Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci (UK: /ˈɡræmʃi/ GRAM-shee,[2] US: /ˈɡrɑːmʃi/ GRAHM-shee,[3] Italian: [anˈtɔːnjo franˈtʃesko ˈɡramʃi] ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, where he remained until his death in 1937.
Antonio Gramsci
27 April 1937 (aged 46)
- Cultural hegemony
- Americanism as Fordist
- bourgeoisie as the hegemonic group
- Organic crisis
- Passive revolution
- the subaltern
- building a counter-hegemony to challenge capitalist power
- Articulation
- war of position
- the distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals
During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory.[4] 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 the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, the state, historical materialism, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture.
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 wealth and power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci's view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. He also attempted to break from the economic determinism of orthodox Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist.[5] 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.
Life[edit]
Early life[edit]
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).[6] Francesco Gramsci was born in the small town of Gaeta, in the province of Latina, Lazio (today in the central Italian region of Lazio but at the time Gaeta was still part of Terra di Lavoro of Southern Italy), to a well-off family from the southern Italian regions of Campania and Calabria and of Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) descent.[7][8] Gramsci himself believed that his father's family had left Albania as recently as 1821.[9][10][11] The Albanian origin of his father's family is attested in the surname Gramsci, an Italianised form of Gramshi, which stems from the definite noun of the placename Gramsh, a small town in central-eastern Albania.[12] Gramsci's mother belonged to a Sardinian landowning family from Sorgono, in the province of Nuoro.[13] Francesco Gramsci worked as a low-level official,[7] and his financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in Ghilarza.[14]
Legacy[edit]
According to the American socialist magazine Jacobin, Gramsci "is one of the most cited Italian authors — certainly the most cited Italian Marxist ever — and one of the most celebrated Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century.", adding that the Prison Notebooks "allowed his unorthodox Marxism to spread worldwide."[65]
Gramsci's thought emanates from the organised political left but has also become an important figure in current academic discussions within cultural studies and critical theory. Political theorists from the political centre and the political right have also found insight into his concepts; for instance, his idea of hegemony has become widely cited. His influence is particularly strong in contemporary political science, such as neo-Gramscianism. 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 met with a mixed reception.[46]: 6–7 Togliatti, who led the party (renamed in 1943 as the Italian Communist Party, PCI) after World War II and whose gradualist approach was a forerunner to Eurocommunism, stated that the PCI's practices during this period were congruent with Gramscian thought.[66][67] It is speculated that he would likely have been expelled from his party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility towards Joseph Stalin.[41]
One issue for Gramsci related to his speaking on topics of violence and when it might be justified or not. When the socialist Giacomo Matteotti was murdered, Gramsci did not condemn the murder. Matteotti had already called for the rule of law and had been murdered by the fascists for that stance. The murder produced a crisis for the Italian fascist regime that Gramsci could have exploited.[68] The historian Jean-Yves Frétigné argues that Gramsci and the socialists more generally were naïve in their assessment of the fascists and as a result underestimated the brutality of which the regime was capable.[69]
Association football[edit]
Like fellow Turinese and communist Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci took an interest in association football, which was becoming a sport with massive following and was elected by the fascist regime in Italy as a national sport, and was said to have been a supporter of Juventus, as were other notable communist and left-wing leaders.[70][71][72] On 16 December 1988, the PCI's newspaper l'Unità published an article on the front page titled "Gramsci Was Rooting for Juve". Signed by Giorgio Fabre, it contained some letters in which Gramsci asked Piero Sraffa for "news from our Juventus". Even though those letters later turned out to be false, the article remains part of the Gramscian bibliography and triggered numerous reactions, including from Giampiero Boniperti, who on behalf of the club the following day told at La Stampa: "We are pleased to know that among our fans there have been personalities who have marked an era from the political, economic, and intellectual point of view. This shows that Juventus truly have something special, a charm that has never lost strength over the years." Gramsci's interest in football dates back to a 16 August 1918 article for the PSI's newspaper Avanti!, titled "Football and Scopone". Fifteen years later, he pointed at the degeneration of stadium cheering, which emerged with the advent of fascism and the consequent nationalisation of the sport that he said extinguished political and trade union commitment.[73]