Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

The founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party. His magnum opus work is acknowledged as the masterpiece of early “Western Marxism” trend of thought.

Gramsci was born in Sardinia to a small family of clerks and finished the University of Turin with great hardships, though he faced constant ill-health, under-nourishment and over-work, he achieved good degrees. During his time at university, he joined the Italian Socialist Party. After graduating from University, he served as the editor in chief of the socialist weekly The People’s Voice, which was published in the city of Turin.

After the outbreak of the World War I, Gramsci actively supported Lenin’s slogan of “turning the imperialist war into a civil war”, launched an anti-war armed uprising with the workers in Turin city, won prestige among them, and was elected as the Secretary of the Turin branch of the Socialist Party.

In January 1921, the Italian Communist Party was founded, and Gramsci was one of its important founders. In May 1922, Gramsci, as the representative of the Italian Communist Party, was elected as the Secretary of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. In October 1922, when fascist forces led by Mussolini seized the state power in Italy, Gramsci was appointed by the Communist International to carry out anti-fascist struggle in Italy and returned the homeland. In November 1926, he was unfortunately arrested. In prison, although he had some perplexity on the issues of the era and communist tactic, he studied revolutionary theory with resolute will and wrote total 32 Prison Notebooks which consists of about 2000 notes.

In April 1937, Gramsci died in prison due to serious health problems, while the Fascist government rejected his demands for health treatment outside the prison.

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci discussed a series of problems of Italian society, such as history, religion, culture, education and society. The most outstanding one is that he summarizes the historical experience and lessons of the international communist movement, whereby he explored the road of proletarian revolution and proletarian emancipation in the western developed capitalist countries, and discussed and explained Marxist Philosophy according to his own interpretation.

He put forward the theory of cultural hegemony (leadership), explained the cultural reasons for the victory of the revolution in Russia and the reasons for failure of the revolution in the developed western capitalist countries, and then emphasizes the function of culture itself and its dynamic and even decisive counteraction to the economic foundation of the society. Gramsci has fought against fascist forces all through his life and has made arduous exploration on the revolutionary emancipation of the proletariat. However, Gramsci fundamentally denied the two theoretical pillars or cornerstones of Marxism: historical materialism and surplus value theory.