I am glad that Vijay wrote about a man who mostly wrote in Arabic (he has a few articles in French). Mahdi `Amil was highly influential among Arab Marxist-Leninists during his lifetime and after. He was killed by Islamist terrorists when Sunni and Shi`ite Islamist terrorist in Lebanon were targeting communists. But `Amil was no Gramsci: he was quite mechanical in his adherence to Marxism-Leninism and did not really try or succeed in formulating Marxist theories to apply to the Lebanese situation. If anything, he was quite rigid in his Leninis and defined sectarianism in Lebanon as follows: "The toiling classes are, in the field of class struggle, practicing this struggle as sects" (see his article in the journal, Tariq, December 1978).
PS Additionally, the genius of Gramsci is that he went beyond the analysis that is steeped in the rigid Marxist-Leninist dichotomy of the super-structure and the infra-structure, while `Amil was a mere applier of this rigid mechanical application of Marxist-Leninism.
PS Additionally, the genius of Gramsci is that he went beyond the analysis that is steeped in the rigid Marxist-Leninist dichotomy of the super-structure and the infra-structure, while `Amil was a mere applier of this rigid mechanical application of Marxist-Leninism.
