Download the YouTube mobile app Android YouTube Help

This somewhat ascetic, pedagogic humanism distinguished the youngGramsci from other socialists who appealed to historical progress orinvested in the slow, practical advance of trade unionism andapplication of scientific reason. He inspired numerous“aesthetic” critics of the liberal state to understandsocio-political improvement as inseparable from free artisticself-creation, the assertion of moral will, and np vip game the cultivation of ashared “inner” sensibility. Croce haddenounced scientific positivism—prevalent among socialscientists and European Marxists—for its abstract, ahistoricalreasoning and emphasis on material “causes” in socialchange. Despite this shifting register, several related philosophical themesand influences can be discerned that characterized his thinkingthroughout his pre-prison activities. Gramsci refused to agree to his ownconditional release if that meant renouncing all politicalactivity. Gramsci’s health continued todeteriorate—he was badly neglected by the prisonauthorities—and he suffered psychologically from his isolation.Yet was he not entirely cut off from events outside.

• His seemingly “heretical”formulation of Marxist theory came to occupy his readers, especiallyas regards his debt to Crocean historicism, his ambiguous relation tomaterialism and to Leninism (see Bobbio 1979).
• Although hebelieved it unlikely in the short term, Gramsci argued the PCd’Ineeded to develop its own supporting intellectuals if it was toundertake an inclusive national strategy to overcome the agrarianbloc.
• Some critics have argued that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is too focused on culture and ideology, and that it neglects the role of economic and material factors in shaping social relations.
• To estimate relevance we look into many factors, such as how well the title, tags, description, and video content match your search query.
• He becamesecretary of the executive committee of the Turin socialists and, inthe same year, took up the role of editor of Il Grido delPopolo.

His ideas remain a sourceof insight for non-orthodox Marxisms (see Thomas 2009), and hisconcepts have been extended to academic fields such as InternationalRelations and Global Political Economy (see Gill 1993) and tosocio-political contexts beyond Europe and the “West” (seeMorton 2007; Fonseca2016). While the concept remains important, there is growingappreciation of other themes in Gramsci’s philosophy of politicsand their relevance to a variety of fields. Recent approaches have been drawn, increasingly, to thenuances and inflections in his analyses, often neglected in thetendency to focus on “hegemony” and its relation toMarxist theory. For them, Gramsci’s corephilosophical insight lay in demonstrating hegemony’s political“logic”, rather than any sociological concerns. Ernesto Laclau andChantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)recast hegemony as the theoretical basis to a strategy of“radical democracy”, aimed at unifying multiple anddiverse social struggles. BritishCultural Studies—especially the work of Raymond Williams andStuart Hall—saw in Gramsci an inventive, “culturalMarxist” framework for examining popular lived experience ofclass domination.

Marxistsociologists such as Nicos Poulantzas (1968 ) and, later, BobJessop (1990) found in hegemony a resource to explore the permutationsof the capitalist state and its shifting class coalitions. Through the late 1960s and 70s, as western states experienced economicand ideological crises, Gramsci’s analyses were appliedseparately from communist strategy or philosophical idealism. This endorsedTogliatti’s own view of the PCI as a pragmatic, mass-based partypursuing its own “Italian road to socialism”; operating asa “collective intellectual” to mobilize the proletariatand its allies in a uniquely national and democratic project (seeTogliatti 1979). The initial reception of Gramsci’s writings was shaped by theItalian Communist Party (Partito comunista italiano, or PCI),particularly by its leader since the mid-1920s, Palmiro Togliatti, whoemphasized their significance for a renewed communist strategy.

Cultural Hegemony and Revolution

This new position was,arguably, less a wholesale volte face than a realization thatthe PSI was culturally and organizationally incapable of responding tothe situation. His radical philosophy of “actualism”—inwhich the subject’s inner conscience creates its own unifiedworld and community—supported the idea of the “ethicalstate” (stato etico) in which public authority andindividual freedom, coercion and consent, were essentiallyindistinguishable (Gentile 1919; see also Schecter 1990). The first original initiative for which Gramsci became known was histheory of factory-based democracy, which he promoted during theso-called biennio rosso—or “two redyears”—of 1919–1920.

2 Turin (1911–

Select a category so viewers can find your video more easily. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in your video’s discovery. Tags can be useful if the content of your video is commonly misspelled. Any video chapters entered will override auto generated video chapters. You can add video chapter titles and timestamps to your videos to make them easier to watch.

2 State and Civil Society

Gramsci’s correspondence (like his Notebooks) was readby the prison authorities and subject to censorship, meaning thatpolitical references to outside events had to be muted or entirelyabsent. The PCd’I, they continued, therefore neededto build mass support among both workers and peasants sothat, when a revolutionary situation eventually returned, it couldexercise effective leadership. The political situation in Italy continued tointensify following the abduction and murder by fascist thugs of thesocialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti and the subsequent withdrawal inprotest of opposition parties from Parliament. In October 1922, Mussolini wasinvited by the King to lead a coalition government, supported byconservative politicians increasingly alarmed at the intensity ofsocial disorder and the prospect of a workers’ revolution. Inspired by the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917,Gramsci aligned himself with the “intransigentrevolutionary” faction in the PSI, urging it to pursue its“maximalist” program of radical transformation. For this milder resistance to the party’s formalposition, he was thereafter treated with some suspicion by fellowsocialists.