Antonio Gramsci: biography of this Marxist philosopher

Antonio Gramsci he was one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party and one of the most outstanding Marxist intellectuals of the last century.

His works and his thoughts are still currently the object of study and debate, and his influence can still be seen in political parties and cultural companies of all kinds.

In this article we will see a short biography of Antonio Gramsci, a summary description of his life and major works, as well as his contributions to Marxist theory.

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Brief biography of Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian journalist and activist known and celebrated for develop the roles of culture and education within Marxism's theories of economics, politics and class. Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia in 1891 and grew up poor among the island's peasants, and his experience of class differences between mainland Italians and Sardinians and the negative treatment of peasant Sardinians by mainlanders shaped his intellectual mindset and policy.

In 1911 Gramsci left Sardinia to study at the University of Turin in northern Italy, living there as the city industrialized. He spent his time in Turin among socialists, Sardinian immigrants, and workers recruited from poor regions to staff the urban factories.

In 1913, Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party.. He did not complete formal education, but was trained at the University as a Hegelian Marxist and studied intensely the interpretation of Karl Marx's theory as a "philosophy of praxis" under Antonio Labriola. This Marxist approach focused on the development of class consciousness and the liberation of the working class through the process of struggle.

His life as a journalist, socialist activist and political prisoner

After leaving school, Antonio Gramsci wrote for socialist newspapers and rose through the ranks of the socialist party. He and the Italian socialists they joined the ideas of Vladimir Lenin and the international communist organization known as the Third International. During this time of political activism, Gramsci advocated workers' councils and labor strikes as methods to take control of the means of production, controlled by the rich capitalists to the detriment of the classes workers.

Ultimately, he helped found the Italian Communist Party to mobilize workers for their rights. Gramsci traveled to Vienna in 1923 and met Georg Lukács, a prominent Hungarian Marxist thinker and philosopher, as well as other Marxist and communist intellectuals and activists who would shape his work intellectual. In 1926, Gramsci, then head of the Italian Communist Party, was imprisoned in Rome for the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini during his powerful campaign to end the politics of opposition.

Gramsci he was sentenced to twenty years in prison but was released in 1934 due to poor health. Most of his intellectual legacy was written in prison, and is known as The prison notebooks, where he reflects on some central themes for Marxism, such as the relationship between structure and superstructure, between ideology and science, or between thought and political action.

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Gramsci's contributions to Marxist theory

Antonio Gramsci's key intellectual contribution to Marxist theory was his elaboration of the social function of culture and its relationship to politics and the economic system. Although Marx briefly discussed these issues in his works, Gramsci was based on the theoretical foundations of Marx to elaborate the fundamental role of political strategy in challenging the dominant relations of society, and the role of the state in regulating social life and maintaining the necessary conditions for capitalism.

Gramsci focused on understanding how culture and politics might inhibit or stimulate revolutionary change, that is, it focused on the political and cultural elements of power and domination (in addition to and together with the economic element). As such, Gramsci's work is a response to the false prediction of Marx's theory that the revolution was inevitable, given the contradictions inherent in the production system capitalist.

In his theory, Gramsci saw the State as an instrument of domination that represents the interests of capital and the ruling class. He developed the concept of "cultural hegemony" to explain how the state achieves this, arguing that domination is largely achieved by a dominant ideology expressed through social institutions that socialize people to consent to group rule dominant.

Gramsci also postulated that hegemonic beliefs dampen critical thinking. and, therefore, they are barriers to the revolution. For him, educational institutions were one of the fundamental elements of cultural hegemony in society. modern Western and he elaborated this idea in some of his essays, as for example in "The formation of the intellectuals".

Although he was influenced by Marxist thought, in his works Gramsci advocated a phased and longer-term revolution than Marx envisioned. He was an advocate of cultivating "organic intellectuals" of all classes and walks of life, who understood and reflected the worldviews of a diversity of people. In addition, he criticized the role of "traditional intellectuals", whose work reflected the worldview of the ruling class and thus facilitated cultural hegemony.

Gramsci he advocated a "war of positions" in which the oppressed peoples worked to disrupt the hegemonic forces in the realm of politics and culture, while carrying out a simultaneous overthrow of power through various maneuvers, and with broad participation of the masses in what would inevitably be a long, difficult road full of advances and setbacks, but after which, if political and cultural victory is achieved, it would be decisive and stable.