In Antonio Gramsci’s “The Formation of Intellectuals”, he explores the different forms of free-thinking intellectuals and how they come to perform a regulatory function in society to prevent the overarching capitalist system from stripping members of the community of their will and ability to think for themselves. However, he also highlights the need for a new form of intellectual for which “technical education…must form the basis…” (1005).

He highlights the existence of two varieties of intellectuals: the organic, a group of individuals which binds together without any express consent to steer society in the right direction politically and economically, and the traditional, whose members’ intellect has been passed down to them, if you will, from preceding generations and “[hold] a monopoly of a number of important services” (1002). After numerous readings, I have come to see that Gramsci condemns the latter variety for their passivity in their societal functions: they are not consciously aware of what they are doing and how they are going to work towards the public good. They look out for the little guy primarily because it is what their predecessors did, unaware of the extent to which their active engagement in the regulation of societal affairs could improve conditions for the faceless worker.

Gramsci calls for an “elite” (1002) to step forward and steer society in the right direction, in terms of both politics and economics. This pushed me to imagine a superhero training facility where a group of viable candidates would be technologically enhanced to take on the struggles and issues that a community faces, but instead of those issues being monsters and rogue scientists and what not, they would refer to the day to day struggles of the middle class workers whose needs are cast aside by the rapid industrialization of society.

Intellectuals supposedly consider themselves “autonomous and independent” (1003) from civil society due to their “uninterrupted historical continuity” and “special qualifications” (1003). This reigned in the superhero metaphor for me once more: These specialized individuals have the remarkable capability to separate themselves from their immediate societal surroundings and keep from blending into a certain period of time of political era. They can think and be freely without being “put down by the man”, almost. This leads to their ability to conjure up the idea of a “social utopia” (1003), where a state of perfect democracy and equality is in play. Gramsci pinpoints these intellectuals as rarities in this ability to separate themselves from the day-to-day goings on and to focus on the big picture instead.

But the stereotypically branded intellectual – the artist, the theorist, the philosopher – is not the only intellectual, though. Gramsci agrees when he states, “All men are intellectuals … but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (1004). I cannot be sure, but I feel that he inadvertently blames the capitalist system here for forcing members of society into menial occupations just to be able to continue living a type of lifestyle they have grown accustomed to; many of these people could be out, doing what the big shot intellectuals, but monetary circumstances prevent them from doing so and thus, they are put into these compartments where their input in society is practically negligible.
The one thing that I remain totally confused about is what Gramsci says near the very end of this excerpt: “The democratic-bureaucratic system has given rise to a great mass of functions which are not all justified by the social necessities of production, though they are justified by the political necessities of the dominant fundamental group.” (1007) Does this link back to what was said earlier about the compartmentalization of workers into insignificant quadrants to keep them occupied while a handful of specialized intellectuals handles the “big boy” stuff? Since what these people are doing is “not justified by the social necessities”, what happens to the people carrying out those functions?

If we were to summarize the extract from Gramsci’s “The Prison Notebooks”, would we label it a condemnation of the capitalist system for its degradation of the governed or a calling for the need of a being to fight the system or at least keep it from usurping complete power? Or both?