Continental · 1891–1937
Antonio Gramsci
Italian communist leader who wrote his major work in Mussolini’s prisons
Gramsci argued that ruling classes govern less by force than by hegemony, a cultural common sense that makes their rule seem natural, so social change requires a long struggle over ideas and institutions.
Life and thought
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) grew up poor in Sardinia, won a scholarship to the University of Turin and was drawn into the city’s factory-council movement after the First World War. He co-founded the Communist Party of Italy in 1921 and became its leader. Arrested by Mussolini’s regime in 1926, he was sentenced to more than twenty years; at the trial the prosecutor reportedly said his brain had to be stopped from working. In prison, in failing health, he filled some thirty notebooks, and he died in 1937 just after his release.
Gramsci asked why revolution had succeeded in Russia but failed in Western Europe. His answer was hegemony: in developed societies the ruling class governs less by force than by consent, through schools, churches, newspapers and the “common sense” they spread, which makes the existing order look natural. Changing society therefore needs a long “war of position” in culture and civil society, led by “organic intellectuals” who come from the working class. Hegemony became a key idea in cultural studies, postcolonial thought and political science.
Works
Shaped by
1818–1883Karl MarxGerman philosopher, economist and revolutionary in London exile1469–1527Niccolò MachiavelliGramsci recast the revolutionary party as a “modern Prince”, after Machiavelli.Shaped
1935–2003Edward SaidSaid drew on Gramsci’s idea of cultural hegemony.born 1942Gayatri Chakravorty SpivakShe took the term “subaltern” from Gramsci, via the Subaltern Studies historians.Meanwhile, in other traditions
1889–1951Ludwig WittgensteinViennese-born Cambridge philosopher who overturned his own first philosophy1891–1962Hu ShiMay Fourth reformer who brought pragmatism to China1891–1956B. R. AmbedkarDalit leader, jurist and chief architect of India’s constitution1891–1970Rudolf CarnapVienna Circle’s great system-builder, later in Chicago and Los Angeles1893–1988Liang ShumingPhilosopher and rural reformer, called “the last Confucian”1895–1990Feng YoulanHistorian of Chinese philosophy and builder of a “new principle learning”On the record
Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks are dated 1935.
The atlas dates them by the end of writing: Gramsci filled the notebooks between 1929 and 1935. They were first published by Einaudi in a thematic selection in 1948–51, and in Valentino Gerratana’s complete critical edition in 1975, now the standard text.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Prison Notebooks” · International Gramsci Society, Concordance table of the Prison Notebooks