Gramsci’s split with Bordiga turned on party-mass relations and strategy, not overall analysis

Evidence

It is very hard to judge, on the basis of material published to date, what Gramsci’s overall attitude to Bordiga was during the first years of the P.C.I.’s existence. On the one hand, there are numerous documents testifying to a substantial identity of positions on all the most important issues. On the other, there is Gramsci’s own testimony that his motives for accepting the Bordiga policies for so long were mainly tactical, and that he was later to blame himself bitterly for not differentiating himself from Bordiga earlier. At all events, it seems clear that such differences as there were concerned not so much questions of overall analysis, or of strategy even, as the relation between theory and practice. While broadly sharing Bordiga’s views on the united front and the nature of social-democracy, and while not as yet having drawn any very consistent conclusions from what was a very different analysis of fascism, he did clearly disagree with Bordiga’s lack of any positive strategy within Italy, with his entire conception of the party and its relation to the masses, and with his inflexibility—especially vis-a-vis the International. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 145

Categorization

• QUESTION: Gramsci’s early alignment with Bordiga ‘mainly tactical’—worth chasing what the tactical motives were and how the party-mass conception crystallized against Bordiga later.