Farewell, then, to L'Unità.
Eurocommunism is over. Those who sought to remake the Labour Party as a vehicle for it, you now need to get the message once and for all.
The Marxism Today for which Tony Blair wrote is long, long, long gone. He was the only politician at the founding meeting of Demos. But Demos is now chaired by David Goodhart, a stalwart attendee and speaker at Blue Labour events.
Formally, the Communist Party became the proto-Blairite Democratic Left, which became the ultra-Blairite New Politics Network, which became Unlock Democracy, which is still there, in a building bought thanks to the largesse of Lenin. Still there, but directed by a Lib Dem.
And now, this.
I am coming to believe the rumour that Gramsci returned to the Church on his deathbed. Even if he was cremated, and his ashes interred in the Cimitero degli Inglesi. Where Keats is buried. Gramsci was a Romantic hero born out of his time, really, wasn't he? Hence, I am coming to believe the rumour that he returned to the Church on his deathbed.
Eurocommunism is over. Those who sought to remake the Labour Party as a vehicle for it, you now need to get the message once and for all.
The Marxism Today for which Tony Blair wrote is long, long, long gone. He was the only politician at the founding meeting of Demos. But Demos is now chaired by David Goodhart, a stalwart attendee and speaker at Blue Labour events.
Formally, the Communist Party became the proto-Blairite Democratic Left, which became the ultra-Blairite New Politics Network, which became Unlock Democracy, which is still there, in a building bought thanks to the largesse of Lenin. Still there, but directed by a Lib Dem.
And now, this.
I am coming to believe the rumour that Gramsci returned to the Church on his deathbed. Even if he was cremated, and his ashes interred in the Cimitero degli Inglesi. Where Keats is buried. Gramsci was a Romantic hero born out of his time, really, wasn't he? Hence, I am coming to believe the rumour that he returned to the Church on his deathbed.
It is something that I have heard by word of mouth from time to time. He was only 46, and I really do think that if the trajectory of his thought had continued, then that would have been where it ended up: the insistence on the unity of theory and practice, the rejection of economic determinism and of metaphysical materialism, the celebration of the "national-popular", the call for an organic working-class culture and self-organisation including worker-intellectuals.
I sometimes think that when I die, then I should like to be cut in half, after the manner of Saint Catherine of Siena. Her top half is in Siena, her bottom half is in Rome. But which half of me should go to the Cimitero degli Inglesi with Gramsci and Keats, which half to Père Lachaise with Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, and why?
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