Early life and intellectual formation
Cammett was born in 1927. Blanche Wiesen Cook and Gerald Markowitz, who worked with him, describe his early work in auto plants and unions. He served in the Navy in 1945–1946 and earned his first degree at Wayne State in 1949. He credited William J. Bossenbrook's teaching with first drawing him to history.[1][3]
His interest in Gramsci grew while he was studying Italy. In a later account, Maria Luisa Righi reported how he explained the change. After losing a Detroit factory job over union work, he returned to study. Research on the Renaissance took him to Rome. There, the Communist Party's large offices caught his eye. He wanted to know how it had gained that standing. Reading its leader Palmiro Togliatti led him to Gramsci.[4]
At Columbia, Shepard B. Clough guided his PhD research. Cammett thanked Clough for his advice and support. A grant from the Italian government helped fund his study in Italy. His book's preface explains this part of his training. His call for socialism appears in the later work discussed below.[1][2]
He later recalled that Carl Marzani's Gramsci booklet spurred him on while his PhD work was still underway. He was then teaching at Middlebury College. Marzani gave him an example of bringing the prison writings to American readers.[5]
Ideas and political aims
Cammett treated Gramsci 's thought as part of his work with workers and allies. The 1967 book moves from the Turin factory councils to disputes within the Communist movement. It then turns to the prison writings on parties and intellectuals. In his view, even Gramsci's abstract work needed this setting.[1]
Hegemony, or leadership built through consent, was central to his reading. A class needed more than an awareness of its own economic needs. Workers had to persuade other groups that they could lead, and make room for those groups' needs. They had to build that claim before taking state power. Cammett kept this work on culture tied to class alliances and a party seeking revolution.[1]
He made a proposal of his own in his 1967 article on Fascism. Socialists, he argued, had not done enough to explain why people joined it. Calling Fascism a tool of big business left much unanswered. They needed to study the hopes and beliefs that drew its followers. That work could help socialists create a culture able to win support from workers, intellectuals, and middle groups.[2]
Career and activities
Cammett earned his Columbia PhD in 1959. His thesis won a 1960 award from the Society for Italian Historical Studies. He kept revising it as more sources came to light.[1][3]
A Rutgers grant funded a return to Italy in 1964. He used the Istituto Gramsci in Rome and thanked its staff, including Franco Ferri and Elsa Fubini. He said the new research led him to expand and largely rewrite the book. At Rutgers, Eugene Genovese was among those who offered criticism.[1]
On September 11, 1966, Cammett gave his paper on Communist theories of Fascism at the Second Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. It appeared in print in spring 1967. He used the history to set out work that he wanted socialists to do.[2]
Major works
A translation review in 1958
Derek Boothman and Righi identify Fred Hallett as Cammett's pen name. The April 1958 Political Affairs review signed Hallett compared Marzani's selection with Louis Marks's. It praised Gramsci's work on alliances and intellectuals, while calling for a fuller account for American readers. The identification rests here on those later named accounts; the review itself carries the Hallett signature.[4][6][7]
The 1967 book and article
Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism [1] gave English readers a full account of Gramsci's work in politics. Cammett translated the Italian quotations himself. He selected two main prison themes for close study: the political party and the role of intellectuals. He did not present the book as a complete account of every notebook subject.[1]
“Communist Theories of Fascism, 1920–1935” compared several Communist explanations of Fascism. Cammett ended by asking socialists to study how people consent to rule. His call for a socialist culture was a proposed task. The article did not show that such a culture had won a mass following.[2]
Influence and criticism
Genovese used Cammett's book as the starting point for his 1967 essay “On Antonio Gramsci.” He praised the research and drew on it to propose socialist work within American institutions. He also wished Cammett had developed his criticisms of Gramsci further. This was a direct, named use of the book in an American strategic argument.[8]
Another connection ran through the Welsh historian Gwyn A. Williams . Cammett reproduced Williams's definition of hegemony. Genovese then quoted it through Cammett. Readers can follow this particular passage from a British article to an American book and essay.[1][8][9]
The Italian liberal Luigi Barzini reviewed Cammett in The New York Review of Books on September 28, 1967. He praised the scholarship while questioning the place of freedom in Gramsci's party politics. Cammett's readers could value his research and still draw opposing political lessons from it.[10]