Time and Revolution in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

On the basis of Gramsci’s “philosophy of praxis” as a theory of the mutual translatability of theory and praxis, the relation between ‘time’ and ‘revolution’ has to be understood in two different ways, though interrelated. On the one side, time is the objective dimension in which a revolution ‘happens’, and revolution is the name that time acquires, if it is seen as a structure characterized by permanent change. On the other side, time – understood as a unitary time – is the political effect of a contingent articulation of relations of forces, that is, of a hegemonic strategy, and revolution is the process of the rearticulation of relations of forces which results into a new hegemonic formation. From the point of view of the philosophy of praxis, this double meaning – objective and subjective – of both ‘time’ and ‘revolution’ is at the same time necessary – since it reflects the existence of moments of the reality which are really ‘distinct’ and cannot therefore be absolutely ‘identified’ – and partial – because this ‘distinction’ is not absolute, but needs to be mediated dialectically. The dialectical mediation of really distinct moments in each ‘situation’ is the theory of translatability of languages. This approach makes it visible, how what Marx in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy distinguishes as the time of “development” and the time of “social revolution” is in reality one and the same structure, characterized by the stability of a hegemonic system or by its disruption and organic crisis. If this dialectical nexus between ‘conditions’ and ‘political action’ is broken, also ‘past’ and ‘present’ will separate, the result being that the past will dominate over the present, making impossible any real rupture and innovation.