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Contains many of the key elements of Gramsci's writings, including 'The Modern Prince' and 'Americanism and Fordism' and observation on the state, Italian history and the role of intellectuals.
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An important thinker, an abstruse text........2006-10-26
"Precision of terms is a revolutionary imperative." -Lenin
Gramsci's name gets bandied about on the academic left enough to make the rest of us feel as though we're missing something if we haven't read him. I took a look at the two chapters that are supposed to be the most relevant to political struggle, "The Modern Prince" and "State and Civil Society", and I'm here to tell activists not to bother slogging through it.
The few key insights the book does offer are easily summarized, and though they might have been fresh in the 1930s, they are by now commonplace: the struggle for socialism must be waged on the terrain of social and cultural insititutions, capitalism exerts its influence not only through brute force but through ideological conditioning using the schools, legal system, and other institutions, etc.
The book itself is very difficult going-- first, it was written under the watchful eye of the prison censors, so it is couched in very vague, allusive, and cryptic terms, and second, it presupposes a great deal of knowledge in the reader of Italian political and intellectual history, and the history of the European Communist Parties. Third, Gramsci's writing style is slapdash and disorganized (though perhaps clarity is too much to expect from someone who was denied medical care in a Fascist prison until it killed him).
It's not surprising that this book has launched a thousand PhD theses and become a cornerstone of ivory-tower socialism. Its abstruse writing makes it perfect fodder for mandarinism and intellectual bluster.
Students of social change would spend their reading time better elsewhere.
The Lost World.......2003-11-25
Michel Foucault once remarked that Antonio Gramsci is a figure much cited and little read. Once upon a time (in the 90s, when things seemed more dismal, then they really were) neoconservatives were warned that Gramscianism was conducting a "long march through the institutions": leftists of a freethinking and free-wheeling bent threw around "organic intellectual" as denoting indigenous members of collective subjects not quite proletarian, and wondered whether "hegemony" was being orchestrated by hip-hop provocateurs.
But in yet another retrenchment of yet another cruel decade, Gramsci has fallen off the map. The neocons wonder if Hillary Rodham Clinton is "angry" about things other than her man and Whitewater; the bohemian leftists wonder about Empire, or stay silent. Which is probably well enough, when it comes to the Gramscian corpus. For although this is the work of an ill-deserved confinement courtesy of one of the world's more notable totalitarian regimes, its stated aim is to be itself "totalitarian" in conception. Antonio Gramsci was something much more complex than a "freedom fighter", and his pronouncements regarding a multitude of subjects in this selection from his *Quaderni del carcere* deserve to be analyzed critically rather than sympathetically.
"Open Marxism" this is not: Gramsci has three major tasks, all of which are compatible with Leninist-Stalinist orthodoxy. Firstly, to analyze the "passive revolution" which has put forth another alternative to progressive political change yet left the productive forces of the economy modernizing with all due speed; secondly, to celebrate the fact of the Communist party's Russian dominance by studying not-necessarily-democratic "hegemony" as a form of political expression throughout modern history; thirdly, to advocate a form of Marxism thoroughly divorced from the materialist scruples of mechanics and keeping its eyes focused firmly on the historical here and now.
All of which are interesting projects, worthy of the best political science and historical ontology that the bourgeois world has to offer, but all of which compete with more explicitly liberatory ideologies (Trotsky's "permanent revolution", representative democracy, Encylopedic enthusiasm for a truly popular science) and offer nuance rather than redemption. Gramsci's communism is, cliched though it may be, somewhat Jesuitical and overly "disciplined" in the face of historical setbacks and core organizational shibboleths of the Comintern: we are offered only details filling out a party line we should believe in anyway, rather than a stirring defense of people power. This book is brilliant, rather than inspirational, and its theses should be troubling, if enlightening, for a member of the democratic left.
A marxist must read!.......2003-06-28
This selection from Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" contains his most important work written during his imprisonment from the italian fascist regime. It includes "the Intellectuals", texts on Education, Notes on Italian History, "The modern Prince", "State and Civil Society", "Americanism and Fordism" and notes on the philosophy of praxis, together with a very informative introduction on the italian Communist Movement in the first decades of the 20th century. In this collection Gramsci's theory of "hegemony" in class societies is fully presented, together with his intepretation of Marxism both in philosophy and in the analysis of the modern world.
Gramsci was on of the foremost leaders of the Italian Communist Party; in his trial in 1927 the fascist Public Prosecutor proclaimed that his brain must be stopped from functioning for twenty years. Fortunately, Gramsci proved to be a devoted fighter in prison and his Notebooks furthered -in many points- the analysis of Marx and Lenin of how capitalism functions and how it could be overthrown.
One of the century's most important political works.......1998-07-10
Gramsci's Prison Notebooks marks one of the nodal points of Western Marxism's break with Leninism and the breed of marxism born of the Bolshevik Revolution. Exploratory and incomplete, the insights contained in this volume marked a turning point in marxist thinking, indeed leading many right through the marxist fold and out the other side. Gramsci's insights into philosphy, cultural criticism, political economy, and politics make this a crucial resource for anyone interested in any of these themes today ... marxist or otherwise. And for those interested in the 'fall' of marxism, Gramsci is perhaps the most important starting point. A veritable critical goldmine!!!!
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The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935
David Forgacs , and
Eric J. Hobsbawm
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Selections from the Prison Notebooks
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ASIN: 0814727018
Release Date: 2000-04-01 |
Book Description
with a new introduction by ERIC J. HOBSBAWM
"Very usefully pulls the key passages from Gramsci's writings into one volume, which allows English-language readers an overall view of his work. Particularly valuable are the connections it draws across his work and the insights which the introduction and glossary provide into the origin and development of some key Gramscian concepts."
--Stuart Hall, Professor of Sociology, Open University
The most complete one-volume collection of writings by one of the most fascinating thinkers in the history of Marxism,
The Antonio Gramsci Reader fills the need for a broad and general introduction to this major figure.
Antonio Gramsci was one of the most important theorists of class, culture, and the state since Karl Marx. In the U.S., where his writings were long unavailable, his stature has lately so increased that every serious student of Marxism, political theory, or modern Italian history must now read him.
Imprisoned by the Fascists for much of his adult life, Gramsci wrote brilliantly on a broad range of subjects: from folklore to philosophy, popular culture to political strategy. Still the most comprehensive collection of Gramsci's writings available in English, it now features a new introduction by leading Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, in addition to its biographical introduction, informative introductions to each section, and glossary of key terms.
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The Two Revolutions: Antonio Gramsci and the Dilemmas of Western Marxism
Carl Boggs
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Selections from the Prison Notebooks
ASIN: 0896082253 |
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Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) is one of the major social and political theorists of the 20th century whose work has had an enormous influence on several fields, including educational theory and practice. Gramsci and Education demonstrates the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's thought for contemporary educational debates. The essays are written by scholars located in different parts of the world, a number of whom are well known internationally for their contributions to Gramscian scholarship and/or educational research. The collection deals with a broad range of topics, including schooling, adult education in general, popular education, workers' education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, multicultural education, and the role of intellectuals in contemporary society.
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Selections from Cultural Writings
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
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ASIN: 0674799860 |
Book Description
Though he died as Benito Mussolini's prisoner, leaving only newspaper articles and fragmentary notes, Antonio Gramsci is now seen as the most significant Marxist thinker since Lenin. This volume is the first English translation of his writings on culture, organically and coherently edited from his journalism and his Prison Notebooks.
Gramsci writes about the popular and the great artists from Jules Verne to Dante, but not as so many timeless monuments. He sees artworks in the context of their reception and their absorption in particular cultures and histories. He is sensitive to the politics of culture as well as to the demands of philological scholarship, as his superb work on Dante in this volume shows. We have in this book Gramsci's changing views on particular literary movements and authors, as well as his ideas on the nature of proletarian and popular cultural criticism. Throughout he is concerned with cultural analysis and strategy rather than literary criticism by itself. The headnotes and footnotes prepared by Forgacs and Nowell-Smith address themselves both to the circumstances surrounding the composition of each segment and to the central problems of contemporary Gramsci scholarship. Antonio Gramsci is the twentieth-century writer who has most brilliantly and suggestively explored the ties that bind culture and politics. The publication of this collection is an event of major significance for theorists of all sorts.
Book Description
The essays collected here relate the writings of Antonio Gramsci and others to the contemporary reconstruction of historical materialist theories of international relations. The contributors analyze the contradiction between globalizing and territorially based social and political forces in the context of past, present, and future world orders, and view the emerging world order as undergoing a structural transformation, a "triple crisis" involving economic, political and "socio-cultural" change. The prevailing trend of the 1980s and early 1990s toward the marketization and commodification of social relations leads the contributors to argue that socialism needs to be redefined away from the totalizing visions associated with Marxism-Leninism, toward the idea of the self defense of society and social choice to counter the disintegrating and atomizing effects of globalizing and unplanned market forces.
Book Description
An introduction to the work, key ideas and influence of Gramsci, Italian Marxist theorist and political activist. Gramsci was a long term prisoner of the Mussolini regime, hence his most famous writings have been those penned in his cell, including the "Prison Notebooks" and the "Prison Letters." Gramsci's ideas about the the relationships between the rulers and the ruled, about domination, resistance and transgression, have been extremely influential in cultural studies and cultural theory. He is perhaps best-known for formulating the concept of "hegemony" which describes the process whereby the ruling power wins the consent of the ruled to the status quo, and hence to fit their subordination , and their ways of understanding the world with the interests of the ruling power. Gramsci's ideas were much employed during the grim years of Thatcherism, as critics on the left (notably Stuart Hall) struggled to find ways to explain the fact that the working classes kept voting for Thatcher, even though it was apparently against their interests to do so. Gramsci's thought also offers hope in that challenges or transgressions to hegemonic ideas or structures can be found even in the most outwardly conservative of narratives. Popular culture has often been cited as a key battleground, on which struggles for meaning and power take place - for example debates about whether Eminem is a "good thing" - because he speaks for the disenfranchised white working-class American, and argues against racial boundaries in music - or a bad thing because of his homophobic and misogynistic lyrics.
Steven Jones' book will explain the contemporary relevance of Gramsci's ideas, notably about hegemony, through recent texts, phenomena and events such as the death of Diana, "La haine," the Global spread of McDonalds and anti-globalization tracts including Naomi Klein's "No Logo."
Book Description
In the last twenty years Antonio Gramsci has become a major presence in British and American anthropology, especially for anthropologists working on issues of culture and power. This book explores Gramsci's understanding of culture and the links between culture and power. Kate Crehan makes extensive use of Gramsci's own writings, including his preprison journalism and prison letters as well as the prison notebooks. Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology also provides an account of the intellectual and political contexts within which he was writing. Crehan examines the challenge that Gramsci's approach poses to common anthropological assumptions about the nature of "culture" as well as the potential usefulness of Gramsci's writings for contemporary anthropologists.
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Gramsci and the fascinating concept of hegemony.......2007-01-02
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci elaborated the idea of hegemony in the early part of the twentieth century. Gramsci emphasizes how values supportive of dominant interests in society get passed on to the masses and thereby, once accepted by the multitudes, come to reinforce the domination by that elite. Political scientists Dawson, Prewitt, and Dawson state that: "Hegemonic theory starts with the assumption that government would not be possible unless the strains and tensions associated with the unequal allocation of values in society were somehow muted. . . . Unless the losers come to see that the way things are is 'natural' or 'appropriate' or 'legitimate,' social disruptions are likely."
Normally, citizens come to accept things the way that they are--as benign, useful, legitimate, and "right." As Gramsci puts it, humans are ". . .conformist to some conformity." This supports the continuation of the status quo--and, by definition, those who benefit from the current state of affairs maintain their sway with this sort of mindset. Those who are powerful and wealthy will stay that way, in part, because the people accept this situation. How does this happen?
The basic premise is that those in power who control the economic and political structures also control the transmission of messages, the views of reality, to the masses. In a capitalist society, those who are not wealthy are continually told that (a) if they work really hard, they can make it and get rich--so do not rock the boat and jeopardize your chances of joining the elite; (b) if the elite get wealthier, then this will trickle down and benefit those who are not in the ranks of the well-to-do. By being told this over and over, the mass of people come to accept their status in society and allow the powerful to stay powerful, the wealthy to stay wealthy.
Hegemony, according to Gramsci, is the result of a bloc of interests united behind a common set of values and norms, which--upon being transmitted to the mass of people through the multitudinous institutions of society--reinforce the power of that bloc. Although an hegemony tends to be stable, change can take place, perhaps through the emergence of a politically conscious working class.
Gramsci, an old Italian Communist, is an interesting thinker. His work is consistent with the idea of "false consciousness," which makes people sound like passive pawns in their own oppression. This might well provide to be unpalatable to many readers. However, he does provide an interesting critique of media, of leaders as willing to manipulate the mass of people. We do know that hegemonies can collapse--witness the end of the old Soviet Union almost overnight. Witness the collapse of East Germany almost overnight. In the end, Gramsci is not an old style Stalinist Marxist; there are many original insights in his work that make him an interesting thinker to explore.
Brilliant writings of a revolutionary.......2000-06-03
Gramsci is the darling of academic sociologists, who have used his insights (especially the concept of "hegemony") in countless obscure books and articles. Of course, these intellectuals never give much mention to Gramsci's activism in the Italian Communist Party. To them, Gramsci achieved greatness when he was locked up by Mussolini, since he could write pure theory that wasn't soiled with his revolutionary activities. The irony, of course, is that Gramsci concerned himself with the *unity* of theory and action, and that he despised the elitist, insular academic world.
This book contains some of his best essays on this theme, especially the Critical Notes on Bukharin's "Popular Study" of Marxism. Gramsci believes, in the Marxist tradition, that philosophy and theory are only useful as guides to practical action. Under capitalism, the working class is the main force of progressive change, and the workers' party systematizes the working-class demands into a concrete program. In that case, the proper source of intellectual thought is not the individual in the university, but the "collective organism" of a revolutionary party:
"In this way a close bond is formed between the large mass, the party and the leading group, and the whole well-co-ordinated complex can move as a 'collective-man'..."
It is sadly ironic that Gramsci was forced to write these lines while isolated in a fascist prison, but that does not take away from their revolutionary content. Gramsci was a brilliant socialist who opposed fascism and Stalinism. He wrote these essays for future revolutionaries, for the "organic intellectuals" who would rise from the working class to think about, *and* fight for, human liberation.
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The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935
Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present)
