## 1. Life and Political Activity


### 1.1 Sardinia (1891-1911)



Antonio Francesco Gramsci was born on 22 January 1891 in Ales,
Sardinia to a middle-class family of Albanian descent. Located in
Italy's southern *Mezzogiorno*, the island of Sardinia
shared the region's arid landscape, widespread poverty, and
fragile social hierarchies. Gramsci was the fifth of seven children
born to Giuseppina (nee Marcia) and Francesco Gramsci and spent
his early childhood near Cagliari, where his family had moved in 1897.
In infancy he developed Pott's Disease, a spinal form of
tuberculosis that was not properly treated and, as a result, he grew
up with a "hunched" back. He suffered frequent health
problems throughout the rest of his life (Davidson 1977:
22-23).



His father, a local civil servant, was suspended from his job in 1898
on politically motivated charges of corruption (he had supported an
opposition candidate in local elections) and subsequently sentenced to
five years in prison (Davidson 1977: 23-25). This brought years
of terrible hardship for the family, who relocated to the town of
Ghilarza. In 1903 the young Antonio--known as
"Nino"--even suspended his schooling to support his
family by working in a Land Registry office. On his return to
education two years later, following his father's release, he
progressed well. A reserved character but an avid reader with a strong
will, he entered high school in Cagliari, where he lived with his
elder brother, Gennaro. Gennaro introduced him to socialist
literature, and he began to read Italian critics such as Gaetano
Salvemini, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and Benedetto Croce, as well as Karl
Marx. Gramsci shared many Sardinians' deep resentment at the
shortcomings of the "liberal" state since its unification
in the nineteenth century, especially its protectionist policies,
which contributed to the South's cultural and economic
underdevelopment.



In 1911 Gramsci won a monthly stipend to support his studies at the
Carlo Alberto College at the University of Turin in the northern
region of Piedmont.


### 1.2 Turin (1911-1922)



Turin contrasted radically with Gramsci's southern upbringing:
it was an advanced industrial city, dominated by the FIAT car
factories and connected to wider European cultures. For some years,
Gramsci endured the precarious existence of an impoverished student;
his education was frequently interrupted by poverty, nervous
exhaustion, and ill-health. At university he studied philology, or
linguistics, and worked under the guidance of the socio-linguist
Professor Matteo Bartoli, who was drawn to Gramsci's native
familiarity with Sardinian dialect (see Ives 2004). Bartoli envisaged
Gramsci becoming a linguist. Studying in the Humanities,
Gramsci's own ambitions were, originally, to train as a teacher.
At university, he contributed to reviews with articles on Futurism
(SCW: 46-49).



Gramsci did not formally complete his university studies. He abandoned
education in 1915 and became a full-time journalist and socialist
activist. Joining the Italian Socialist Party (*Partito socialista
italiano*, or PSI) in 1913, he became involved in worker's
education. Two years later, he was offered a position as a journalist
for the Turin edition of the PSI daily newspaper, *Avanti!*
Already a contributor to the weekly *Il Grido del Popolo*
("The People's Cry"), he accepted the offer and
began writing political commentaries and theatre reviews under a
regular column, titled "Sotto la Mole" ("In the
shadow of the Mole Antoniella", a landmark in Turin, designed
originally as a synagogue, near to where Gramsci lodged). In 1917, he
co-published a single issue socialist cultural review, aimed at young
socialists, entitled *La Citta futura* ("City of
the Future").



The prospect of world war deeply split the Italian public and
political parties into "interventionists" and
"neutralists". The firebrand revolutionary socialist,
Benito Mussolini, came out for intervention against the PSI's
official neutrality. Entering the war, he hoped, would initiate a
wider collapse of the liberal order and ignite social revolution.
Mussolini was eventually forced out of the party. The young Gramsci
was also tempted by that stance and declared his preference not for
intervention but for an "active neutrality" that took the
war as a moment to prepare for radical transformation (SPWI:
6-9). For this milder resistance to the party's formal
position, he was thereafter treated with some suspicion by fellow
socialists.



Inspired by the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917,
Gramsci aligned himself with the "intransigent
revolutionary" faction in the PSI, urging it to pursue its
"maximalist" program of radical transformation. He became
secretary of the executive committee of the Turin socialists and, in
the same year, took up the role of editor of *Il Grido del
Popolo*. In December 1917 he published "The Revolution
Against *Capital*" in *Avanti!*, and used *Il
Grido* to publicize news and commentary on events in Russia,
including texts by Lenin and Trotsky (SPWI: 34-7). He made
various efforts to organize a local proletarian cultural association
to galvanize political and economic struggles into a general
revolutionary project, although they did not take off.



After the war Gramsci joined with university and socialist friends to
found and edit a new review, *L'Ordine Nuovo* ("The
New Order"). Intended, initially, as a journal of
"socialist culture" it became a medium to discuss the
industrial factory struggles then underway in Turin. In *Ordine
Nuovo*, Gramsci presented a theory of a workers' state
inspired by the efforts at self-management by skilled workers (see
SPWI: 65-124). Spurred on by the workers' disputes and
factory occupations across the years 1919 and 1920, he published
writings by syndicalist thinkers, participated in debates, and set out
his own views on the potential for the factories to become the locus
of proletarian state institutions (see Clark 1977).



After the occupations ended in defeat, Gramsci aligned with the
communist faction of the PSI, calling for the party to be renewed as a
revolutionary organization. In January 1921 in Livorno, the communists
formally split from the PSI and established the Communist Party of
Italy (*Partito comunista d'Italia* or PCd'I). Led
by the militant, Amadeo Bordiga, the new party required rigid
discipline and had firm ideological roots in Marxist doctrine. Gramsci
was elected to its central committee and *Ordine Nuovo* was
transformed into the party's daily paper.



The PCd'I remained too small to have any serious impact on
events. Despite substantial success in the 1919 elections, the now
divided left were increasingly outwitted by the maneuverings of
Mussolini, and his "fascist" movement. Throughout 1921 and
1922, fascist "squads" terrorized trade unions across the
north of Italy, burning down their offices and sending armed gangs to
violently assault workers and peasants. In October 1922, Mussolini was
invited by the King to lead a coalition government, supported by
conservative politicians increasingly alarmed at the intensity of
social disorder and the prospect of a workers' revolution.


### 1.3 Moscow (1922-1923)



In June 1922 Gramsci was dispatched to Russia as the PCd'I
delegate to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (or
"Comintern") to participate in its Moscow conference.
Exhausted by the recent years of frenetic activity, he soon booked
into a sanatorium to recover his health. During that sojourn, he met
Julija Schucht who in the next year became his wife and, later, mother
to his two sons.



In Moscow, Gramsci was absorbed into the bureaucratic complexities of
international communist politics, negotiating with the Comintern over
the PCd'I's relations to other left parties. Events in
both Russia and Italy compelled Gramsci to reconsider his position on
party tactics. In November, the fourth congress of the Comintern
agreed that the PCd'I should fuse with the PSI (which, by then,
had expelled its own reformists and renewed its links to the
International). In truth, there was little enthusiasm among Italian
communists for this option and no real opportunity after Mussolini had
taken power. Leading members of each party (including Bordiga) were
being persecuted by the regime and detained by the police. From
prison, Bordiga circulated a draft manifesto openly rejecting the
policy of fusion, but Gramsci--increasingly concerned at
Bordiga's open divergence from the Comintern--refused to
sign it, arguing later that he had "a different conception of
the Party" (GTW: 197).


### 1.4 Vienna and Rome (1923-1926)



Gramsci relocated to Vienna in late 1923 to open the
PCd'I's Foreign Bureau and maintain closer links with
events in Italy. There he began to articulate a conception of party
tactics that contrasted with Bordiga's sectarian
inclinations--under which, Gramsci claimed, "We detach
ourselves from the masses" (GTW: 159)--and began organizing
a new leading group with his comrades from Turin. Gramsci sought a
United Front policy with other radical organizations and parties in
Italy to maintain a presence across the country--particularly in
the South--rather than simply await a crisis to hand leadership
to the party. This view brought him closer to the policy of the
Comintern. In Vienna he initiated the publication of a new daily party
paper, *L'Unita* ("Unity"), aimed at
an inclusive audience of "workers and peasants".



Gramsci was elected in April 1924 (in his absence) to the Italian
Parliament, which granted him immunity from prosecution. He returned
to Italy in May and took part in the PCd'I's clandestine
conference at Como. There he made clear his tactical differences with
Bordiga, although the majority remained aligned to Bordiga's
position. In the summer Gramsci took over the role of party General
Secretary (GTW: 321). The political situation in Italy continued to
intensify following the abduction and murder by fascist thugs of the
socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti and the subsequent withdrawal in
protest of opposition parties from Parliament. Initially, public
revulsion at the murder threatened to destabilize the regime but the
opposition gradually crumbled, and police harassment of anti-fascists
continued.



In January 1926 the PCd'I held its third congress in Lyons,
France. Gramsci's conception of party tactics finally won
substantial support from the membership. The so-called "Lyons
Theses", co-written by Gramsci and Togliatti, underscored the
urgency of adapting strategy to national conditions in Italy. With its
partial capitalist development, extensive agrarian sector, and the
precarious "compromise" between the northern bourgeoisie
and southern big landowners, the unified state lacked a substantial
popular base (see SPWII: 340-75). Fascism, they argued, merely
preserved the rule of these two classes by armed force and with petty
bourgeois support. The PCd'I, they continued, therefore needed
to build mass support among both workers *and* peasants so
that, when a revolutionary situation eventually returned, it could
exercise effective leadership. In the meantime, Gramsci underscored
the necessity of a united front with other democratic parties (SPWII:
406-7).



Concerned at the growing divisions within the Soviet leadership
between Stalin and Trotsky, Gramsci wrote a letter in October 1926
underlining the danger this split posed to Russia's leading role
in the communist movement (GTW: 369-76). However, Togliatti, who
was entrusted to pass on the letter to the Russian Central Committee,
did not deliver it for fear of causing greater friction.



Gramsci himself was now increasingly in danger in Italy where, despite
formal immunity, the regime increased its harassment of opposition
parties as it transitioned into a full authoritarian dictatorship. On
8 November 1926, Gramsci was arrested by the authorities and placed in
prison.


### 1.5 Prison (1926-1937)



To await trial Gramsci was transferred from Rome, via Naples and
Sicily, to the island of Ustica, where he was confined in a private
house with other communists (including Bordiga). In January 1927 he
was conveyed to Milan, where he was placed in isolation and underwent
interrogation. Permitted to receive books and write two letters a
week, Gramsci indicated some potential writing projects in
correspondence to his sister-in-law, Tatiana Schucht, who remained in
Italy during his imprisonment and became a vital source of support. He
suggested that he would like to write something "from a
'disinterested' standpoint, *fur ewig*"
("for eternity", borrowing a phrase from Goethe) (GPL:
45). He was visited by his Turin friend, Piero Sraffa (later a
well-known Cambridge University economist), who helped supply reading
materials and acted as an interlocutor with Togliatti.



Eventually, in May 1928, a special tribunal was held in Rome. Gramsci
was sentenced to 20 years, 4 months and 5 days in prison (but in 1932
the sentence was commuted to 12 years). The prosecutor had remarked
"We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty
years" (PPW: xxviii). Already in fragile health, he was
transferred to the prison in Turi di Bari, in the region of Apulia.
Later--and despite the prosecutor--he was granted a cell of
his own and permission to read and write. The first of his
*Notebooks* is dated 8 February 1929.



Life in prison was not easy. Gramsci's health continued to
deteriorate--he was badly neglected by the prison
authorities--and he suffered psychologically from his isolation.
Yet was he not entirely cut off from events outside. He received
visits from Tatiana and from his brothers, who (in addition to
servicing his study needs and advocating on his behalf for medical
treatment) passed on news concerning the PCd'I and the Russian
leadership. So, at least initially, he was not wholly unaware of
changing policies and strategic decisions. The Comintern's
switch in policy from 1928--the so-called "Third
Period": abandoning the united front tactic in favor of class
insurrection, on the assumption that a crisis in capitalism was
imminent, denouncing potential socialist and social democratic parties
as "social fascists"--contrasted with Gramsci's
position supporting alliances. Gramsci's criticism of this new
policy brought ostracism from other communist prisoners (Spriano 1977
[1979: 70-1]).



Gramsci's correspondence (like his *Notebooks*) was read
by the prison authorities and subject to censorship, meaning that
political references to outside events had to be muted or entirely
absent. Nonetheless, he kept in regular contact with his wife and
children (one of whom he had never met), and his mother. His letters
offer fascinating insight into his intellectual interests, personal
feelings, and health during incarceration (see GPL). He wrote stories
for his young sons and reminisced about his own childhood in Sardinia.
Initially, with other party members in the prison, he took part in
reading groups and political conversations. However, his declining
health over the years encouraged supporters to request his release or
transfer to an infirmary. Gramsci refused to agree to his own
conditional release if that meant renouncing all political
activity.



In 1933 he was finally moved to a clinic in Formia. He continued to
write but less productively and, after 1935, mostly correspondence. At
Formia he eventually applied for and was granted conditional freedom
(which enabled him to leave the grounds in the company of Tatiana). In
August 1935 he moved to the "Quisisana" sanatorium in Rome
where he received visits from Sraffa and from his brothers, and where
in April 1937 his sentence finally expired. By that time, he was
gravely ill. On the evening of 25 April 1937, Gramsci suffered a
cerebral hemorrhage. He died in the early hours of 27 April.



Gramsci's funeral was held the next day and his ashes were kept
locally until after the war, when they were moved to the English
Cemetery in Rome, where his grave remains. Tatiana retrieved
Gramsci's thirty-three handwritten *Notebooks*; these
were secured secretly in a bank until the following year when they
were smuggled to Moscow and passed on to the PCd'I (Spriano 1977
[1979: 133-34]).


## 2. Pre-Prison Journalism and Political Writings



Gramsci's overt "philosophical" references in his
writings prior to the *Notebooks* are sporadic and bound
closely to his responses to wider events. He wrote as a committed
socialist and revolutionary critic, albeit as an intellectual
skeptical of prevailing orthodoxies (influenced, arguably, by his
southern upbringing which made him something of an
"outsider" to mainstream progressive opinion). Like many
Italian commentators, he shared the view that the liberal
state's fundamental shortcoming consisted in a failure to build
popular and inclusive governing institutions. The task remained,
therefore, "to make Italians" (*fare gli italiani*)
as one critic put it, that is, to find a model of association to
culturally integrate citizens (see Bellamy 1987). This general problem
informs Gramsci's pre-prison writings as well as his later
account of hegemony (see Bellamy & Schecter 1993).



The period up to Gramsci's arrest was a dramatically evolving
context of social and political crisis in Italy and across Europe
generally. Gramsci earned local recognition during and after the war
as a biting, "serious" radical journalist. He was
acerbically critical of Italy's ruling elite and the
bourgeoisie's shallow moral sensibilities. For example, in 1918
he denounced the widespread use of cocaine as "an index of
bourgeois progress" and bemoaned the absence, demonstrated by
the Italian card game *scopone*, of a "concept of
'fair play'" proper to developed capitalist
societies (see PPW: 72, 74). From the early 1920s, by contrast, his
audience was primarily party members, and his writing was steeped in
the technical language of revolutionary communist analysis.



Despite this shifting register, several related philosophical themes
and influences can be discerned that characterized his thinking
throughout his pre-prison activities. These can be summarized as:


1. a "humanist" opposition to scientific positivism and
materialist determinism for its neglect of the subjective dimension to
human action. Here he was influenced by neo-idealist philosophers and
critics of the classical Marxist tradition, primarily Benedetto
Croce;
2. a radical insistence on the force of subjectively motivated
collective action, expressed as the formation of a unified moral will.
The most popular source of this view in Italy was the revolutionary
syndicalist thinker, Georges Sorel; and
3. a preference for collective self-liberation and a rejection of
authoritarian, elitist, or artificially imposed systems of rule. Such
views were common among radical critics of the liberal state and its
protectionist policies, such as the socialist reformer and analyst of
southern underdevelopment, Gaetano Salvemini.



These themes and influences combined in Gramsci's criticism of
the liberal political class and his promotion of socialism. Three
sequential phases of his pre-prison thinking can be distinguished: his
early cultural socialism
 (SS2.1);
 his post-war theory of the factory-based workers' state
 (SS2.2);
 and his later, developing reflections on communist party strategy
 (SS2.3).


### 2.1 Cultural Socialism



Gramsci's early writing was informed by the influential critical
framework of the neo-Hegelian philosopher Benedetto Croce. Croce had
denounced scientific positivism--prevalent among social
scientists and European Marxists--for its abstract, ahistorical
reasoning and emphasis on material "causes" in social
change. Positivism neglected the historically particular and
practically creative dimension of "spirit" (or
consciousness) which, beyond any political program, motivated all
social and cultural transformation. Croce invited a view of
Italy's political failings as the absence of a robust, unifying
culture--a secular civic faith--rather than economic
underdevelopment as such (see Croce 1914). He inspired numerous
"aesthetic" critics of the liberal state to understand
socio-political improvement as inseparable from free artistic
self-creation, the assertion of moral will, and the cultivation of a
shared "inner" sensibility.



Gramsci admitted later to having been "tendentially somewhat
Crocean" in his early writing (FSPN: 355). For example, he
endorsed the acquisition by workers of a "faith" based on
intellectual self-discipline and independence of thought, severely
castigating any tendency to passive "indifference" (SPWI:
17-18). Echoing Sorel, whose writings Croce had championed, he
presented socialism not as the outcome of historical
"laws" but as "an integral vision of life",
the adoption of an invigorating, moral consciousness to supplant the
failed bourgeois order (SCW: 22). In 1917 he welcomed the Russian
Revolution as the "revolution against Capital", viewing it
not as proof of Marx's economic theories but as evidence of the
practical force of a collective will (SPWI: 34-7). Later, in
1918, Gramsci offered his own idealist version of Marx, imagined as
"a master of moral and spiritual life" teaching the
proletariat to become consciously aware of "its power and
mission" in history (PPW: 57, 56).



This somewhat ascetic, pedagogic humanism distinguished the young
Gramsci from other socialists who appealed to historical progress or
invested in the slow, practical advance of trade unionism and
application of scientific reason. Gramsci regarded such appeals as
rooted in an elitist attitude aimed at bringing reform to the masses
from on-high. Instead, he endorsed a grass-roots self-organization
that underscored the integrity and moral autonomy of a uniquely
proletarian worldview. This placed him closer to other radical critics
of the PSI, such as anarchists and syndicalists who also looked to a
libertarian politics "from below" (see Levy 1999).


### 2.2 The Factory State



The first original initiative for which Gramsci became known was his
theory of factory-based democracy, which he promoted during the
so-called *biennio rosso*--or "two red
years"--of 1919-1920.



Inspired by the industrial unrest and factory occupations in Turin and
beyond, as well as by the new "soviets" in Russia, Gramsci
published in *Ordine Nuovo* various opinions and resources on
the topic of a nascent workers' state (see SPWI: 65-124).
His contributions took his earlier humanism in a more concrete,
practical direction. Efforts by workers to wrest the management of
production from industrialists--in part via "factory
councils", formerly grievance committees--instantiated, for
him, an initiative rooted in actual history, where a new moral
community was "spontaneously" expressing its own
independent identity beyond the limits of trade unionism. Focused on
the practical planning and control of material production, he claimed,
the occupying workers were not responding passively to abstract
historical laws or to the directions of their leaders but, rather,
acting as agents of their own self-creation.



Gramsci sketched a model of industrial democracy in which a new type
of state, based inside the factories, would replace the discredited
parliamentary regime. Free trade capitalism was exhausted, and trade
union organization had now reached its limit, he argued. Emerging
organically inside the factories were



> 
> 
> institutions which will replace the person of the capitalist in his
> administrative functions and his industrial power, and so achieve the
> autonomy of the producer in the factory. (SPWI: 77)
> 
> 
> 



Rather than administer over isolated citizens by separating public
authority from everyday life--as under liberalism--the
factory instantiated a new type of polity formed around the collective
material needs of production (see Schecter 1991). Gramsci envisaged a
participatory system of factory councils functioning in a hierarchical
democratic system through which workers would relay and manage the
practical needs of national life. Authority would be reconciled to
liberty, not opposed to it, as under liberalism. The atomistic
individual would give way to the "producer", an individual
already psychologically and organizationally oriented to the
collective through its role in the labor process (SPWI:
110-11).



Gramsci envisaged a system in which a communal identity had priority
over individual initiative. His was an "organic" model of
state in which all parts related to the primary needs of the whole.
This was a potentially illiberal system that assumed substantive moral
agreement among workers (see Sbarberi 1986). Some see here the
influence of the neo-idealist (and soon fascist) philosopher, Giovanni
Gentile. His radical philosophy of "actualism"--in
which the subject's inner conscience creates its own unified
world and community--supported the idea of the "ethical
state" (*stato etico*) in which public authority and
individual freedom, coercion and consent, were essentially
indistinguishable (Gentile 1919; see also Schecter 1990). Such
anti-liberal sentiments were common in the wake of the war and chimed
with widespread public disenchantment with elite-led parliamentary
politics.


### 2.3 Communist Party Strategy



By the end of the occupations in 1920, Gramsci had already begun to
shift away from advocating workers' self-liberation. For him,
the complete absence of political leadership from the PSI had
undermined the occupations' revolutionary potential. With the
formation of the PCd'I, he committed to a hierarchical,
centralized leadership and strict ideological discipline via a
Bolshevik model of the revolutionary party. This new position was,
arguably, less a wholesale *volte face* than a realization that
the PSI was culturally and organizationally incapable of responding to
the situation. Indeed, his understanding of the party's role
continued to evolve thereafter. Nonetheless, his thinking from here
onwards remained within a "Leninist" frame of reference
concerning revolutionary leadership, tactics, and organization.



What is notable about Gramsci's writings on party strategy in
the period 1921-26 is not that they offer a coherent or novel
political theory but, rather, that they show he was developing an
independent position that echoed fragments of his earlier thinking.
This involved: the rejection of "formalistic" reasoning
that neglected specific historical conditions; attention to the
Italian social structure and the distinctive, cultural-political role
of "intellectuals"; and the necessity of a mass-based
party that incorporated the southern peasantry. These topics were
central points of reference in Gramsci's mature thinking about
hegemony in the *Notebooks*.



For Gramsci, the critique of formalism underscored his growing concern
that the new party wasn't reading the "objective
situation" but, rather, imposing a rigid view
"deduced" from abstract principle (SPWII: 360). The
surprising success of fascism in mobilizing part of the populace
against the proletariat revealed just how intellectually and
politically unprepared communists had been. Gramsci now began to
underline the view that the received model of revolution--a
violent seizure of power in the midst of a catastrophic
crisis--needed to be adapted to conditions that had not applied
in Russia. As he noted in September 1926:



> 
> 
> in the advanced capitalist countries, the ruling class possesses
> political and organizational reserves which it did not possess, for
> instance, in Russia. (SPWII: 408)
> 
> 
> 



Economic crises did not lead automatically to political instability
because forces could be found to support the regime. In peripheral
states like Italy's, he observed, "a broad stratum of
intermediary classes"--middle classes of various
kinds--influenced the proletariat and the peasantry, steering
them away from revolution.



In his notes on the "Southern Question", written just
prior to his arrest, Gramsci also explored the neglected problem of
Italy's South, which he described as "a great social
disintegration" (SPWII: 454). He noted the influence of southern
intellectuals, such as Benedetto Croce and Giustino Fortunato, in
ideologically legitimating the liberal regime. Croce, especially, had
performed a "national function" by endorsing liberalism,
helping to prevent radical southern intellectuals from joining with
peasants in opposition to the conservative agrarian bloc. Although he
believed it unlikely in the short term, Gramsci argued the PCd'I
needed to develop its own supporting intellectuals if it was to
undertake an inclusive national strategy to overcome the agrarian
bloc.



Even within the constrained horizons of communist politics, then,
Gramsci was beginning to pose the question of revolution on a
different plane than others in the movement. The unplanned
interruption brought by his arrest and imprisonment permitted him to
explore many of these issues in much greater depth.


## 3. Prison Writings



Gramsci's *Prison Notebooks* (or *Quaderni del
carcere*) comprise around three thousand pages of thematically
organized essays, observations and comments, written between 1929 and
1935 (see QC). A number of his notes were revised over time, which
indicates they were not written randomly but conformed, in part, to a
plan. Recent research offers some clue as to the logic and chronology
of their drafting (see Francioni 1984). Nonetheless, the
*Notebooks* were not written for publication and, as a whole,
they remain fragmentary with no explicit guide as to how, or in even
what order, the contents might be read.



In his earliest letters from detention, Gramsci indicated various
themes that he hoped to explore, including Italian intellectuals,
comparative linguistics, the plays of Pirandello, newspapers and other
forms of "popular literature" (GPL: 45-6). Later he
listed more topics--including historiography, the development of
the Italian bourgeoisie, the southern question, common sense, and
folklore.



These cultural and historical headings may appear uncontroversial. But
they permitted Gramsci to develop his wider thoughts on the practical
and intellectual problems that had preoccupied him prior to his
arrest. That included: historical features of the Italian state;
theoretical concepts for analyzing the cultural and political
conditions of class domination; and the organizing principles and
character of a revolutionary strategy. Freed from the immediate
constraints of tactical decisions and their repercussions, Gramsci
drew on his humanistic training to extend and deepen his understanding
of these problems (see Schwarzmantel 2015).


### 3.1 Hegemony



The concept often regarded as the locus of innovation in the
*Notebooks*--and hence their philosophical
linchpin--is "hegemony" (*egemonia*),
signifying both leadership and domination.



Hegemony had been a common term in debates among Russian Marxists and
usually described the leading (or "hegemonic") role of the
working class over its allies in a political coalition. But it had
also been employed by Italian political thinkers in the nineteenth
century to imagine gradually building consent across the nation for
the new state--"making Italians"--rather than
relying exclusively on the exercise of force. Gramsci fused these
meanings to present hegemony as the general hypothesis that a social
class aims to achieve consensual domination for its rule by
progressively expanding its leadership across society (see Femia
1981).



This idea--with its potential for variation in empirical focus
and application--was developed across different notes and topics,
sometimes as a methodological device to analyze historical situations,
at other times alongside different concepts to make strategic
observations. But it also functioned more broadly as a philosophical
horizon highlighting the inseparability of thought and action,
signaling that all intellectual enquiries were unavoidably implicated
in the formation of an integral "way of life". Focusing on
hegemony permits us to appreciate the *Notebooks* as a unified
intellectual project, despite their disparate themes and contrasting
accents.



The major themes of Gramsci's ideas concerning hegemony are
explored below, starting with his "sociological"
observations on the state, intellectuals, and ideology
 (SS3.2-4),
 and then looking at his theoretical reconstruction of Marxist
philosophy
 (SS3.5),
 and his observations concerning the revolutionary party
 (SS3.6).


### 3.2 State and Civil Society



Gramsci's discussion of hegemony hinged, in part, on the
empirical observation that capitalist rule in developed western
states, increasingly, is founded on the generation of consent across
civil society, not solely on the deployment of coercion via the army,
police or law courts.



Expanding on his suggestion from 1926 (see
 SS2.3
 above) that the ruling class had available to it "political and
organizational reserves", Gramsci now argued that modern states
since the mid-nineteenth century have tended to cultivate consensual
support--or hegemony--across civil society such that
coercion, or its threat, was no longer the primary form of rule,
except in "moments of crisis of command and direction when
spontaneous consent has failed" (SPN: 220-21).



Gramsci drew on a distinction, common in Italian political thought,
between "force" and "consent". Hegemony
referred to consent, although this was understood usually to be
balanced with force. Modern states aimed to absorb threats to their
power by winning over potentially hostile social groups and classes,
compromising the immediate interests of the dominant class to maintain
general support. Such efforts may often be fragile or limited, but
that basic condition fundamentally altered the terrain of political
contest. States could not be reduced to mere administrative units of
executive authority--that is, to a separate "political
society"--but were intertwined with a "sturdy
structure of civil society"--schools, churches,
"private associations", newspapers, intellectuals and so
on (SPN: 238). Unlike in Russia--where state power was strong and
civil society weak ("primordial and
gelatinous")--modern states utilize the
"trenches" of civil society by exercising "civil
hegemony" (SPN: 243). This protected them from the threats to
their rule caused by economic crises or civil disruption.



The state, then, was a complex structure combining both force and
consent: it was both the instrument by which a ruling class maintained
its dominance over society *and* the medium through which it
undertook a "civilising activity", functioning as an
"ethical state" or "educator" by promoting
"a certain way of life" for its citizens (SPN: 247; see
also SPN: 12). At one point Gramsci formulated this as "State =
political society + civil society (in other words hegemony protected
by the armour of coercion)", or what he also called an
"integral" conception of the state.



Gramsci's remarks elaborated his earlier rejection of an
exclusively insurrectionary model of revolution. In the
*Notebooks* he was further suggesting that hegemony described a
general condition applicable to both bourgeois and proletarian forms
of rule. Revolutionary transformation--for *any*
class--cannot be focused exclusively on the seizure of coercive
and bureaucratic power but must engage the state's wider system
of defenses. He referred to this in the military terms that had become
commonplace after the First World War as a switch from a "war of
manoeuvre"--a direct and violent assault on the forces of
the state--to a "war of position"--the gradual
winning of tactical strongholds (SPN: 238-39). A revolutionary
project, he suggested, must first build consent across civil society
*before* taking formal power (SPN: 57). That did not mean that
coercion would *never* be necessary, only that its status was
diminished in modern states.



Understanding variations in the exercise of hegemony required a
political analysis attuned to the "equilibrium" of force
and consent at any conjuncture. In place of the common Marxist
division of economic "structure" and
"superstructure", Gramsci proposed the concept of a
"historical bloc" (*blocco storico*). This was a
composite of distinct class and social forces joined politically and
culturally under a specific form of hegemony (SPN: 137). Additionally,
it was possible to gauge the extent to which a class had sacrificed
its "economic corporate" interests in expanding its
leadership across civil society (SPN: 161). Empirical analysis of
hegemony would assess the "relations of forces" that
combined structures and superstructures in a historical situation
(SPN: 181-85; for a discussion, see Bellamy & Schecter 1993:
ch. 6).



Gramsci explored various historical examples and concepts of political
rule in the *Notebooks*. In extensive notes on the Italian
Risorgimento (the period of state building in the nineteenth century)
he highlighted the failure of the northern bourgeoisie to develop an
extensive hegemonic leadership by incorporating
"subaltern" social classes in the South (see SPN:
52-120). He borrowed the concept of "passive
revolution" to describe this situation in which a change in
economic structure occurs but without a radical political
transformation; this was a concept he also suggested could describe
Fascism (SPN: 105-20).


### 3.3 The Theory of Intellectuals



Intellectuals formed a major theme of the *Notebooks* and
developed Gramsci's brief observations on the topic prior to his
arrest. Intellectuals, he noted,



> 
> 
> are the dominant group's "deputies" exercising the
> subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. (SPN:
> 12)
> 
> 
> 



As such, they were key agents in the state's connection to civil
society.



To understand their role in organizing consent, he argued, it was
necessary to expand the concept of intellectual. Rather than refer to
academics or artists, who work explicitly with ideas, the category
comprised all those whose social function was to communicate with, and
educate, non-specialists (SPN: 9). Those undertaking the function of
intellectuals included industrial technicians, managers,
entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and scientists. Gramsci distinguished
between "organic" and "traditional" types:
organic intellectuals emerged from a specific social class and
functioned to elaborate that class's productive activity as a
set of general principles; traditional intellectuals, such as
philosophers or the clergy, were remnants of a former historical stage
who retained social prestige but no longer directly served a
productive class. Intellectuals were therefore rooted in material
relations of production but undertook the "critical
elaboration" of that activity into a "new and integral
conception of the world" (SPN: 9).



The construction of hegemony, Gramsci underlined, would require both
the elaboration of new organic intellectuals and the assimilation of
traditional intellectuals. He noted that his work with *Ordine
Nuovo* in Turin had already involved developing new forms of
"intellectualism" among skilled workers who constituted,
in his view, the organic intellectuals of a future communist society
(SPN: 9-10). In his notes on "Americanism and
Fordism", he explored this theme in modern rationalized and
mechanized production systems, still with little optimism that
proletarian organic intellectuals were ready to promote a new
worldview (SPN: 279-318). Notably, Gramsci devoted considerable
attention to an assessment of Croce, a traditional intellectual with
an unparalleled "role in Italian life" (FSPN: 360),
comparable "with that of the Pope in the Catholic world"
(FSPN: 469; see also SPN: 94-95).


### 3.4 Ideology and Common Sense



Gramsci's attention to intellectuals connected to his
reflections on popular consciousness and its practical organization
in, for example, religion, education, language, and folklore (see
FSPN: 1-137, 138-60; SPN: 26-43; SCW: 167-95).
Popular attitudes, he underlined--drawing on his linguistic
training--should not be dismissed but, rather, understood as part
of how ordinary people lived and experienced their world (see Ives
2004). They were also the medium through which hegemony was
exercised.



The tendency among Marxists to diminish "ideology and
politics", reducing them to an immediate expression of an
economic structure, was dismissed by Gramsci as "primitive
infantilism" (SPN: 407). Instead, ideology should be grasped as
a conception of the world that "serves to cement and
unify" human practice (SPN: 328). It had a lived
"psychological" validity that enabled people to become
conscious of their practical situations, however inadequately (SPN:
377). It was therefore important to explore and understand that
practical function. Gramsci did this in his remarks on "common
sense" (*senso comune*).



Common sense--popular attitudes and beliefs, frequently accepted
as "eternal" truths by ordinary people--denoted, for
Gramsci, a largely uncritical and "fragmentary" mode of
consciousness (SPN: 419). Consisting of superstitions and forms of
"folklore" concerning the nature of reality and ethical
conduct, common sense was a "philosophy of the popular
masses", often born from religion, that differentiated
"simple" folk from educated intellectuals. Its danger was
that it tended to invite resignation and passivity rather than
collective action. That was a problem for what Gramsci referred to as
"subaltern" groups--marginalized and subordinate
classes such as the peasantry and the proletariat--who, despite
periodic rebellions, never adequately challenge dominant classes (see
Green 2002). Yet, common sense thinking often had a "healthy
nucleus" in "good sense", that is, in the practical
and realistic attitudes that could be made "more coherent and
unitary" (SPN: 328) if joined to a systematic and critical
conception of the world. It was necessary not to dismiss common sense
thinking (nor the struggles of subaltern groups) but to critically
engage the "contradictory consciousness" of ordinary
people (SPN: 326)--that is, the tendency to hold beliefs
contradicted by actual conduct--and educate it.



Gramsci understood that educative task to belong to
intellectuals--not merely to advance a superior and abstract
philosophy but to work on common sense, thereby "renovating and
making 'critical' an already existing activity"
(SPN: 331). A hegemonic worldview had to connect to the
"simple" to become embedded in everyday life. The past
success of traditional intellectuals in this regard explained the
ongoing influence of the Catholic Church in Italy.


### 3.5 The Philosophy of Praxis



The *Notebooks* present an extensive critique of what Gramsci
saw as the prevailing orthodoxy in Marxist philosophy. Exemplary here
was the analysis by the Russian philosopher and economist, Nikolai
Bukharin, in his *Theory of Historical Materialism: A Popular
Manual of Marxist Sociology* (published in 1921), a text Gramsci
had utilized in party schools. Gramsci now rejected Bukharin's
treatment of Marxism as a deterministic science of society and used
his text as a foil to present an alternative account of historical
materialism that he labelled the "philosophy of praxis",
following the late nineteenth century Hegelian Marxist philosopher,
Antonio Labriola. Gramsci probably used Labriola's term to evade
the prison censor but, undoubtedly, it captured the primacy he gave to
practical, political questions in his approach to theorizing. He saw
Marxism as a philosophy aimed at critically engaging popular common
sense, laying the basis for a new hegemony.



The *Popular Manual*, as Gramsci referred to it, demonstrated
the worst of what he called "vulgar materialism" (SPN:
407). It reduced Marxism to a search for the causal laws of social
evolution and accepted, without reflection, the positive sciences as
the sole model of knowledge. It took up a speculative
"method" positioned outside of history to observe
supposedly "objective" mechanical regularities and to make
predictions about their development (see SPN: 425-40). This view
was mistaken for various reasons: instead of treating Marxism as an
original philosophy, it subordinated it to the natural sciences; it
failed to grasp the "dialectic" in Marxism, which
underscored the critical struggle against established thought (SPN:
434-35); and it separated thought from action, "science
and life", and therefore divided intellectuals with knowledge
from the experiences of "the great popular masses" (SPN:
442).



To remedy these defects, Gramsci argued that Marxism, or historical
materialism, be understood as a philosophy rooted in history, as an
expression of the practical struggle to rethink those circumstances
anew. As such it "contains in itself all the fundamental
elements to construct a total and integral conception of the
world" (SPN: 462). Thought and action should be understood as
dialectically intertwined in a developmental process that can
"bring into being a new form of State [...] a new
intellectual and moral order [...] a new type of society"
(SPN: 388). Historical materialism was not an abstract framework from
which merely to observe historical change; it was the philosophical
vehicle whose expansion into a cultural outlook aimed to bring about
that change (see FSPN: 395-96). Gramsci affirmed
Labriola's designation of Marxism as a "philosophy of
praxis" because it insisted on the unity of thought and action
(praxis)--and, through that, the gradual formation of an
autonomous moral and cultural worldview--as the guiding principle
of Marx's philosophy (SPN: 388).



Gramsci also proposed that Croce's idealism could be of
"instrumental value" to a renewed philosophy of praxis.
Influenced by Marxism, Crocean historicism conceived thought and
expression as entirely "immanent" to history, that is, as
responses to concrete problems, undetermined by any transcendent
scheme or teleology. Croce presented "liberty" as the
unifying ethical principle expressing this historicist sensibility;
the basis to what he conceived as a modern religion. Gramsci
acknowledged that Croce had



> 
> 
> forcefully drawn attention to the importance of cultural and
> intellectual factors in the development of history [...] to the
> moment of hegemony and consent. (FSPN: 357)
> 
> 
> 



Yet, he claimed, Croce also erased class conflict in his historical
writing, emphasizing only periods of liberal hegemony--the
consensual, ethical aspects of history and not the violence or
political struggles that ushered in bourgeois society, such as the
French Revolution (SPN: 119; see also GPL: 213-14,
215-16). By contrast, a philosophy of praxis would build on
Croce's insights, focusing instead on
"ethico-political" history--the socio-economic
divisions that bring, dialectically, a new culture into
existence--without his partial, liberal gloss. It would
vigorously critique received common sense beliefs, philosophies, and
hierarchies that prevented the advance of ordinary people (SPN:
330-31). Gramsci described the philosophy of praxis as an
"absolute 'historicism', the absolute secularisation
and earthliness of thought" (SPN: 465).



In rejecting the scientific model of knowledge in favor of a form of
historical consciousness, Gramsci radically shifted Marxism's
epistemological bearings. The measure of historical materialism lay
not exclusively in the immediate empirical "truth" of its
propositions or predictions but, moreover, in the cultural and
political efficacy of its overall intellectual and moral reform, which
enabled creative subjective engagement with objective conditions:
"it is a philosophy which is also politics" (SPN: 395). He
suggested that mass "adhesion or non-adhesion to an ideology is
the real critical test of the rationality and historicity of modes of
thinking", not just direct correspondence of theory to an
independent reality (SPN: 341); and that "prediction" was
not so much "a scientific act of knowledge" as "the
abstract expression of the effort made, the practical way of creating
a collective will" (SPN: 438). Gramsci compared the philosophy
of praxis to the Protestant Reformation in so far as its success
resided in generating cultural agreement to cement civil and political
unity (SPN: 395).



Gramsci was not suggesting that truth was *only* a matter of
shared agreement. The philosophy of praxis still aligned to the
foundational Marxist principle that social consciousness
"corresponds" to material relations of production,
knowledge of which was necessary for any practical effort. Marxism
therefore required "the critique of ideologies" which
"tend to hide reality" (FSPN: 396) and, in this, it sought
to bring thought and action into rational correspondence. But the
philosophy of praxis could achieve that only if it were grasped as a
form of politics, not an abstract science.



These comments are consistent with Gramsci's general line of
argument in the *Notebooks* on the strategic importance of
building consent prior to revolution. They indicate that such a
strategy was not a momentary, tactical initiative. It aligned with his
aspiration for a cultural transformation over the longer term. His
focus on the subjective, "superstructural" element of
class politics certainly put Gramsci at odds with more objectivist
accounts of Marxism, but it was far from an aversion to the reality of
"structural" and empirical constraints (see Morera 1990).
Whatever its shortcomings as a generalizable Marxist theory,
Gramsci's philosophy of praxis was in keeping with his attempt
to conceive revolutionary politics as the preparation of a
"total, integral civilisation" (SPN: 462; see Thomas
2009).


### 3.6 The Modern Prince



Gramsci still considered the agent of a revolution to be, by
necessity, a centralized and ideologically disciplined party. But now
he presented the party as the vehicle of a "total and integral
conception of the world" that, in advance of the revolution
itself, would organize across civil society.



The character of the revolutionary party, for Gramsci, could be
grasped by reference to Niccolo Machiavelli's treatise on
political leadership, *The Prince*. The figure of the prince
combined in one person both tactical calculation and an ambition to
lead the people in building a state (see SPN: 125). That image of
leadership, Gramsci continued, was later exemplified in Georges
Sorel's notion of "myth", that is, a motivating
ideal or "concrete phantasy which acts on a dispersed and
shattered people to arouse and organise its collective will"
(SPN: 126). Elaborating and diffusing "conceptions of the
world" was what modern political parties were designed to do
(SPN: 335). Gramsci's reflections on communist party strategy
were therefore formulated as a treatise on what he conceived as
"The Modern Prince" (*il moderno Principe*).



Drawing from the experience of the French Revolution, a modern Prince
(or revolutionary party) must present itself as the type of
"Jacobin force" which then had "awakened and
organised the national-popular collective will, and founded the modern
States" (SPN: 131). Its strategy could not be oriented
exclusively to the moment of revolutionary rupture but, moreover,
"to the question of intellectual and moral reform, that is to
the question of religion or world-view" (SPN: 132). The
party's aim was to realize "a superior, total form of
modern civilisation" rooted in economic relations (SPN: 133).
Yet the "national-popular" dimension required it to do
this by transcending the corporate interests of one class alone,
presenting its goals on a "universal plane": "thus
creating the hegemony of a fundamental group over a series of
subordinate groups" (SPN: 182). The party would lead by making
itself the repository of popular common sense, gathering the support
of allied intellectuals, and developing its own distinct worldview
built on the philosophy of praxis. Gramsci's conception of the
party's role, therefore, went beyond a temporary or mechanical
alliance of separate classes; it meant mobilizing a wholly new and
inclusive vision of modern society.



The modern Prince was to be organized in such a way as to maintain
contact with workers, but also to ensure disciplined leadership. It
would be a party of "ordinary, average men", with a
leadership "endowed with great cohesive, centralising and
disciplinary powers", and an "intermediate element"
to keep the two in mutual contact (SPN: 152-53). The party would
thus be a mass-based organization under firm direction. To ensure
"organic" discipline, Gramsci endorsed the principle of
"democratic centralism" whereby decisions would be open to
discussion by rank-and-file members. But, once taken, those decisions
would be unquestioningly obeyed. That way "bureaucratic"
rigidity would be avoided and



> 
> 
> there would be a continual adaptation of the organisation to the real
> movement; a matching of thrusts from below with orders from above.
> (SPN: 188)
> 
> 
> 



This hybrid of classically "Leninist" and mass-based
models of the party reflected Gramsci's concern to steer a
course between sectarian closure and reformist, representational
politics. Gramsci was not optimistic that ordinary members could
participate effectively without strong direction from a disciplined
cadre, however much he thought revolution would eventually overcome
the separation of leaders and led (SPN: 144). Hegemonic strategy
inevitably meant creating a new leading elite (SPN: 340) whose
superior philosophy would "in the masses as such, [...]
only be experienced as a faith" (SPN: 339). Although some see in
Gramsci's politics the basis of a radically democratic politics
(Sassoon 1987), his was not a particularly liberal conception (see
Femia 1981: 172-85).


## 4. Reception of the Prison Writings



Gramsci's prison writings were first published in Italy after
the Second World War: his letters from prison in 1947 (see GLP),
winning the Viareggio literary prize that year; and his
*Notebooks* in six, thematic volumes of selections between 1948
and 1951. A complete, "critical" edition of the
*Notebooks* (in four volumes) was published in 1975 (see
QC).



The distance in time since their drafting, and the fragmented nature
of the texts themselves, meant that the prison writings did not
directly address the new environment into which they emerged. The
meaning and implications of his thinking were therefore heavily
mediated by national and geopolitical concerns through which,
inevitably, the *Notebooks* were read. Over time--as his
writings became available and scholarship on his thought
improved--recognition of his distinctiveness as a thinker has
grown around the world. Gramsci's account of hegemony,
especially, has been a highly effective resource for cultural and
political analysis (see Martin 2022).



Where precisely did Gramsci's philosophical innovations lie for
his later readers? Over the years, different, interpretations of
Gramsci have tended to emphasize competing aspects of his thought as
its philosophical "core" (see Liguori 2012 [2022]).



The initial reception of Gramsci's writings was shaped by the
Italian Communist Party (*Partito comunista italiano*, or PCI),
particularly by its leader since the mid-1920s, Palmiro Togliatti, who
emphasized their significance for a renewed communist strategy. To
demonstrate allegiance to Stalin and the USSR, Togliatti presented an
"acceptable" version of Gramsci that suited the
PCI's cautious post-war politics. Selective editing of the
*Notebooks* downplayed overt conflict with Stalin, emphasizing
Gramsci's continuity with the Soviet philosophical orthodoxy of
"dialectical materialism" and a Leninist model of
revolution. However, following Stalin's death in 1953 Togliatti
underscored Gramsci's unique formulation of Marxism and his
continuity with native Italian currents of philosophy. This endorsed
Togliatti's own view of the PCI as a pragmatic, mass-based party
pursuing its own "Italian road to socialism"; operating as
a "collective intellectual" to mobilize the proletariat
and its allies in a uniquely national and democratic project (see
Togliatti 1979).



Now a canonical figure in Italian Marxism, Gramsci's reading of
history--particularly his view of the Risorgimento as a failed
bourgeois revolution--was called into question in the late 1950s.
In one notable debate, liberal historian Rosario Romeo disputed that
economic conditions could have permitted the nineteenth-century
bourgeoisie to act as a "Jacobin" force by mobilizing the
peasantry and other subaltern classes. Gramsci's reasoning (and,
by extension, the PCI's sense of its distinctive national
strategy) was premised on a moral and political, rather than genuinely
objective, interpretation of history (Liguori 2012 [2022:
121-23]; Davis 1979).



Although Romeo's critique was disputed by Gramscian historians,
from the 1960s, as more of his writings were published and
translations became available, Gramsci was increasingly read
independently of (and in opposition to) the PCI's strategic
concerns (see Mouffe 1979). His seemingly "heretical"
formulation of Marxist theory came to occupy his readers, especially
as regards his debt to Crocean historicism, his ambiguous relation to
materialism and to Leninism (see Bobbio 1979). More widely,
Gramsci's exploration of cultural and political superstructures
resulted in a tendency to categorize him as a "western"
Marxist, concerned less with economic conditions or coercion and more
with ideological barriers to class consciousness (see Anderson 1976,
1976-77). Hegemony was associated with a general theory of
cultural and ideological domination relevant to the critique of
consumer capitalism.



Through the late 1960s and 70s, as western states experienced economic
and ideological crises, Gramsci's analyses were applied
separately from communist strategy or philosophical idealism. Marxist
sociologists such as Nicos Poulantzas (1968 [1973]) and, later, Bob
Jessop (1990) found in hegemony a resource to explore the permutations
of the capitalist state and its shifting class coalitions. British
Cultural Studies--especially the work of Raymond Williams and
Stuart Hall--saw in Gramsci an inventive, "cultural
Marxist" framework for examining popular lived experience of
class domination. Debates over the functions of mass media and
populist ideology, particularly with the emergence of
"Thatcherism" in the 1980s, were uniquely attuned to the
dynamics of hegemonic politics suggested in Gramsci's writings
(see Hall 1988; Jessop et al. 1988).



"Post-Marxist" approaches to hegemony from the 1980s built
on the established popularity of Gramsci's thought, particularly
its application in the field of ideology studies. Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe's *Hegemony and Socialist Strategy* (1985)
recast hegemony as the theoretical basis to a strategy of
"radical democracy", aimed at unifying multiple and
diverse social struggles. Drawing on "poststructuralist"
philosophies, hegemony was conceived as a general principle of
"discursive articulation"--the contingent formation
of a collective identity--with no "necessary"
foundation in economic class. For them, Gramsci's core
philosophical insight lay in demonstrating hegemony's political
"logic", rather than any sociological concerns. They
sought to discard the residual economism in his thinking and thus the
automatic privilege granted by Marxism to class agency in hegemonic
politics. In their view, various hegemonic formations co-exist, and a
radical democratic politics does not require working class
leadership.



Gramsci's *Notebooks* continued to attract scholarly
interest after the demise of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of
the PCI. Recent approaches have been drawn, increasingly, to the
nuances and inflections in his analyses, often neglected in the
tendency to focus on "hegemony" and its relation to
Marxist theory. While the concept remains important, there is growing
appreciation of other themes in Gramsci's philosophy of politics
and their relevance to a variety of fields. His ideas remain a source
of insight for non-orthodox Marxisms (see Thomas 2009), and his
concepts have been extended to academic fields such as International
Relations and Global Political Economy (see Gill 1993) and to
socio-political contexts beyond Europe and the "West" (see
Morton 2007; Fonseca
2016). Gramsci's own experience as an internal migrant who
"looked at modernity from the bottom of its peripheries"
(Urbinati 1998: 371), and his particular attention to the struggles of
"subaltern" classes in the formation of national cultures,
have inspired forms of postcolonial literary criticism and politics
quite at odds with the communist frame in which his ideas originated
(see Srivastava & Bhattacharya 2012).