Chapter Gramsci e la ‘civiltà del lavoro’

Overview & Synopsis

When Gramsci theorizes the Factory Councils (in 1919-1920), he looks at work as the center of social and political life: the Factory Council brings together economics and politics, society and the state. The root of the socialist state, defined as a “civilization of work”, is grafted directly into the factory. In the Gramsci of the Prison Notebooks, on the other hand, Gramsci dwells on the relevant innovations brought about by Fordism and Taylorism. The metaphor of the "trained gorilla" seems to him to mean - if taken critically - also a possibility of liberation of the worker from the fatigue caused by the “Taylor method”.