A Comparative Study Of Lenin's And Gramsci's Thoughts On Cultural Leadership

Culture is a special spiritual force,which can help people gradually transform into material force in the process of understanding and transforming the world,so as to promote the development of society.The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19 th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that by 2035,we should build a strong cultural country and basically realize the long-term goal of socialist modernization.Cultural leadership is an important content that political parties need to master in promoting social development.In today’s complex and changeable process of globalization,mastering cultural leadership plays an important role in national construction and development.How to achieve cultural leadership is not only an issue that governments pay attention to,but also a hot topic in academic circles.Under the guidance of Marxist theory,taking the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century as the historical background,combined with the actual situation of Russia and Italy,this paper makes a comparative study on the theoretical origin,development process,main contents and historical contributions of Lenin’s and Gramsci’s cultural leadership thoughts by using the methods of literature research and comparative analysis.Lenin’s environment,the intensification of social contradictions and serious class exploitation,the one after another workers’ movements urgently need scientific theory to guide their actions.Before the October Revolution,Russia was in dire straits.In terms of ideology and culture,Lenin and the Bolshevik party also fought against the wrong ideological trend dominated by Bernstein revisionism and Kautsky opportunism in order to obtain cultural leadership.Through the October Revolution,the Russian proletariat gained political leadership.In the process of construction,Lenin realized the importance of cultural leadership.Therefore,based on the criticism and inheritance of Marx and Engels,early populist thought and Plekhanov thought and the actual situation of Russia,Lenin put forward measures to consolidate cultural leadership,such as resolutely resisting and cracking down on wrong thoughts,adhering to the party’s leadership,instilling proletarian advanced culture into workers and paying attention to cultural construction,which promoted the development of Russia.Gramsci participated in a series of social practices such as the Italian workers’ committee in his youth,and actively wrote articles for newspapers and periodicals,which laid a solid foundation for the formation of his later thought.After Gramsci was arrested in 1926,he had a profound reflection in prison.Based on the current social situation in Italy,he inherited Marx and Engels’ thought of civil society and state,Lenin’s theory of proletarian leadership and the thoughts of Italian scholars such as Machiavelli and Croce,This paper puts forward the thought of cultural leadership with "civil society is the place to compete for cultural leadership,organic intellectuals are the main body to compete for cultural leadership,and positional warfare is the strategy to compete for cultural leadership".Although the cultural backgrounds of Lenin and Gramsci are different,they both attach importance to the construction of cultural leadership.The comparative study of the two cultural leadership thoughts has important theoretical significance: first,further clarify the guiding position of Marxism in ideology;Second,correctly understand the core position of the Communist Party of China;Third,provide theoretical guidance for strengthening cultural self-confidence and building cultural leadership.In addition,it also enlightens us to strengthen the party’s ideological leadership and the construction of the contingent of intellectuals.In today’s era,China’s ruling party has ushered in new development opportunities,but also faces the challenge of playing games with other foreign cultures.Therefore,we should pay more attention to the research on their cultural leadership thought,so as to further give full play to the ideological guidance and value support role of cultural leadership thought in China’s cultural construction.