The 1st Martyr of Fascism. The Great Antonio Gramsci Today is the 77th death anniversary of this great Historian and intellectual brain called Antonio Gramsci. He was one of the most important Marxist thinkers in the 20th century. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolinis Fascist regime and died in Mussolini’s prison in the year 27 April 1937. If one has not read about him than one has missed one of the best political literature in the World.. He was born in the year 22nd January 1891 in Sardin, Italy. He was one of the finest Italian writer, politician, political theorist, philosopher, sociologist, and linguist. He is known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how states use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci remains hugely popular today across the left as well as in academic circles where a neo-Gramscian school of though crosses disciplines and generations. His most referred to works are his prison notebooks, a collection of articles and fragments that he wrote whilst languishing in Mussolini’s jail. What people value in Grasmsci is his contribution to political theory, including central concepts like hegemony. Gramsci was arrested by Mussolini’s fascist police in 1926 and thrown into prison where he remained until 1937 when he was released, sick and close to death. he died a few months afterwards. A vigorous and energetic thinker, he refused to let the fascist prisons silence him. In his cell he wrote several notebooks where he outlined his thoughts on several topics from historical materialism to the revolutionary party to the political world perspective. He painstakingly reconstructed quotes of Marx and Lenin from memory as he formulated ideas which are still discussed and used today. After his death his wifes’ sister smuggled his notebooks out of the country in diplomatic parcels, when they arrived in Russia they were edited and brought into circulation. The benefit of Gramsci for academia is that since most of his writings on method are contained in his Prison notebooks, This is a revealing insight into how academia likes its Marxism – the product of being trapped in a prison cell, with a fascist censor looking over your shoulder. The concept of hegemony, which Gramsci is perhaps most famous for, was discussed by Plekhanov and Lenin before him. Gramsci’s most popular idea, the concept of hegemony, refers to how a class exerts influence over other classes in such a way that they will follow its political and economic project. It comes from the need to answer the question; when faced with a system when so many people are exploited and alienated by a tiny elite, how does the ruling class maintain its rule? Gramscis intellectual works in prison did not emerge in the light of day until several years after World War II, when the PC began publishing scattered sections of the Notebooks and some of the approximately 500 letters he wrote from prison. By the 1950s, and then with increasing frequency and intensity, his prison writings attracted interest and critical commentary in a host of countries, not only in the West but in the so-called third world as well. Some of his terminology became household words on the left, the most important of which, and the most complex, is the term hegemony as he used it in his writings and applied to the twin task of understanding the reasons underlying both the successes and the failures of socialism on a global scale, and of elaborating a feasible program for the realization of a socialist vision within the really existing conditions that prevailed in the world. Among these conditions were the rise and triumph of fascism and the disarray on the left that had ensued as a result of that triumph. Also extremely pertinent, both theoretically and practically, were such terms and phrases as organic intellectual, nationalpopular, and historical bloc which, even if not coined by Gramsci, acquired such radically new and original implications in his writing as to constitute effectively new formulations in the realm of political philosophy. On his 77th death anniversary, we salute this great man for his contribution towards strengthening the working class movement. Long live Antonio Gramsci.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 12:38:15 +0000
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