ANTONIO GRAMSCI, ITALIAN COMMUNISM AND EDUCATION

It can be said that Italian communism from its earliest days to the present has experienced three phases: (1) The Revolutionary, from 1919 to 1926, in which it was believed that the Leninist revolution was near. The PCI was formed, Mussolini came to power, and the PCI was banished from Italy in this period. (2) The Intermediary, from 1926 to 1935, during which thoughts of the revolution were postponed until after the defeat of fascism. The PCI found itself fragmented into three parts: the incarcerated, the underground, and the exiled and the party leadership was controlled to a considerable extent by Moscow. (3) The National, extending from 1935 to the present, when the PCI began to shift from the traditional communist objectives to those which could be called socialist within a national liberal-democratic framework. It has become, in the eyes of many, an establishment party, and it appears to adhere rigorously to the Italian national Constitution in its dealings with other parties and with the Italian society, though internally, at the leadership level, it remains rather authoritarian.In the third stage, the National, party education, propaganda and indoctrination are increasingly supplanted by an educational approach in which the Italian national educational system becomes the most important educating instrument of the party. Its educational outlook is consonant with the liberal-democratic environment in which it operates because the socialist values of the party are bound up in it to a large extent. The individual is to be recognized as important within a social setting, and evidence is to be highly regarded in the learning process.The second leader of the party, Antonio Gramsci, has contributed substantially to the educational philosophy of the party through his prison writings. His belief in the dignity of the individual student is taken as the keynote of the Italian communist approach to the question of education, and his educational position is contrasted with that of Amadeo Bordiga, the first leader of the PCI, and with that of Lenin.An assumption in this study is that educational views of a group are reflective of its sociopolitical substratum. In the case of the PCI one sees a different educational position with each of the three phases mentioned above. In the Revolutionary period, propaganda reigned supreme, propaganda being defined as speaking or writing with the primary objective of effecting a specific end. Propaganda was relied upon in part because there was no time and little willingness to seek supportive evidence. The message was emphasized. During the Intermediary era the PCI needed to find explanations for the success of fascism, particularly after Hitler's rise to power hence Italian communists were in a more receptive mood with regard to the search for evidence. Although there was no abatement of propaganda in this period, an approach to knowledge which might be termed educational was beginning. Education is defined in part as the search for and use of evidence, permitting conclusions to be drawn from it.