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strife. In the Prison Notebooks, he writes:

Caesarism can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. When the progressive force A struggles against the reactionary force B, not only may A defeat B or B defeat A, but it may happen that neither A nor B defeats the other – that they bleed each other mutually and then a third force C intervenes from outside, subjugating what is left of both A and B. In Italy, after the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico this is precisely what occurred.8

This passage recalls Marx and Engels’s theory of Bonapartism, where it is seen as the outcome of the exhaustion of the bourgeoisie and the working class, and as the political expression of the peasantry and small proprietors.9 However, the passage is more suggestive. For the third force C, though coming from the outside, and “subjugating what is left of both A and B,” nevertheless intervenes not only because of the mutual exhaustion of A and B, but also because A or B invites C’s intervention as a second best (or least unfavorable) solution to the conflict. Thus, though the eventual outcome of the intervention might be the subjugation of both groups, the intervention itself is sparked by interests internal to the conflict.

As Gramsci notes, that was the case in Italy after the death of Lorenzo. The struggle for supremacy that underlay the balance of power among the Italian states led to foreign intervention in the affairs of the peninsula. This intervention, though obviously from the “outside,” took its specific forms and produced a particular outcome (the eventual subjugation of the Italian states) as a consequence of the internal dynamics of the relations between the Italian states themselves. The fact that no state was able to amass the necessary power to become a hegemonic or imperial force was both the cause and the result of foreign intervention. At the same time, this failure of any one Italian state to achieve supremacy over the others is linked by Gramsci, in his interpretation of Machiavelli, to the failure of the ruling elites to establish a durable and stable hegemony over the subordinate groups within a given principality or republic.

The “third force” was always present, that is, always an active factor in the conflict. The subjugation is the unintended consequence of an intervention

8 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York, 1973), 219, hereafter SPN.

9 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, in David Fernbach, ed., The First International and After

(Harmondsworth, 1974), 208–9. See also his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in D. Fernbach, ed., Surveys from Exile (Harmondsworth, 1973); and Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow, 1968), 290.

whose purpose is to freeze and to redirect the antagonism, certainly the open, political forms of it, in order to prevent the reciprocal destruction. Thus, Caesarism “always expresses the particular solution in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation characterised by an equilibrium of forces leading towards catastrophe.”10 The dictator (the “great personality,” or, as Gramsci writes elsewhere in quasi-Weberian fashion, the “charismatic leader” and “charismatic ‘men of destiny’”)11 is “entrusted” with the power to arbitrate between the contending groups. Caesarism is therefore either progressive or reactionary: “Caesarism is progressive when its intervention helps the progressive force to triumph, albeit with its victory tempered by certain compromises and limitations. It is reactionary when its intervention helps the reactionary force to triumph.”12 Gramsci presents Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as examples of the former and Louis Napoleon and Bismarck as examples of the latter.

Not only is this definition tautological.13 It reflects the teleological, and from our perspective in time, somewhat innocent and optimistic faith in the forward march of history, not to mention the ultimate victory of the workers and peasants. Even from Gramsci’s own political and theoretical position, the progressive/regressive dichotomy is not very coherent. For the content of the two terms is determined by the ongoing political and ideological struggle, and it can have no meaning or value independent of this struggle, that is, independent of the power of the actors. However, the ideological character of the progressive/regressive dichotomy does not make it valueless. It demonstrates that Caesarism, though a third force in Marx’s and Gramsci’s sense, is nevertheless a force that can only emerge from the power struggle of antagonistic groups.

What Gramsci means by the progressive/regressive dyad is explained by a second dichotomy, that between “qualitative” and “quantitative.” The Caesarism of Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte was of a qualitative

12Ibid., 219.

13Baehr, Caesar, 267. Baehr rightly notes the teleological character of progressive Caesarism. However, it might be shorn of its obvious ideological character if it is seen solely as a form of dictatorship that leads to major structural and systemic transformation – something along the lines of Schmitt’s

“sovereign dictatorship,” or Sulla’s revisionist dictatura legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae. In addition to Baehr, see Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship (Minneapolis, 1989). Of course, Schmitt would reject Gramsci’s dichotomy between regressive and progressive, and replace it with dictatorship which is either “commissary,” or limited and preserving of the existing order, and “sovereign,” which is unlimited, and may thus be innovating and lead to the institution of a new order. See George Schwab, The Challenge of the Exception: An Introduction to the Political Ideas of Carl Schmitt Between 1921 and 1926 (Westport, 1989).

Gramsci gives Ramsey MacDonald’s Labour governments as examples of a Caesarist solution without a representative personality – a “compromise solution” that did not evolve into a more developed, fully mature form of Caesarism. On the other hand, he points out that in Italy from October 1922 to November 1926 “there was a politico-historical movement in which various gradations of Caesarism succeeded each other, culminating in a more pure and permanent form.”20 Presumably because of the great strength and resilience (measured in terms of ideology, degree of consensus, as indicators of regime legitimacy), the crisis in Britain never moved beyond the “gradation” of a coalition government as a compromise solution.21 In Germany, the deadlock in the Reichstag produced by the opposition of the Communists and Nazis led to a series of compromise solutions imposed on parliament from an extra-parliamentary force, namely the Reich President, in the form of presidential cabinets under Bruning,¨

von Papen, and Schleicher.22 A decade earlier in Italy, the governments of Giolitti, Bonomi, and Facta were all based on parliamentary coalitions and represented the attempt on the part of the liberals, nationalists, and Catholics to find a nonfascist and nonrevolutionary socialist solution to the crisis of the state.

In Italy and in Germany, various gradations of Caesarist fascism could be identified. Both Mussolini and Hitler came to power constitutionally and legally as heads of government within parliamentary coalitions. Whatever the ideological pretensions regarding the revolutionary nature of fascism, power was achieved through the conventional channels provided by

20Ibid.

21See Baehr, Caesar, 270–72, 275–6. Criticizing Gramsci’s assertion that coalition government is a first stage of Caesarism, Baehr makes the important observation that “coalition governments are not necessarily crisis governments, nor are they necessarily heading in any direction whose goal is extrinsic to them” (276). This is a good point. However, as far as Italy and Germany are concerned, Caesarist dictatorship emerged out of coalition governments. Perhaps Gramsci’s notes regarding the relation between coalition governments and Caesarism should be understood within the context of observations on what Gramsci calls the “crisis” of authority and hegemony, or the “general crisis of the State.” In this context, and though Gramsci may not have had Russia in mind, Lenin’s first revolutionary government following the seizure of power in November 1917 was, or at least took the parliamentary/political form of, a coalition government. On the other hand, Baehr is right to point to the implausibility of the “neo-Gramscian theory” of Caesarism, which takes Gramsci’s comments regarding compromise and coalition governments and applies them to post-War liberal-democratic systems.

22The twenties and thirties produced lively debates regarding the nature of dictatorship and Bonapartism, for obvious historical reasons. These theories ranged from the communist, such as those of Thalheimer and Trotsky, to the conservative and nationalist right, such as that of Schmitt. While these three recognized the dictatorial character of the presidential cabinets in Weimar Germany, they disagreed over its meaning and specific aspects. See Luisa Mangoni, “Cesarismo, bonapartismo, fascismo,” and “Per una definizione del fascismo: i concetti di bonapartismo e cesarismo.”

class, Gramsci notes:

The previous ruling classes were essentially conservative in the sense that they did not tend to construct an organic passage from the other classes into their own, i.e. to enlarge their class sphere “technically” and ideologically: their conception was that of a closed caste. The bourgeois class poses itself as an organism in continuous movement, capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level. The entire function of the State has been transformed; the State has become an “educator”, etc.24

The ruling elites of the Risorgimento and, later, of the liberal state it spawned did not achieve the political and economic integration of the various social groups of Italian society. The liberal and bourgeois elements of Italian society were isolated politically and socially. The divorce of the state, or rather of the ruling elites, from the mass of the people prevented it from acting as an educator, that is, from exercising moral and intellectual leadership. Lacking widespread consensus and unable to generate mechanisms of legitimation within society, it also lacked the moral and political resilience to withstand what Gramsci calls a “crisis of authority,” which is a “crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the State.”25

Although hegemony assumes many guises for Gramsci and moves on various levels, it refers to the movement from the economic-corporative to the political, and from the particular to the universal.26 This Gramsci underlines when he contrasts the particulare of the noble case (as seen in Guicciardini) and the collective popular will expressed and embodied in Machiavelli’s new prince.27 At the same time, hegemony describes the kaleidoscopic generation of alliances as differing and competing social groups form and reform as they eventually coalesce around a particular preeminent group. A group becomes hegemonic to the extent that it exercises intellectual and moral leadership over the other groups in a manner such that the latter function as allies or associates of the former. Opposed to hegemony is domination, the exercise of coercion over other groups. Gramsci notes, “[T]he supremacy of a social group is manifested in two ways: as ‘domination’ and as ‘intellectual and moral leadership.’ A social group is dominant over those antagonistic groups it wants to ‘liquidate’ or to subdue even with armed force, and is leading with respect to those groups that are associated and allied with it.”28 What Gramsci calls the “integral State” – the social and political order – embodies a hegemonic equilibrium between coercive power and

28Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, critical edition of the Gramsci Institute, ed. Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols. (Turin, 1975), vol. 3, Notebook 19, 2010, henceforth cited as QC.

moral/cultural mechanisms of persuasion. Moreover, in modern liberal and democratic states, “[t]he ‘normal’ exercise of hegemony . . . is characterized by a combination of force and consent which are balanced in varying proportions, without force prevailing too greatly over consent.”29 Domination and leadership, force and consent, together characterize the political, so that for Gramsci the state is formed by two distinct, and interwoven, spheres: “dictatorship plus hegemony” and “political society plus civil society.” The synthesis of the two spheres is what Gramsci means by the “state.” 30 This view revises the standard Marxist and Leninist conception of the state as the organized force of the ruling class and the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. Intellectuals, by generating and disseminating beliefs, values, knowledge, and culture within civil society, are the experts in legitimation and function as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled.

A note in which Gramsci contrasts the socio-political order confronting Lenin’s Bolsheviks in Russia and that faced by the communists in the West is revealing. Gramsci says that the differences in social and political structures between the East and the West require different methods and strategy to make successful revolutions. It is also significant in what it implicitly reveals about the different forms of Caesarism. Gramsci writes, “In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West there was a proper relation between the State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.”31 Civil society is the sphere of liberty where consent and persuasion are generated. It is the sphere of cultural, ideological, and religious conflict where conflict is defined by the contest of voluntary and secondary associations such as trade unions, political parties, sects and churches, schools and universities, civic organizations, and interest groups of various kinds. Gramsci continues: “The massive structures of the modern democracies, both as State organisations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were the ‘trenches’ and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely ‘partial’ the element of movement which before used to be ‘the whole’ of war.”32 In the West, a direct assault (what Gramsci calls a war of movement) on the state is not possible precisely because of the multiple interwoven layers of complex associations in modern democracy. Only a war of position – that is, ideological, cultural, and intellectual struggle – will

Gramsci’s use of the term “from outside” in describing Caesarism is significant.39 It points to the ancient Greek and Roman distinction between power exercised within the polity and power exercised outside it. In Republican Rome, for example, the imperium of the magistrates was of two kinds, the imperium domi, or power exercised within the pomerium of the city, that was limited and circumscribed by various institutional checks, and the imperium militiae, or power exercised outside the confines of the city, like that of a general on campaign or a promagistrate within his provincia. This latter power is not subject to appeal and to countervailing checks, and it is thus absolute.40 Both forms of imperium are constitutional and legitimate as long as they are exercised within their respective legal and political spheres. The Roman dictatorship was a mechanism by which the imperium militiae could be exercised constitutionally and legitimately within the city in times of crisis or emergency. It represented an attempt to subject such an imperium to the control of republican institutions. It is with the Marian and Sullan civil wars that the constitutional dictatorship (which by that time had fallen into disuse) was transformed into a type totally novel and innovating, the Sullan dictatura legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae (dictatorship to rewrite the laws and reconstitute the state).41 Caesar’s dictatorship was of a similar type. Accordingly, Caesarism represents the introduction of the imperium militiae into the civil and political space of the polity not as a temporary and emergency measure, but rather as a normal and permanent political/bureaucratic form that dominates and directs the institutions of the polity. The military power of the general, when brought to bear within the city, subordinates the civil authorities of the city to the army and freezes civil and political life by abolishing the customary competition among the various factions and parties. Gramsci recognizes the theoretical importance of this distinction when he writes:

The theory of Caesarism, so prevalent today . . . is expressed in the political language of Napoleon III, who is certainly neither a great historian nor a philosopher nor a political theorist. Certainly in the history of Rome the figure of Caesar is not only or principally characterized by “Caesarism” in this narrow sense. The historical development expressed by Caesar assumes, within the “Italic peninsula” as well as

39Ibid., 219; quoted above.

40On the imperium, see Frank Frost Abbott, A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions

(Boston, 1902), 149–54, and Dictionnaire des Antiquites´ Grecques et Romaines (Graz, Austria, 1969), 545. See also Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship, 158–61; and Benedetto Fontana, “Tacitus on Empire and Republic,” History of Political Thought 14, 1 (1993), 34–5. See also Baehr’s discussion of ancient Roman politics in his Caesar and the Fading of the Roman World.

41On the differences between the constitutional dictatorship and the Caesarist one, see Theodor Mommsen, The History of Rome, trans. William P. Dickson (New York, 1888), 4:560–4.