I hate the indifferent

Antonio Gramsci 1891 · 1937Power rests on cultural hegemony, not just force.

What it claims

Each must account for what he did and especially for what he did not do: the indifferent is not innocent.

Why

Indifference is not neutral: evil comes less from the few who act than from the abstention of the many, who could have acted.

In short

"I hate the indifferent" is an argument by Antonio Gramsci ("Indifferenti", La città futura, 11 February 1917) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: consequences). Its claim: Each must account for what he did and especially for what he did not do: the indifferent is not innocent. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"Indifferenti", La città futura, 11 February 1917

Valid with an implicit premise

At 25, Gramsci writes a short, harsh text. For him, standing aside does not leave the world as it is: it leaves it in the hands of those who act. What happens, evil as well as good, comes less from the initiative of a few than from the mass that lets it happen. Then, once misfortune strikes, the indifferent complain like eternal innocents. The text demands that each person account for what he did, and above all for what he did not do. We file the argument under consequences, because it judges abstention by its effects; but Gramsci also speaks of "duty", and the filing remains approximate.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where the mass's abstention causes harm, but where a particular individual could have changed nothing or was not informed: he would not be responsible.

Valid with P3. P1 and P2 describe a fact: the mass's indifference has effects. To conclude that each person is responsible, P3 is needed, which moves from the collective to the individual and assumes each could have acted. Almost all objections aim at this step.

Analogy. In a village a house is on fire and everyone watches from a window. The fire spreads because nobody picked up a bucket. Each neighbour says: "Alone, I would have changed nothing." Gramsci answers: it is the sum of these sentences that let the village burn.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Erasmus, On Free Will 1524 · attacks premise 3

Erasmus writes that he takes so little pleasure in assertions that he would readily side with the sceptics, wherever Scripture and the Church allow. He is speaking of a question of theology, not politics. But the objection generalises: when one does not know who is right, suspending judgement is a defensible position, and taking sides too quickly can do harm.

Gramsci replies

Gramsci Gramsci does not cite Erasmus, but targets a related attitude

He describes those who offer very fine solutions that stay barren: their contribution to collective life is lit by no moral light, it comes from intellectual curiosity and not from a sharp sense of historical responsibility, which wants everyone active and admits no form of agnosticism or indifference.

The debate goes on (our summary) Gramsci targets those who see clearly and do not commit; Erasmus doubts on obscure points. Yet the same text blames the indifferent for their "scepticism": for Gramsci, doubt is no excuse for not acting. What remains is the question the text does not settle: who decides that a cause is clear enough to demand commitment?

The drop-in-the-ocean objection attacks premise 3

A single person almost never changes the outcome. If I had got involved, what happened would have happened anyway: why should I be responsible for what I could not have prevented?

Gramsci replies

summary: their text is not yet in our corpus

Gramsci What the text blames the indifferent for (same paragraph)

Few or none blame themselves for their indifference, their scepticism, or for not having given their arms and their activity to the groups of citizens who were fighting precisely to avoid that evil.

The debate goes on (our summary) Gramsci does not claim that one commitment would have changed everything. He shifts the question: one does not act alone, one joins groups that can change the outcome. The objector may answer that joining a group is still a drop in the ocean, and that each person gains by letting others commit in his place. The step from the collective to each person's responsibility remains the point the objection attacks.

The taking-sides objection attacks the conclusion

Forcing everyone to take sides pushes towards camps and fanaticism. One may have good reasons to choose no camp, or to choose the wrong one. The text says "partisan" without saying for whom.

no reply

summary: their text is not yet in our corpus

We have not yet found a direct reply by Gramsci in the texts.

The debate goes on (our summary) In the 1917 text, Gramsci speaks from his own side, the "city of the future" that his party is building. He gives no criterion for telling a good party from a bad one: he asks people to take sides, not to choose well.