Gramsci rejected left-right faction labels as inadequate to party strategy.

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”. … Moreover, he was at this time broadly sympathetic to the outlook of the Left in the Russian party. He wrote: “It is well known that in November 1917, while Lenin and the majority of the party had gone over to Trotsky’s view and intended to take over not merely political power but also economic power, Zinoviev and Kamenev remained in the traditional party view and wanted a revolutionary coalition government with the Mensheviks and Social-Revolutionaries … In the recent polemic which has broken out in Russia, it is clear that Trotsky and the opposition in general, in view of the prolonged absence of Lenin from the leadership of the party, have been greatly preoccupied about the danger of a return to the old mentality, which would be damaging to the revolution. Demanding a greater intervention of proletarian elements in the life of the party and a diminution of the powers of the bureaucracy, they want basically to ensure the socialist and proletarian character of the revolution and to prevent a gradual transition to that democratic dictatorship—carapace for a developing capitalism—which was still the programme of Zinoviev and Co. in November 1917. This seems to me to be the situation in the Russian party … the only novelty is the passage of Bukharin to the Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin group.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 180

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to the toolkit frame of how theoretical labeling (left/right, orthodox/heterodox) can mask rather than clarify strategic substance. — connects to: Gramsci rejected faction labels of left and right as falsifying real political strategies — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 180; Gramsci rejected simple left-right labels for political leadership choices; Gramsci resisted reducing political disagreements to factional labels — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 199
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Gramsci rejected faction labels of left and right as falsifying real political strategies — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 180; Gramsci rejected simple left-right labels for political leadership choices; Gramsci resisted reducing political disagreements to factional labels — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 199

Broader Connections

• Gramsci rejected faction labels of left and right as falsifying real political strategies #corroborates (0.98) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 180