Gramsci, Antonio
labor of criticism, by the spread of culture and
(1891–1937)
FABIO DE NARDIS
University of Salento, Italy
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian philosopher,
journalist, linguist, and political sociologist. Born
in 1891 at Ales, Sardinia, he died in Rome in
1937, after 11 years in fascist prisons, where he
was detained because of his membership in the
Italian Communist Party, which he founded and
led until his death.
Gramsci is considered one of the twentieth cen-
tury’s greatest Marxist thinkers mainly thanks to
his Prison Notebooks, a monumental work con-
sisting of 33 notebooks, written in prison between
1929 and 1935 and first published in Italy between
1948 and 1951. This work has been available to
an international audience since 1971 as Selections
from Prison Notebooks. The only complete critical
edition in English of Gramsci’s seminal writings
was published in multivolume form in 2007.
In the Prison Notebooks Gramsci introduces
concepts that have strongly influenced mod-
ern critical sociology, political theory, social
anthropology, and linguistic studies. He uses
interdisciplinary sources referring to authors such
as Michels, Pareto, Croce, Machiavelli, Sorel, and
reflecting meticulously on European and Italian
history, the concept of revolution, the role of civil
society, Fordism, popular culture, and folklore.
The relevance of Gramsci’s social theory can be
understood when contextualized in the broader
historical framework of theoretical Marxism.
He became critical of the kind of determinist
Marxism expressed by the principal leaders of the
Second International, such as Kautsky, as well as
by some theorists of the Bolshevik Revolution like
Plekhanov and Bukharin. Opposing any Marxist
determinism, Gramsci counters the automation
of evolution with the collective will of the masses.
Social transformation is for Gramsci a func-
tion of the creative role of the masses and the
political ability to articulate a revolutionary con-
sciousness. Gramsci states that every revolution
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Edited by George Ritzer and Chris Rojek.
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeosg066.pub2
has been preceded by an intense intellectual
ideas amongst the masses. His writings basi-
cally concern the rejection of mechanistic and
economistic interpretations of Marx’s doctrine
and the adherence to a historicist and human-
ist form of Marxism. For Gramsci socialism is a
worldview that points to an intellectual and moral
reform of society, an unattainable goal without
the collective will created in political praxis.
The process of social reformation is the result of
the historical transformation of the economic class
into a historical class that occurs in the dialectical
relationship between the masses and the intellec-
tuals. Whereas Lenin stressed the primary role
of the revolutionary vanguards organized into
a party, in Gramsci’s view both vanguards and
party are subordinate to the collective will of civil
society.
The autonomous mass organization originating
inside the party does not represent just a part
of the masses, but forms with them an organic
whole. Both intellectuals and the party, interact-
ing with the popular masses, must work toward
the development of a political consciousness
and a collective will, with the elaboration of a
historically rooted ideology of transformation.
If the aim is the revolutionary seizure of power,
the subaltern classes, in order to be successful,
must work toward creating the conditions for
transformation, aiming to be an ideologically
hegemonic class well before becoming the domi-
nant social group. The socialization of the means
of material production is only one aspect of the
revolutionary process, which must be associated
with the socialization of the means of cultural
and intellectual production. Gramsci’s thought
goes beyond the mere culturalist reinterpretation
of classical Marxism, making him a theorist
of political forms of transition defined by the
dialectical relationship between social forces
(Buci-Glucksmann, 1979).
Political realism is defined as giving up the
pursuit of immediate political success in favor of
constructing and preserving the conditions for
future actions. The presence of state spirit is a con-
dition of stability of the collective will, necessary
2 G R A M S C I , A N T O N I O ( 1 8 9 1–1 9 3 7 )
to overcome the fragmented, subversive, and
reactive initiative of the subjugated masses.
Gramsci sees state spirit as first substantiated by
the party’s spirit, because the political party is an
embryonic state structure. The lack of state spirit
coincides with apoliticism. The core concept in
Gramsci’s thought about the forms of political
action is the idea of economic-corporative action.
It refers to the level of internal homogeneity of a
collective body’s self-awareness and organization.
Gramsci identifies three levels of political action
corresponding to three phases of development:
first, the economic-corporative level, the most
basic, where solidarity and collective action are
internal to a single category but not to a class;
second, the economic-political level, with action
based on class solidarity expressed by simple
trade union demands, while the question of
the state is viewed only in relation to juridi-
cal equality between dominated and dominant
within existing arrangements; and, third, the
state-hegemonic level, marked by a growing
awareness that the interests of one group should
also become the interests of other social groups.
This level refers to the political phase, where
already germinated ideologies become a political
party which can favor the establishment of unity
based on economic, political, and intellectual
goals (Salamini, 1981).
According to Gramsci, the process of transfor-
mation can only be guaranteed by the emergence
of a new historical bloc defined by the organic
unity between structure and superstructure,
meaning that the complex set of superstructures
is an ideological reflection of social relations of
production. Between the two elements there is
a necessary reciprocity, which is precisely the
real dialectical process. The historical bloc is
not a sort of amalgamation between different
classes, but rather a hegemonic situation in which
social cohesion is ensured by a new conception
of the world (superstructural dimension) and by
a dominant social class (structural dimension).
In this context, the dominant power of a given
social group is not guaranteed by violence, but
by a more subtle process of gathering consensus
from other social groups.
The role of intellectuals becomes crucial, as they
represent the functionaries of the superstructure.
Originally a category in the specialized world
of production, they become the administrators
of social hegemony. Every social group, being
originally brought into existence with an essential
function in the world of economic production,
gives rise to one or more organic intellectual
classes whose task is to give homogeneity and
awareness to the group from which they derived.
Gramsci roughly distinguishes between two
major superstructural levels: that of civil society
or the ensemble of organisms commonly called
private, and political society or state, correspond-
ing to the hegemonic function performed by the
dominant social group in society, either directly,
by exercising control through juridical and police
institutions, or indirectly, by strengthening and
developing organic cultural institutions.
Within civil society, the party performs the
same function as the state in political society.
It creates a bond between organic intellectuals
from a given group and traditional intellectuals.
Therefore, all party members chiefly play an
intellectual role, since their activity is divided
into directive, organizational, and educational
facets. In a political party the members of a social
group go beyond the economic moment of their
historical development, becoming agents of gen-
eral activities. The Gramscian party is an entity
distinct from the masses, or from a social group
not yet politically active, but later to be organi-
cally linked, in the stage of political consciousness
and hegemony. Initially, the party is a vanguard
that anticipates a future society, a kind of his-
tory in progress. The achievement of hegemony,
requiring a consciously united civil society, is the
stage when the party tends to lose its usefulness.
At this point, it discards its partial nature and
identifies with the interests of the whole society.
The political party’s task is therefore to anticipate
the future experience of a progressive society. It
experiments with new conceptions of the world
and represents a historical necessity only for
groups that aspire to hegemony.
In Europe, particularly in Italy, by tradition the
masses are largely passive. This produces mystify-
ing extra-historical values. By contrast, a popular
organized mass, active and conscious, is able to
create new sociohistorical worlds, legitimizing
them, in political praxis, through new world-
views. The political praxis of the masses is then
a source of historical certainty. Any mechanical
law of necessity, and any form of alienation and
 G R A M S C I , A N T O N I O ( 1 8 9 1–1 9 3 7 )
mystification, disappears in the active awareness
of an organized civil society.
The activities of the dominant classes require
the nonactivity of subordinate social groups.
For Gramsci, the masses, especially in Italy, live
in a primitive stage of indifference and apathy,
superstition and fatalism. The awareness of their
interests is strictly confined to the local context
where they live. Excluded from high culture, they
are relegated to a folkloric dimension. The Italian
masses have not been able to achieve a hege-
monic position, because hegemony presupposes
emancipation and cultural autonomy. These con-
siderations prompt Gramsci to reflect on common
sense and folklore (Grooten and Steenbergen,
1972). He stresses the historical, ideological, and
political aspects of common sense, understood as
a spontaneous philosophy separate from that of
professional thinkers. All people are bearers of a
spontaneous philosophy contained first in the lan-
guage, seen as a set not only of empty grammatical
forms but also of notions and concepts convey-
ing a certain worldview. Once this is accepted, a
quality leap is needed so as to move from a stage of
pure observation toward one of critical awareness.
Philosophy mostly reflects the traits of the
individual elaboration of thought whereas com-
mon sense expresses the haphazard nature of the
generic thought marking a certain age and popu-
lar environment. Common sense is the worldview
of the subaltern masses during the negative phase
of their development, when they are politically
and culturally subordinate to a dominant group.
Lacking critical awareness, common sense is
unable to think dialectically and historically.
3
Nevertheless, in folklore and common sense,
Gramsci identifies a positive core, a creative
element that, if developed, may lead the people to
attain an autonomous self-awareness.
SEE ALSO: Civil Society; Marxism and
Sociology; Political Parties; Popular Culture;
Revolutions, Sociology of
References
Buci-Glucksmann, C. (1979) Gramsci and the State,
Lawrence & Wishart, London.
Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from Prison Notebooks,
International Publishers, New York.
Gramsci, A. (2007) Prison Notebooks, 3 vols, trans. and
ed. J.A. Buttigieg, Columbia University Press, New
York.
Grooten, J. and Steenbergen, G. (1972) Common
sense, in New Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philosophy
Library, New York.
Salamini, L. (1981) Sociology of Political Praxis, Rout-
ledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Further Readings
Badaloni, N. (1975) Il marxismo di Gramsci, Einaudi,
Turin.
Gramsci, A. (1977) Selections from Political Writings
1910–1920, International Publishers, New York.
Liguori, G. and Voza, P. (eds) (2009) Dizionario grams-
ciano 1926–1937, Carocci, Rome.