Gramsci on Parties and Political Order

 Antonio Gramsci writes in his Prison Notebooks:

all political parties (those of subordinates as well as ruling groups) also carry out a policing function--that is to say, the function of safeguarding a certain political and legal order. If this were conclusively demonstrated, the problem would have to be posed in other terms; it would have to bear, in other words, on means and the procedures by which such a function is carried out. Is its purpose one of repression or of dissemination; in other words, does it have a reactionary or a progressive character? Does the given party carry out its policing function in order to conserve an outward, extrinsic order which is a fetter on the vital forces of history; or does it carry it out in the sense of tending to raise the people to a new level of civilisation expressed programmatically in its political and legal order? (155)

And elsewhere:

Modern political technique became totally transformed after Forty-eight; after the expansion of parliamentarism and of the associative systems of union and party, and the growth in the formation of vast State and "private" bureaucracies (i.e. politico-private, belonging to parties and trade unions); and after the transformations which took place in the organisation of the forces of order in the wide sense--i.e. not only the public service designed for the repression of crime, but the totality of forces organised by the State and by private individuals to safeguard the political and economic domination of the ruling class. In this sense, entire "political" parties and other organisations--economic or otherwise--must be considered as organs of political order, of an investigational and preventive character" (220-1). 

American political commentary appears to be perpetually worked up over the state of the norms. Donald Trump's GOP is said to have destroyed important, unwritten rules that are fundamental for the preservation of a liberal, constitutional order. In response, conservative commentators retort that it was the democrats who first began the assault on norms (Bork etc.) and that the republicans are just playing catch up. 

A certain sort of enthusiastic rightwinger says: "Of course we should smash the norms. These constitutional constraints serve to entrench a liberal reigning status quo that is antithetical to our substantive political and moral priorities." 

A certain sort of enthusiastic leftwinger says: "Of course we should smash the norms. These constitutional constraints serve to entrench a neoliberal reigning status quo that is antithetical to our substantive political and moral priorities."

This leaves the familiar liberal remainder--progressives and conservatives who search constantly for a way of restoring of restoring the norms, of bringing back certain boundaries for modern politics. 

(I have a friend who likes to imagine a convention of people named Norm, walking around with slogans like "Norms are Under Attack" and "Save the Norms!")

Gramsci comments on this phenomenon. Political parties do, indeed, play a critical role in stabilizing the prevailing legal order. Many communists of his generation thought that the very existence of a constitutional order is reactionary (Marx is famously hostile to the idea of a constitutional state. Think about his discussion in the 18th Brumaire on how the autonomy of a bureaucratic "state machinery" represents a reactionary threat to the proletariat, or his famous quip from the "Manifesto" that "the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie"). But Gramsci sees an important role for politics not merely as an epiphenomenon of deeper material forces, but as necessary for the organization and direction of spontaneous social movements.

Gramsci's observation here is that a settled state machinery is not intrinsically reactionary or progressive. Depending on the circumstances, an established political order can advance the cause of either rightwing or leftwing politics. The status quo is not static, it always brings with it ideological movement. This is why conservatives need not reflexively defend the prevailing order, nor should progressives always desire its abolition. Principled conservatives can favor destruction, and principled radicals, preservation.

He continues:

In fact, a law finds a lawbreaker: 1. among the reactionary social elements whom it has dispossessed; 2. among the progressive elements whom it holds back; 3. among those elements which have not yet reached the level of civilisation which it can be seen as representing. The policing function of a party can hence be either progressive or regressive. It is progressive when it tends to keep the dispossessed reactionary forces within the bounds of legality, and to raise the backward masses to the level of the new legality. It is regressive when it tends to hold back the vital forces of history and to maintain a legality which has been superseded, which is anti-historical, which has become extrinsic. Besides, the way in which the party functions provides discriminating criteria. When the party is progressive it functions "democratically" (democratic centralism); when the party is regressive it functions "bureaucratically" (bureaucratic centralism). (155)