This book familiarizes the English-speaking reader with the debate on the originality of Gramsci’s thought and its importance for the development of Marxist theory. The contributors present the principal viewpoints regarding Gramsci’s theoretical contribution to Marxism, focussing in particular on his advances in the study of the superstructures, and discussing his relation to Marx and Lenin and his influence in Eurocommunism. Different interpretations are put forward concerning the elucidation of Gramsci’s key concepts, namely: hegemony, integral state, war of position and passive revolution.

Antonio Gramsci used the term ‘passive revolution’ to describe the limitations and weaknesses of the 19th century bourgeois state in Italy which permitted economic development whilst thwarting social and political progress. This detailed study consists of seven essays each exploring a different theme of the economic and social basis of the Liberal state, providing a broad understanding of the background against the emergence of Italian fascism and present a number of debates and controversies amongst Italian historians. By critical discussion of Gramsci’s reading of modern Italian history, the essays present an analysis of the structure and development of social and economic relations in the formation of the Liberal state, illustrating the transition from liberalism to fascism.

This volume analyses the philosophical nature of Gramsci’s Marxism and its Hegelian source, the radical critique of the economistic tradition and the original analyses of the role of superstructures, ideology, consciousness and subjectivity in the revolutionary process. It relates the central themes of Gramsci’s writings, such as hegemony, ‘historical blocs’, the role of intellectuals and political praxis, to the more peripheral ones, such as science, language, literature and art. The introduction includes a brief intellectual biography of Gramsci.

Winner of the prestigious 'Giuseppe Sormani International Prize' for the best monograph on Antonio Gramsci (4th edition, 2012-2017). Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is one of the most translated Italian authors of all time. After the Second World War his thought became increasingly influential, and remained relevant throughout the second half of the century. Today, it is generally agreed that his Marxism has highly original and personal features, as confirmed by the fact that his international influence has continued to grow since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gramsci and Languages offers an explanation of this originality and traces the origins of certain specific features of Gramsci’s political thought by looking at his lifelong interest in language, especially in questions of linguistic diversity and unification.

This is a concise introduction to the life and work of the Italian militant and political thinker, Antonio Gramsci. As head of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s, Gramsci was arrested and condemned to 20 years' imprisonment by Mussolini's fascist regime. It was during this imprisonment that Gramsci wrote his famous Prison Notebooks – over 2,000 pages of profound and influential reflections on history, culture, politics, philosophy and revolution. An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci retraces the trajectory of Gramsci's life, before examining his conceptions of culture, politics and philosophy. Gramsci's writings are then interpreted through the lens of his most famous concept, that of 'hegemony'; Gramsci's thought is then extended and applied to 'think through' contemporary problems to illustrate his distinctive historical methodology. The book concludes with a valuable examination of Gramsci's legacy today and useful tips for further reading. George Hoare and Nathan Sperber make Gramsci accessible for students of history, politics and philosophy keen to understand this seminal figure in 20th-century intellectual history.

This sociological critique of the ‘philosophy of praxis’ looks at the importance of the concept in the social theory of leading influential Western Marxists such as Lukács, Gramsci, Korsch, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Adorno in the inter-war period. It offers a detailed critique of Marx and Hegel, and explores the validity and implications for sociology of two of Marx’s ideas which the later theorists made the centre piece of their social theory: first, that true theory is authenticated by praxis, and second, its corollary that certain major social transformations should and would in practice render sociology redundant.

Antonio Gramsci is widely celebrated as the most original political thinker in Western Marxism. Among the most central aspects of his enduring intellectual legacy is the concept of subalternity. Developed in the work of scholars such as Gayatri Spivak and Ranajit Guha, subalternity has been extraordinarily influential across fields of inquiry stretching from cultural studies, literary theory, and postcolonial criticism to anthropology, sociology, criminology, and disability studies. Almost every author whose work touches upon subalterns alludes to Gramsci’s formulation of the concept. Yet Gramsci’s original writings on the topic have not yet appeared in full in English. Among his prison notebooks, Gramsci devoted a single notebook to the theme of subaltern social groups. Notebook 25, which he entitled “On the Margins of History (History of Subaltern Social Groups),” contains a series of observations on subaltern groups from ancient Rome and medieval communes to the period after the Italian Risorgimento, in addition to discussions of the state, intellectuals, the methodological criteria of historical analysis, and reflections on utopias and philosophical novels. This volume presents the first complete translation of Gramsci’s notes on the topic. In addition to a comprehensive translation of Notebook 25 along with Gramsci’s first draft and related notes on subaltern groups, it includes a critical apparatus that clarifies Gramsci’s history, culture, and sources and contextualizes these ideas against his earlier writings and letters. Subaltern Social Groups is an indispensable account of the development of one of the crucial concepts in twentieth-century thought.