Antonio Gramsci

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Antonio Gramsci, around 1920

Antonio Gramsci [ anˈtɔːni̯o ˈgramʃi Antonio Gramsci ? / i ] (born January 22, 1891 in Ales in Sardinia , † April 27, 1937 in Rome ) was an Italian writer , journalist , politician and Marxist philosopher . He is one of the founders of the Communist Party of Italy ( Partito Comunista Italiano ), of which he was General Secretary (Chairman) from 1924 to 1927. From April 6, 1924 until his arrest by fascists on November 8, 1926, he was a member of the Italian Parliament . During his time in prison, Gramsci wrote texts with philosophical, sociological and political considerations that fill 32 notebooks. They have become known as prison notebooks and form an important work of Marxist thought ; Gramsci's analyzes are still included in political theory today . Audio file / audio sample

Live and act

family

Antonio Gramsci was born on January 22nd, 1891 in Ales ( Sardinia ) as the fourth child of Francesco Gramsci and Giuseppina Marcias. The Gramsci family belonged to the Arbëresh , the Albanian minority in southern Italy. The family name Gramsci was probably derived from the Albanian city ​​of Gramsh . Gramsci thought that his Albanian - speaking great-grandfather fled the Epirus (Balkans) in 1821 after a popular uprising . An erroneous family tree was responsible for this. In fact, his ancestors came to the Kingdom of Naples in an early wave of refugees from Albanian Christians, as his great-grandfather Nicola Gramsci (1769–1824) is documented as a landowner in Plataci in the province of Cosenza (Calabria) in the 18th century. Don Nicola Gramsci had moved with his family to Naples in 1795, where the Gramsci family integrated into high society and from where he administered the land in Calabria. Antonio's grandfather Gennaro Gramsci (1812–1872) was born in Plataci, became a colonel in the gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Both Sicilies and married Teresa Gonzales, the daughter of a well-known Neapolitan lawyer .

Their youngest son, Francesco Gramsci, born on March 6, 1860 in Gaeta ( Latium ), became Antonio Gramsci's father. He began studying law, but had to drop out prematurely when his father died. The result was social decline. His job search led him to Sardinia in 1881 , where he found a job at the registry office in Ghilarza . In Sardinia he met his future wife, Antonio Gramsci's mother, Peppina (actually Giuseppina) Marcias, whom he married in 1883 against his mother's wishes.

Peppina Marcias came from a middle-class background. Her father was a tax collector and owned a small house on a small plot of land. Giuseppina was born in Ghilarza in 1861. She attended elementary school for three years and learned to read and write as one of the few girls of her time. She became an avid reader, for example of Boccaccio .

The Gramsci couple had a total of seven children; they had their first child, Gennaro, in 1884. Grazietta followed three years later, Emma in 1889 and Antonio on January 22, 1891. A year later the family moved to Sorgono ( Sardinia ). Mario (1893), Teresina (1895) and Carlo (1897) were born there.

childhood

Antonio Gramsci was of a delicate constitution and fought for his health all his life. At the age of three, a nanny dropped Antonio on the floor. He fell so badly that a hump formed on his back. Bone tuberculosis probably played an important role even then. He suffered from growth problems and was only five feet tall as an adult.

He later wrote of acute problems and his mother's continued concern: “When I was four I had cramps for three days and lost so much blood that I was completely exhausted. The doctors didn't give me a chance anymore, and until 1914 my mother kept the children's coffin and shroud that she had already bought for my funeral. "

Antonio is portrayed as a lively child; Due to his physical handicap, he found himself excluded from many of the other children's games, which made him more and more a loner and closed off. His siblings described their brother as a rather melancholy person, but who very often showed his affection for them.

From the age of six he attended elementary school; in third grade he had good, but not excellent grades. But since he was way ahead of the other children, he wanted to skip a class. This failed because he could not recite all the articles of the Italian constitution by heart, as the Director of Studies had asked him to do. He completed his last year of elementary school with the highest grade in every subject.

Father's professional difficulties

On August 9, 1898, Francesco Gramsci was charged with abuse of office and embezzlement and arrested shortly afterwards. Due to the small amount of embezzlement, Francesco Gramsci was sentenced on October 27, 1900 to a minimum sentence of 5 years, 8 months and 22 days in prison, which he served in Gaeta . Francesco Gramsci had in fact not kept his accounts correctly, but another background for the arrest was political, as he had supported Enrico Carboni Boy in the 1897 elections ; In the end, however, his political opponent Cocco Ortu prevailed. Out of shame, Giuseppina did not tell her children that their father had to go to prison.

Without their father's income, the Gramsci family entered a period of extreme poverty. That is why they moved to Ghilarza , the birthplace of Giuseppina Marcias , a short time later . The mother now worked as a contract seamstress and rented a room, she also took care of the household and sometimes worked at night. Despite all the work, she still found enough time to help Antonio with his homework.

Attend high school

Gramsci as a 15 year old

The poverty of his family did not allow him to attend a high school at first. Instead, Gramsci began working in a land registry office, where he earned nine lire a month. Gramsci later described his work at the time as follows: "I had to lug around registers that were heavier than me, and many nights I cried from exhaustion because my whole body ached."

On January 31, 1904, Francesco Gramsci had served his sentence, was rehabilitated and found a job as a clerk. That is why Antonio was able to enroll in the Santu Lussurgiu high school, eighteen kilometers from Ghilarza . It was a small school where only three teachers taught the five lower grades. Despite the unfavorable supervisory relationship, Gramsci managed to pass the Licenza ginnasiale (lower level examination ) in Oristano . In the summer of 1908 he enrolled in the Liceo Dettori in Cagliari , the three-year high school, called Lyceum, where he obtained his university entrance qualification. In Cagliari he subsequently lived with his brother Gennaro in a small pension.

First contact with the socialist movement

Gennaro Gramsci had in the meantime done his military service in the socialist stronghold of Turin and had returned to Sardinia as a committed socialist , where he found a job in an ice cream factory. Gennaro was involved in the Camera del Lavoro , an association of workers founded by the Partito Operaio Italiano (Italian Workers' Party), the forerunner of the Italian Socialist Party , where he was entrusted with the office of cashier. It was through his brother that Antonio first came into contact with socialist books, magazines and brochures. Gramsci read the popular novels by Carolina Invernizio and Anton Giulio Barrili , as well as the magazines La Voce and Marzocco , writings by Giovanni Papini , Emilio Cecchi and studied in particular the works of Benedetto Croce and Gaetano Salvemini .

After initial difficulties, Antonio managed to close the gaps in the poor schooling. Gramsci also lived in seclusion in Cagliari. It is reported that he neither smoked, drank nor accepted any invitations.

At the end of the second year at the Lyceum, Antonio asked his Italian teacher Raffa Garzia, who was also the director of the Unione Sarda newspaper , if he could work on the newspaper during the summer. The professor accepted, and on July 20, 1910, Gramsci received his press card. His first reporting took him to the village of Aidomaggiore . There the population wanted to introduce universal suffrage, which is why the first lieutenant of the Carabinieri sent reinforcements, forty Carabinieri and forty infantrymen. At the election the whole village was deserted, no one dared to go outside. Gramsci's coverage of these events was short, succinct, and humorous.

By the end of his third year of high school, Gramsci was suffering from malnutrition. He passed the final exams with good to very good grades.

Studied in Turin

In 1911 the Collegio Carlo Alberto (Fondazione Albertina) in Turin offered 39 scholarships . The scholars received 70 lire a month to attend the University of Turin. Antonio Gramsci also sought such a scholarship and took the necessary entrance exams. For this purpose, Gramsci received an entry fee of 100 lire from his parents. Among other things, he paid for the third class trip from Sardinia to Turin, which alone cost 45 lire. On October 27, 1911, the exams ended, in which Antonio finished ninth. In second place came Palmiro Togliatti , who also came from Sardinia and would later become Gramsci's party member.

University of Turin

Gramsci received one of the scholarships and enrolled in the philosophy faculty . However, it turned out that the seventy lire he received a month was not enough. Gramsci later described the first months of his studies as the worst time of his life. Loneliness, hunger and cold tormented him and triggered hallucinations and fainting spells.

For the elections of October 26, 1913, Gramsci returned to Sardinia for a short time. The Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti had ordered an extension of the right to vote for this election; this was the first time that illiterate people were admitted. However, corruption and voter intimidation remained pervasive. Antonio Gramsci returned to Turin in November 1913 , where he now lived on the bottom floor of a palace in Via San Massimo 14. Gramsci became a member of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI). During this time, Antonio fell behind with his exams, because he suffered from a kind of reduced blood flow in the brain, which resulted in a partial memory loss. So that he could keep the scholarship of the Fondazione Albertina , Gramsci took various exams between March and April 1914.

The intellectual life in the University of Turin was shaped by futurism and idealism , as represented by Professor Benedetto Croce . Gramsci dealt intensively with these currents. One of his most important teachers was the Romanist Matteo Giulio Bartoli . During his studies he often visited young party colleagues, for example Angelo Tasca , Palmiro Togliatti and Umberto Terracini . On October 31, 1914, Gramsci wrote his first article for the socialist weekly Il Grido del popolo .

On August 1, 1914, the First World War broke out. Italy took a neutral position for the time being. The PSI demanded unconditional neutrality. A small PSI group around Benito Mussolini , at that time one of the most popular socialist leaders in the country and editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Avanti , on the other hand, advocated an intervention against the Central Powers and thus triggered a heated discussion, to which Gramsci, too, through a benevolent interpretation of Mussolini's position in the " Grido del popolo ”contributed; Later he was accused of being an interventionist. Shortly afterwards, Mussolini was expelled from the Socialist Party. With the help of the French Foreign Ministry, the French Socialists (SFIO) financed Mussolini's split from PSI and the establishment of the newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia . With the establishment of the fascist alliance together with republicans , anarchists , syndicalists and socialists , Mussolini pursued the strategy of waging revolutionary war against the external enemy and at the same time waging terror against the internal enemy (socialists, later also communists). Notwithstanding the protests of the workers and the PSI, Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on May 23, 1915 . Gramsci continued to live in great poverty and suffered from his illnesses, so that he had to give up his studies in 1915 after having already interrupted it once. Although he had presented his illnesses, the grant had been suspended by the Commission.

Journalistic and political work at PSI

From the beginning of 1916 Gramsci worked as an editor at Il Grido del popolo , where he had previously published several articles. He also wrote for the PSI mouthpiece Avanti! (the Turin edition) the column Sotto la Mole , where he worked as a pamphleteer and theater critic. Gramsci visited workers, took part in various socialist conferences and wrote the first edition of the socialist youth magazine La Città futura .

In March 1917, the Russian Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown and a liberal government was installed; on April 29th, Gramsci wrote in the affirmative: "The Russian revolution is ... the work of the proletariat and it will therefore inevitably end in a socialist regime."

The war-related grievances and the news of the Russian revolution led to spontaneous uprisings in Italy; however, these were suppressed by the government. At the Revolta per il pane (bread riots) in Turin on August 25, 1917, the government cracked down on; Fifty dead, over two hundred injured, numerous arrests and the declaration of a state of emergency in Turin were the consequences. The socialist leaders were charged with inciting a revolution and sentenced to prison terms. The board of directors of the socialists was replaced by a twelve-member committee, of which Gramsci also belonged. Gramsci remained editor of Il Grido del popolo until the newspaper ceased operations on October 19, 1918.

On November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia ; on November 24th, Gramsci published an Italian-wide edition of Avanti! under the title La rivoluzione contro il Capitale (German: The revolution against capital).

At the end of the First World War, Gramsci only worked for the Turin edition of Avanti! , but the young Turin socialists Gramsci, Tasca, Togliatti and Terracini wanted to get even more involved in socialist politics after the October Revolution . To this end, the quartet founded the weekly L'Ordine Nuovo . Gramsci belonged to the editorial collective and also took over the editing.

On March 23, 1919, Benito Mussolini founded the "Fasci di combattimento" as a forerunner of the fascist party , which also appeared as a paramilitary organization to smash the socialist movement. The PSI party executive decided on the XVI. Majority at the party congress in March 1919 to join the Communist International (Comintern) founded in Moscow on March 4 . Within the PSI, two groups were formed, the Astensionisti around Amadeo Bordiga , who wanted to abstain and called for an election boycott, and the Elezionisti around Serrati , who were in favor of the socialists taking part in the elections. Both wings spoke out in favor of armed struggle. In contrast to Serrati, Bordiga wanted to rename the party the “Italian Communist Party” and spoke out in favor of the exclusion of all party members who opposed the armed struggle. The group around L'Ordine Nuovo was close to Serrati's side.

L'Ordine Nuovo and the Turin Council Movement

Palmiro Togliatti (around 1920)

The first edition of the newspaper appeared on May 1, 1919. The title read , “Educate yourselves, for we need all your cleverness. Get moving because we need all your enthusiasm. Get organized, because we need all your strength. ” An editorial written by Gramsci and Togliatti, which called for the establishment of workers' councils in the factories of Turin, met with a wide response. By the end of the year, 120,000 Turin workers were organized in councils. As a result, the workers revolted, brought the factories under their control, but kept production going. Gramsci, who among other things took part in factory meetings, advanced to become the political spokesman for the mass movement.

In the Ordine Nuovo , the developments and experiences of the Russian Soviets were also discussed and documented. Gramsci propagated a council concept for Turin that should extend beyond the factory committees. According to Gramsci, the aim of these councils would be to create a revolutionary culture of self-organized producers; he also described it as the nucleus of a future communist society.

On the initiative of Ordine Nuovo , a culture school was set up in November 1919 to pursue the political education of the workers' councils. Gramsci gave numerous lectures there in which the experiences of the council movement were discussed and reflected, and he also supported the establishment of communist educational groups. In an editorial of the Ordine Nuovo , Gramsci wrote that it was the task of the Ordine Nuovo to act as a spontaneous school of the labor movement and thus to create a unity of intellectual education and proletarian action.

In April 1920, the Turin council movement had another high point when 200,000 workers carried out a ten-day general strike. This strike was limited to Turin, however, as the national leadership of the PSI refused to support it. In September of the same year, however, there were new factory occupations throughout Italy, with the focus again on Turin. When the military was threatened in Turin against the occupiers, the Socialist Party succeeded in negotiating a compromise with the employers and preventing the military operation. However, this led to the political isolation of the remaining councils, which Gramsci made the party to reproach. This was one of the reasons why the differences between the centrist, reformist and communist currents increased.

Gramsci now drafted a nine-point program, which was published on May 8, 1920 in L'Ordine Nuovo . Gramsci advocated the swift transition to revolution, which would, however, require better coordination between workers and peasants. This revolution will "either be followed by the conquest of political power by the revolutionary proletariat or by a terrible reaction by the possessing class."

On July 19, 1920, the 2nd Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) began and passed a paper with 21 conditions that should apply to socialist parties if they wanted to become members of the Comintern. Among other things, the demand was made that the name of the party concerned had to be changed to “Communist Party” and that reformist groups had to be excluded immediately. The centrist wing around Serrati feared losing the reformist wing in the situation in Italy in which the bourgeoisie counterattacked. Lenin advocated expulsion, but at the same time criticized Bordiga and the Astensionisti for their ignorance of positive international examples of revolutionary parliamentary work. Gramsci's nine-point program was endorsed by Lenin, which gave Gramsci a boost.

Founding of the Communist Party

The resolution of the Communist International required the socialist parties to distance themselves from the reformists and the gradualists (the latter advocated the achievement of power through small democratic steps). The Partito Socialista Italiano expressly rejected this. In the course of the suppression of the workers' councils in August and September 1920, this led to the split-off of the left wing of the PSI. The first preparations for this split were made at the PSI conference held in Imola in November 1920.

The spin-off was only completed on the occasion of the PSI conference on January 21, 1921. After Amadeo Bordiga declared the impossibility of cooperation between the revolutionaries, the reformists and the maximalists, the communists left the building and founded the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) in the San Marco Theater in Livorno . The party moved its headquarters to Milan and started its activities under the chairmanship of Bordiga. Gramsci and Terracini moved into the central committee, Amadeo Bordiga, Bruno Fortichiari , Luigi Repossi , Ruggiero Greco and Umberto Terracini formed the executive.

L'Ordine Nuovo , run by Gramsci, became one of the most famous communist daily newspapers alongside Il Lavoratore from Trieste and Il Comunista from Rome . In the elections of May 15, 1921, Antonio Gramsci ran for MP, but was not elected. When the III. The Comintern Congress, which was held in the summer of 1921, but now a united front was urgently recommended for the situation in Italy in order to be able to take action against the fascist offensive, Bordiga did not follow, but polemicized in his Roman theses against the united front tactics. Gramsci, who tried several times to mobilize for the united front, gave up his efforts in late 1921.

L'Unità : the first edition from February 12, 1924

At the end of May 1922, Gramsci traveled to Moscow to represent the Italian Communists in the executive branch of the International Communists. When he arrived in Russia, he fell ill and had to seek treatment for nervous diseases in a Moscow sanatorium.

After Mussolini came to power , the Comintern decided that the Italian communists should unite with the socialist wing of the internationalists. The fascists arrested Bordiga in February 1923, and the Comintern, with Gramsci's consent, set up a mixed executive in Italy, in which Bordiga's group was now a minority. Bordiga was elected to the EKKI Presidium for this purpose. Shortly afterwards, however, the new executive was arrested, which is why Gramsci was sent to Vienna with the task of building a new executive from outside.

On February 12, 1924, the first edition of the new communist daily L'Unità appeared in Milan and from March 1, the new editions of L'Ordine Nuovo appeared , which was now only published twice a month.

Marriage with Julca Schucht

Julca Schucht and children Delio and Giuliano (1930)

During his trip to Moscow in 1922, Gramsci met Eugenia Schucht again, a Russian violinist whom he had met for the first time in Italy a few years earlier. Through her he met her sister Julca, who also worked as a violinist and had attended the Liceo musicale in Rome for several years , and fell in love with her.

Julca (actually Julia) Schucht was born in Geneva in 1896 during the emigration of the German-Jewish Schucht family. Her German father was an opponent of tsarist rule and a leading communist, who was exiled to Siberia for this reason and who later emigrated. Her Jewish mother, Julia Girsfeld, was an active socialist, later a communist. At the beginning of the century the family moved to Rome. Here Julia attended the Liceo musicale and subsequently worked as a violinist and taught at the music school in Ivanovo . In 1924 she became an employee of the Soviet secret police OGPU , the successor organization to the Cheka and a forerunner of the KGB .

Antonio Gramsci and Julia Schucht married in 1923. During his marriage to Gramsci, Schucht gave birth to two sons in Moscow, on August 21, 1924, Delio, who died in 1981. The second son, Giuliano, who died in 2007, was born on August 30, 1926. Also because of his imprisonment, Gramsci never met his second son.

Communist Party Chairman

As a result of the waves of arrests, Gramsci remained one of the few free CC members of the KPI. On April 6, 1924, he won a mandate for the KPI in the Veneto region . As a result, Gramsci now enjoyed immunity and was therefore able to leave Vienna , where he was temporarily staying, and move to Rome . In the same month he took part in an illegal meeting of the leadership of the Italian communists near Como and became the general secretary (chairman) of the KPI.

On June 10th, Giacomo Matteotti , a Socialist MP, was kidnapped by six Squadristi and then murdered. Matteotti had previously given a fiery speech in parliament in which he had warned of the impending danger of the fascists for Italian democracy. The disappearance of Matteotti and the discovery of his body a few weeks later led to a marked change in mood in large parts of the population. The majority did not doubt that the fascists were behind the murder. Mussolini's popularity fell.

The Aventinians , an association of anti-fascist forces (including socialists, communists, liberals, democrats and Catholics), protested against the assassination of Matteotti by leaving their members of parliament. However, the opposition was anything but united; the different parties distrusted each other, which made them almost incapable of acting. Gramsci continued to believe that the end of the fascist regime was imminent, but he should be mistaken. The squadristi and their violent repression made the population docile. For example, Piero Gobetti , a harsh critic of the regime, was beaten by four squadristi in front of his house on September 5, 1925 and injured so badly that he succumbed to his injuries in the spring of 1926.

On October 20, Gramsci suggested that the Aventinians form a kind of anti-parliament . However, this proposal was rejected by the other opposition parties. On October 26th, he traveled to Sardinia to attend a regional Communist Party congress and to visit his family. On November 12, 1924, the Communist MP Luigi Repossi returned to Parliament, and two weeks later the remaining Communist MPs also returned. On January 3, 1925, Benito Mussolini gave a speech to the Chamber of Deputies. As leader of the Fascist Party, he took full "moral, political and historical responsibility" for the murder of Matteotti, but without establishing any direct connection. When he was asked to charge him for the crime, his opponents did not comply with the prospect of such an undertaking.

From February to April 1925 Gramsci stayed in Moscow to meet his son Delio and to see his wife again. On May 26, Antonio Gramsci gave his first and last speech to former party colleague Mussolini; this after the government had drawn up a draft law that should regulate anti-government associations and their activities. Gramsci: "With this law you hope to prevent the development of large workers' and peasant organizations [...] you can bring the state under your control, you can change the law, you can try to ban the organizations in their current form, but you can don't disregard the facts. You are doing nothing other than forcing the proletariat to orient itself in a different (political) direction [...] the revolutionary forces in Italy cannot be divided, your dream will not be realized! ”As on September 12, 1924 the militant communist Giovanni Corvi murdered the fascist MP Armando Casalini in retaliation for the murder of Matteotti , the fascist regime intensified its repression against the opposition. From 20 to 26 January 1926 took place in Lyon secretly conducted III. Congress of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) held. Here Gramsci presented his theses on Italian fascism and its origins. The Congress agreed to these theses and confirmed Gramsci as Secretary General of the Central Committee.

Back in Rome, Gramsci spent a few months with his family. His wife, who was expecting their second son, Giuliano, left Italy on August 7, 1925 for Moscow. A month later, her sister Eugenia Schucht returned to Moscow with their firstborn son Delio.

In September Gramsci began an essay on the Questione meridionale ( Alcuni temi sulla questione meridionale ), in which he analyzed the political developments of 1894, the year of the peasant unrest in Sicily, and the uprising of 1896 in Milan.

Arrest, trial, prison term and death in 1937

The Regina Coeli prison in Rome

On October 31, 1926, Mussolini survived an assassination attempt; Although he was unharmed, he took the attack as an opportunity to eliminate the last traces of democracy. On November 5, the fascist government dissolved all opposition parties and also abolished freedom of the press. Three days later Gramsci was arrested in defiance of his parliamentary immunity and taken to Regina Coeli prison in Rome. Shortly afterwards he was exiled to Ustica and from February 7, 1927 he was imprisoned in Milan, in the San Vittore prison.

The trial of twenty-two communists, among them Antonio Gramsci, Umberto Terracini , Mauro Scoccimarro , Giovanni Roveda and Ezio Riboldi , began on May 28, 1928 in Rome; General Alessandro Saporiti was the president of the court. Gramsci was charged with conspiratorial activity, inciting civil war, defending criminal offenses, and inciting class hatred. The prosecutor, Michele Isgrò, closed his indictment with the following words: “We have to prevent this brain from working for twenty years.” On June 4th, Gramsci was sentenced to twenty years, four months and five days in prison; on July 19th, he was sentenced to twenty years, four months and five days in prison he was imprisoned in Turi prison ( Bari province ).

A period of imprisonment began for Gramsci under physically and mentally inhumane conditions. He was ostracized or denounced by the management of the KPI in Paris as well as by fellow prisoners because of various critical statements. His former professor and friend Piero Sraffa provided him with books. The separation from his family, the isolation from political practice and the intellectual exchange with friends and comrades hit him hard. The only connection to the outside world subsequently remained the correspondence with the closest relatives and the visits Gramsci was allowed to receive.

Antonio Gramsci's grave in Rome

Removed from public life, the political intellectual had little more than to think further and formulate his thoughts. For the most part, it is the works that were created while in custody that earned the comparatively broad, long-term popularity of his name. On February 8, 1929, Gramsci, who was not given permanent writing implements, is said to have started to write the famous prison notebooks. A cellmate is said to have helped him hide his notes. His sister-in-law Tatiana (Tania) Schucht, who adored the great theorist, was important for their transport outside. Julca - with the children in Russia - was barely able to support Antonio; in private letters he laments the rarity of her replies. Her sister had moved to Italy, visited her brother-in-law often and tried to get his release or improve his living conditions.

In 1931 the prisoner suffering from tuberculosis was placed in a solitary cell. The consumption also affected his since childhood ailing back: Gramsci suffered from Pott's disease , tuberculous changes of the spine . He tried to keep up with the elaboration of his political, philosophical and historical considerations. However, his health deteriorated more and more. In August 1932, Gramsci, who also had high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis, suffered severe cerebral haemorrhage.

Gramsci's mother died on December 30, 1932. The family decided not to tell Antonio about this. In 1933 Gramsci went through another crisis, with hallucinations and delusions. In the meantime, a committee was formed in Paris that campaigned for the release of Gramsci and other political prisoners; these included Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse . On November 19, Gramsci was taken to the infirmary of the Civitavecchia prison, and on December 7, he was transferred to the clinic of Dr. Cusumano to Formia .

On October 25, 1934, Mussolini approved Gramsci's release request, but Gramsci was still placed under arrest and was not allowed to go to a clinic because the government feared he might flee abroad. It was not until August 24, 1935 that the painful Gramsci was allowed to visit the “Quisisana” clinic in Rome. He was in grave condition. In addition to complications of his tubercular and cerebrovascular diseases, the diagnosis of gout and therapeutic efforts to treat hypertension are known from the time of his clinical care .

On April 21, 1937, Gramsci was officially regained full freedom. However, he stayed in the clinic; and his condition was critical. On April 27, 46-year-old Antonio Gramsci died of another cerebral hemorrhage. The next day his remains were cremated, followed by the funeral, in which only his brother Carlo and his sister-in-law Tania attended. After the Allied liberation of Italy , Gramsci's ashes were transferred to the Protestant cemetery in Rome.

Thinkers who influenced Gramsci

  • Henri Bergson - French philosopher, Nobel Prize winner in literature and theoretician of voluntarism .
  • Benedetto Croce - Italian liberalist, anti-Marxist, philosopher, humanist, historian and politician
  • Antonio Labriola - Italian Marxist from the very beginning
  • Niccolò Machiavelli - Italian politician, philosopher, historian and poet of the 16th century, who particularly influenced Gramsci's theory of the state.
  • Karl Marx - economist, philosopher, historian, political journalist and founder of Marxism .
  • Vilfredo Pareto - Italian engineer, economist and sociologist
  • Georges Sorel - French syndicalist thought leader and social philosopher.

philosophy

hegemony

Gramsci first formulated his concept of hegemony on the basis of developments in Italian history, particularly the Risorgimento . Accordingly, the Risorgimento could have taken on a revolutionary character if it had managed to win the support of the broad masses (especially the peasants, who at that time formed the majority of the population). The limits of the bourgeois revolution lay in the fact that it was not led by a radical party, in contrast to France , where the rural population who supported the revolution were decisive in the defeat of the aristocratic forces.

The most progressive Italian party at the time was the Partito Sardo d'Azione , the party of Mazzini and Garibaldi . However, this did not have the ability to unite the progressive bourgeois forces with the peasants. Garibaldi distributed land to the peasants in Sicily , but the peasant uprising was ruthlessly suppressed and the Guardia nazionale anticontadina was founded.

Even if the Partito d'Azione was a progressive element in the Risorgimento, it did not represent the leading force, because this position was occupied by the moderate forces. This enabled the Cavourans to take the lead in the bourgeois revolution and absorb the radical forces. This succeeded because the moderate Cavourans had an organic relationship with their intellectuals, who, like the politicians, were landowners and industrial tycoons. Most of the population thus remained passive and a compromise was reached between the capitalists of northern Italy and the large landowners of southern Italy.

“The predominance of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and as intellectual and moral leadership. A social group is dominant when it subdues the opposing groups and leads the allied groups. A social group can, and must, have taken the lead before taking power; when it is then in power [...] it becomes dominant, but it must continue to lead. "

The task of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in the Risorgimento was to provide the leading class. There were groups in Italy whose core strived for unity, but these groups did not want to lead anyone, or they were not prepared to coordinate their interests with those of other groups. They wanted to rule but not to lead; they wanted their interests to prevail, they wanted a new independent force to rule Italy. This force became the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, which thus took over a function similar to that taken over by a party.

From the point of view of Gramsci, every group striving for domination in a modern society must be prepared to compromise on their economic and social interests, to seek compromises with a large number of political forces and to form alliances with them. Gramsci calls these alliances Historical Block , a term coined by Georges Sorel . This block forms the basis for a social order through which the hegemony of the dominant class is formed and ensured with the help of a link between institutions, social relationships and ideas. In Italy this historical block was formed by the industrialists, the landowners, the middle class and parts of the petty bourgeoisie.

Gramsci noted that in the West, the cultural values ​​of the bourgeoisie are linked to Christianity . Therefore, part of his criticism of the prevailing culture is also directed against religious norms and values. He was impressed by the power the Catholic Church had over the believers and saw the care with which the Church prevented the religion of the intellectuals from becoming too distant from the religion of the uneducated. Gramsci believed that the task of Marxism was to combine the criticism of religion exercised by humanism in the Renaissance with the main elements of the Reformation . According to Gramsci, Marxism cannot supersede religion until it can meet people's spiritual needs, and for that to happen they must perceive it as an expression of their own experiences.

Intellectuals and education

Gramsci often thought about the role of the intellectual in society. He is famous for his conviction that all people are intellectuals and therefore have intellectual and rational talents, but that only a few in society also take on the role of intellectuals and can also develop and exercise these talents. For Gramsci, the intellectuals are not only speakers or pure scientists, but also leaders and organizers of social processes who exert an influence on the prevailing social conditions and therefore produce and secure a certain social hegemony via state and ideological apparatuses such as education Media, parties, interest groups, etc.

Gramsci distinguished between traditional intellectuals, which include the writer, the philosopher, and the artist. They see themselves (wrongly) as a class outside of society. On the other hand, there are organic intellectuals who each class produces from its own ranks. A social group striving for hegemony does everything to assimilate the traditional intellectuals and to win them over to their ideologies. This is faster and more efficient if the group also develops its own organic intellectuals.

These organic intellectuals not only describe social life with scientific rules, but rather, through the language of culture, they articulate feelings and experiences that the general public cannot convey themselves. Gramsci saw it as a need to create a working class culture. In the revolutionary proletarian movements and in a social society, contrary to the previous societies, everyone should increasingly assume the function of an intellectual. This would require an education system in which working class intellectuals can develop. This educational system could not simply produce and convey a science and practice of proletarian class character in old hierarchical-authoritarian educational apparatuses of the bourgeois type; rather, it needed a new social organizational form of education that followed the principle of a future social society and the insights of Marxist theory. The already existing intellectual activities of the masses are to be critically questioned and renewed through this new organization of the intellectual activity of the working class. In educational institutions, the relationship between teacher and pupil should be redesigned so that everyone should exercise the function of teacher and pupil, similar to how Marx formulated in the theses on Feuerbach that the educator himself must be educated.

State and civil society

Gramsci's theory of hegemony is tied to his idea of ​​the capitalist state, which he believes is governed by coercion and consensus. The state is not to be understood in the narrower sense as government; Gramsci differentiates between political society, in which the political and legal institutions belong, and civil society, which is commonly referred to as the private or non-state sphere of life and to which the economy also belongs. He describes the former as the area of ​​coercion and the latter as the area of ​​consensus. Gramsci emphasizes that the separation is purely conceptual and that the two areas often overlap in reality.

State = political society + civil society; that is, hegemony armored with coercion. According to Gramsci, the separation of state and civil society is not possible because the state itself establishes and enforces, guarantees or changes the separation between private and public spheres, political and civil society.

Gramsci claimed that under modern capitalism, the bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by accepting certain demands from trade unions and political parties. In doing so, the bourgeoisie promotes a passive revolution by going under their economic interests and allowing the forms of their hegemony to change. Gramsci postulated that movements such as reformism , fascism , Taylorism and Fordism are examples of this.

In the tradition of Niccolò Machiavelli , he argued that the Revolutionary Party was The Modern Prince who would allow the working class to form organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony within bourgeois society.

Consequently, the main political task for Gramsci was the gain of “cultural hegemony” by the party as “collective intellectuals”, the “translation” of (Marxist) philosophy into everyday consciousness and its confirmation as “philosophy of practice”.

Quotes

“Creating a new culture not only means making individual 'original' discoveries, it also and especially means to critically disseminate truths that have already been discovered, to 'socialize' them, so to speak, and thereby make them the basis of vital actions, an element of coordination and intellectual and moral order. That a mass of people is brought to think the real present coherently and in a uniform way is a 'philosophical' fact that is much more important and 'original' than when a philosophical 'genius' discovers a new truth, the Erbhof small groups of intellectuals remains. "

- Antonio Gramsci : Prison Notebooks . Critical Complete Edition, edited by Klaus Bochmann , Wolfgang Fritz Haug , Peter Jehle, Volume 1–10, Argument Verlag, Hamburg 1991ff., Volume 6, Issue 1, § 12

“You have to create sober, patient people who do not despair in the face of the worst horrors and who are not enthusiastic about every stupid thing. Pessimism of reason, optimism of will "

- Prison notebooks, no. 28, § 11, 2232

"All people are intellectuals, [...] but not all people have the function of intellectuals in society."

- Prison notebooks, no.12, § 1, 1500

“We have to wean ourselves off and stop understanding culture as encyclopedic knowledge, whereby the human being is only seen as a vessel that has to be filled and grafted with empirical data, with naked and incoherent facts, which he then finds in his brain as in categorize the sections of a dictionary […]. Real culture is something completely different. Culture is disciplining one's inner self, taking possession of one's own personality and attaining a higher level of consciousness with which one comes to understand one's own historical value, one's own function in life, one's own rights and duties. "

- Grido del popolo of January 29, 1916

“To know oneself means to live one's own being, means to be master of oneself, to stand out from others, to break out of chaos, to be an element of order, but of one's own order and one's own, one Ideally committed discipline. And that cannot be achieved if you do not also know the others, their history, the efforts that they have made to become what they are, to create the social formation that they founded and that we through the want to replace ours. "

- Grido del popolo of January 29, 1916

“Contemporary history offers a model for understanding the Italian past: there is a European cultural awareness today, and there are a number of expressions from intellectuals and politicians who claim the need for a European Union: one could also say that the historical Process strives towards this union and there are many material forces that will only be able to develop in this union: if this union will exist in x years, the word 'nationalism' will have the same archaeological meaning as the word 'municipalism'. "

- Prison notebooks, No. 6, § 78, 1930

Influence / reception

Political Science, Neographic Scianism, KPI

Although Gramsci came from the organized left, he is now an important figure in academic discussions, for example within cultural studies . His influence is particularly strong in political science , so that a special trend named after Gramsci, Neogramscianism , has formed here. His work also had a strong influence on intellectual treatises on pop culture .

Gramsci's legacy was the subject of intense discussion in communist circles. Palmiro Togliatti , who led the Communist Party of Italy after World War II , claimed that the policies of the PCI under his leadership were in line with Gramsci's theories. Others believe that Gramsci would probably have been expelled from the party if his prison sentence had not prevented him from regular contact with the communist leadership under Joseph Stalin , as Gramsci's ideas were fundamentally different from those of Stalinism .

People who were influenced by Gramsci

New rights

Theorists of the political right have also discovered his concepts for themselves; for example, his ideas on hegemony are often taken up. In the wake of the right-wing intellectual Alain de Benoist, the French Nouvelle Droite and the West German New Right also refer to Gramsci's ideas on how to achieve discourse hegemony .

Works

Gramsci's work prior to his arrest in November 1926 consists mainly of newspaper articles, some speeches and reports, and an unfinished work on southern Italy.

Prison notebooks

The total of 32 prison notebooks, which consist of a total of 2,848 pages, were not intended for publication by Gramsci. They contain thoughts and notes that Gramsci wrote down during his imprisonment. Over time, the whole thing grew into one of the most important works of Marxist philosophy, which Gramsci calls the philosophy of practice. Tatiana Schucht and Piero Sraffa saved the prison notebooks from the supervisory staff and then handed them over to the banker Raffaele Mattioli ; he had previously paid for the hospital stays for Gramsci. Mattioli then traveled to Moscow and entrusted the writings to Palmiro Togliatti and the other Italian communists. At the end of the Second World War, the booklets were published together with the Lettere dal carcere by the publishing house Einaudi. A total of six volumes were published, which are arranged according to topic and have the following titles:

  • Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce (German: The historical materialism and the philosophy of Benedetto Croce ).
  • Gli intellettuali e l'organizzazione della cultura (German: The intellectuals and the organization of culture ).
  • Il Risorgimento (German: The Risorgimento ).
  • Note sul Machiavelli, sulla politica e sullo Stato moderno (German: Notes about Machiavelli, about politics and about the modern state ).
  • Letteratura e vita nazionale (German: literature and national life ).
  • Passato e presente (German: past and present ).

In 1975 the booklets appeared in an expanded new edition; this time, the booklets were no longer arranged thematically, but according to the time of origin. In addition to the prison notebooks, this issue also includes all the articles written by Gramsci and published in L'Avanti! have appeared in Il grido del popolo and in L'ordine nuovo .

  • 2011: Nicola Calefi / Guglielmo Leoni (eds.): I racconti dei fratelli Grimm. e traduzioni originali dai "Quederni del carcere" . Sassuolo, Milan.

Work editions

  • Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks . Edited by Klaus Bochmann and Wolfgang Fritz Haug, 10 volumes. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1991ff (new edition 2012).
  • Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters . Volume 1: Correspondence with Giulia Schucht . Edited by Ursula Apitzsch , Peter Kammerer, Aldo Natoli, Mimma Paulesu Quercioli. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1995.
  • Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters Volume 2: Correspondence with Tatjana Schucht 1926–1930 . Edited by Ursula Apitzsch, Peter Kammerer, Aldo Natoli. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2008.
  • Antonio Gramsci: Letters from the Dungeon . Dietz Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1956.
  • Antonio Gramsci: Upbringing and Education . Edited by Andreas Merkens. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-88619-423-X (Gramsci-Reader 1).
  • Antonio Gramsci: America and Europe . Edited by Thomas Barfuss. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2007 (Gramsci-Reader 2).
  • Antonio Gramsci: Literature and Culture . Edited by Ingo Lauggas. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2012 (Gramsci-Reader 3).
  • Read Gramsci! Entry into the prison notebooks , ed. v. Mario Candeias , Florian Becker, Janek Niggemann, Anne Steckner, Hamburg 2013.
  • Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters III. Correspondence with Tatjana Schucht 1931–1935 . Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2014.
  • Antonio Gramsci: A Great and Terrible World. The Pre-Prison Letters (1908-1926) . Edited by Derek Boothman. Lawrence & Wishart, London 2014.

literature

German speaking

  • Perry Anderson : Antonio Gramsci: A Critical Appreciation. Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-921241-45-6 .
  • Thomas Barfuss, Jehle, Peter: Antonio Gramsci for an introduction. Junius, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-88506-084-0 .
  • Armin Bernhard: Antonio Gramscis Political Pedagogy. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2005.
  • Robert Bösch: The miraculous renaissance of Antonio Gramsci. In: Krisis 13 (Ed.): Contributions to the criticism of the commodity society. Bad Honnef 1993.
  • Johanna Borek et al. (Ed.): Cultures of resistance. Texts on Antonio Gramsci. Vienna 1993.
  • Christine Buci-Glucksmann : Gramsci and the State. For a materialistic theory of philosophy. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1981, ISBN 3-7609-0568-4 .
  • Sonja Buckel , Andreas Fischer-Lescano (eds.): Hegemony armored with compulsion. Civil society and politics in Antonio Gramsci's understanding of the state. (= Understanding of the State. Volume 11). Nomos, Baden-Baden 2007, ISBN 978-3-8329-2438-6 .
  • Anette Emtmann: Civil Society Between Revolution and Democracy. The “velvet revolution” in the light of Antonio Gramsci's category of “società civile”. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1998.
  • Giuseppe Fiori: The Life of Antonio Gramsci. A biography. Rotbuch, Berlin 2013. (Original: Vita di Antonio Gramsci. Laterza, Bari, 1966)
  • Gregor von Fürstenberg: Religion and Politics. Antonio Gramsci's sociology of religion and its reception in Latin America. Grünewald-Verlag, Mainz / Munich 1997.
  • Luciano Gruppi: Gramsci, Philosophy of Practice and the Hegemony of the Proletariat. VSA, Hamburg 1977.
  • Wolfgang Fritz Haug : Philosophizing with Brecht and Gramsci. Argument Verlag, Hamburg 1996
  • Wolfgang Fritz Haug: Historical Materialism and Philosophy of Practice. From Marx to Gramsci, from Gramsci to Marx. In: Das Argument 236. Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2000, pp. 387-398.
  • Uwe Hirschfeld, Werner Rügemer (Ed.): Utopia and civil society. Reconstructions, theses and information on Antonio Gramsci. Elefanten Press Verlag, Berlin 1990.
  • Uwe Hirschfeld (ed.): Gramsci perspectives. Contributions to the founding conference of the “Berlin Institute for Critical Theory” e. V. from April 18 to 20, 1997 in the Jagdschloss Glienicke, Berlin. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1998.
  • Uwe Hirschfeld: Notes on common sense, political education and utopia. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-86754-811-3 .
  • Karin Hofer: Antonio Gramsci's political theory. SFP, Salzburg 1991.
  • Hans Heinz Holz , Giuseppe Prestipino: Antonio Gramsci today. Current perspectives on his philosophy. Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1992.
  • Franz Kaminski, Heiner Karuscheit, Klaus Winter: Antonio Gramsci, Philosophy and Practice - Foundations and Effects of the Gramsci Debate. Sendler Verlag, Frankfurt 1982, ISBN 3-88048-058-3 .
  • Sabine Kebir : Antonio Gramscis civil society. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-87975-556-6 .
  • Petra Lange: Ways of the Political: The Political Philosophy of Antonio Gramscis and Hannah Arendt. The other publishing house, Osnabrück 2003.
  • Holger Andreas Leidig: Crashed. Antonio Gramsci and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. dissertation.de, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89825-380-5 .
  • Domenico Losurdo : Antonio Gramsci's Marxism: From Utopia to "Critical Communism". 2nd Edition. VSA Verlag, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-89965-536-0 .
  • Peter Mayo: Political education with Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2006.
  • Andreas Merkens, Victor Rego Diaz (Ed.): Working with Gramsci. Texts on Antonio Gramsci's political and practical appropriation. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88619-425-4 .
  • Harald Neubert : Antonio Gramsci - Hegemony, Civil Society, Party: An Introduction. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2001.
  • Harald Neubert: Gramsci - Togliatti - Longo - Berlinguer line: renewal or revisionism in the communist movement. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2009.
  • Karin Priester : Studies on the State Theory of Italian Marxism: Gramsci and Della Volpe. Campus Publishing House, 1981
  • Benjamin Opratko, Oliver Prausmüller (Hrsg.): Gramsci global: Neogramscianische Perspektiven in der Internationale Politischen Wirtschaft. Argument-Verlag, Berlin / Hamburg 2011.
  • Juan Rodriguez-Lores: The Basic Structure of Marxism. Gramsci and the philosophy of practice. Makol, Frankfurt am Main 1971.
  • Christian Riechers : Antonio Gramsci. Marxism in Italy. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1970.
  • Christian Riechers: The defeat in the defeat. Texts on the labor movement, class struggle, fascism. Dissidents of the labor movement. Volume 1. Edited, introduced and commented on by Felix Klopotek . Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-89771-453-3 .
  • Gerhard Roth : Gramsci's philosophy of practice. A new interpretation of Marxism. patmos, Düsseldorf 1972.
  • Ulrich Schreiber : Antonio Gramsci's political theory. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1990
  • Hermes Spiegel: Gramsci and Althusser. A critique of Althusser's reception of Gramsci's philosophy. Argument-Verlag, Hamburg 1997.
  • Nora Sternfeld : The educational disproportion. Teaching and learning with Rancière, Gramsci and Foucault. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-85132-530-0 .
  • Rahel Sophia Süß : collective agency. Gramsci - Holzkamp - Laclau / Mouffe . Foreword by Oliver Marchart . Turia + Kant, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-85132-767-0 .
  • Theo Votsos: The concept of civil society in Antonio Gramsci. Argument-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-88619-281-4 .
  • Ernst Wimmer : Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution. Globus Verlag, Vienna 1984.
  • Zibaldone No. 11: Antonio Gramsci. Piper, Munich 1991.
  • André Zogholy : Cultural-political strategies of the FPÖ and the hegemony theory according to Antonio Gramsci. (= Writings of the Johannes Kepler University Linz. Series B, Economics and Social Sciences. 61). Trauner, Linz 2002, ISBN 3-85487-336-0 .

English speaking

  • Alison J. Ayers (Ed.): Gramsci, political economy, and international relations theory: modern princes and naked emperors. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2008.
  • Andreas Bieler (Ed.): Images of Gramsci: connections and contentions in political theory and international relations. Routledge, London 2006.
  • John McKay Cammett: Antonio Gramsci and the origins of Italian Communism. Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford 1967.
  • Kate Crehan: Gramsci′s Common Sense. Inequality and Its Narratives. Duke University Press, Durham 2016.
  • Alastair Davidson: Antonio Gramsci: Towards an intellectual biography. Merlin Press, London 1987 (new edition Brill, Leiden 2016).
  • Harold Entwistle: Antonio Gramsci: conservative schooling for radical politics. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon 2010 (= 1979).
  • Joseph Francese (Ed.): Perspectives on Gramsci: politics, culture and social theory. Routledge, London 2009.
  • Stephen Gill (Ed.): Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 1994.
  • Marcus E. Green (Ed.): Rethinking Gramsci. Routledge, London 2011.
  • Renate Holub: Antonio Gramsci: beyond Marxism and postmodernism. Routledge, London 1999.
  • Peter Ives: Language and hegemony in Gramsci. Pluto Press, London 2004.
  • Peter Ives, Rocco Lacorte: Gramsci, Language, and Translation. Lexington Books, Lanham 2010.
  • Steve Jones: Antonio Gramsci. Routledge, London 2008.
  • Mark McNally, John Schwarzmantel: Gramsci and global politics: hegemony and resistance. Routledge, London 2009.
  • Mark McNally (Ed.): Antonio Gramsci. Palgrave Macmillan, London 2015.
  • Adam David Morton: Unraveling Gramsci: hegemony and passive revolution in the global political economy. Pluto, London 2007.
  • Emanuele Saccarelli : Gramsci and Trotsky in the shadow of Stalinism: the political theory and practice of opposition. Routledge, New York 2008.
  • Antonio A. Santucci: Antonio Gramsci. Monthly Review, New York 2010.
  • Neelam Srivastava, Baidik Bhattacharya (Ed.): The Postcolonial Gramsci. Routledge, New York 2012.
  • Peter Thomas: The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Brill Academic Publication, 2009.

Film adaptations

Web links

Commons : Antonio Gramsci  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Antonio Gramsci  - Quotes
Online texts on Gramsci

References and comments

  1. ^ Tiberio Occhionero: Family tree of the Gramsci family. Retrieved October 2, 2017 (Italian).
  2. ↑ IGSN 9 - Nuove notizie sulla famiglia paterna di Gramsci. Retrieved October 2, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Emergono nuovi particolari storici sulle origini albanesi di Gramsci - La Nuova Sardegna . In: Archivio - La Nuova Sardegna . ( gelocal.it [accessed October 2, 2017]).
  4. ↑ See Giuseppe Fiori: Vita di Antonio Gramsci. Edition 1979, p. 13.
  5. ↑ Mostly eighth, and a nine in Italian. The grading scale in Italy ranged from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest grade.
  6. ↑ He suffered from fantasies about a large spider falling down and sucking out his brain.
  7. ^ Editor's note. In: Antonio Gramsci: On politics, history and culture . Edited by Guido Zamins. Translated from Italian by Maria-Louise Döring, Günther Grübel, Sabine Kebir, Helmut Kessler, Annemarie Motsch, Anna Mudry, Erich Saleski, Guido Zamis. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1980, p. 5.
  8. ↑ Palmiro Togliatti: Antonio Gramsci. A life for the Italian working class. Berlin 1954.
  9. ^ The leading article with the title "Workers' Democracy" appeared on June 21, 1919 in L'Ordine nuovo .
  10. ↑ See also the article “Unions and Councils” published in L'Ordine nuovo on October 11, 1919 .
  11. ^ Antonio Gramsci jr .: La famiglia Schucht. In: Italieni europei 2/2007. February 29, 2008, accessed February 20, 2019 (Italian).
  12. ↑ In the original: «con questa legge voi sperate di impedire lo sviluppo di grandi organizzazioni operaie e contadine […] voi potete conquistare lo Stato, potete modificare i codici, potete cercar di impedire all organizzazioni di esistere nella forma in cui sono esistite fino ma non potete prevalere sulle condizioni obbiettive in cui siete costretti a muovervi. Voi non farete che costringere il proletariato a ricercare un indirizzo diverso […] le forze rivoluzionarie italiane non si lasceranno schiantare, il vostro torbido sogno non riuscirà a realizzarsi. »
  13. ↑ The term Munizipalismus (Italian: municipalismo ) goes back to a movement during the Roman Republic of the 18th century , in which some municipalities tried to break away from the new state entirely. In the following, the term describes political concepts that demand the self-determination and autonomy of local systems.
  14. ↑ Interview Frankfurter Rundschau, December 27, 2016
  15. ↑ Steffen Kailitz: Political Extremism in the Federal Republic of Germany. Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 84-93.
  16. ^ Editor's note. In: Antonio Gramsci: On politics, history and culture. Edited by Guido Zamis. Translated from Italian by Maria-Louise Döring, Günther Grübel, Sabine Kebir, Helmut Kessler, Annemarie Motsch, Anna Mudry, Erich Saleski, Guido Zamis. Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1980, p. 5.
  17. ^ Antonio Gramsci: Quaderni del carcere. Edizione critica dell'Istituto Gramsci. Einaudi Publishing House, Turin 1975.
personal data
SURNAME Gramsci, Antonio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian author, politician, philosopher (theoretician of communism)
DATE OF BIRTH January 22, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Ales , Sardinia
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1937
Place of death Rome