An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci

Contents

Journalism and militancy

L’Ordine Nuovo

The Communist Party

Prison and the Notebooks

Defining the intellectual

The organic intellectual and the traditional intellectual

Intellectuals and political struggle

Education

Defining education

The school

The dialectic of conformity and spontaneity

Journalism

The press and the organization of culture

The bourgeois press

‘Integral journalism’

Popular literature

3 Politics

Introduction

Civil society, political society and the State

Difficult definitions

‘East’ and ‘West’

War of movement and war of position

The interpretation of modern politics

Gramsci’s method of historical analysis

The era of revolution-restoration

The national-popular Jacobin revolution

The Risorgimento as ‘passive revolution’

Trasformismo, molecularity and scission

Conjunctural processes and organic crises

Caesarism

The analysis of fascism

The modern Prince

What is a political party?

The modern Prince: The incarnation of revolution

The party as living organism

Two errors of revolutionary strategy

4 Philosophy

Redefining philosophy: The individual, philosophy and politics

Theory, practice and philosophical anthropology

‘Every man is a philosopher’

Common sense

The ‘folklore of philosophy’

A pragmatist epistemology

Ideology

Religion and the Catholic Church

The economy: From economic base to historic bloc

Point of departure: The base/superstructure metaphor

The critique of economism

Americanism and Fordism

Point of arrival: The ‘historic bloc’

The philosophy of praxis

Materialism, idealism and Croce

‘Absolute historicism’

The revolution of common sense

5 Hegemony

Introduction

Hegemony: The exercise of leadership

Origins

Political projects

Consent and coercion

Hegemony: A cognitive and moral process

A culture in formation

The ethical State

Hegemonic consciousness as catharsis

The historical stages of hegemony

The pre-hegemonic State

Bourgeois hegemony

From proletarian hegemony to the ‘regulated society’

PART THREE Applications

6 Thinking through Gramsci in Political Theory: Left/Right and the Critical Analysis of Common Sense

Introduction

Contextualizing common sense: Left/Right in politics and everyday life

Historicizing common sense: Left/Right since the French Revolution

Analysing common sense: The formal characteristics of the Left/Right metaphor

The conception of the world contained in common sense: The conception of politics underlying Left/Right

The critique of common sense: Interpreting Left/Right as a political narrative

Conclusion

7 Thinking through Gramsci in Political Economy: Neo-Liberalism and Hegemony in Britain and France in the 1980s

Introduction

Stuart Hall: Thatcherism as hegemonic project

Socialist politics in France before 1981: A Left turn

Five years of Socialist government: A rocky path to neo-liberalism

Parti Socialiste discourse during neo-liberalization: Dissonance and demobilization

Coherent vs. split historic blocs

Neo-liberalism and intellectuals in France: Transformism and fatalism

Conclusion

PART FOUR Legacy

8 Mapping Gramsci’s Legacy

Introduction

Gramsci and Western Marxism

Gramsci and Italian communism

Gramsci and post-Marxism

Gramsci and Postcolonial Studies

Gramsci and Cultural Studies

Gramsci and International Political Economy

Conclusion

Guide to Further Reading

A suggestion on reading Gramsci

Bibliography

Index