Gramsci << GRAM shee >> , Antonio (1891-1937) was an Italian philosopher and politician. He was born on Jan. 22, 1891, in Sardinia , an island off the western coast of Italy . As an adolescent, Gramsci suffered from poor health, but he was a bright student and avid reader. In 1911, he received a scholarship to study at the University of Turin. His political passions drew him to identify with the impoverished people of Sardinia and the perceived injustice of Italy’s wealthy industrial north and underdeveloped and poor south. While Gramsci studied, he also wrote on topics of political theory, history, sociology, and linguistics.
Influenced by a variety of Italian and European philosophers, Gramsci became an increasingly radical, Marxist thinker. He began writing for socialist newspapers, including The New Order, which he founded in 1919. His writings show he aligned his views with those of the Bolshevik leaders of the newly formed Soviet Union . Gramsci founded the Italian Communist Party and became its first leader. In 1924, Gramsci was elected to the Italian Parliament.
Gramsci’s career coincided with the rise of fascist power in Italy. In 1926, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had Gramsci arrested and imprisoned. Gramsci spent almost the entirety of his remaining 11 years behind bars and in exile. In prison, his serious medical conditions, including intestinal diseases and headaches, were neglected, and he succumbed to these on April 27, 1937, at the age of 46. Gramsci’s most influential writings were published as Prison Notebooks (1929-1935).
Today Gramsci is best known in radical philosophical circles for a new approach to Marxism. He placed a high value on ideology in addition to economic conditions and material history. Gramsci continues to exert a profound influence in modern anthropology and sociology because anthropologists and sociologists often work among poor, marginalized, and powerless people. Gramsci’s ideas resonate because they help scholars to understand varying natures of inequality.
Gramsci is also known for his approach to the concept of hegemony. His idea of hegemony differs from its meaning commonly known in political science, where it mostly centers on political domination of one country over another, typically through military means. Hegemony for Gramsci demonstrates how people come to accept the major ideas or values of the systems in which they live. For example, why do people naturally accept the idea of salary and wealth differences based on status and profession? Why do people think it virtuous to work long hours?
For Gramsci, the answers to such questions had much to do with a country’s (or government’s) ideological structure or system. Similarly, he thought that such notions could only be challenged and changed as poor and powerless people educated themselves about their own conditions and positions in the societies where they live. Such organic intellectuals, as he called them, would be eager to make changes benefiting the communities from which they arose.
Gramsci’s ideas seem abstract despite his desire to improve the human condition through politics, and even as he provides actual situations to make his points. His ideas continue to appeal to social scientists because they lend themselves well to hypothetical models and theory building.
