Selections From The Prison Notebooks

by Antonio Gramsci

The Prison Notebooks were a series of essays written by the Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was imprisoned by the Italian Fascist regime in 1926, and the notebooks were written between 1929 and 1935, when Gramsci was released from prison on grounds of ill-health. He died in April 1937.

Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. Although written unsystematically, the Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th century political theory.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Politics, Philosophy

848 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 17, 2018

About the author

Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, where he remained until his death in 1937.

During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources — not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, the state, historical materialism, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture.
Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — use cultural institutions to maintain wealth and power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci's view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. He also attempted to break from the economic determinism of orthodox Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist. He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a philosophy of praxis and an absolute historicism that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gramsci was one of the most important, original and influential marxist writers of the 20th Century. He wrote extensively on the role of intellectuals, on education, history, politics, culture, the modern state and philosophy. The Prison Notebooks was written between 1929 and 1935, when Gramsci was a prisoner of the Italian fascist state under Mussolini. He developed the concept of 'hegemony', arguing that the ruling class sustained its control of society and the state through hegemonic domination of education, culture, sport, religion etc. Working class revolution whould therefore only succeed if the struggle was broadened from that in trhe work place to a broad based struggle involving the contestation of control and space in education, culture, sport, the community etc.

[Yngve Skogstad]

One of those classics of Western Marxist thought that you’ve got to get around to someday. A bit of a mixed bag, in my opinion. For obvious reasons, the work has a very fragmentary character, and the editors only sparsely attempt to explain or contextualize what Gramsci is trying to get across (and past the censor). That being said, there are extensive footnotes concerning the various Italian politicians, parties, etc. that Gramsci mentions throughout, and I found these very helpful. But asides from these the reader is left pretty much on his/her own. Given that Gramsci is notoriously indisposed to defining the terms he uses, and at times also uses them in contradictory ways, it’s not that strange he’s been interpreted in such diverse ways.

The first two-thirds of the book I found sharp and coherent, but towards the end when it came to his thoughts on philosophy, Croce and other characters that I have no relation to I found myself losing interest. I guess I don’t have the patience for his (in our present context irrelevant) point-scoring vis-à-vis Bukharin and others.

Gramsci is at his best when he delves into specific political conjunctures or historical developments, and can deliver sharp and innovative analyses applying his theoretical concepts to concrete historical events. His most well-known ideas I was already quite familiar with (such as hegemony, intellectuals, war of position-war of manoeuvre, historical blocs), but I was also intrigued by his concept of “common sense” as the fragmentary, incoherent philosophy of the masses (“the folklore of philosophy”), as well as his conception of the party as “the modern Prince”, here building on Machiavelli.

[Kevin Q · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gramsci was an orthodox revolutionary historical materialist. People act like he is some post-marxist because he emphasized the dialectical nature of historical materialism. It may appear to the decontextualized that this is post-marxism as a result of it emerging on the intellectual scene amidst the ubiquity of Althusser's structural(and therefore determinist) Marxism, but this is not the case. Gramsci is one of the best authors when it comes to examining the nature of a material(and consequently cultural) paradigm shift.
Gramsci was also opposing himself to Lenin by arguing for the development and leadership of working class individuals against Lenin's desire to have a paradigm shift occur as a result of bourgeois professional revolutionists.
Although he is against these two thinkers who were seen as emblematic of Marxism: he is not some revisionist coward. He is doing difficult theoretical work with the ultimate goal of overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with socialism/communism.

[Niamh]

For MA

[Justin Barger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, if a bit disjointed and long.

Boy he loves to ramble. In short, Gramsci believes that political practice and philosophy are inseparable from one another and in turn, inseparable from the mass of social and cultural and historical relations which produce itself constantly in a dialectical relationship between the mass and elites of a given society. I skimmed a few sections as his writing was fragmentary, rambling and hard to follow sometimes.

[Sarita]

mmm i want that book...

[Matthew]

I think you have to have read a whole library before getting anything out of this one. Probably should've quit 3 months ago.