Beyond Right and Left

Two Italian writers, Gaetano Mosca and Antonio Gramsci, have been very influential in twentieth-century political thought, the first cast as a thoroughgoing conservative, the second as the model of a humanistic Marxist. The author of this provocative bookthe first systematic study of the connection between the two menmaintains that they are closer to each other than is commonly supposedthat they in fact belong to the same political tradition of democratic elitism. Maurice A. Finocchiaro argues that Gramscis political theory is a constructive critique of Moscas and that the key common element is the attempt to combine democracy and elitism in a theoretical system that defines them not as opposite but as compatible and interdependent. Finocchiaro finds that a critical examination of the major works of the two men demonstrates their shared belief in the viability of democratic elitism and undermines the importance of the distinction between right and left.