Gramsci, Antonio

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{{Infobox philosopher
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{{epname|Gramsci, Antonio}}
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{{Infobox_Philosopher
 
| region          = [[Western philosophy]]
 
| region          = [[Western philosophy]]
 
| era              = [[20th-century philosophy]]
 
| era              = [[20th-century philosophy]]
| image           = Gramsci.png
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|color           = #B0C4DE
| caption          = Gramsci in 1916
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| image_name = Gramsci.png  
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| image_caption = Gramsci in 1916
 
| name            = Antonio Gramsci
 
| name            = Antonio Gramsci
|birth_name=Antonio Francesco Gramsci
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| birth       = {{birth date|1891|1|22|df=y}} ([[Ales (Sardinia)|Ales]], [[Sardinia]], Italy)
| birth_date       = {{birth date|1891|1|22|df=y}}
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| death       = 27 April 1937 (aged 46) ([[Rome]], Italy)
| birth_place      = [[Ales (Sardinia)|Ales]], [[Sardinia]], Italy
 
| death_date       = 27 April 1937 (aged 46)
 
| death_place      = [[Rome]], Italy
 
 
| alma_mater      = [[University of Turin]]
 
| alma_mater      = [[University of Turin]]
 
| notable_works    = ''[[Prison Notebooks]]''
 
| notable_works    = ''[[Prison Notebooks]]''
| school_tradition = {{hlist | [[Continental philosophy]] | [[Western Marxism]] | [[neo-Marxism]] | [[Marxist humanism]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://revisesociology.com/2016/06/23/gramscis-humanist-marxism/|title=Gramsci's Humanist Marxism|date=2016-06-23}}</ref>}}
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| school_tradition = [[Continental philosophy]] <br/> [[Western Marxism]] <br/>[[neo-Marxism]]<br/>[[Marxist humanism]]
| main_interests  = {{hlist | Politics | ideology | culture}}
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| main_interests  = Politics <br/> ideology <br/> culture
| notable_ideas    = {{hlist | [[Cultural hegemony]] | [[bourgeoisie]] as the hegemonic group | building a [[counter-hegemony]] to challenge capitalist power | war of position | the distinction between "traditional" and "organic" intellectuals}}
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| notable_ideas    = [[Cultural hegemony]] <br/> [[bourgeoisie]] as the hegemonic group<br/> building a [[counter-hegemony]] to challenge capitalist power<br/> war of position<br/> the distinction between "traditional" and "organic" intellectuals
|influences        = {{flatlist|
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|influences        = [[Karl Marx]], [[Benedetto Croce]], [[Francesco De Sanctis]], <ref>Perry Anderson, ''Considerations on Western Marxism'' (Bristol, England: New Left Books, 1976, ISBN 978-0860917205), 57.</ref> [[Giovanni Gentile]], [[Niccolò Machiavelli]], [[Friedrich Engels]], [[Vladimir Lenin]], [[Georges Sorel]], [[Antonio Labriola]], [[Amedeo Bordiga]], [[Vilfredo Pareto]]
* [[Karl Marx]]
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|influenced        = [[Louis Althusser]],<ref>Louis Althusser, ''Lenin and Philosophy'' (Monthly Review Press, 2001, ISBN 1583670394).</ref> [[William K. Carroll]], [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]], [[Edward Said]], [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[New Left]]
* [[Benedetto Croce]]
 
* [[Francesco De Sanctis]]<ref name=Anderson>{{cite book |last=Anderson |first=Perry |author-link=Perry Anderson |year=1976 |title=Considerations on Western Marxism |location=Bristol| publisher=New Left Books|page=57|ref=harv}}</ref>
 
* [[Giovanni Gentile]]
 
* [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]
 
* [[Friedrich Engels]]
 
* [[Vladimir Lenin]]
 
* [[Georges Sorel]]
 
* [[Antonio Labriola]]
 
* [[Amedeo Bordiga]]
 
* [[Vilfredo Pareto]]
 
}}
 
|influenced        = {{flatlist|
 
* [[Louis Althusser]]<ref>{{cite book|first=Louis|last=Althusser|title=Lenin and Philosophy|date=1971|page=142n7|publisher=Monthly Review Press|location=London|isbn=978-1583670392|url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm}}</ref>
 
* [[William K. Carroll]]
 
* [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]]
 
* [[Edward Said]]
 
* [[Ernesto Laclau]]
 
* [[New Left]]
 
}}
 
 
| module          =  
 
| module          =  
  {{Infobox officeholder | embed = yes
 
  | office        = [[List of Secretaries of the Italian Communist Party|General Secretary]] of the<br />[[Communist Party of Italy]]
 
  | term_start    = January 1924 
 
  | term_end      = January 1926 
 
  | predecessor  = [[Amadeo Bordiga]]
 
  | successor    = [[Palmiro Togliatti]]
 
  | party        =
 
  | otherparty    = 
 
  }}
 
 
}}
 
}}
[[File:Antonio Gramsci - Molti quaderni colorati del carcere.jpg|thumb|Antonio Gramsci's many prison notebooks]]
 
'''Antonio Francesco Gramsci''' ({{IPAc-en|UK|ˈ|ɡ|r|æ|m|ʃ|i}},<ref>{{Cite Oxford&nbsp;Dictionaries|Gramsci, Antonio|accessdate=3 May 2019}}</ref> {{IPAc-en|US|ˈ|ɡ|r|ɑː|m|ʃ|i}},<ref>{{Cite American Heritage Dictionary|Gramsci|accessdate=3 May 2019}}</ref> {{IPA-it|anˈtɔːnjo franˈtʃesko ˈɡramʃi|lang|It-Antonio Gramsci.ogg}}; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian  [[Marxism|Marxist]] writer and politician. He wrote on [[philosophy]], [[political theory]], [[sociology]], [[history]] and [[linguistics]]. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the [[Communist Party of Italy]] and was imprisoned by [[Benito Mussolini]]'s [[Italian Fascism|Fascist regime]].
 
  
Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His ''[[Prison Notebooks]]'' are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century [[political theory]].<ref name=Sassoon1>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Sassoon |first=Anne Showstack|editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G. | editor3-link=V. G. Kiernan | editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Prison Notebooks | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=446}}</ref> Gramsci drew insights from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as [[Niccolò Machiavelli]], [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Georges Sorel]] and [[Benedetto Croce]]. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including [[History of Italy|Italian history]] and [[Italian nationalism|nationalism]], the [[French Revolution]], [[fascism]], [[Taylorism]] and [[Fordism]], [[civil society]], [[folklore]], [[religion]] and [[high culture|high]] and [[popular culture]].
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'''Antonio Francesco Gramsci''' (January  22, 1891 – April 27, 1937) was an Italian  [[Marxism|Marxist]] writer and politician. He wrote on [[philosophy]], [[political theory]], [[sociology]], [[history]], and [[linguistics]]. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the [[Communist Party of Italy]], imprisoned by [[Benito Mussolini]]'s [[Italian Fascism|Fascist regime]].
  
Gramsci is best known for his theory of [[cultural hegemony]], which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the [[bourgeoisie]] – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic culture using [[ideology]] rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "[[common sense]]" values of all and thus maintain the ''[[status quo]]''. Cultural hegemony is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than the use of force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the [[Base and superstructure|superstructure]].
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Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His ''[[Prison Notebooks]]'' drew from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as [[Niccolò Machiavelli]], [[Vilfredo Pareto]], [[Georges Sorel]], and [[Benedetto Croce]]. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including [[History of Italy|Italian history]] and [[Italian nationalism|nationalism]], the [[French Revolution]], [[fascism]], [[Taylorism]], and [[Fordism]], [[civil society]], [[folklore]], [[religion]], and [[high culture|high]] and [[popular culture]]. The notebooks were Gramsci's attempt to address the problem that socialist revolutions were not happening in advanced Western societies as Marx's theory had predicted. Gramsci tried to explain theoretically why this problem occurred, and what could be done about it. It is expressed in his term "[[Optimism and Pessimism|pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will]]."
 
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Gramsci also attempted to break from the [[economic determinism]] of [[classical Marxism|traditional Marxist]] thought, and so is sometimes described as a [[neo-Marxism|neo-Marxist]].<ref>{{cite book|first1=Michael|last1=Haralambos|first2=Martin|last2=Holborn|title=Sociology Themes and Perspectives|edition=8th|date=2013|pages=597–598|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|location=New York City|isbn=978-0-00-749882-6}}</ref> He held a [[humanism|humanistic]] understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a "philosophy of [[praxis (process)| praxis]]" and an "absolute [[historicism]]" that transcends traditional [[materialism]] and traditional [[idealism]].
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Gramsci's theory centered on his concept of [[cultural hegemony]], which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the [[bourgeoisie]] – use cultural institutions to maintain its position within capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic control on culture through its [[ideology]], creating consent among the populace that allows them to govern successfully without resorting to violence, economic force, or coercion. Gramsci argued that hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "[[common sense]]" values of all and thus maintain the ''[[status quo]]'', while hindering the ability of the proletariat to produce a revolution as Marx had predicted.
  
 
==Life==
 
==Life==
  
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[[File:Antonio Gramsci - Molti quaderni colorati del carcere.jpg|thumb|400px|Antonio Gramsci's many prison notebooks]]
 
=== Early life ===
 
=== Early life ===
Gramsci was born in [[Ales (Sardinia)|Ales]], in the [[province of Oristano]], on the island of [[Sardinia]], the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci (1860–1937) and Giuseppina Marcias (1861–1932). The senior Gramsci was a low-level official born in the small town of [[Gaeta]], in the [[province of Latina]] (in the [[Central Italy|Central Italian region]] of [[Lazio]]). He was from a well-off family from the [[Southern Italy|Southern Italian regions]] of [[Campania]] and [[Calabria]] and of  [[Arbëreshë people|Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian)]] descent.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/igsn/news/n09_11.shtml|title=IGSN 9 – Nuove notizie sulla famiglia paterna di Gramsci|website=www.internationalgramscisociety.org|access-date=15 March 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.iltorinese.it/italiani-origine-albanese-si-distinti-secoli/|title=Italiani di origine albanese che si sono distinti nei secoli {{!}} Il Torinese {{!}} Quotidiano on line di Informazione Società Cultura|website=www.iltorinese.it|language=it-IT|access-date=2018-05-05|date=8 January 2016}}</ref> Antonio Gramsci himself believed his father's family had left [[Albania]] as recently as 1821.<ref name="Pipa234">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nkhiAAAAMAAJ&dq=The+politics+of+language+in+socialist+Albania&q=Italianized|title=The politics of language in socialist Albania|last=Pipa|first=Arshi|publisher=East European Monographs|year=1989|isbn=978-0-88033-168-5|location=Boulder, Colorado|page=234|ref=harv}} "I myself have no race. My father is of recent Albanian origin. The family escaped from Epirus after or during the 1821 wars <of Greek Independence> and Italianized itself rapidly." ''Lettere dal carcere'' (Letters from Prison), ed. S. Capriogloi & E Fubini (Einaudi, Turin, 1965), pp. 507–08."</ref><ref>[http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/igsn/news/n09_11.shtml International Gramsci Society]</ref><ref>[http://www.albanianews.it/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Genealogia-dei-Gramsci.jpg Genealogia dei Gramsci]</ref> The Albanian origin of his father's family is attested in the surname Gramsci, an Italianized form of ''Gramshi'', that stems from the [[Definiteness|definite]] [[Albanian morphology#Nouns (declension)|noun]] of the placename [[Gramsh, Elbasan|Gramsh]], a small town in central-eastern Albania.<ref name="Manzelli161">{{cite book|last=Manzelli|first=Gianguido|chapter=Italiano e albanese: affinità e contrasti|editor1-last=Ghezzi|editor1-first=Chiara|editor2-last=Guerini|editor2-first=Federica|editor3-last=Molinelli|editor3-first=Piera|title=Italiano e lingue immigrate a confronto: riflessioni per la pratica didattica, Atti del Convegno-Seminario, Bergamo, 23-25 giugno 2003|year=2004|publisher=Guerra Edizioni|isbn=9788877157072|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MbsbAQAAIAAJ&q=Gramsh+o+Gramshi,+con+l%27articolo+determinativo+finale+in&dq=Gramsh+o+Gramshi,+con+l%27articolo+determinativo+finale+in|pages=161|ref=harv}} "Antonio Gramsci, nato ad Ales (Oristano) nel 1891, fondatore del Partito Comunista d'ltalia nel 1921, arrestato nel 1926, morto a Roma nel 1937, portava nel proprio cognome la manifesta origine albanese della famiglia (Gramsh o Gramshi, con l'articolo determinativo finale in -i, è il nome di una cittadina dell'Albania centrale)."</ref> The mother of Antonio Gramsci belonged to a [[Sardinian people|Sardinian]] [[Real estate|landowning]] family from [[Sorgono]] (in the [[province of Nuoro]]).<ref>Dante L. Germino, ''Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics'' (Baton Rouge, Louisiana:[[Louisiana State University Press]], 1990, ISBN 978-0807115534), 157.</ref>
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Gramsci was born in [[Ales (Sardinia)|Ales]], in the [[province of Oristano]], on the island of [[Sardinia]], the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci (1860–1937) and Giuseppina Marcias (1861–1932). The senior Gramsci was a low-level official born in the small town of [[Gaeta]], in the [[province of Latina]] (in the [[Central Italy|Central Italian region]] of [[Lazio]]). He was from a well-off family from the [[Southern Italy|Southern Italian regions]] of [[Campania]] and [[Calabria]] and of  [[Arbëreshë people|Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian)]] descent.<ref>[http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/igsn/news/n09_11.shtml IGSN 9 – Nuove notizie sulla famiglia paterna di Gramsci] ''International Gramsci Society Newsletter'' 9 (March, 1999): 40-41. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref><ref> [http://www.iltorinese.it/italiani-origine-albanese-si-distinti-secoli/ Italiani di origine albanese che si sono distinti nei secoli: Antonio Gramsci] ''Il Torinese''. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref> Antonio Gramsci himself believed his father's family had left [[Albania]] as recently as 1821.<ref>Arshi Pipa, ''The politics of language in socialist Albania'' (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989, ISBN 978-0880331685), 234.</ref> The Albanian origin of his father's family is attested in the surname Gramsci, an Italianized form of ''Gramshi'', that stems from the [[Definiteness|definite]] [[Albanian morphology#Nouns (declension)|noun]] of the placename [[Gramsh, Elbasan|Gramsh]], a small town in central-eastern Albania. The mother of Antonio Gramsci belonged to a [[Sardinian people|Sardinian]] [[Real estate|landowning]] family from [[Sorgono]] (in the [[province of Nuoro]]).<ref>Dante L. Germino, ''Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics'' (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0807115534), 157.</ref>
  
In 1898, Francesco was convicted of [[embezzlement]] and imprisoned, reducing his family to destitution. The senior Gramsci's financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in [[Ghilarza]].<ref>Hoare and Smith, xviii.</ref> The young Antonio had to abandon schooling and work at various casual jobs until his father's release in 1904.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xviii–xix.</ref> As a boy, Gramsci suffered from health problems, particularly a malformation of the spine that stunted his growth (his adult height was less than 5 feet)<ref>Kate Crehan, ''Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology'' (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520236025), 14..</ref> and left him seriously hunchbacked. For decades, it was reported that his condition had been due to a childhood accident—specifically, having been dropped by a nanny—but more recently it has been suggested that it was due to [[Pott disease]],<ref>Daniel M. Markowicz, "Gramsci, Antonio," in ''The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory'', ed. Michael Ryan, (Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978- 1405183123).</ref> a form of tuberculosis that can cause deformity of the spine. Gramsci was also plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life.
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In 1898, Francesco was convicted of [[embezzlement]] and imprisoned, reducing his family to destitution. The senior Gramsci's financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in [[Ghilarza]]. The young Antonio had to abandon schooling and work at various casual jobs until his father's release in 1904.<ref>Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.), "Introduction" ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks'' (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971, ISBN 978-0853152804), xviii–xix.</ref> As a boy, Gramsci suffered from health problems, particularly a malformation of the spine that stunted his growth (his adult height was less than 5 feet)<ref>Kate Crehan, ''Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology'' (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520236025), 14.</ref> and left him seriously hunchbacked. For decades, it was reported that his condition had been due to a childhood accident—specifically, having been dropped by a nanny—but more recently it has been suggested that it was due to [[Pott disease]],<ref>Daniel M. Markowicz, "Gramsci, Antonio," in ''The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory'', ed. Michael Ryan, Gregory Castle, Robert Eaglestone, and M. Keith Booker (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1405183123).</ref> a form of tuberculosis that can cause deformity of the spine. Gramsci was also plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life.
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Gramsci completed secondary school in [[Cagliari]], where he lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had made him a militant socialist. However, Gramsci's sympathies then did not lie with socialism, but rather with the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and miners, whose mistreatment by the mainlanders would later deeply contribute to his intellectual growth.<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xix.</ref><ref>[http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/antonio-gramsci_%28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/ Antonio Gramsci, Dizionario di Storia Treccani]. Treccani.it (8 November 1926). Retrieved on 2017-04-24.</ref><ref>''Antonio Gramsci e la questione sarda'', a cura di Guido Melis, Cagliari, Della Torre,  1975</ref><ref>[https://www.thoughtco.com/antonio-gramsci-3026471 Biography of Antonio Gramsci, Nicki Lisa Cole] </ref> They perceived their neglect as a result of privileges enjoyed by the rapidly industrialising [[Northern Italy|North]], and they tended to turn to a growing [[Sardinian nationalism]], brutally repressed by troops from the Italian mainland,<ref>[[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Hall, Stuart]] (June 1986). ''Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity''. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (2), 5-27, Sage Journals</ref> as a response.<ref>{{in lang|it}} [http://ricerca.gelocal.it/lanuovasardegna/archivio/lanuovasardegna/2004/05/03/ST8PO_ST801.html Gramsci e l'isola laboratorio, La Nuova Sardegna]. Ricerca.gelocal.it (3 May 2004). Retrieved on 2017-04-24.</ref>
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Gramsci completed secondary school in [[Cagliari]], where he lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had made him a militant socialist. However, Gramsci's sympathies then did not lie with socialism, but rather with the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and miners, whose mistreatment by the mainlanders would later deeply contribute to his intellectual growth.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xix.</ref><ref>Nicki Lisa Cole, [https://www.thoughtco.com/antonio-gramsci-3026471 Biography of Antonio Gramsci] ''ThoughtCo'', August 14, 2019. Retrieved January 5, 2022. </ref> They perceived their neglect as a result of privileges enjoyed by the rapidly industrializing [[Northern Italy|North]], and they tended to turn to a growing [[Sardinian nationalism]], brutally repressed by troops from the Italian mainland,<ref>Stuart Hall, "Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity," ''Journal of Communication Inquiry'' 10(2), June 1986, 5-27.</ref> as a response.
  
 
===Turin===
 
===Turin===
[[File:Loggiato.jpg|thumb|200 px|right|[[University of Turin]]: the Rectorate]]
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[[File:Loggiato.jpg|thumb|400 px|right|[[University of Turin]]: the Rectorate]]
In 1911, Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the [[University of Turin]], sitting the exam at the same time as [[Palmiro Togliatti]].<ref>Hoare and Smith, xx.</ref> At [[Turin]], he read literature and took a keen interest in [[linguistics]], which he studied under [[Matteo Bartoli]]. Gramsci was in Turin as it was going through industrialization, with the [[Fiat]] and [[Lancia]] factories recruiting workers from poorer regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started to emerge.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xxv.</ref> Gramsci frequented socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants on the Italian mainland. His worldview was shaped by both his earlier experiences in Sardinia and his environment on the mainland. Gramsci joined the [[Italian Socialist Party]] in late 1913, where he would later occupy a key position and observe from Turin the Russian revolutionary process.<ref>Gian Luigi Deiana, [https://www.rs21.org.uk/2017/06/23/revolutionary-reflections-the-legacy-of-antonio-gramsci/ "The Legacy of Antonio Gramsci,"] Retrieved September 30, 2020.</ref>
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In 1911, Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the [[University of Turin]], sitting for the exam at the same time as [[Palmiro Togliatti]], head of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death..<ref>Hoare and Smith, xx.</ref> At [[Turin]], he studied literature and showed an interest in [[linguistics]], which he studied under [[Matteo Bartoli]]. Gramsci was in Turin during the period of industrialization, with the [[Fiat]] and [[Lancia]] factories recruiting workers from poorer regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started to emerge.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xxv.</ref> Gramsci frequented socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants on the Italian mainland. His worldview was shaped by both his earlier experiences in Sardinia and his environment on the mainland. Gramsci joined the [[Italian Socialist Party]] in late 1913, where he would later occupy a key position and observe from Turin the Russian revolutionary process.<ref>Gian Luigi Deiana, [https://www.rs21.org.uk/2017/06/23/revolutionary-reflections-the-legacy-of-antonio-gramsci/ "The Legacy of Antonio Gramsci,"] ''Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century'', June 23, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref>
  
Although showing a talent for his studies, Gramsci had financial problems and poor health. Together with his growing political commitment, these led to him abandoning his education in early 1915, at age 24. By this time, he had acquired an extensive knowledge of history and philosophy. At university, he had come into contact with the thought of [[Antonio Labriola]], [[Rodolfo Mondolfo]], [[Giovanni Gentile]], and most importantly, [[Benedetto Croce]], possibly the most widely respected Italian intellectual of his day. Labriola especially propounded a brand of [[Hegelian]] Marxism that he labelled "philosophy of [[praxis (process)|praxis]]".<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xxi.</ref> Although Gramsci later used this phrase to escape the prison censors, his relationship with this current of thought was ambiguous throughout his life.
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Although showing a talent for his studies, Gramsci had financial problems and suffered from poor health. Together with his growing political commitment, he decided to abandon his education in early 1915 at the age of 24. By this time, he had acquired an extensive knowledge of history and philosophy. At university, he had come into contact with the thought of [[Antonio Labriola]], [[Rodolfo Mondolfo]], [[Giovanni Gentile]], and most importantly, [[Benedetto Croce]], possibly the most widely respected Italian intellectual of his day. Labriola especially propounded a brand of [[Hegelian]] Marxism that he labelled "philosophy of [[praxis (process)|praxis]]".<ref>Hoare and Smith, xxi.</ref> Although Gramsci later used this phrase to escape the prison censors, his relationship with this current of thought was ambiguous throughout his life.
  
From 1914 onward, Gramsci's writings for socialist newspapers such as ''[[Il Grido del Popolo]]'' earned him a reputation as a notable journalist. In 1916, he became co-editor of the [[Piedmont]] edition of ''[[Avanti! (Italian newspaper)|Avanti!]]'', the Socialist Party official organ. An articulate and prolific writer of political theory, Gramsci proved a formidable commentator, writing on all aspects of Turin's social and political life.<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xxx.</ref>
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From 1914 onward, Gramsci's writings for socialist newspapers such as ''[[Il Grido del Popolo]]'' earned him a reputation as a notable journalist. In 1916, he became co-editor of the [[Piedmont]] edition of ''[[Avanti! (Italian newspaper)|Avanti!]]'', the Socialist Party official organ. An articulate and prolific writer of political theory, Gramsci proved a formidable commentator, writing on all aspects of Turin's social and political life.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xxx.</ref>
  
Gramsci was at this time also involved in the education and organisation of Turin workers; he spoke in public for the first time in 1916 and gave talks on topics such as [[Romain Rolland]], the [[French Revolution]], the [[Paris Commune]], and [[Feminism|the emancipation of women]]. In the wake of the arrest of Socialist Party leaders that followed the revolutionary riots of August 1917, Gramsci became one of Turin's leading socialists when he was both elected to the party's Provisional Committee and made editor of ''Il Grido del Popolo''.<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], pp. xxx–xxxi.</ref>
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Gramsci was at this time also involved in the education and organization of Turin workers; he spoke in public for the first time in 1916 and gave talks on topics such as [[Romain Rolland]], the [[French Revolution]], the [[Paris Commune]], and [[Feminism|the emancipation of women]]. In the wake of the arrest of Socialist Party leaders that followed the revolutionary riots of August 1917, Gramsci became one of Turin's leading socialists when he was both elected to the party's Provisional Committee and made editor of ''Il Grido del Popolo''.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xxx–xxxi.</ref>
  
In April 1919, with Togliatti, [[Angelo Tasca]] and [[Umberto Terracini]], Gramsci set up the weekly newspaper ''[[L'Ordine Nuovo]]'' (The New Order). In October the same year, despite being divided into various hostile factions, the Socialist Party moved by a large majority to join the [[Third International]]. The ''L'Ordine Nuovo'' group was seen by [[Vladimir Lenin]] as closest in orientation to the [[Bolsheviks]], and it received his backing against the anti-parliamentary programme of the [[left communist]] [[Amadeo Bordiga]].
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In April 1919, with Togliatti, [[Angelo Tasca]] and [[Umberto Terracini]], Gramsci set up the weekly newspaper ''[[L'Ordine Nuovo]]'' (The New Order). In October the same year, despite its division into various hostile factions, the Socialist Party moved by a large majority to join the [[Third International]]. The ''L'Ordine Nuovo'' group was seen by [[Vladimir Lenin]] as closest in orientation to the [[Bolshevik|Bolsheviks]], and it received his backing against the anti-parliamentary program of the [[left communist]] [[Amadeo Bordiga]].
  
Among tactical debates within the party, Gramsci's group was mainly distinguished by its advocacy of [[workers' councils]], which had come into existence in Turin spontaneously during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci, these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of organising production. Although he believed his position at this time to be in keeping with Lenin's policy of "All power to the Soviets", his stance that these Italian councils were communist, rather than just one organ of political struggle against the bourgeoisie, was attacked by Bordiga for betraying a [[syndicalist]] tendency influenced by the thought of [[Georges Sorel]] and [[Daniel DeLeon]]. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost alone in his defence of the councils.
+
Among tactical debates within the party, Gramsci's group was mainly distinguished by its advocacy of [[workers' councils]], which had spontaneously come into existence in Turin during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci, these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of organizing production. Although he believed his position to be in keeping with Lenin's policy of "All power to the Soviets," his stance that these Italian councils were communist, rather than just one organ of political struggle against the bourgeoisie, was attacked by Bordiga for betraying a [[syndicalism|syndicalist]] tendency influenced by the thought of [[Georges Sorel]] and [[Daniel DeLeon]]. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost alone in his defense of the councils.
  
===In the Communist Party of Italy===
+
===The Communist Party of Italy===
[[File:Julia Schucht with sons 1930s.jpg|thumb|Julia Schucht with sons]]
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[[File:Julia Schucht with sons 1930s.jpg|thumb|400px|Julia Schucht with sons]]
  
The failure of the workers' councils to develop into a national movement convinced Gramsci that a Communist Party in the [[Leninist]] sense was needed. The group around ''L'Ordine Nuovo'' declaimed incessantly against the Italian Socialist Party's centrist leadership and ultimately allied with Bordiga's far larger "abstentionist" faction. On 21 January 1921, in the town of [[Livorno|Livorno (Leghorn)]], the [[Communist Party of Italy]] (''Partito Comunista d'Italia – PCI'') was founded. In opposition to Bordiga, Gramsci supported the ''[[Arditi del Popolo]]'', a militant anti-fascist group which struggled against the [[Blackshirts]].
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The failure of the workers' councils to develop into a national movement convinced Gramsci that a Communist Party in the [[Marxism-Leninism|Leninist]] sense was needed. The group around ''L'Ordine Nuovo'' declaimed incessantly against the Italian Socialist Party's centrist leadership and ultimately allied with Bordiga's far larger "abstentionist" faction. On January 21, 1921, in the town of [[Livorno|Livorno (Leghorn)]], the [[Communist Party of Italy]] (''Partito Comunista d'Italia – PCI'') was founded. In opposition to Bordiga, Gramsci supported the ''[[Arditi del Popolo]]'', a militant anti-fascist group which struggled against the [[Blackshirts]].
  
Gramsci would be a leader of the party from its inception but was subordinate to Bordiga, whose emphasis on discipline, centralism and purity of principles dominated the party's programme until he lost the leadership in 1924.
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Gramsci would be a leader of the party from its inception but was subordinate to Bordiga, whose emphasis on discipline, centralism and purity of principles dominated the party's program until he lost the leadership in 1924.
  
In 1922, Gramsci travelled to Russia as a representative of the new party. Here, he met Julia Schucht (Yulia Apollonovna Schucht), a young violinist whom he married in 1923 and with whom he had two sons, Delio (born 1924) and Giuliano (born 1926).<ref>[http://www.antoniogramsci.com/moglie_figli.htm Picture] of Gramsci's wife and their two sons at the Italian-language [http://www.antoniogramsci.com Antonio Gramsci Website].</ref> Gramsci never saw his second son.<ref>Crehan, Kate (2002). ''Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology''. University of California Press. p. 17. {{ISBN|0520236025}}.</ref>
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In 1922, Gramsci travelled to the [[Soviet Union]] as a representative of the new party. There he met Julia Schucht (Yulia Apollonovna Schucht), a young violinist whom he married in 1923 and with whom he had two sons, Delio (born 1924) and Giuliano (born 1926). Gramsci never saw his second son.<ref>Crehan, 17.</ref>
  
[[File:Antonio Gramsci commemorative plaque Moscow.jpg|thumb|200px|Antonio Gramsci commemorative plaque, [[Mokhovaya Street]] 16, Moscow. The inscription reads "In this building in 1922–1923 worked the eminent figure of international communism and the labor movement and founder of the Italian Communist Party ANTONIO GRAMSCI."|left]]
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[[File:Antonio Gramsci commemorative plaque Moscow.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Antonio Gramsci commemorative plaque, [[Mokhovaya Street]] 16, Moscow. The inscription reads "In this building in 1922–1923 worked the eminent figure of international communism and the labor movement and founder of the Italian Communist Party ANTONIO GRAMSCI."]]
  
The Russian mission coincided with the advent of fascism in Italy, and Gramsci returned with instructions to foster, against the wishes of the PCI leadership, a united front of leftist parties against fascism. Such a front would ideally have had the PCI at its centre, through which Moscow would have controlled all the leftist forces, but others disputed this potential supremacy: socialists did have a certain tradition in Italy, too, while the Communist Party seemed relatively young and too radical. Many believed that an eventual coalition led by communists would have functioned too remotely from political debate, and thus would have run the risk of isolation.
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The Russian mission coincided with the rise of [[fascism]] in Italy. Gramsci returned with instructions to foster, against the wishes of the PCI leadership, a united front of leftist parties against fascism. Such a front would have had the PCI at its center, through which Moscow would have controlled all the leftist forces. Not everyone was happy about Moscow's potential supremacy. The socialists had a longer tradition in Italy, while the Communist Party seemed relatively young and too radical. Many believed that an eventual coalition led by communists would have functioned too far from the political debate, and would have run the risk of isolation.
  
In late 1922 and early 1923, Benito Mussolini's government embarked on a campaign of repression against the opposition parties, arresting most of the PCI leadership, including Bordiga. At the end of 1923, Gramsci travelled from Moscow to [[Vienna]], where he tried to revive a party torn by factional strife.
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In late 1922 and early 1923, [[Benito Mussolini]]'s government embarked on a campaign of repression against the opposition parties, arresting most of the PCI leadership, including Bordiga. At the end of 1923, Gramsci traveled from Moscow to [[Vienna]], where he tried to revive a party torn by factional strife.
  
In 1924 Gramsci, now recognised as head of the PCI, gained election as a deputy for the [[Veneto]]. He started organizing the launch of the official newspaper of the party, called ''[[L'Unità]]'' (Unity), living in Rome while his family stayed in Moscow. At its Lyon Congress in January 1926, Gramsci's theses calling for a united front to restore democracy to Italy were adopted by the party.
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In 1924 Gramsci, now recognized as head of the PCI, gained election as a deputy for the [[Veneto]], the region around Venice.. He started organizing the launch of the official newspaper of the party, called ''[[L'Unità]]'' (Unity), living in Rome while his family stayed in Moscow. At its Lyon Congress in January 1926, Gramsci's theses calling for a united front to restore democracy to Italy were adopted by the party.
  
In 1926, [[Joseph Stalin]]'s manoeuvres inside the Bolshevik party moved Gramsci to write a letter to the [[Comintern]] in which he deplored the opposition led by [[Leon Trotsky]] but also underlined some presumed faults of the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti which they never completely resolved.<ref>Giuseppe Vacca.Vita e Pensieri Di Antonio Gramsci.Einaudi.Torino 2012</ref>
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In 1926, [[Joseph Stalin]]'s maneuvers inside the Bolshevik party moved Gramsci to write a letter to the [[Comintern]] deploring the opposition led by [[Leon Trotsky]] but also underlining some faults he perceived in the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti which they never completely resolved.
 
{{clear}}
 
{{clear}}
  
 
===Imprisonment and death===
 
===Imprisonment and death===
[[File:Antonio Gramsci Grave in Rome01.jpg|thumb|right|180px|Gramsci's grave at the [[Protestant Cemetery, Rome|Cimitero Acattolico]] in Rome]]
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[[File:Antonio Gramsci Grave in Rome01.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Gramsci's grave at the [[Protestant Cemetery, Rome|Cimitero Acattolico]] in Rome]]
On 9 November 1926, the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws, taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini's life that had occurred several days earlier. The fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his [[parliamentary immunity]], and brought him to the Roman prison ''[[Regina Coeli (prison)|Regina Coeli]]''.
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On November 9, 1926, the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws, taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini's life that had occurred several days earlier. The fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his [[parliamentary immunity]], and brought him to the Roman prison ''[[Regina Coeli (prison)|Regina Coeli]]''.
 
 
At his trial, Gramsci's prosecutor stated, "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning".<ref name="Lawrence and Wishart">[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p.lxxxix.</ref> He received an immediate sentence of five years in confinement on the island of [[Ustica]] and the following year he received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment in [[Turi, Apulia|Turi]], near [[Bari]].
 
  
Over 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated: "His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell."<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xcii.</ref>
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At his trial, Gramsci's prosecutor stated, "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning."<ref>Hoare and Smith, lxxxix.</ref> He received an immediate sentence of five years in confinement on the island of [[Ustica]] and the following year he received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment in [[Turi, Apulia|Turi]], near [[Bari]].
  
An international campaign, organised by [[Piero Sraffa]] at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]] and Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana, was mounted to demand Gramsci's release.<ref name="Jones, S. Gramsci p.25">Jones, S. Gramsci (Routledge Critical Thinkers), p.25. Routledge: 2006. {{ISBN|0-415-31947-1}}</ref> In 1933 he was moved from the prison at Turi to a clinic at [[Formia]],<ref>[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xciii.</ref> but was still being denied adequate medical attention.<ref name="Hoare, Quentin 1971">[[#Hoare|Gramsci 1971]], p. xciv.</ref> Two years later he was moved to the Quisisana clinic in Rome. He was due for release on 21 April 1937 and planned to retire to Sardinia for [[convalescence]], but a combination of [[arteriosclerosis]], [[pulmonary tuberculosis]], [[high blood pressure]], [[angina]], [[gout]] and acute [[gastric disorders]] meant that he was too ill to move.<ref name="Hoare, Quentin 1971"/> Gramsci died on 27 April 1937, at the age of 46. His ashes are buried in the [[Protestant Cemetery, Rome|Cimitero Acattolico]] (Non-Catholic Cemetery) in Rome.
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Over his 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated. "His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell."<ref>Hoare and Smith, xcii.</ref>
  
==Philosophical work==
+
An international campaign, organized by [[Piero Sraffa]] at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]] and Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana, was mounted to demand Gramsci's release.<ref name=Jones>Steven J. Jones, ''Gramsci'' (Abington, UK: Routledge, 2006, ISBN 0415319471), 25.</ref> In 1933 he was moved from the prison at Turi to a clinic at [[Formia]], but was still being denied adequate medical attention.<ref>Hoare and Smith, xciii-xciv.</ref> Two years later he was moved to the Quisisana clinic in Rome. He was due for release on April 21, 1937 and planned to retire to Sardinia for [[convalescence]], but a combination of [[arteriosclerosis]], [[pulmonary tuberculosis]], [[high blood pressure]], [[angina]], [[gout]] and acute [[gastric disorders]] meant that he was too ill to move. Gramsci died on April 27, 1937 at the age of 46. His ashes are buried in the [[Protestant Cemetery, Rome|Cimitero Acattolico]] (Non-Catholic Cemetery) in Rome.
{{Marxism}}
 
Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the 20th century, and a particularly key thinker in the development of [[Western Marxism]]. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the ''[[Prison Notebooks]]'', contain Gramsci's tracing of [[History of Italy|Italian history]] and nationalism, as well as some ideas in [[Marxist theory]], [[critical theory]] and educational theory associated with his name, such as:
 
  
*[[Cultural hegemony]] as a means of maintaining and legitimising the capitalist state
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==Tenets of Gramscian theory==
*The need for popular workers' education to encourage development of intellectuals from the working class
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Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, and a particularly key thinker in the development of [[Western Marxism]]. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the ''[[Prison Notebooks]]'', contain Gramsci's tracing of [[History of Italy|Italian history]] and nationalism, as well as some ideas in [[Marxist theory]], [[critical theory]] and educational theory associated with his name. His most important theoretical contribution was [[Cultural hegemony]], which he describes as a means of maintaining and legitimizing the capitalist state. In addition to hegemony Gramsci was a critic of [[economic determinism]] and [[materialism|philosophical materialism]] within Marxism in favor of a philosophy of [[praxis]] rooted in an absolute [[historicism]].<ref>Michael Haralambos and Martin Holborn, ''Sociology Themes and Perspectives'' 8th edition (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013, ISBN 978-0007498826), 597–598.</ref> He held a [[humanism|humanistic]] understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a "philosophy of [[praxis (process)| praxis]]" and an "absolute [[historicism]]" that transcends traditional [[materialism]] and traditional [[idealism]].
*An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and [[civil society]], where leadership is constituted through consent
 
*Absolute [[historicism]]
 
*A critique of [[economic determinism]] that opposes [[fatalism|fatalistic]] interpretations of Marxism
 
*A critique of [[materialism|philosophical materialism]]
 
  
 
===Hegemony===
 
===Hegemony===
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[[Hegemony]] was a term previously used by Russian Marxists such as [[Vladimir Lenin]] to denote the political leadership of the working-class in a democratic revolution.<ref>Perry Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," ''New Left Review'' I(100), November–December 1976, 15-17.</ref> Gramsci greatly expanded this concept, developing an acute analysis of how the ruling capitalist class – the [[bourgeoisie]] – establishes and maintains its control.<ref>Anderson, 20.</ref>
  
{{details|Cultural hegemony}}
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Orthodox Marxism had predicted that the socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. According to the classical Marxist doctrine of base and superstructure, the ownership of the means of production was causal and the political and cultural sphere was an effect. Internal contradictions within capitalism would lead to revolution. The [[October Revolution|revolution in Russia]] buoyed that hope but despite the [[Great Depression]], revolution in the West seemed a distant hope. Marxists had to wrestle with why the revolution had not occurred in advanced capitalist societies as Marx predicted. Gramsci was one of the first Marxists to develop a theory to explain this anomaly between theory and existing reality. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political/economic coercion, that is, through their control of the means of production, but also through [[ideology]]. The [[bourgeoisie]] developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "[[common sense]]" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeois state and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting against it.
[[Hegemony]] was a term previously used by Russian Marxists such as [[Vladimir Lenin]] to denote the political leadership of the working-class in a democratic revolution.<ref name=NLR>{{cite journal | last = Anderson| first = Perry | authorlink = Perry Anderson | title = The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci | journal = [[New Left Review]] | volume = I | issue = 100 | pages = 5–78 | publisher = New Left Review | date = November–December 1976 | url = http://newleftreview.org/I/100/perry-anderson-the-antinomies-of-antonio-gramsci | ref = harv }}</ref>{{rp|15–17}} Gramsci greatly expanded this concept, developing an acute analysis of how the ruling capitalist class – the [[bourgeoisie]] – establishes and maintains its control.<ref name=NLR />{{rp|20}}
 
  
Orthodox Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had occurred in the most advanced nations. Rather, capitalism seemed more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through [[ideology]]. The [[bourgeoisie]] developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "[[common sense]]" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
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To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. Lenin, representing the traditional Marxist view, held that culture was ancillary to political objectives, but for Gramsci, it was fundamental to the attainment of power that [[cultural hegemony]] be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests; neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this union of social forces a "historic bloc," taking a term from [[Georges Sorel]]. This bloc forms the basis of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re-produces the hegemony of the dominant class through a nexus of institutions, [[social relations]], and ideas.<ref>Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Hegemony" in Tom Bottomore, ed. ''The Dictionary of Marxist Thought'' (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 230.</ref> In this way, Gramsci's theory emphasized the importance of the political and ideological [[base and superstructure|superstructure]] in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.
  
To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. Lenin held that culture was ancillary to political objectives, but for Gramsci, it was fundamental to the attainment of power that [[cultural hegemony]] be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests; neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion.<ref name=Sassoon2 />  Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces.<ref name=Sassoon2 /> Gramsci calls this union of social forces a "historic bloc", taking a term from [[Georges Sorel]]. This bloc forms the basis of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re-produces the hegemony of the dominant class through a nexus of institutions, [[social relations]], and ideas.<ref name=Sassoon2>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Sassoon |first=Anne Showstack|editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G. | editor3-link=V. G. Kiernan | editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Hegemony | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=230}}</ref> In this way, Gramsci's theory emphasized the importance of the political and ideological [[base and superstructure|superstructure]] in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.
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Gramsci observed that bourgeois cultural values were tied to [[folklore]], popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these. He was impressed by the influence of [[Roman Catholicism]] and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in [[Renaissance humanism]] and the elements of the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own experience.
  
Gramsci stated that bourgeois cultural values were tied to [[folklore]], popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these. He was also impressed by the influence [[Roman Catholicism]] had and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in [[Renaissance humanism]] and the elements of the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]] that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own experience.
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===State and civil society===
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Gramsci's theory of hegemony is predicated on his conception of the capitalist state. Based on his theory of cultural hegemony, Gramsci, contra Marx, does not understand the state as simply the effect of the cause - the relations of production. He divides it between the state apparatus - the police, the army, the legal system which the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control – and [[civil society]] composed of the family, the education system, and trade unions. These institutions commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere mediate between the state and the economy.<ref name=CivilSociety>Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Civil Society," in Tom Bottomore, ed. ''The Dictionary of Marxist Thought'' (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 83.</ref> However, he stresses that the division is purely conceptual and that the two often overlap in reality.<ref>Antonio Gramsci, ''Prison Notebooks, Volume 3'' trans. J.A. Buttigieg. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 0231139446), 160.</ref> Gramsci argues that the capitalist state rules through both force plus consent: political society is the realm of force and civil society is the realm of consent.
  
===Intellectuals and education===
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Under modern capitalism the [[bourgeoisie]] can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere. Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in [[passive revolution]] by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change. For Marx, the nature of capitalist competition did not allow for such concessions. Gramsci sees examples in movements such as [[reformism]] and [[fascism]], as well as the [[scientific management]] and [[assembly line]] methods of [[Frederick Winslow Taylor|Frederick Taylor]] and [[Henry Ford]] respectively.
Gramsci gave much thought to the role of intellectuals in society.<ref name=Kiernan>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Kiernan |first=V. G. |author-link=V. G. Kiernan|editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G | editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Intellectuals | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=259}}</ref> He stated that all men are intellectuals, in that all have intellectual and rational faculties, but not all men have the social function of intellectuals.<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], p. 9.</ref> He saw modern intellectuals not as talkers, but as practically-minded directors and organisers who produced hegemony through ideological apparatuses such as education and the media. Furthermore, he distinguished between a traditional [[intelligentsia]] which sees itself (wrongly) as a class apart from society, and the thinking groups which every class produces from its own ranks "organically".<ref name=Kiernan/> Such "organic" intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules, but instead [[articulation (sociology)|articulate]], through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the masses could not express for themselves. To Gramsci, it was the duty of organic intellectuals to speak to the obscured precepts of folk wisdom, or common sense (''senso comune''), of their respective political spheres. These intellectuals would represent excluded social groups of a society, what Gramsci referred to as the [[Subaltern (postcolonialism)|subaltern]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Crehan|first1=Kate|title=Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives|date=2016|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=978-0-8223-6219-7|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/gramsciscommonse00creh_2}}</ref>
 
  
In line with Gramsci's theories of hegemonic power, he argued that capitalist power needed to be challenged by building a [[counter-hegemony]]. By this he meant that, as part of the war of position, the organic intellectuals and others within the working-class, need to develop alternative values and an alternative [[ideology]] in contrast to [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] ideology. He argued that the reason this had not needed to happen in Russia was because the Russian ruling class did not have genuine hegemonic power. So the [[Bolsheviks]] were able to see through a war of manoeuvre (the [[Russian Revolution|1917 revolution]]), relatively easily, because ruling-class hegemony had never been fully achieved. He believed that a final war of manoeuvre was only possible, in the developed and advanced capitalist societies, when the war of position had been won by the organic intellectuals and the working-class building a counter-hegemony.
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Gramsci argued that capitalist power needed to be challenged by building a working-class [[counter-hegemony]]. Gramsci saw the struggle with capitalist hegemony as a kind of war. He saw two options. One he labeled the "war of maneuver," the other the "war of position." The war of maneuver he defined as revolutionary power that is stronger than the state. In this case it can simply overwhelm the state, as in the case of pre-Soviet [[Imperial Russia]]. The [[Bolshevik|Bolsheviks]] were able to win a "war of maneuver" in the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] relatively easily. However, unlike Russia which had a weak and crumbling ruling class that did not have genuine hegemonic power, in developed capitalist societies an alternate or counter-hegemony would be necessary. In the West, where the state was better developed and had control of both political power and ideological hegemony in civil society, another approach was needed. This approach Gramsci called the "war of position."
  
The need to create a [[working-class culture]] and a counter-hegemony relates to Gramsci's call for a kind of education that could develop working-class intellectuals, whose task was ''not'' to introduce Marxist ideology into the consciousness of the proletariat as a set of foreign notions but to renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it natively critical of the status quo. His ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the notion of [[critical pedagogy]] and [[popular education]] as theorized and practised in later decades by [[Paulo Freire]] in Brazil, and have much in common with the thought of [[Frantz Fanon]]. For this reason, partisans of adult and popular education consider Gramsci an important voice to this day.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mayo|first=Peter|date=June 2008|title=Antonio Gramsci and his Relevance for the Education of Adults|journal=Educational Philosophy & Theory|volume=40|issue=3|pages=418–435|doi=10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00357.x|s2cid=143570823|url=https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/44580/1/Antonio_Gramsci_and_his_relevance_to_the_education_of_adults.pdf}}</ref>
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Drawing from [[Niccolò Machiavelli|Machiavelli]], he argues that ''The Modern Prince'' – the revolutionary party – is the force that will allow the working-class to develop organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony within civil society. For Gramsci, the complex nature of modern civil society means that a war of position, carried out by revolutionaries through political agitation, the trade unions, advancement of [[proletarian culture]], and other ways to create an opposing civil society was necessary alongside a war of maneuver – a direct revolution – in order to have a successful revolution without danger of a counter-revolution.
  
===State and civil society===
+
Despite his claim that the lines between the two may be blurred, Gramsci rejects the state-worship that results from equating political society with civil society, as was done by the [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobins]] and Fascists. He believes the proletariat's historical task is to create a "regulated society," in which political society is diminished and civil society is expanded. He redefines the "[[withering away of the state]]" in Marxism as the full development of civil society's ability to regulate itself<ref name=CivilSociety/>
  
Gramsci's theory of hegemony is tied to his conception of the capitalist state. Gramsci does not understand the state in the narrow sense of the government. Instead, he divides it between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) – the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control – and [[civil society]] (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) – commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere, which mediates between the state and the economy.<ref name=Sassoon3>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Sassoon |first=Anne Showstack |editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G  |editor3-link=V. G. Kiernan| editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Civil Society | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=83}}</ref> However, he stresses that the division is purely conceptual and that the two often overlap in reality.<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], p. 160.</ref> Gramsci claims the capitalist state rules through force plus consent: political society is the realm of force and civil society is the realm of consent.
+
===Intellectuals and education===
 +
Gramsci believed that a final "war of maneuver" was only possible in the developed and advanced capitalist societies after the "war of position" had been won by the organic intellectuals and the working-class building a counter-hegemony.  
  
Gramsci proffers that under modern capitalism the [[bourgeoisie]] can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere. Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in [[passive revolution]] by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change. Gramsci posits that movements such as [[reformism]] and fascism, as well as the [[scientific management]] and [[assembly line]] methods of [[Frederick Winslow Taylor|Frederick Taylor]] and [[Henry Ford]] respectively, are examples of this.
+
<blockquote>In the East the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the state tottered, a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed. The State was just a forward trench; behind it stood a succession of sturdy fortresses and emplacements.<ref>Gramsci 2007, 169.</ref></blockquote>
  
Drawing from [[Niccolò Machiavelli|Machiavelli]], he argues that The Modern Prince – the revolutionary party – is the force that will allow the working-class to develop organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony within civil society. For Gramsci, the complex nature of modern civil society means that a war of position, carried out by revolutionaries through political agitation, the trade unions, advancement of [[proletarian culture]], and other ways to create an opposing civil society was necessary alongside a war of manoeuvre – a direct revolution – in order to have a successful revolution without danger of a counter-revolution or degeneration.
+
By intellectuals, Gramsci meant the social function played by the class of thinkers in developing the basis for the "war of position."<ref>Gramsci 2007, 9.</ref> Intellectuals were not just political theorists, but those in education, media and other institutions within civil society. He distinguished between a traditional [[intelligentsia]] which he believed sees itself (wrongly) as a class apart from society, and the thinking groups which every class produces from its own ranks "organically."<ref>Kiernan and Millibrand, 83.</ref> Such "organic" intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules, but instead [[articulation (sociology)|articulate]], through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the masses could not express for themselves. It was the duty of the "organic" intellectuals to speak to the obscured precepts of folk wisdom, or common sense (''senso comune''). These intellectuals would represent excluded social groups of a society, what Gramsci referred to as the [[Subaltern (postcolonialism)|subaltern]].<ref>Kate Crehan, ''Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives'' Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0822362197).</ref>
  
Despite his claim that the lines between the two may be blurred, Gramsci rejects the state-worship that results from equating political society with civil society, as was done by the [[Jacobin (politics)|Jacobins]] and Fascists. He believes the proletariat's historical task is to create a "regulated society", where political society is diminished and civil society is expanded. He defines the "[[withering away of the state]]" as the full development of civil society's ability to regulate itself.<ref name=Sassoon3 />
+
The "organic intellectuals" and others within the working-class needed to develop alternative values and an alternative [[ideology]] to counteract [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] ideology. Gramsci called for a kind of education that could develop working-class intellectuals, whose task was ''not'' to introduce Marxist ideology into the consciousness of the proletariat as a set of foreign notions but to renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it natively critical of the status quo. This would lead to the creation of a [[working-class culture]] and a counter-hegemony.
  
 +
==Critique of Traditional Marxism==
 
===Historicism===
 
===Historicism===
Like the [[Young Marx|early Marx]], Gramsci was an emphatic proponent of [[historicism]].<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], pp. 404–407.</ref> In Gramsci's view, all meaning derives from the relation between human practical activity (or [[praxis (process)|praxis]]) and the objective historical and social processes of which it is a part. Ideas cannot be understood outside their social and historical context, apart from their function and origin. The concepts by which we organise our knowledge of the world do not derive primarily from our relation to [[object (philosophy)| objects]], but rather from the social relations between the users of those concepts. As a result, there is no such thing as an unchanging [[human nature]], but only historically variable social relationships. Furthermore, philosophy and science do not reflect a reality independent of man. Rather, a theory can be said to be true when, in any given historical situation, it expresses the real developmental trend of that situation.
+
Like the [[Young Marx|early Marx]], Gramsci was an emphatic proponent of [[historicism]].<ref>Gramsci 2007, 404–407.</ref> For later Marx and his followers, Marxism had discovered the truth of scientific socialism rooted in a metaphysical materialism which had turned [[Idealism]] on its head. The type of relations between workers and owners of the means of production was historically contingent but Marxism itself was considered scientific and thus not historically contingent. In this view, Marxism (or the Marxist theory of history and economics) did not belong to the "illusory" realm of the superstructure because it is a science.  
  
For the majority of Marxists, truth was truth no matter when and where it was known, and scientific knowledge (which included Marxism) accumulated historically as the advance of truth in this everyday sense. In this view, Marxism (or the Marxist theory of history and economics) did not belong to the illusory realm of the superstructure because it is a science. In contrast, Gramsci believed Marxism was true in a socially pragmatic sense: by articulating the [[class consciousness]] of the [[proletariat]], Marxism expressed the truth of its times better than any other theory. This anti-[[scientism|scientistic]] and anti-[[positivism|positivist]] stance was indebted to the influence of Benedetto Croce. However, it should be underlined that Gramsci's absolute historicism broke with Croce's tendency to secure a metaphysical synthesis in historical destiny. Although Gramsci repudiates the charge, his historical account of truth has been criticised as a form of [[relativism]].<ref name=Kolakowski>{{cite book |date=1978 |title=Leszek Kolakowski Main Currents of Marxism – Its Rise, Growth and, Dissolution – Volume III – The Breakdown |url=https://archive.org/details/maincurrentsofma00kola/page/228 |location= |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/maincurrentsofma00kola/page/228 228–231] |isbn=978-0-19-824570-4 }}</ref>
+
Gramsci does not explicitly reject the metaphysical materialism of Marx and Engels, but his belief that human history and collective praxis determine the ultimate validity of any idea meant that Gramsci's views run contrary to the copy theory of perception advanced by [[Friedrich Engels]].<ref>Friedrich Engels, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm Anti-Duehring], ''Work of Friedrich Engels, 1877''. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref><ref>Friedrich Engels, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm ''Dialectics of Nature''], 1873-1886. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref> and Lenin,<ref>Vladimir Ilych Lenin, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm Materialism and Empirio-Criticism], ''Lenin Collected Works'' (Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, 1972, Volume 14), 17-362. Retrieved January 5, 2022.</ref> In Gramsci's view, all meaning derives from the relation between human practical activity (or [[praxis (process)|praxis]]) and the objective historical and social processes of which it is a part. Ideas cannot be understood outside their social and historical context, apart from their function and origin. The concepts by which we organize our knowledge of the world do not derive primarily from our relation to [[object (philosophy)| objects]], but rather from the social relations between the users of those concepts. As a result, there is no such thing as an unchanging [[human nature]], but only historically variable social relationships. Furthermore, philosophy and science do not reflect a reality independent of man. Rather, a theory can be said to be true when, in any given historical situation, it aligns with historical development.
 +
 
 +
Gramsci believed Marxism was true in a socially pragmatic sense: by articulating the [[class consciousness]] of the [[proletariat]], Marxism expressed the truth of its times better than any other theory. This anti-[[scientism|scientistic]] and anti-[[positivism|positivist]] stance was indebted to the influence of Benedetto Croce. However, it should be underlined that Gramsci's absolute historicism broke with Croce's tendency to secure a metaphysical synthesis in historical destiny. Although Gramsci repudiates the charge, his historical account of truth has been criticized by Marxists as a form of [[relativism]].<ref>Leszek Kolakowski, ''Main Currents of Marxism'' (London, England: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, ISBN 978-0393329438), 228-231.</ref>
  
 
===Critique of "economism"===
 
===Critique of "economism"===
 +
Late Marxism was a kind of "economic determinism." Marx argued that history was driven by the struggle over ownership of the means of production. The proletarian revolution would occur when the contradictions within capitalism reached their "tipping point." In a pre-prison article entitled "The Revolution against {{italics correction|''[[Das Kapital]]''}}", Gramsci argued that the [[October Revolution]] in Russia had invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full development of capitalist [[productive forces|forces of production]].<ref>Anne Showstack Sassoon, in Tom Bottomore, ed. ''The Dictionary of Marxist Thought'' (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 221.</ref> Gramsci believed, contra Marx, that Marxism was not primarily a [[determinism|determinist]] philosophy. He believed that the principle of the causal primacy of the [[forces of production]] was a misunderstanding within Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which sphere has primacy over the other.
  
In a pre-prison article entitled "The Revolution against {{italics correction|''[[Das Kapital]]''}}", Gramsci wrote that the [[October Revolution]] in Russia had invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full development of capitalist [[productive forces|forces of production]].<ref name=Sassoon4>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Sassoon |first=Anne Showstack |editor1-last=Bottomore |editor1-first=Tom |editor1-link=Tom Bottomore |editor2-last=Harris |editor2-first=Laurence | editor3-last=Kiernan |editor3-first=V.G  |editor3-link=V. G. Kiernan| editor4-last=Miliband |editor4-first=Ralph |editor4-link=Ralph Miliband |encyclopedia=The Dictionary of Marxist Thought |title=Antonio Gramsci | date=1991 | edition= Second | publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd. | isbn=0-631-16481-2 | pages=221}}</ref> This reflected his view that Marxism was not a [[determinism|determinist]] philosophy. The principle of the causal primacy of the [[forces of production]] was a misconception of Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which sphere has primacy over the other.  
+
Gramsci saw the belief in economic determinism as a misunderstanding of the [[labor movement|workers' movement]] due to the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to defensive action. This doctrine was to be abandoned as a hindrance once the working-class became able to take the initiative. He understood the tension between Marxism's economic determinism which claimed with scientific certainly that the proletarian revolution was coming and the Marxist notion of praxis, which requires workers to exercise their free will and take social action. Gramsci believed that because Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, it cannot rely on unseen historical laws as the agents of social change. History is defined by human praxis. Once the consciousness of the working-class reaches the stage of development necessary for action, it will encounter historical circumstances that allow it to act.
  
The belief from the earliest years of the [[labour movement|workers' movement]] that it would inevitably triumph due to "historical laws" was a product of the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to defensive action. This [[fatalism|fatalistic]] doctrine was to be abandoned as a hindrance once the working-class became able to take the initiative. Because Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, it cannot rely on unseen historical laws as the agents of social change. History is defined by human praxis and therefore includes a human will. Nonetheless, will-power cannot achieve anything it likes in any given situation: when the consciousness of the working-class reaches the stage of development necessary for action, it will encounter historical circumstances that cannot be arbitrarily altered. However, it is not predetermined by historical inevitability as to which of several possible developments will take place as a result.
+
==Legacy==
 +
Gramsci anticipated many of the concerns of the [[Frankfurt School]] and the origins of [[critical theory]] and [[cultural studies]]. The idea of hegemony is used by political theorists from the center and the right as well as the left. His influence is particularly strong in contemporary [[political science]].
 +
 +
As a socialist, Gramsci's legacy is contested.<ref>Anderson, 6–7.</ref> For a time he was allied with Lenin and Stalin. He believed in revolutionary praxis. Although he argued that the revolution could only happen after the proletariat could create its own cultural hegemony, he actively worked for revolution. Togliatti, who led the Party (renamed as [[Italian Communist Party]], PCI) after [[World War II]] and whose gradualist approach was a forerunner to [[Eurocommunism]], claimed that the PCI's practices during this period were congruent with Gramscian thought. It is speculated that he would likely have been expelled from his Party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility to [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]].<ref name=Jones/>
  
His critique of [[Economic determinism|economism]] also extended to that practised by the syndicalists of the Italian trade unions. He believed that many trade unionists had settled for a reformist, gradualist approach in that they had refused to struggle on the political front in addition to the economic front. For Gramsci, much as the ruling class can look beyond its own immediate economic interests to reorganise the forms of its own hegemony, so must the working class present its own interests as congruous with the universal advancement of society. While Gramsci envisioned the trade unions as one organ of a counter-hegemonic force in a capitalist society, the trade union leaders simply saw these organizations as a means to improve conditions within the existing structure. Gramsci referred to the views of these trade unionists as vulgar economism, which he equated to covert reformism and even liberalism.
+
His ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the notion of [[critical pedagogy]] and [[popular education]] as theorized and practiced in later decades by [[Paulo Freire]] in Brazil, and have much in common with the thought of [[Frantz Fanon]]. For this reason, partisans of adult and popular education consider Gramsci an important voice.<ref>Peter Mayo, "Antonio Gramsci and his Relevance for the Education of Adults," ''Educational Philosophy & Theory'' 40(3) (June 2008): 418–435.</ref>
 
 
===Critique of materialism===
 
 
 
By virtue of his belief that human history and collective praxis determine whether any philosophical question is meaningful or not, Gramsci's views run contrary to the metaphysical materialism and copy theory of perception advanced by [[Friedrich Engels]],<ref>Friedrich Engels: [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm ''Anti-Duehring'']</ref><ref>Friedrich Engels: [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm ''Dialectics of Nature'']</ref> and Lenin,<ref>Lenin: [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/index.htm ''Materialism and Empirio-Criticism''].</ref> though he does not explicitly state this. For Gramsci, Marxism does not deal with a reality that exists in and for itself, independent of humanity.<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], pp. 440–448.</ref> The concept of an [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective]] universe outside of human history and human praxis was analogous to belief in God.<ref name="Gramsci, Antonio p.445">[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], p. 445.</ref> Gramsci defined objectivity in terms of a universal [[intersubjectivity]] to be established in a future communist society.<ref name="Gramsci, Antonio p.445"/> Natural history was thus only meaningful in relation to human history. In his view philosophical materialism resulted from a lack of critical thought,<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], pp. 444–445.</ref> and could not be said to oppose religious dogma and superstition.<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], p. 420.</ref> Despite this, Gramsci resigned himself to the existence of this arguably cruder form of Marxism. Marxism was a philosophy for the proletariat, a subaltern class, and thus could often only be expressed in the form of popular superstition and common sense.<ref>[[#Gramsci|Gramsci 1982]], pp. 419–425.</ref> Nonetheless, it was necessary to effectively challenge the ideologies of the educated classes, and to do so Marxists must present their philosophy in a more sophisticated guise, and attempt to genuinely understand their opponents' views.
 
 
 
==Influence==
 
Gramsci's thought emanates from the organized left, but he has also become an important figure in current academic discussions within [[cultural studies]] and [[critical theory]]. Political theorists from the center and the right have also found insight in his concepts; his idea of hegemony, for example, has become widely cited. His influence is particularly strong in contemporary [[political science]] (see [[Neo-Gramscianism]]). His work also heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly [[popular culture studies]] in which many have found the potential for political or ideological resistance to dominant government and business interests.{{citation needed|date=December 2014}}
 
 
 
His critics charge him with fostering a notion of power struggle through ideas. They find the Gramscian approach to philosophical analysis, reflected in current academic controversies, to be in conflict with open-ended, liberal inquiry grounded in apolitical readings of the classics of Western culture.
 
 
 
As a socialist, Gramsci's legacy has been disputed.<ref name=NLR />{{rp|6–7}} Togliatti, who led the Party (renamed as [[Italian Communist Party]], PCI) after World War II and whose gradualist approach was a forerunner to [[Eurocommunism]], claimed that the PCI's practices during this period were congruent with Gramscian thought. It is speculated that he would likely have been expelled from his Party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility to [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]].<ref name="Jones, S. Gramsci p.25"/>
 
  
 
===In popular culture===
 
===In popular culture===
 
+
* The '''Antonio Gramsci Battalion''' was formed on 9 November 1943 from captured [[Italy|Italian]] soldiers who wished to continue the war by resisting [[Nazi]] [[Germany|German]] forces in [[Albania]].
* ''Occupations'' – Gramsci is a central character in [[Trevor Griffiths]]'s 1970 play ''Occupations'' about workers taking over car factories in [[Turin]] in 1920.
 
* ''Gramsci – Everything That Concerns People'' – [[John Sessions]] plays Gramsci in the 1984 [[Channel 4]] film. [[Brian Cox (actor)|Brian Cox]] narrates.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b720b80b2 |title=Gramsci – Everything That Concerns People (1987) |website=bfi.org.uk}}</ref>
 
* ''Gramsci Monument'' – a project by [[Thomas Hirschhorn]] in honour of Gramsci; built in a courtyard of the Forest Houses housing projects in the [[Bronx]], [[New York (state)|New York]] by 15 residents in 2013. It included displays and artefacts from Gramsci's life in addition to lectures on Gramsci.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://observer.com/2013/07/thomas-hirschhorns-gramsci-monument-opens-at-forest-houses-in-the-bronx/ |title=Thomas Hirschhorn's 'Gramsci Monument' Opens at Forest Houses in the Bronx |author=Andrew Russeth |date=2 July 2013}}</ref>
 
* [[Scritti Politti]] – British [[post-punk]] band, named in honour of Gramsci. The name is a rough Italian translation of ''political scripts/writings''.  
 
 
* ''Piazza Gramsci'' – a central square, named after Gramsci in [[Siena]] in Tuscany.
 
* ''Piazza Gramsci'' – a central square, named after Gramsci in [[Siena]] in Tuscany.
 
* ''Via Antonio Gramsci'', the main road to the Central Train Station in [[Cefalù]], on the northern coast of [[Sicily]], [[Italy]] is also named after Gramsci.
 
* ''Via Antonio Gramsci'', the main road to the Central Train Station in [[Cefalù]], on the northern coast of [[Sicily]], [[Italy]] is also named after Gramsci.
* Additional streets named after Gramsci are found in the cities of [[Naples]], [[Turin]], [[Lascari]], [[Pollina]], [[Collesano]], [[Volterra]] and [[Palermo]].
 
 
* A major road going through the lower portion of Genoa, along the coast, is named after Gramsci.
 
* A major road going through the lower portion of Genoa, along the coast, is named after Gramsci.
* In an episode of the comedy ''[[Spaced]]'', Gramsci was the name of a dog that was trained to attack the rich. The dog was owned by Minty, a friend of Tim Bisley ([[Simon Pegg]]). One day Minty won the lottery and was attacked by Gramsci.
 
* In the [[Florestano Vancini]]'s film [[The Assassination of Matteotti]] (1973), Gramsci is played by [[Riccardo Cucciolla]], same as in the Lino Del Fra's [[Antonio Gramsci: The Days of Prison]] (1977).
 
  
==Bibliography==
+
==Major Works==
  
 
===Collections===
 
===Collections===
* ''Pre-Prison Writings'' (Cambridge University Press)
+
* ''Pre-Prison Writings''. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0521411431
* ''The [[Prison Notebooks]]'' (three volumes) (Columbia University Press)
+
* ''The Prison Notebooks''. (three volumes) (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0231060820
* ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks'' (International Publishers)
+
* ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks''. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1978. ISBN 978-0853152378)
  
 
===Essays===
 
===Essays===
* ''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1916/12/newspapers.htm Newspapers and the Workers]'' (1916)
+
* ''[https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1916/12/newspapers.htm Newspapers and the Workers]'' ''Avanti!'' (Piedmont Edition) December 22, 1916. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
* ''Men or machines?'' (1916)
+
* ''Men or machines?'' 1916.
* ''One Year of History'' (1918)
+
* ''One Year of History'' 1918.
  
==See also==
+
==Notes==
*[[Subaltern Studies]]
+
<references/>
*[[Subaltern (postcolonialism)]]
 
*[[Reformism]]
 
*[[Articulation (sociology)|Articulation]]
 
*[[Risorgimento]]
 
*[[Praxis School]]
 
*[[Liberation theology]]
 
*[[Antonio Gramsci Battalion]]
 
  
 
==References==
 
==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}
+
* Althusser, Louis. ''Lenin and Philosophy''. Monthly Review Press, 2001. ISBN 1583670394
 +
* Anderson, Perry. ''Considerations on Western Marxism'' (Bristol, England: New Left Books, 1976, ISBN 978-0860917205
 +
* Anderson, Perry. "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," ''New Left Review'' I(100), (November–December 1976): 5–78.
 +
* Boggs, Carl. ''The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism''. London, UK: South End Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0896082267
 +
* Bottomore, Tom. ''The Dictionary of Marxist Thought''. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0631164812
 +
* Crehan, Kate. ''Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 0520236025
 +
* Crehan, Kate. ''Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives''. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0822362197
 +
* Davidson, Alastair. ''Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography''. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2016. ISBN 978-9004326293
 +
* Femia, Joseph. ''Gramsci's Political Thought – Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process''. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0198272510
 +
* Fonseca, Marco. ''Gramsci's Critique of Civil Society. Towards a New Concept of Hegemony''. Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press, 2016. ISBN 978-1138486492
 +
* Germino, Dante L. ''Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics''. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0807115534
 +
* Gramsci, Antonio. J.A. Buttigieg (trans.). ''Prison Notebooks, Volume 3''. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. ISBN 0231139446
 +
* Gramsci, Antonio. ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks''. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971. ISBN 978-0717803972
 +
* Greaves, Nigel. ''Gramsci's Marxism: Reclaiming a Philosophy of History and Politics''. Leicester, England: Troubador Publsihing Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-1848761278
 +
* Hall, Stuart. "Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity," ''Journal of Communication Inquiry'' 10(2) (June 1986): 5–27.
 +
* Haralambos, Michael, and Martin Holborn. ''Sociology Themes and Perspectives'' 8th edition. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN 978-0007498826
 +
* Harman, Chris. [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=308&issue=114 Gramsci, the Prison Notebooks and Philosophy] ''International Socialism'' 114, (April 6, 2007). Retrieved June 24, 2021.
 +
* Hoare, Quentin, and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.). ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks''. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971. ISBN 978-0853152804
 +
* Jay, Martin. ''Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0520057425
 +
* Joll, James. ''Antonio Gramsci''. New York, NY, Viking Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0670129423
 +
* Jones, Steven J. ''Antonio Gramsci''. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 978-0415319478
 +
* Kołakowski, Leszek. ''Main Currents of Marxism''. London, England: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN 978-0393329438
 +
* McNally, Mark (ed.). ''Antonio Gramsci''. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. ISBN 978-1137334176
 +
* Pipa, Arshi. ''The Politics of Language in Socialist Albania''. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989. ISBN 978-0880331685
 +
* Ryan, Michael, Gregory Castle, Robert Eaglestone, and M. Keith Booker (eds.). ''The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory''. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ISBN 978-1405183123
 +
* Santucci, Antonio A. ''Antonio Gramsci''. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1583672105
 +
* Thomas, Peter. ''The Gramscian Moment, Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism''. Boston, MA/Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2009. ISBN 978-9004167711
  
==Cited sources==
+
==External links==
* Anderson, Perry, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," ''[[New Left Review]]'' I(100), November–December 1976, 5–78.
+
All links retrieved August 11, 2023.  
* Hoare, Quentin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell, eds. " Introduction" ''Selections from the Prison Notebooks''. New York, New York: International Publishers, 1971, ISBN 978-0853152804, xvii–xcvi.
 
* Gramsci, Antonio, ''Selections from the Prison Books''. London, England: Lawrence and Wishart, 1982, ISBN 978-0853152804.
 
* Kołakowski, Leszek, ''Main Currents of Marxism''. London, England: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005, ISBN 978-0393329438
 
 
 
==Further reading==
 
<!-- Inline citations to these books need to be added —>
 
*{{cite journal | last = Anderson| first = Perry | authorlink = Perry Anderson | title = The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci | journal = [[New Left Review]] | volume = I | issue = 100 | pages = 5–78 | publisher = New Left Review | date = November–December 1976 | url = http://newleftreview.org/I/100/perry-anderson-the-antinomies-of-antonio-gramsci | ref = harv }}
 
* Francesco Aqueci, ''[https://www.duemilaventi.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Il-Gramsci-di-un-nuovo-inizio-Quaderno-Agon.pdf Il Gramsci di un nuovo inizio]'',  Quaderno 12, Supplemento al n. 19 (settembre-dicembre 2018) di «[http://agon.unime.it/ AGON]», Rivista Internazionale di Studi Culturali, Linguistici e Letterari, pp. 223.
 
*{{cite book | last = Boggs| first = Carl|authorlink=Carl Boggs | year = 1984| title = The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism | place =London | publisher = [[South End Press]]| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-89608-226-7| url =}}
 
*{{cite book | last = Bottomore| first = Tom|authorlink=Tom Bottomore | year = 1992| title = The Dictionary of Marxist Thought | place =| publisher = Blackwell Publishers| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-631-18082-1| url =}}
 
* Davidson, Alastair (2018). ''Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography'' [2016]. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
 
*Femia, Joseph (1981) ''Gramsci's Political Thought – Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process''. Oxford. {{ISBN|0-19-827251-0}}.
 
*Fonseca, Marco (2016). ''Gramsci's Critique of Civil Society. Towards a New Concept of Hegemony''. Routledge. {{ISBN|978-1-13-848649-2}}
 
*{{cite book| last = Gramsci| first = Antonio| authorlink = | year = 1971| title = Selections from the Prison Notebooks| place = | publisher = International Publishers| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-7178-0397-2| url = https://archive.org/details/selectionsfrompr00newy}}
 
*Greaves, Nigel (2009) ''Gramsci's Marxism: Reclaiming a Philosophy of History and Politics''. Leicester. {{ISBN|978-1-84876-127-8}}.
 
* Harman Chris [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=308&issue=114 ''Gramsci, the Prison Notebooks and Philosophy'']
 
*{{cite book | last = Jay| first = Martin|authorlink=Martin Jay| year = 1986| title = Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas | place =| publisher = University of California Press| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-520-05742-5| url =}}
 
*{{cite book| last = Joll| first = James| authorlink = James Joll| year = 1977| title = Antonio Gramsci| place = New York| publisher = Viking Press| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-670-12942-3| url = https://archive.org/details/antoniogramsci00joll}}
 
*{{cite book| last = Kolakowski| first = Leszek| authorlink = Leszek Kołakowski| year = 1981| title = Main Currents of Marxism, Vol. III: The Breakdown| place = New York| publisher = Oxford University Press| edition = | volume = | isbn = 978-0-19-285109-3| url = https://archive.org/details/goldenagemaincur00lesz| url-access = registration}}
 
* {{Cite journal |last = Hall |first = Stuart | title = Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity |journal= [[Journal of Communication Inquiry]] | volume = 10 | issue = 2 |pages = 5–27 |doi = 10.1177/019685998601000202 | date = June 1986 |s2cid = 53782 | ref = harv }}
 
*{{cite book| last = Maitan| first = Livio| authorlink=| year = 1978| title = Il marxismo rivoluzionario di Antonio Gramsci | place = Milano| publisher = Nuove edizioni internazionali}}
 
*McNally, Mark (ed.) (2015) ''Antonio Gramsci''. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. {{ISBN|978-1-137-33418-3}}.
 
*{{cite book|title=Illustres. Vita, morte e miracoli di quaranta personalità sarde|last1=Onnis|first1=Omar|last2=Mureddu|first2=Manuelle|publisher=Domus de Janas|year=2019|isbn=978-88-97084-90-7|location=Sestu|pages=|language=it|oclc=1124656644}}
 
*Pastore, Gerardo (2011), ''Antonio Gramsci. Questione sociale e questione sociologica''. Livorno: Belforte. {{ISBN|978-88-7467-059-8}}.
 
*{{cite book| last = Santucci| first = Antonio A.| authorlink=| year = 2010| title = Antonio Gramsci | url = https://archive.org/details/antoniogramsci0062sant_no04| url-access = registration| place = | publisher = Monthly Review Press | isbn = 978-1-58367-210-5}}
 
*Thomas, Peter (2009) ''The Gramscian Moment, Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism''. Leiden/Boston. {{ISBN|978-90-04-16771-1}}.
 
  
==External links==
 
{{Commons}}
 
{{Wikiquote}}
 
 
* [http://www.gooristano.com/content/casa-natale-di-antonio-gramsci Monumento Casa natale di Antonio Gramsci, Ales, Sardinia]
 
* [http://www.gooristano.com/content/casa-natale-di-antonio-gramsci Monumento Casa natale di Antonio Gramsci, Ales, Sardinia]
  
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* [http://www.fondazionegramsci.org/ Fondazione Instituto Gramsci]
 
* [http://www.fondazionegramsci.org/ Fondazione Instituto Gramsci]
 
* [http://www.casanataleantoniogramsci.org Associazione Casa Natale Antonio Gramsci]
 
* [http://www.casanataleantoniogramsci.org Associazione Casa Natale Antonio Gramsci]
* [http://www.antoniogramsci.com/  ''Antonio Gramsci'', 1891–1937] {{in lang|it}}
 
  
 
===Texts by Gramsci===
 
===Texts by Gramsci===
 
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm Gramsci's writings] at the Marxists Internet Archive Library
 
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/index.htm Gramsci's writings] at the Marxists Internet Archive Library
* [http://journal.telospress.com/search?fulltext=notes+on+language&submit=yes&x=0&y=0 journal.telospress.com Gramsci: "Notes on Language"] - ''[[TELOS (journal)|TELOS]]''
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* [http://journal.telospress.com/search?fulltext=notes+on+language&submit=yes&x=0&y=0 journal.telospress.com Gramsci: "Notes on Language"] - ''TELOS''
  
 
===Articles on Gramsci===
 
===Articles on Gramsci===
* [http://journal.telospress.com/search?fulltext=gramsci&submit=yes&x=13&y=7 Articles on Gramsci] at journal.telospress.com
+
* [http://journal.telospress.com/search?fulltext=gramsci&submit=yes&x=13&y=7 Articles on Gramsci] ''journal.telospress.com''
* Trudell, Megan; et al: [https://web.archive.org/web/20070926224337/http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?s=contents&issue=114 "Gramsci's revolutionary legacy"], ''[[International Socialism (magazine)|International Socialism]]'' 2007, issue 117
+
* Trudell, Megan; et al: [https://web.archive.org/web/20070926224337/http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?s=contents&issue=114 "Gramsci's revolutionary legacy"] ''International Socialism'' 2007, issue 117 (archived)
* Robaina, Roberto: [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=162&issue=109 "Gramsci and revolution: a necessary clarification"], , ''International Socialism''
+
* Robaina, Roberto: [http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=162&issue=109 "Gramsci and revolution: a necessary clarification"] ''International Socialism''
 
* Jakopovich, Dan: [http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555 "Revolution and the Party in Gramsci's Thought: A Modern Application"]
 
* Jakopovich, Dan: [http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1555 "Revolution and the Party in Gramsci's Thought: A Modern Application"]
* [http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm  Gramsci's contribution to the field of adult and popular education] - www.infed.org
+
* [http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-gram.htm  Gramsci's contribution to the field of adult and popular education] ''www.infed.org''
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120204085704/http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm "The life and work of Antonio Gramsci"] - www.theory.org.uk (Archived)
+
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120204085704/http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm "The life and work of Antonio Gramsci"] ''www.theory.org.uk'' (Archived)
* [http://corkonlinelawreview.com/editions/2003/2003ix.pdf "The Whole Picture – Gramscian Epistemology through the Praxis Prism"] - corkonlinelawreview.com
 
* [[Chris Hedges|Hedges, Chris]]: [http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/antonio_gramsci_and_the_battle_against_fascism_20170604 "Antonio Gramsci and the Battle Against Fascism"] - ''[[Truthdig]]''. June 4, 2017
 
* [[Bob Jessop|Jessop, Bob]]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180713144626/http://bobjessop.org/2014/04/21/lectures-on-gramsci/ Lectures on Gramsci] (Four sessions with audio).
 
  
{{Italian Communist Party}}
 
{{Continental philosophy}}
 
{{Viareggio Prize}}
 
{{Social and political philosophy}}
 
  
 
{{credit|980662452}}
 
{{credit|980662452}}

Latest revision as of 05:41, 11 August 2023

Western philosophy
20th-century philosophy
Gramsci.png
Name: Antonio Gramsci
Birth: January 22 1891(1891-01-22) (Ales, Sardinia, Italy)
Death: 27 April 1937 (aged 46) (Rome, Italy)
School/tradition: Continental philosophy
Western Marxism
neo-Marxism
Marxist humanism
Main interests
Politics
ideology
culture
Notable ideas
Cultural hegemony
bourgeoisie as the hegemonic group
building a counter-hegemony to challenge capitalist power
war of position
the distinction between "traditional" and "organic" intellectuals
Influences Influenced
Karl Marx, Benedetto Croce, Francesco De Sanctis, [1] Giovanni Gentile, Niccolò Machiavelli, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Georges Sorel, Antonio Labriola, Amedeo Bordiga, Vilfredo Pareto Louis Althusser,[2] William K. Carroll, Stuart Hall, Edward Said, Ernesto Laclau, New Left

Antonio Francesco Gramsci (January 22, 1891 – April 27, 1937) was an Italian Marxist writer and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy, imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.

Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. His Prison Notebooks drew from varying sources – not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including Italian history and nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism, and Fordism, civil society, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture. The notebooks were Gramsci's attempt to address the problem that socialist revolutions were not happening in advanced Western societies as Marx's theory had predicted. Gramsci tried to explain theoretically why this problem occurred, and what could be done about it. It is expressed in his term "pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will."

Gramsci's theory centered on his concept of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain its position within capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie, in Gramsci's view, develops a hegemonic control on culture through its ideology, creating consent among the populace that allows them to govern successfully without resorting to violence, economic force, or coercion. Gramsci argued that hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "common sense" values of all and thus maintain the status quo, while hindering the ability of the proletariat to produce a revolution as Marx had predicted.

Life

Antonio Gramsci's many prison notebooks

Early life

Gramsci was born in Ales, in the province of Oristano, on the island of Sardinia, the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci (1860–1937) and Giuseppina Marcias (1861–1932). The senior Gramsci was a low-level official born in the small town of Gaeta, in the province of Latina (in the Central Italian region of Lazio). He was from a well-off family from the Southern Italian regions of Campania and Calabria and of Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) descent.[3][4] Antonio Gramsci himself believed his father's family had left Albania as recently as 1821.[5] The Albanian origin of his father's family is attested in the surname Gramsci, an Italianized form of Gramshi, that stems from the definite noun of the placename Gramsh, a small town in central-eastern Albania. The mother of Antonio Gramsci belonged to a Sardinian landowning family from Sorgono (in the province of Nuoro).[6]

In 1898, Francesco was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned, reducing his family to destitution. The senior Gramsci's financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in Ghilarza. The young Antonio had to abandon schooling and work at various casual jobs until his father's release in 1904.[7] As a boy, Gramsci suffered from health problems, particularly a malformation of the spine that stunted his growth (his adult height was less than 5 feet)[8] and left him seriously hunchbacked. For decades, it was reported that his condition had been due to a childhood accident—specifically, having been dropped by a nanny—but more recently it has been suggested that it was due to Pott disease,[9] a form of tuberculosis that can cause deformity of the spine. Gramsci was also plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life.

Gramsci completed secondary school in Cagliari, where he lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had made him a militant socialist. However, Gramsci's sympathies then did not lie with socialism, but rather with the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and miners, whose mistreatment by the mainlanders would later deeply contribute to his intellectual growth.[10][11] They perceived their neglect as a result of privileges enjoyed by the rapidly industrializing North, and they tended to turn to a growing Sardinian nationalism, brutally repressed by troops from the Italian mainland,[12] as a response.

Turin

University of Turin: the Rectorate

In 1911, Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the University of Turin, sitting for the exam at the same time as Palmiro Togliatti, head of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death..[13] At Turin, he studied literature and showed an interest in linguistics, which he studied under Matteo Bartoli. Gramsci was in Turin during the period of industrialization, with the Fiat and Lancia factories recruiting workers from poorer regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started to emerge.[14] Gramsci frequented socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants on the Italian mainland. His worldview was shaped by both his earlier experiences in Sardinia and his environment on the mainland. Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party in late 1913, where he would later occupy a key position and observe from Turin the Russian revolutionary process.[15]

Although showing a talent for his studies, Gramsci had financial problems and suffered from poor health. Together with his growing political commitment, he decided to abandon his education in early 1915 at the age of 24. By this time, he had acquired an extensive knowledge of history and philosophy. At university, he had come into contact with the thought of Antonio Labriola, Rodolfo Mondolfo, Giovanni Gentile, and most importantly, Benedetto Croce, possibly the most widely respected Italian intellectual of his day. Labriola especially propounded a brand of Hegelian Marxism that he labelled "philosophy of praxis".[16] Although Gramsci later used this phrase to escape the prison censors, his relationship with this current of thought was ambiguous throughout his life.

From 1914 onward, Gramsci's writings for socialist newspapers such as Il Grido del Popolo earned him a reputation as a notable journalist. In 1916, he became co-editor of the Piedmont edition of Avanti!, the Socialist Party official organ. An articulate and prolific writer of political theory, Gramsci proved a formidable commentator, writing on all aspects of Turin's social and political life.[17]

Gramsci was at this time also involved in the education and organization of Turin workers; he spoke in public for the first time in 1916 and gave talks on topics such as Romain Rolland, the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and the emancipation of women. In the wake of the arrest of Socialist Party leaders that followed the revolutionary riots of August 1917, Gramsci became one of Turin's leading socialists when he was both elected to the party's Provisional Committee and made editor of Il Grido del Popolo.[18]

In April 1919, with Togliatti, Angelo Tasca and Umberto Terracini, Gramsci set up the weekly newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo (The New Order). In October the same year, despite its division into various hostile factions, the Socialist Party moved by a large majority to join the Third International. The L'Ordine Nuovo group was seen by Vladimir Lenin as closest in orientation to the Bolsheviks, and it received his backing against the anti-parliamentary program of the left communist Amadeo Bordiga.

Among tactical debates within the party, Gramsci's group was mainly distinguished by its advocacy of workers' councils, which had spontaneously come into existence in Turin during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci, these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of organizing production. Although he believed his position to be in keeping with Lenin's policy of "All power to the Soviets," his stance that these Italian councils were communist, rather than just one organ of political struggle against the bourgeoisie, was attacked by Bordiga for betraying a syndicalist tendency influenced by the thought of Georges Sorel and Daniel DeLeon. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost alone in his defense of the councils.

The Communist Party of Italy

Julia Schucht with sons

The failure of the workers' councils to develop into a national movement convinced Gramsci that a Communist Party in the Leninist sense was needed. The group around L'Ordine Nuovo declaimed incessantly against the Italian Socialist Party's centrist leadership and ultimately allied with Bordiga's far larger "abstentionist" faction. On January 21, 1921, in the town of Livorno (Leghorn), the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia – PCI) was founded. In opposition to Bordiga, Gramsci supported the Arditi del Popolo, a militant anti-fascist group which struggled against the Blackshirts.

Gramsci would be a leader of the party from its inception but was subordinate to Bordiga, whose emphasis on discipline, centralism and purity of principles dominated the party's program until he lost the leadership in 1924.

In 1922, Gramsci travelled to the Soviet Union as a representative of the new party. There he met Julia Schucht (Yulia Apollonovna Schucht), a young violinist whom he married in 1923 and with whom he had two sons, Delio (born 1924) and Giuliano (born 1926). Gramsci never saw his second son.[19]

Antonio Gramsci commemorative plaque, Mokhovaya Street 16, Moscow. The inscription reads "In this building in 1922–1923 worked the eminent figure of international communism and the labor movement and founder of the Italian Communist Party ANTONIO GRAMSCI."

The Russian mission coincided with the rise of fascism in Italy. Gramsci returned with instructions to foster, against the wishes of the PCI leadership, a united front of leftist parties against fascism. Such a front would have had the PCI at its center, through which Moscow would have controlled all the leftist forces. Not everyone was happy about Moscow's potential supremacy. The socialists had a longer tradition in Italy, while the Communist Party seemed relatively young and too radical. Many believed that an eventual coalition led by communists would have functioned too far from the political debate, and would have run the risk of isolation.

In late 1922 and early 1923, Benito Mussolini's government embarked on a campaign of repression against the opposition parties, arresting most of the PCI leadership, including Bordiga. At the end of 1923, Gramsci traveled from Moscow to Vienna, where he tried to revive a party torn by factional strife.

In 1924 Gramsci, now recognized as head of the PCI, gained election as a deputy for the Veneto, the region around Venice.. He started organizing the launch of the official newspaper of the party, called L'Unità (Unity), living in Rome while his family stayed in Moscow. At its Lyon Congress in January 1926, Gramsci's theses calling for a united front to restore democracy to Italy were adopted by the party.

In 1926, Joseph Stalin's maneuvers inside the Bolshevik party moved Gramsci to write a letter to the Comintern deploring the opposition led by Leon Trotsky but also underlining some faults he perceived in the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti which they never completely resolved.

Imprisonment and death

Gramsci's grave at the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome

On November 9, 1926, the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws, taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini's life that had occurred several days earlier. The fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his parliamentary immunity, and brought him to the Roman prison Regina Coeli.

At his trial, Gramsci's prosecutor stated, "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning."[20] He received an immediate sentence of five years in confinement on the island of Ustica and the following year he received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment in Turi, near Bari.

Over his 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated. "His teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell."[21]

An international campaign, organized by Piero Sraffa at Cambridge University and Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana, was mounted to demand Gramsci's release.[22] In 1933 he was moved from the prison at Turi to a clinic at Formia, but was still being denied adequate medical attention.[23] Two years later he was moved to the Quisisana clinic in Rome. He was due for release on April 21, 1937 and planned to retire to Sardinia for convalescence, but a combination of arteriosclerosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, high blood pressure, angina, gout and acute gastric disorders meant that he was too ill to move. Gramsci died on April 27, 1937 at the age of 46. His ashes are buried in the Cimitero Acattolico (Non-Catholic Cemetery) in Rome.

Tenets of Gramscian theory

Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century, and a particularly key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory and educational theory associated with his name. His most important theoretical contribution was Cultural hegemony, which he describes as a means of maintaining and legitimizing the capitalist state. In addition to hegemony Gramsci was a critic of economic determinism and philosophical materialism within Marxism in favor of a philosophy of praxis rooted in an absolute historicism.[24] He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a "philosophy of praxis" and an "absolute historicism" that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.

Hegemony

Hegemony was a term previously used by Russian Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin to denote the political leadership of the working-class in a democratic revolution.[25] Gramsci greatly expanded this concept, developing an acute analysis of how the ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – establishes and maintains its control.[26]

Orthodox Marxism had predicted that the socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. According to the classical Marxist doctrine of base and superstructure, the ownership of the means of production was causal and the political and cultural sphere was an effect. Internal contradictions within capitalism would lead to revolution. The revolution in Russia buoyed that hope but despite the Great Depression, revolution in the West seemed a distant hope. Marxists had to wrestle with why the revolution had not occurred in advanced capitalist societies as Marx predicted. Gramsci was one of the first Marxists to develop a theory to explain this anomaly between theory and existing reality. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political/economic coercion, that is, through their control of the means of production, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "common sense" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeois state and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting against it.

To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. Lenin, representing the traditional Marxist view, held that culture was ancillary to political objectives, but for Gramsci, it was fundamental to the attainment of power that cultural hegemony be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests; neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this union of social forces a "historic bloc," taking a term from Georges Sorel. This bloc forms the basis of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re-produces the hegemony of the dominant class through a nexus of institutions, social relations, and ideas.[27] In this way, Gramsci's theory emphasized the importance of the political and ideological superstructure in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.

Gramsci observed that bourgeois cultural values were tied to folklore, popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these. He was impressed by the influence of Roman Catholicism and the care the Church had taken to prevent an excessive gap developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism and the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own experience.

State and civil society

Gramsci's theory of hegemony is predicated on his conception of the capitalist state. Based on his theory of cultural hegemony, Gramsci, contra Marx, does not understand the state as simply the effect of the cause - the relations of production. He divides it between the state apparatus - the police, the army, the legal system which the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control – and civil society composed of the family, the education system, and trade unions. These institutions commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere mediate between the state and the economy.[28] However, he stresses that the division is purely conceptual and that the two often overlap in reality.[29] Gramsci argues that the capitalist state rules through both force plus consent: political society is the realm of force and civil society is the realm of consent.

Under modern capitalism the bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere. Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in passive revolution by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change. For Marx, the nature of capitalist competition did not allow for such concessions. Gramsci sees examples in movements such as reformism and fascism, as well as the scientific management and assembly line methods of Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford respectively.

Gramsci argued that capitalist power needed to be challenged by building a working-class counter-hegemony. Gramsci saw the struggle with capitalist hegemony as a kind of war. He saw two options. One he labeled the "war of maneuver," the other the "war of position." The war of maneuver he defined as revolutionary power that is stronger than the state. In this case it can simply overwhelm the state, as in the case of pre-Soviet Imperial Russia. The Bolsheviks were able to win a "war of maneuver" in the Russian Revolution of 1917 relatively easily. However, unlike Russia which had a weak and crumbling ruling class that did not have genuine hegemonic power, in developed capitalist societies an alternate or counter-hegemony would be necessary. In the West, where the state was better developed and had control of both political power and ideological hegemony in civil society, another approach was needed. This approach Gramsci called the "war of position."

Drawing from Machiavelli, he argues that The Modern Prince – the revolutionary party – is the force that will allow the working-class to develop organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony within civil society. For Gramsci, the complex nature of modern civil society means that a war of position, carried out by revolutionaries through political agitation, the trade unions, advancement of proletarian culture, and other ways to create an opposing civil society was necessary alongside a war of maneuver – a direct revolution – in order to have a successful revolution without danger of a counter-revolution.

Despite his claim that the lines between the two may be blurred, Gramsci rejects the state-worship that results from equating political society with civil society, as was done by the Jacobins and Fascists. He believes the proletariat's historical task is to create a "regulated society," in which political society is diminished and civil society is expanded. He redefines the "withering away of the state" in Marxism as the full development of civil society's ability to regulate itself[28]

Intellectuals and education

Gramsci believed that a final "war of maneuver" was only possible in the developed and advanced capitalist societies after the "war of position" had been won by the organic intellectuals and the working-class building a counter-hegemony.

In the East the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the state tottered, a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed. The State was just a forward trench; behind it stood a succession of sturdy fortresses and emplacements.[30]

By intellectuals, Gramsci meant the social function played by the class of thinkers in developing the basis for the "war of position."[31] Intellectuals were not just political theorists, but those in education, media and other institutions within civil society. He distinguished between a traditional intelligentsia which he believed sees itself (wrongly) as a class apart from society, and the thinking groups which every class produces from its own ranks "organically."[32] Such "organic" intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules, but instead articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the masses could not express for themselves. It was the duty of the "organic" intellectuals to speak to the obscured precepts of folk wisdom, or common sense (senso comune). These intellectuals would represent excluded social groups of a society, what Gramsci referred to as the subaltern.[33]

The "organic intellectuals" and others within the working-class needed to develop alternative values and an alternative ideology to counteract bourgeois ideology. Gramsci called for a kind of education that could develop working-class intellectuals, whose task was not to introduce Marxist ideology into the consciousness of the proletariat as a set of foreign notions but to renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it natively critical of the status quo. This would lead to the creation of a working-class culture and a counter-hegemony.

Critique of Traditional Marxism

Historicism

Like the early Marx, Gramsci was an emphatic proponent of historicism.[34] For later Marx and his followers, Marxism had discovered the truth of scientific socialism rooted in a metaphysical materialism which had turned Idealism on its head. The type of relations between workers and owners of the means of production was historically contingent but Marxism itself was considered scientific and thus not historically contingent. In this view, Marxism (or the Marxist theory of history and economics) did not belong to the "illusory" realm of the superstructure because it is a science.

Gramsci does not explicitly reject the metaphysical materialism of Marx and Engels, but his belief that human history and collective praxis determine the ultimate validity of any idea meant that Gramsci's views run contrary to the copy theory of perception advanced by Friedrich Engels.[35][36] and Lenin,[37] In Gramsci's view, all meaning derives from the relation between human practical activity (or praxis) and the objective historical and social processes of which it is a part. Ideas cannot be understood outside their social and historical context, apart from their function and origin. The concepts by which we organize our knowledge of the world do not derive primarily from our relation to objects, but rather from the social relations between the users of those concepts. As a result, there is no such thing as an unchanging human nature, but only historically variable social relationships. Furthermore, philosophy and science do not reflect a reality independent of man. Rather, a theory can be said to be true when, in any given historical situation, it aligns with historical development.

Gramsci believed Marxism was true in a socially pragmatic sense: by articulating the class consciousness of the proletariat, Marxism expressed the truth of its times better than any other theory. This anti-scientistic and anti-positivist stance was indebted to the influence of Benedetto Croce. However, it should be underlined that Gramsci's absolute historicism broke with Croce's tendency to secure a metaphysical synthesis in historical destiny. Although Gramsci repudiates the charge, his historical account of truth has been criticized by Marxists as a form of relativism.[38]

Critique of "economism"

Late Marxism was a kind of "economic determinism." Marx argued that history was driven by the struggle over ownership of the means of production. The proletarian revolution would occur when the contradictions within capitalism reached their "tipping point." In a pre-prison article entitled "The Revolution against Das Kapital", Gramsci argued that the October Revolution in Russia had invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full development of capitalist forces of production.[39] Gramsci believed, contra Marx, that Marxism was not primarily a determinist philosophy. He believed that the principle of the causal primacy of the forces of production was a misunderstanding within Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which sphere has primacy over the other.

Gramsci saw the belief in economic determinism as a misunderstanding of the workers' movement due to the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to defensive action. This doctrine was to be abandoned as a hindrance once the working-class became able to take the initiative. He understood the tension between Marxism's economic determinism which claimed with scientific certainly that the proletarian revolution was coming and the Marxist notion of praxis, which requires workers to exercise their free will and take social action. Gramsci believed that because Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, it cannot rely on unseen historical laws as the agents of social change. History is defined by human praxis. Once the consciousness of the working-class reaches the stage of development necessary for action, it will encounter historical circumstances that allow it to act.

Legacy

Gramsci anticipated many of the concerns of the Frankfurt School and the origins of critical theory and cultural studies. The idea of hegemony is used by political theorists from the center and the right as well as the left. His influence is particularly strong in contemporary political science.

As a socialist, Gramsci's legacy is contested.[40] For a time he was allied with Lenin and Stalin. He believed in revolutionary praxis. Although he argued that the revolution could only happen after the proletariat could create its own cultural hegemony, he actively worked for revolution. Togliatti, who led the Party (renamed as Italian Communist Party, PCI) after World War II and whose gradualist approach was a forerunner to Eurocommunism, claimed that the PCI's practices during this period were congruent with Gramscian thought. It is speculated that he would likely have been expelled from his Party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility to Stalin.[22]

His ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the notion of critical pedagogy and popular education as theorized and practiced in later decades by Paulo Freire in Brazil, and have much in common with the thought of Frantz Fanon. For this reason, partisans of adult and popular education consider Gramsci an important voice.[41]

In popular culture

  • The Antonio Gramsci Battalion was formed on 9 November 1943 from captured Italian soldiers who wished to continue the war by resisting Nazi German forces in Albania.
  • Piazza Gramsci – a central square, named after Gramsci in Siena in Tuscany.
  • Via Antonio Gramsci, the main road to the Central Train Station in Cefalù, on the northern coast of Sicily, Italy is also named after Gramsci.
  • A major road going through the lower portion of Genoa, along the coast, is named after Gramsci.

Major Works

Collections

  • Pre-Prison Writings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN 978-0521411431
  • The Prison Notebooks. (three volumes) (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0231060820
  • Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1978. ISBN 978-0853152378)

Essays

  • Newspapers and the Workers Avanti! (Piedmont Edition) December 22, 1916. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
  • Men or machines? 1916.
  • One Year of History 1918.

Notes

  1. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (Bristol, England: New Left Books, 1976, ISBN 978-0860917205), 57.
  2. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy (Monthly Review Press, 2001, ISBN 1583670394).
  3. IGSN 9 – Nuove notizie sulla famiglia paterna di Gramsci International Gramsci Society Newsletter 9 (March, 1999): 40-41. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  4. Italiani di origine albanese che si sono distinti nei secoli: Antonio Gramsci Il Torinese. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  5. Arshi Pipa, The politics of language in socialist Albania (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989, ISBN 978-0880331685), 234.
  6. Dante L. Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0807115534), 157.
  7. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.), "Introduction" Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971, ISBN 978-0853152804), xviii–xix.
  8. Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0520236025), 14.
  9. Daniel M. Markowicz, "Gramsci, Antonio," in The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, ed. Michael Ryan, Gregory Castle, Robert Eaglestone, and M. Keith Booker (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, ISBN 978-1405183123).
  10. Hoare and Smith, xix.
  11. Nicki Lisa Cole, Biography of Antonio Gramsci ThoughtCo, August 14, 2019. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  12. Stuart Hall, "Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity," Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2), June 1986, 5-27.
  13. Hoare and Smith, xx.
  14. Hoare and Smith, xxv.
  15. Gian Luigi Deiana, "The Legacy of Antonio Gramsci," Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, June 23, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  16. Hoare and Smith, xxi.
  17. Hoare and Smith, xxx.
  18. Hoare and Smith, xxx–xxxi.
  19. Crehan, 17.
  20. Hoare and Smith, lxxxix.
  21. Hoare and Smith, xcii.
  22. 22.0 22.1 Steven J. Jones, Gramsci (Abington, UK: Routledge, 2006, ISBN 0415319471), 25.
  23. Hoare and Smith, xciii-xciv.
  24. Michael Haralambos and Martin Holborn, Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th edition (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013, ISBN 978-0007498826), 597–598.
  25. Perry Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," New Left Review I(100), November–December 1976, 15-17.
  26. Anderson, 20.
  27. Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Hegemony" in Tom Bottomore, ed. The Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 230.
  28. 28.0 28.1 Anne Showstack Sassoon, "Civil Society," in Tom Bottomore, ed. The Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 83.
  29. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Volume 3 trans. J.A. Buttigieg. (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 0231139446), 160.
  30. Gramsci 2007, 169.
  31. Gramsci 2007, 9.
  32. Kiernan and Millibrand, 83.
  33. Kate Crehan, Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0822362197).
  34. Gramsci 2007, 404–407.
  35. Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duehring, Work of Friedrich Engels, 1877. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  36. Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1873-1886. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  37. Vladimir Ilych Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Lenin Collected Works (Moscow, Russia: Progress Publishers, 1972, Volume 14), 17-362. Retrieved January 5, 2022.
  38. Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism (London, England: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, ISBN 978-0393329438), 228-231.
  39. Anne Showstack Sassoon, in Tom Bottomore, ed. The Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1992, ISBN 0631164812), 221.
  40. Anderson, 6–7.
  41. Peter Mayo, "Antonio Gramsci and his Relevance for the Education of Adults," Educational Philosophy & Theory 40(3) (June 2008): 418–435.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy. Monthly Review Press, 2001. ISBN 1583670394
  • Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism (Bristol, England: New Left Books, 1976, ISBN 978-0860917205
  • Anderson, Perry. "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci," New Left Review I(100), (November–December 1976): 5–78.
  • Boggs, Carl. The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism. London, UK: South End Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0896082267
  • Bottomore, Tom. The Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0631164812
  • Crehan, Kate. Gramsci, Culture, and Anthropology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 0520236025
  • Crehan, Kate. Gramsci's Common Sense: Inequality and Its Narratives. Raleigh, NC: Duke University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0822362197
  • Davidson, Alastair. Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2016. ISBN 978-9004326293
  • Femia, Joseph. Gramsci's Political Thought – Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN 0198272510
  • Fonseca, Marco. Gramsci's Critique of Civil Society. Towards a New Concept of Hegemony. Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press, 2016. ISBN 978-1138486492
  • Germino, Dante L. Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990. ISBN 978-0807115534
  • Gramsci, Antonio. J.A. Buttigieg (trans.). Prison Notebooks, Volume 3. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007. ISBN 0231139446
  • Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971. ISBN 978-0717803972
  • Greaves, Nigel. Gramsci's Marxism: Reclaiming a Philosophy of History and Politics. Leicester, England: Troubador Publsihing Ltd., 2009. ISBN 978-1848761278
  • Hall, Stuart. "Gramsci's relevance for the study of race and ethnicity," Journal of Communication Inquiry 10(2) (June 1986): 5–27.
  • Haralambos, Michael, and Martin Holborn. Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th edition. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013. ISBN 978-0007498826
  • Harman, Chris. Gramsci, the Prison Notebooks and Philosophy International Socialism 114, (April 6, 2007). Retrieved June 24, 2021.
  • Hoare, Quentin, and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds.). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971. ISBN 978-0853152804
  • Jay, Martin. Marxism and Totality: The Adventures of a Concept from Lukacs to Habermas. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986. ISBN 978-0520057425
  • Joll, James. Antonio Gramsci. New York, NY, Viking Press, 1977, ISBN 978-0670129423
  • Jones, Steven J. Antonio Gramsci. Routledge, 2006. ISBN 978-0415319478
  • Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. London, England: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. ISBN 978-0393329438
  • McNally, Mark (ed.). Antonio Gramsci. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. ISBN 978-1137334176
  • Pipa, Arshi. The Politics of Language in Socialist Albania. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1989. ISBN 978-0880331685
  • Ryan, Michael, Gregory Castle, Robert Eaglestone, and M. Keith Booker (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. ISBN 978-1405183123
  • Santucci, Antonio A. Antonio Gramsci. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1583672105
  • Thomas, Peter. The Gramscian Moment, Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Boston, MA/Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Publishers, 2009. ISBN 978-9004167711

External links

All links retrieved August 11, 2023.

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Texts by Gramsci

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