Gramsci borrowed non-Marxist concepts while redefining them within Marxist discourse

Evidence

The conceptual vocabulary here is drawn in part from Bergson, introduced in order to fill a gap felt by Gramsci to exist ‘in traditional Marxist theories of social and individual praxis. More than anything else it is these importations from non-Marxist philosophies that have caused Gramsci to be taxed with idealism by more “orthodox” Marxists. It should, however, be noted that in an earlier passage Gramsci defines “will” in a very non-Bergsonian sense as equalling, in the last analysis, practical or political activity, and in general he does not hesitate consciously to use words from an earlier philosophical tradition while endowing them with a new content determined by their context within a Marxist discourse. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2538

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

• XREF: This vocabulary-importing-and-redefining practice is the same move Islamophobia theory later makes with Foucault, Arendt, and others — the reader’s toolkit should note Gramsci as early model of ‘re-signifying’ borrowed theory.
• DEFINE: Explains how Gramsci’s ‘will’ diverges from Bergson’s, a fine-grained definitional clarification worth carrying forward.

Related

• Gramsci’s Marxism is open and supplies concepts classical Marxism lacked (similarity 0.83)
• Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis links theory inseparably to practice and action (similarity 0.81)
• Gramsci practices an open Marxism that develops Marx beyond orthodoxy. (similarity 0.81)
• Gramsci’s concepts operate on Marxist terrain aimed at political practice (similarity 0.81)
• Tracing how Marxism got absorbed into other philosophies requires delicate analysis of hidden connections. (similarity 0.81)
• Gramsci rejected any Marxism that separated knowledge from how it is acquired (similarity 0.80)
• Gramsci read the Bolsheviks as living Marx’s living thought against dogmatic determinism (similarity 0.80)
• Gramsci rejected the deterministic Marxism that forbid revolution before capitalism developed. (similarity 0.80)
• Gramsci’s theory is activist practice within broad Marxism, not orthodoxy. (similarity 0.79)
• Yet the notebooks must be read whole to resist partisan interpretation of Gramsci (similarity 0.79)
• Gramsci adds concepts classical Marxism lacked for explaining modern society. (similarity 0.79)
• Gramsci defines freedom as untrammelled thought, whereas Marx grounds it in material necessity. (similarity 0.78)
• Gramsci distinguishes Marx’s rational dialectic from a merely materialist inversion of Hegel (similarity 0.78)
• Gramsci’s concepts transfer to race despite his silence on it. (similarity 0.78)
• Marxism’s core innovation is rejecting transcendence, not asserting materialism (similarity 0.78)