Gramsci, Antonio (1891–1937)

Abstract

Antonio Gramsci (born January 22, 1891; died April 27, 1937) was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (1921) of which he became Secretary in 1926. Arrested by the Fascists, he was condemned to 20 years of imprisonment, during which he wrote his Quaderni del carcere (‘Prison Notebooks’). These were published after the Fascist dictatorship had collapsed, and they had a great influence, first on the political culture of Italian Communism and later on that of the intelligentsia of the European left. He became famous above all for his theory of hegemony, aimed at the peaceful seizure of power by changing the way the subordinate classes thought and felt, and of the demiurgic role of the revolutionary party conceived as the modern prince. This theory, based on an original reading of Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto's sociological theories, was launched with the publication of the Khrushchev Report (1956). It was greeted as the main cultural instrument for freeing Marxism from Stalinist dogmatism and for establishing a Socialist strategy adapted to the specific conditions of Western societies. For several decades this made Gramsci's thinking the main theoretical point of reference for Communist intellectuals.