Views in brief

What Gramsci was allowed to say

I AGREE with the arguments made by Paul D'Amato in his recent letter ("Advice for understanding Gramsci") defending the view that the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci wrote his Prison Notebooks in code to evade the censors, and I would like to add one further point.

Paul was responding to arguments made by Bill Crane (based on a recent book about Gramsci by Paul Thomas) ["A clarification on Gramsci's thought"]. In making the case that Gramsci was not deliberately writing in coded language, Bill writes: "Gramsci's fascist jailers knew that he was the secretary of the Communist Party. What exactly did they think he was writing? Pasta recipes?"

In 1980, I spent some time traveling in South Africa during the country's racist apartheid regime. At that time, the South African Communist Party was an illegal organization and The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels was a banned book. However, when I visited a bookstore in Cape Town, I discovered that other works by Marx, including Capital, Volume I, were legally available for sale.

Why the difference? The Manifesto was regarded as an agitational work that was accessible to--and likely to be read by--a wide audience. By contrast, Capital is a theoretical treatise of several hundred pages. Even though it reaches the same conclusions as the Manifesto, the apartheid government censors permitted it to be distributed because they thought that few people would actually read it.

Something similar may explain why the censors in Mussolini's fascist Italy permitted Gramsci to write his notebooks. If Gramsci had written in a more straightforward way, the censors might have destroyed his work. But so long as his notebooks were couched in obscure, coded language, the censors didn't care, because this would not be understood by very many people.

In other words, the fact that the censors knew that Gramsci was writing about politics from a Marxist perspective is not a good reason for thinking that he wasn't also deliberately writing in code.
Phil Gasper, Madison, Wisconsin

The relevance of E.P. Thompson

I WAS struck by Todd Chretien's dismissal of E.P. Thompson in his recent obituary for Tom Hayden ("Bargaining on a revolution?"), particularly since the evidence he presents for Thompson's repudiation of "working-class politics" does not bear scrutiny if one reads Thompson's writings of the period.

Chretien quotes C. Wright Mills' 1960 "Letter to the New Left," written in response to the 1959 collection Out of Apathy, edited by Thompson, and then suggests that Mills' conclusions in the letter were shared by Thompson. However, a November 1960 essay by Thompson ("Revolution again!" New Left Review, I/6), includes a refutation of Mills' conclusions as well as a comradely critique of the review in International Socialism (penned by Michael Kidron). It clearly demonstrates Thompson's commitment to a socialist perspective centered upon the activity of the working class majority.

Thompson's answers deviate from the revolutionary socialist tradition, but the questions he posed regarding the lived experience of class are an important corrective to the hackneyed conceptions employed by Marxists old and new, and thus remain as relevant as ever, in my view.
Grant M., Ann Arbor, Michigan

Why I'm voting for Stein

IN RESPONSE to "Time to boycott the Democrats": During this 2016 election, I will be following the provision of our Constitution that grants me the right to vote for a representative of my choice who will protect my way of life and uphold the Constitution. Jill Stein represents more common sense, concern for America, and will thus create and protect a world more suitable for all our grandchildren, than both Clinton and Trump put together.

The problem is, America is not a true democracy, and the only entity allowed to be represented in this country is the wealthy corporate energy corporations influencing our regulating agencies, the media, politicians, courts and decision makers with money and power. I do not believe that all of America is out of whack; only those that are well represented.

Mara Ahmed hits the nail on the head and deserves recognition for speaking truth to power. If only those who hear her would do the same, maybe we, the majority, can overcome this sad, embarrassing, inhumane, self-serving, war mongering, anti-immigrant, homophobic, racist and ignorant mode of leadership that is closer to fascism than democracy.
Ron Teska, Belleville, West Virginia

We need a party for the left

IN RESPONSE to "The system is rigged...but not against Trump": Absolutely terrific piece. This is the primary problem with anything in this country, and one we must overcome. We need a real left party, but those other two will fight tooth and nail to prevent it. This has only ever been a partial democracy.

Keep up the great writing!
Mi Forrest, from the internet