16 July 1999
CG: As I mentioned to you in Los Angeles, I’ll write in Italian to save time.footnote1 It’s evening and I’m tired; I’m leaving for the seaside tomorrow. It’s not the best of circumstances in which to send you my comments on the documents you gave me (I read them straight away, but haven’t looked at them since).footnote2 I’ll give it a go anyway, although for the moment I’ll limit myself to the essentials.
I’ve written ‘documents’, but in reality it’s just one document: reflections on the general situation. I’ve recognized your usual clarity of thought, though this time it’s marred by a flaw that strikes me as serious. You rightly speak of a decisive historical defeat, but not for a moment do you ask yourself whether your—and your group’s—previous analyses have been undermined by this defeat. There’s never any mention of self-criticism. I am well aware that this term has for decades been shrouded in an aura of bureaucratic coercion and hypocrisy. But reflecting on one’s own mistakes seems to me to be right and proper. You seem to be saying: our analysis was correct but we have lost (not just in isolated instances); now we must hold firm, not act like those who adapt or renounce their principles. But is this enough? I would have expected a different line of argument, something along these lines: our analysis was inadequate; history has taken a different course from what we had hoped for; loyalty to principles is not enough; we must first and foremost critically reflect on our analytical tools, on ourselves.
It seems to me that Gramsci adopted something of this sort in the wake of an equally serious defeat, albeit one that was geographically more limited. His approach strikes me as exemplary because it starts from the idea of understanding why the enemy won. In your document, I do not see such an approach; on the contrary, I see an attitude that strikes me as sectarian closed-mindedness. What is the point of saying ‘we’re good, we’re the best in this or that field of knowledge’?; what is the point of saying ‘we could invite some intellectuals who do not share our views, interview them for the journal without having to pay too much’ instead of saying ‘let’s try to learn from the enemy’—an attitude which I consider indispensable, especially in the face of a defeat of historic proportions?
As you can see, I am speaking to you frankly and even bluntly, taking your invitation seriously. But I hope we will discuss all this again.
17 July 1999
PA: Thank you very much for your sharp comment. You are perfectly right about the memos. They contain no self-criticism. In fact—this is in many ways a larger omission—they don’t even explain why anyone should still be on the left, or imagine that such a notion has a meaning any longer. But you’re wrong to suggest that this betrays some general attitude. It is just a function of the modest scope of the documents, which are mainly administrative in character. Across a wider intellectual space, I doubt whether sectarian closure is the first charge to be made. You correctly remark that after any defeat—actually this applies just as much at moments of victory—one should learn lessons from the enemy. But on this score, most people would think I had taken the leading minds and theories of the Centre and Right—Oakeshott, Strauss, Rawls, Hayek, Fukuyama, etc.—fairly seriously: too much so, for many well-meaning people of moderate persuasion on the left—look at Bobbio’s reaction to my critique of his Destra e sinistra.footnote3 There’s no personal virtue here: nlr has published a wide range of texts, which I just allude to by abbreviation in the memos, on the reasons for the global defeat of the Left, that have been at least as radical as anything Gramsci ever wrote—actually, given freer conditions, understandably more so. I think anyone looking at Robin’s ‘Fin-de-Siècle’ or Peter Wollen’s essay on Kautsky would concede this.footnote4