the major contribution to this vision belongsto those 'Classics' of Laterza."55Following the Classics of Modern Philosophy came an entireseries devoted to the works of Croce himself. This series set out infour early volumes the Crocean conception of the "Philosophy ofSpirit," distinguishingit from other dominant ideologies such aspositivismand Marxismbut also-if less severely-from the thoughtof men like Vico, Kant, and Hegel. Croce regarded his philosophyas a personaltriumph,but he also saw it as the logical conclusiontothe great thinkerswho had preceded him, a kind of summingup of

54 See, e.g., Gian Falco [GiovanniPapini], "Morte e resurrezionedella filosofia,"Leonardo (December20, 1903): 1-7; Giuliano il Sofista [GiuseppePrezzolini], "Uncompagno di scavi," Leonardo 2 (June 1904): 4-7, and "Risposta a Calderoni"(whose letter precedes Prezzolini's), ibid. (November 1904): 7-9; The FlorencePragmatistClub, "IIpragmatismomesso in ordine," Leonardo 3 (April1905):45-48.55 Garin, "I classici," p. 8.



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82 Edmund E. Jacobittithe results of Western thought, a summing up which was to consti-tute the foundation for-but also the limits of-all future thought. Inall, the works of Croce constituted some seventy volumes, volumeswhich placed the great minds and works of the past, as well as thepresent, within the "philosophy of Spirit," ordering, like sometwentieth-century Newton, the apparent flux and chaos of Westernhistory into a rational and coherent cosmos.Beyond the philosophical works there were as well the works onaesthetics and criticism, and, of course, the histories. The subtle"political" nature of those "histories" was often missed, theAchaeans disembarking unnoticed into the culture, there to shapeand form from within the debate over current political issues. Oneneed only remember the famous History of Italy (1870-1915)-issuedin 1928 as a blow against fascism, as a glorification of the prefascistyears so as to deflate the myth of the fascist Gallahad-to note thepower of Croce's word. Accused of being indifferent to politics,Croce responded, candidly, that simply because his work did notalways address the obviously political it did not mean that he was"above politics." His aim was wider, for he meant not to affect theoutcome of a single issue, but the context, and therefore the generaloutcome, of politics as a whole:Do [my critics] believe that I was not engaged in politics when writing,forexample, my History of the Kingdom of Naples, [a work] which wouldnever have been born without my political passion for the past and thepresent?Do they think I would have behaved moreusefullyif I had intrudedamong the politiciansor [engaged in] the daily politicalchase? . . . In factmy book penetratesminds and souls and I see it continuallyrecalled . . . inthe problemsthat concern Italian life and the conditions of SouthernItaly.And that is . . . [the nature] of my best and most enduring "politicalwork.' '56

In 1909 the design for the most ambitious of the Laterza librarieswas drawn up. At a summer meeting in the mountains of theAbruzzo, Laterza and Croce designed the Writers of Italy, a serieswhich was dedicated to Victor Emmanuel III and was to comprisesome 600 volumes. The aim was, as Gianfranco Folena put it, touncover the history of twentieth-century Italian Idealism, "the singlecultural consciousness of modern Italy."57 Thus the opening pro-gram of the Writers of Italy announced the intention of "assuring atlast for Italy the corpus of writers that gave her a tongue and that56 Croce, "La politica dei non politici," Culturae vita morale, p. 292.57 GianfrancoFolena, "Scrittorid'Italia," in Catologo generale, p. 9.



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Hegemony before Gramsci 83through the centuries reaffirmedand maintained her racial unityand glorious civilization.'58As with the Libraryof Modern Culture, each Italian writer fromthe remote past down to the present would be "assigned his place"in the historical dramawhose crescendo had come in the works ofCroce. Thus appearedthe works of Machiavelli, Guicciardini,Vico,Cuoco, Foscolo, Gioberti, De Sanctis, and scores of others. Noroom was found, however, for Galvani, Beccaria, or Volta, theleading Italians of the Enlightenment.Nor was there space for thestatesman and philosopher Carlo Cattaneo, the so-called father ofItalian positivism. In the newspaper Azione of Milan a certainprofessor Arcariwrote, in 1909, of a kind of "closed sectarianism"in the attitudes of Croce and Gentile and of a "bias" in the seriescoming from Bari. Why, he inquired, were men like Cattaneo ex-cluded? "At the time the catalogue [of proposed authors] was,somewhat hurriedly compiled," Croce responded, "an edition ofCattaneo'sworks was (and still is) in progressat [the publisher]LeMonnier and I [therefore] thought one could not, with literarypropriety, announce the republicationof Cattaneo's works. Was Ideceived? If so I will add [Cattaneo] to the next catalogue."59Cattaneo's works were, however, not published by Laterza until1965.Arcari's awareness of the bias of the Laterza press was, however,isolated, and Italians devoured with relish the history of their mod-ern culture without noticing the gaps and empty parentheses whichmight have led to other definitions of "modern culture." "Therevolutionary character of the collection and the change that itsrealization accomplished in the culture of the country was notperceived by many at the time."60The ambitiousness and the very size of the tasks undertaken byCroce, Gentile, and Laterza meant that these three alone could notpossibly supervise the publication of each of these series. Otherdirectors had to be found, authors had to be located to write,introduce, or annotate the volumes, and yet each had to have that"determinatepoint of view" which was to give coherence to theeffort as a whole. Croce delegateda good deal of the responsibilitiesto other men. The Writers of Italy, for example, after 1912 and until1927, was directed by Croce's biographer,the great Vico scholar,Fausto Nicolini, though Croce himself "wrote the programfor [the

58 "Gli 'Scrittorid'Italia,' " Cultura moderna, no. 7 (February1953), p. 1.59Benedetto Croce, "Argomenti letterari," Pagine sparse, serie prima (Naples,1919), pp. 130-31.60 FerruccioFocher,Profilo del opera di Benedetto Croce (Cremona,1963), p. 254.



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84 Edmund E. Jacobittiseries] and supervised it with love, even personally editing severalvolumes."61In assessing the weight of Croce's impact on twentieth-centuryItaly one must recall the singularposition of the Laterza press in theformation of the minds of contemporary educated Italians. Laterzaand La critica were in a very real sense the voice of the south, thevoice of a traditionuniquelytelescoped and harmonizedthrough thewritings of Croce into a single theme. Gramsci, reflecting, withenvious anger, on the strength of Croce's hegemony, noted that"in the South there exists only the publishinghouse of Laterza andthe journal La Critica; there are academies and cultural groups ofgreat erudition" but there are no small or even medium-sized our-nals, there are no other publishers "around which Southernmiddleclass intellectuals are gathered." Southernersseeking a voice in thepress therefore were forced to write through Laterza or to seek theunlikely "hospitality" of a northern publisher.62Out of Bari over the next decades there flowed the hundreds andhundreds of volumes inspiredby Croce, volumes which flowed intolibraries and private homes and eventually into the universities. Thetexts, as Garin put it, "in a little more than ten years, had trans-formed the libraries of every educated Italian" and succeeded "inimposinga precise orientationon the culture." Augusto Guzzo who,secure in his religious faith, did not feel the weight of Croce as didothers of that generation, once suggested that "those who felt theimmense authority of Croce as a domination have not always askedthemselves whether the domination should be imputedto the weak-ness of whoever allowed himself to be dominatedrather than to theprecise will to power and to the deliberateprogram or an empireofthe dominator.63Weakness perhaps there was, but also an emptiness, and empti-ness filled for some, like Guzzo, by religion, but for others by thosebooks sent out of Bari accordingto "the deliberateprogram or" notan empire, but a spiritualhegemony which, as Gramsci noted, hasmade Croce for Italiansdown to the present day "the contemporaryworld moment of Classical Germanphilosophy."64

61 Nicolini (n. 17 above), p. 229.62 "La questione meridionale," Rinascita 2 (February 1945): 41 (published post-humously).63 Augusto Guzzo, Dieci anni dopo (1952-1962) (Turin, 1962), pp. 6-7.64 Materialismo storico, pp. 236-37.

hegemony before gramsci

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