Who he was: Antonio Gramsci was a writer, political theorist, philosopher and politician in Italy. Gramsci was a founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party and was put in prison by Benito Mussolini. Gramsci is best known for his political ideas of using cultural hegemony as a way to maintain the state in a capitalist society. Most of his writing was done while in prison but Gramsci is considered one of the leading Marxist political thinkers of the 20th century. While imprisoned by the fascists, Gramsci penned more than 30 notebooks and 3000 pages of history.
Gramsci lived and wrote at a time similar to the 21st century when the apparent failures of the monarchy led many to look at other forms of government, including fascism and communism. It is similar to today's perceived failure of regulatory democracy forced on productive nations and peoples by the Anglo-American elites to control many individual nations.
Gramsci used the Marxist idea of hegemony to explain why the inevitable socialist revolutions predicted by Marxist intellectuals never took place in most nations. Gramsci suggested capitalism maintained control ideologically not just by government intimidation but by a hegemonic culture where the values of the bourgeoisie became the common values of the majority and this helped maintain the status quo rather than allowing revolutions to take place.
Background: Antonio Gramsci was born on the island of Sardinia on January 22, 1891. In 1898 his father was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned and Antonio had to work to help support the family until his father was released in 1904. Gramsci finished secondary school in Cagliari where he lived with his older brother who was a militant socialist. Initially, Gramsci favored Sardinian nationalism and independence over socialism.
Gramsci was awarded a scholarship to the University of Turin where he studied literature and due to labor unrest following auto factory industrialization, Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1913.
Because of financial and health related problems Gramsci quit college in 1915 and began to write political theory for socialist newspapers. In addition, Gramsci became a public speaker and was elected to the Socialist Party's provisional committee and made editor of a socialist publication. Following the First World War Gramsci established The New Order weekly newspaper, which was initially backed by Lenin.
On January 21, 1921 in Livorno, the Communist Party of Italy was established. Antonio Gramsci later visited Russia, returning with orders to create a united front of parties on the left to oppose Mussolini and fascism. On November 9, 1926 the fascist government of Italy issued a number of emergency laws because of an alleged assassination attempt on Mussolini. Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned.
It is often difficult to determine when violence or assassination attempts are real, state sanctioned or black-flag operations designed to achieve political ends. Whatever the case may have been in this instance, Gramsci remained in prison until 1937 when he died, at the age of 46.