Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937)

Abstract

Gramsci sought to reconceptualize Marxism on a basis that avoided the economic determinism of the Second International (which also reappeared within the Communist movement after Lenin’s death). He rethinks the relationship between economic base and ideologico-political superstructure as that between necessity and freedom: the objective constraints imposed by economic relations provide the basis for a determinate exercise of collective will by a class that seeks to shape its historical circumstances through the conquest of state power and thus transform the very objectivity of the economic basis. This is what Gramsci calls catharsis – the transition from the assertion of merely “economic-corporate” interests to the “ethico-political” moment of seeking hegemony. The development of a Communist hegemonic project unfolds on the complex terrain of the superstructures, which embrace both political society (the state narrowly understood) and civil society (“private” institutions that arise from the needs of the economic structure but become the framework of associational life). Together political and civil society form what Gramsci calls the “integral state” on which secure class rule depends. Achieving hegemony, a synthesis of coercive domination and intellectual and moral leadership, requires articulating together civil and political society in a manner that begins to transform the integral state into an “ethical state” that functions as an educator.