Gramsci, Antonio

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Gramsci, Antonio 1891-1937

Antonio Gramsci counts among the most influential thinkers of the Left in the twentieth century. Born to a family of modest means in Caligari, Sardinia, Italy, Gramsci’s early life was characterized by poverty, and for most of his life he suffered from poor health, which was worsened by his long imprisonment in fascist Italy. He died in 1937 after more than ten years in prison.

LIFE

In addition to poverty and work to support his family, Gramsci’s early years in Sardinia introduced him to socialist politics, as well as to the writings of prominent Italian thinkers of his time, including Gaetano Salvemini (1873–1957), Benedetto Croce (1866–1952), Giuseppe Prezzolini (1882–1982), and Pilade Cecchi, in addition to becoming introduced to the writings of Karl Marx (1818–1883). The beginnings of Gramsci’s entry into the larger spheres of Italian political and intellectual life can roughly be dated to the years 1911 and 1912, when after obtaining a scholarship to attend the University of Turin, he immersed himself in the study of linguistics, philosophy, and literature, and also met a number of individuals who were to exercise a profound impact on his life, notably the leaders of the future Italian Communist Party (PCI), Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964) and Angelo Tasca (1892–1960), as well as such intellectuals as Matteo Bartoli (1873–1946) and Umberto Cosmo (1868–1944).

His early academic promise notwithstanding, Gramsci dedicated much of his time after 1915 to journalism, becoming one of the most effective public voices of the Italian Socialist Party, from whose split the PCI was born with Gramsci’s active participation in 1921. In those years he wrote regular columns for the Turin edition of the newspaper Avanti! (Forward!), and in 1919 he cofounded L’Ordine Nuovo (The New Order), which became an influential review. During those years Gramsci was constantly active in workers’ militant organizing, and devoted much time to the factory council movement, in addition to giving talks to workers’ study groups on historical revolutionary experiences, including the French Revolution and the Paris Commune, as well as on literature and Marxist philosophy.

Following the split that produced the PCI in 1921, Gramsci lived for over a year in Moscow (1922–1923) as an Italian delegate to the Communist International (Comintern), returning to Italy after his election to the Chamber of Deputies in 1924 gave him temporary immunity from arrest. During that period he also became the general secretary of the PCI. His writings at that point show concern about the main issues of the moment, including the rise of Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) in the Soviet Union and the elimination of the opposition in the Comintern, as well as the “southern question” in Italy— namely the less developed status of southern Italy, its status as a colonial periphery of the north, and the need of the communist party for a distinct strategy to mobilize the agrarian population—and the relationship between workers and intellectuals.

THOUGHT

The bulk of Gramsci’s intellectual output, however, is contained in his Prison Notebooks, a large compendium of essays, commentaries, and letters written during his internment, which began to be published in piecemeal fashion by the PCI after World War II (1939–1945). It is these writings that reveal Gramsci’s distinctive contribution to social theory and Left analysis, even though they are colored by a certain cryptic style designed to maneuver around issues sensitive to prison censors. The most significant innovations in these writings include Gramsci’s thesis on hegemony, the role of intellectuals, and the status of the peasantry in Left analysis.

The notion of hegemony, in particular, was developed by Gramsci as a way to account for a deficiency in the revolutionary character of the working class, as well as to amend the economic determinism that had plagued Marxist analysis. In some ways, “hegemony” was Gramsci’s way of elaborating the actual working out of Marx’s famous dictum, “the ideas of the ruling class are always the ruling ideas.” In Gramsci’s formulation, hegemony accounts for how domination is exercised apart from coercion and force. The dominated classes or groups have their own reasons for accepting the ideas of a ruling class or elite, and such reasons are the ground for the spontaneous consent given to a dominant ideology by classes that are dominated by it.

This concept has obvious affinities to other terms used in the social sciences, such as unquestioned “common sense.” However, contrary to appearances, hegemony, even if taken as “common sense,” is not stable. It is liable to break down as the subordinated groups develop alternative ways of seeing the world, and as crises within established systems create room for precisely the emergence of alternative hegemonies. The key to this kind of transformation consists thus of cultural and political work in society, rather than simply revolutionary action. This is precisely what Gramsci meant by “war of position” (the long, patient work in civil society oriented to combating established hegemony), to be distinguished from “war of maneuver” (the revolutionary takeover in a society where domination is not complemented by hegemonic sway over society at large).

It was such an orientation toward questions of culture, consciousness, and active agency that also highlighted for Gramsci the role of intellectuals. He saw that intellectuals are crucial in articulating and disseminating the outlooks of the classes for which they speak, in a way that goes beyond the simple expression of economic interests. For the working class, an intellectual who fulfilled that role was not confined in Gramsci’s thought to a stratum of educated, revolutionary elite. Rather, the “organic intellectual” could also be a lay person whose expression of the specific ideology of his class originates out of his actual working life. This conception arises out of Gramsci’s argument that all individuals are intellectual in the sense of having and using an intellect, though not all are intellectuals in terms of their formal social role.

Finally, unlike many intellectuals on the left who ignored the peasantry while highlighting the role of the working class, Gramsci emphasized the need to address the “southern question,” especially in countries like Italy (and Russia) where the peasantry comprised a large proportion of the population. His cryptic references to the “subaltern” encapsulate this orientation, and suggest the need for the party to assimilate the work of the organic intellectuals of segments of the population that it had ignored.

These various dimensions of Gramsci’s outlook have insured him great influence over twentieth-century thought. Those looking for sources of inspiration in Marxist thought beyond economic determinism have turned to his work, as have media scholars who were interested in exploring how certain ideas disseminate more broadly than others.

SEE ALSO Hegemony; Marxism; Socialism