Gramsci rejected faction labels of left and right as falsifying real political strategies

Evidence

In February 1924, Gramsci had written: “Just as I did not believe a year ago that the International was moving to the right… I do not believe today that it is moving to the left.” He rejected the simple explanation for the German debacle offered by Zinoviev, i.e. that Brandler was a rightist; Gramsci described Brandler’s strategy in 1923 as if anything putschist, and dismissed the question of which of the two contending factions in the German party—the Brandler/Thalheimer pre-October leadership, or Zinoviev’s protégés Fischer and Maslov who replaced them after the defeat—was “right” and which “left” as “a rather Byzantine question”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 180

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows Gramsci’s refusal to treat ‘left’ and ‘right’ faction labels as analytically useful categories — a methodological stance, not just a political position.