Notes on “The Formation of the Intellectuals” by Antonio Gramsci
Dear All,
I hope you are coping well with the lockdown and taking good care of your health. Here
are the notes on Gramsci that I had promised. I’m extremely sorry for the delay.
The following pages will include my explanation and analysis of the sections of the essay
we have not yet read in the class. Don’t treat these comments as the last word on Gramsci, but as
prompts to help you analyze his ideas. I will also answer some of the questions you have asked
me in our previous classes and conversations.
Don’t worry if you have not included these points in your assignments, I will mark you
based on what I had taught you before the holidays. You may include these points if you wish to.
Feel free to write to me on email or Whatsapp me personally if you have a doubt or want
to discuss something.
So, let me begin with my explanations and comments on the text.
“School is the instrument through which intellectuals of various levels are elaborated….”
(p. 25)
By elaboration, Gramsci means development, expansion, widening of scope.
School is the place where intellectuals are formed, their minds are developed, they are
trained in intellectual-cerebral activities. This is also the place where the relationship between the
intellectual-cerebral and the muscular-nervous effort is modified and brought to an equilibrium
suited to the material conditions in the world of production.
Gramsci says, “the more extensive the “area” covered by education and the more
numerous the “vertical” “levels” of schooling, the more complex is the cultural world, the
civilization, of a particular place.” By “area,” Gramsci could mean the area of intellectual
activity covered by the educational institutions (how many subjects, streams, specializations) or
the number of students covered by the education system. Basically, the quantity of students,
quantity and variety of intellectual activity. By “levels”, he means how many years, primary,
middle, high, higher-secondary, undergraduate, post-graduate, doctorate, post-doctorate, and so
on. The widest base in terms of number of students educated is required for the selection and
elaboration of people for the top intellectual qualification. Students drop out at different stages to
occupy various levels of the hierarchy of intellectuals. Quantity cannot be separated from
quality, because quantity is required to ensure the quality of intellectual activity.
, Gramsci points out that this wide base, this democratization of education, often causes
widespread unemployment. One observation that had come up in our class discussions was that
Gramsci does not provide any solution to this problem. I would say, Gramsci hints at a way out,
but does not elaborate on it in this essay. The Prison Notebooks were not finished works.
Through these notebooks, we get a glimpse of Gramsci in the process of figuring things out. So
there are a lot of open questions. In this case, Gramsci points out a contradiction in the education
system, which the dominant ideology tries to obfuscate. I think one of the contributions of
Marxism is the recognition of unemployment as a problem created by the structure of capitalist
economy, and not some intrinsic defect in a person’s character. Here, Gramsci shows how
unemployment is the result of the education industry itself. Interestingly, this wide base of
education came into existence along with the rise of industrialism and capitalism. For a fun
illustration of this, I suggest this RSA animation of Ken Robinson’s talk on public education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).
You have also read about this education system in Dickens’ Hard Times. You have read
how Dickens refers to people who are poor, unemployed or in debt in his novels. His
representations are sympathetic, but often paternalistic. The narrative of the self-made man in
Hard Times propagates the idea that people are poor and unemployed because they could not
“make” themselves, whereas the Gramsci’s reading of the problem is that this unemployment is a
result of the structure of the education system.
Gramsci refers to this crisis of unemployment again at the end of the section on the
formation of intellectuals, and seems to suggest that unionization is a way of addressing this
crisis: “Mass formation has standardised individuals both psychologically and in terms of
individual qualification and has produced the same phenomena as with other standardised
masses: competition which makes necessary organisations for the defence of professions,
unemployment, over-production in the schools, emigration, etc” (28). This refers to the necessity
of unions, guilds and various organizations to defend the rights of workers, unemployed people,
students who fall through the cracks of the education system, migrant workers and so on.
The relationship between the intellectuals and the world of production (p. 26)
Intellectuals have a direct relationship with the “fundamental social groups” or classes,
especially organic intellectuals. However, their relationship with the world of production (or the
economic base/structure) is mediated by the whole fabric of society and the complex of
superstructures.
“Superstructures” would include the legal, political, religious, educational, aesthetic and
many such entities. There are multiple levels of superstructures, but Gramsci mentions two major
superstructural levels in this essay—civil society and political society. The text clearly explains
(and I am just summarizing it here):
1. Civil society corresponds to the function of hegemony or social hegemony which
creates the “spontaneous” consent of the masses to the “general direction imposed on
Dear All,
I hope you are coping well with the lockdown and taking good care of your health. Here
are the notes on Gramsci that I had promised. I’m extremely sorry for the delay.
The following pages will include my explanation and analysis of the sections of the essay
we have not yet read in the class. Don’t treat these comments as the last word on Gramsci, but as
prompts to help you analyze his ideas. I will also answer some of the questions you have asked
me in our previous classes and conversations.
Don’t worry if you have not included these points in your assignments, I will mark you
based on what I had taught you before the holidays. You may include these points if you wish to.
Feel free to write to me on email or Whatsapp me personally if you have a doubt or want
to discuss something.
So, let me begin with my explanations and comments on the text.
“School is the instrument through which intellectuals of various levels are elaborated….”
(p. 25)
By elaboration, Gramsci means development, expansion, widening of scope.
School is the place where intellectuals are formed, their minds are developed, they are
trained in intellectual-cerebral activities. This is also the place where the relationship between the
intellectual-cerebral and the muscular-nervous effort is modified and brought to an equilibrium
suited to the material conditions in the world of production.
Gramsci says, “the more extensive the “area” covered by education and the more
numerous the “vertical” “levels” of schooling, the more complex is the cultural world, the
civilization, of a particular place.” By “area,” Gramsci could mean the area of intellectual
activity covered by the educational institutions (how many subjects, streams, specializations) or
the number of students covered by the education system. Basically, the quantity of students,
quantity and variety of intellectual activity. By “levels”, he means how many years, primary,
middle, high, higher-secondary, undergraduate, post-graduate, doctorate, post-doctorate, and so
on. The widest base in terms of number of students educated is required for the selection and
elaboration of people for the top intellectual qualification. Students drop out at different stages to
occupy various levels of the hierarchy of intellectuals. Quantity cannot be separated from
quality, because quantity is required to ensure the quality of intellectual activity.
, Gramsci points out that this wide base, this democratization of education, often causes
widespread unemployment. One observation that had come up in our class discussions was that
Gramsci does not provide any solution to this problem. I would say, Gramsci hints at a way out,
but does not elaborate on it in this essay. The Prison Notebooks were not finished works.
Through these notebooks, we get a glimpse of Gramsci in the process of figuring things out. So
there are a lot of open questions. In this case, Gramsci points out a contradiction in the education
system, which the dominant ideology tries to obfuscate. I think one of the contributions of
Marxism is the recognition of unemployment as a problem created by the structure of capitalist
economy, and not some intrinsic defect in a person’s character. Here, Gramsci shows how
unemployment is the result of the education industry itself. Interestingly, this wide base of
education came into existence along with the rise of industrialism and capitalism. For a fun
illustration of this, I suggest this RSA animation of Ken Robinson’s talk on public education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U).
You have also read about this education system in Dickens’ Hard Times. You have read
how Dickens refers to people who are poor, unemployed or in debt in his novels. His
representations are sympathetic, but often paternalistic. The narrative of the self-made man in
Hard Times propagates the idea that people are poor and unemployed because they could not
“make” themselves, whereas the Gramsci’s reading of the problem is that this unemployment is a
result of the structure of the education system.
Gramsci refers to this crisis of unemployment again at the end of the section on the
formation of intellectuals, and seems to suggest that unionization is a way of addressing this
crisis: “Mass formation has standardised individuals both psychologically and in terms of
individual qualification and has produced the same phenomena as with other standardised
masses: competition which makes necessary organisations for the defence of professions,
unemployment, over-production in the schools, emigration, etc” (28). This refers to the necessity
of unions, guilds and various organizations to defend the rights of workers, unemployed people,
students who fall through the cracks of the education system, migrant workers and so on.
The relationship between the intellectuals and the world of production (p. 26)
Intellectuals have a direct relationship with the “fundamental social groups” or classes,
especially organic intellectuals. However, their relationship with the world of production (or the
economic base/structure) is mediated by the whole fabric of society and the complex of
superstructures.
“Superstructures” would include the legal, political, religious, educational, aesthetic and
many such entities. There are multiple levels of superstructures, but Gramsci mentions two major
superstructural levels in this essay—civil society and political society. The text clearly explains
(and I am just summarizing it here):
1. Civil society corresponds to the function of hegemony or social hegemony which
creates the “spontaneous” consent of the masses to the “general direction imposed on
