Selections From The Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

Author:Antonio Gramsci [Gramsci, Antonio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

that the State's goal is its own end, its own disappearance, in other words the re-absorption of political society into civil society. [1930]

PARLIAMENT AND THE STATE 319

Professor Julius Miskolczy, the director of the Hungarian Academy in Rome, has written in Magyar Szemle that in Italy "Parliament, which used formerly to be so to speak outside the State, has now, despite the valuable contribution which it continues to make, become inserted in the State and has undergone a basic change in its composition . . ."

The notion that Parliament may have become "inserted" into the State is a discovery in the science and art of politics that is worthy of the Christopher Columbuses of contemporary Reaction. All the same, the assertion is interesting as evidence of the way in which many politicians conceive the State in practice. For the question does indeed have to be asked: do parliaments, even in those countries where apparently they have most real power, in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is their real function? Furthermore, if the answer is affirmative, in what way do they constitute a part of the State, and how do they carry out their particular function? On the other hand, even if parliaments do not constitute an organic part of the State, is their

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existence of no significance for the State? And what grounds are there for the accusations made against parliamentarianism and against the party system—which is inseparable from parliamentarianism? (Objective grounds, naturally—i.e. ones related to the fact that the existence of Parliament, in itself, hinders and delays the technical actions of the government.)

That the representative system may politically "be a nuisance" for the career bureaucracy is understandable; but this is not the point. The point is to establish whether the representative and party system, instead of

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