L'Ordine Nuovo

by Antonio Gramsci

Fondato a Torino il 1° maggio 1919 da Antonio Gramsci e altri intellettuali torinesi del calibro di Palmiro Togliatti, Angelo Tasca e Umberto Terracini, "L'Ordine Nuovo" dichiara un programma di rinnovamento sociale e proletario e diviene ben presto l'organo del movimento dei consigli di fabbrica. Il periodico pubblica articoli che suscitano accesi dibattiti in tutto il movimento operaio, politico e sindacale, diventando una piattaforma rivoluzionaria il cui programma è sostenuto dallo stesso Lenin. Gli articoli che Gramsci scrive per "L'Ordine Nuovo" - particolarmente significativi e caratterizzanti nella sua biografia intellettuale e politica - vengono qui riuniti in una raccolta sono riprodotti, difatti, gli esemplari redazionali sottratti alla censura, che permettono così di ristabilire il testo originale senza tagli.

501 pages, Paperback

Published November 25, 2020

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.