Antonio Gramsci - Anyone know of him/his works?

[Son of Scargill]

Just been reading a book and came across a short profile of this guy.Liked the sound of some theories and would like to know a bit more.He was a militant in the Italian Communist Party,and I probably should have heard of him,but I'm afraid I know bugger all.
Forgive my ignorance,but my convictions are more from the heart,less from the head.

[vox]

You can read quite a bit of Gramsci at the Marxist Internet Archives:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/

vox

[Nickademus]

let me know what you come up with because the name is very familiar to me (perhaps its because i'm part italian) but i can't remember why i've heard that name before. i highly doubt i heard it in any of my history classes before.

and quite frankly i don't have the time to be doing research out side of school (law school is a *****!)

[Son of Scargill]

Thanks for the link vox,much appreciated!
Nickademus,will try and get back to you when(if?)I get my head around him.Seems he believed in a more flexible,or adaptable,interpretation of Marxism,with a strong belief that the working class must win Intellectually,as well as just politically and economically,the minds of the peasantry and middle classes in order for any revolution to be completely successful.No doubt there's a lot more to it than that,so I'm off to burn my limited braincells out studying his work.
once again,Cheers vox
Oh!And he died in prison after Mussolini had jailed him for 10 years.

[DaNatural]

thanks for bringing is nameto attention scargill, i think ill check hm out, hesounds fairly interesting. peace

[Reuben]

Gramsci was marxistand. However he rejected the concept that the ruling class maint-ain the status quo purely through privelege and instead put much more emphasis on the power of ideology. He talked about ideological hegemony, which refferred to ideologies wihich beneffitted the interests of the ruling class being understood as the norm.

Great guy.

[peaccenicked]

Gramsci was general secretary of the Italian comunist party. Mussolini was determined to lock this 'great mind away for twenty years. Is prison notebook give insights to the press questions of the working class of that time.
His notion of hegomeny has entered into the language
of social studies. He had much to say about popular culture. He is well worth studying.

[peaccenicked]

Gramsci and hegemony
Antonio Gramsci, an Italian (1891-1937), was a leading Marxist thinker. Like Althusser, he rejected economism, insisting on the independence of ideology from economic determinism. Gramsci also rejected crude materialism, offering a humanist version of Marxism which focused on human subjectivity.
Gramsci used the term hegemony to denote the predominance of one social class over others (e.g. bourgeois hegemony). This represents not only political and economic control, but also the ability of the dominant class to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as 'common sense' and 'natural'. Commentators stress that this involves willing and active consent. Common sense, suggests Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, is 'the way a subordinate class lives its subordination' (cited in Alvarado & Boyd-Barrett 1992: 51).

However, unlike Althusser, Gramsci emphasizes struggle. He noted that 'common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself' (Gramsci, cited in Hall 1982: 73). As Fiske puts it, 'Consent must be constantly won and rewon, for people's material social experience constantly reminds them of the disadvantages of subordination and thus poses a threat to the dominant class... Hegemony... posits a constant contradiction between ideology and the social experience of the subordinate that makes this interface into an inevitable site of ideological struggle' (Fiske 1992: 291). References to the mass media in terms of an ideological 'site of struggle' are recurrent in the commentaries of those influenced by this perspective. Gramsci's stance involved a rejection of economism since it saw a struggle for ideological hegemony as a primary factor in radical change.

Criticisms of Althusser's theory of ideology drew some neo-Marxists to Gramsci's ideas.

[TheDerminator]

The greatest contribution of Gramsci to socialist thinking, was his recognition that political consciousness, was solely a political question, that it was and is also a cultural question. Although, Althusser made some valid contributions towards philosophy, the most advanced orthodox Marxist political position is Gramsci-Leninism, because it realises that the bougeois ideological hegemony is also cultural hegemony and this reifies, the commonsense which Peaccenick described.
It only reinforces the power of the whole social culture which includes politics, and if you include in this the power of the corporate media companies, you get some of the idea of the size of the monster we are up against.
I should add that the anarchist Chomsky, has done the most to raise consciousness about the impact and control of the media, and it follows on easily from the major contribution of Gramsci.
So you too can become a Gramsci-Leninist-Chomskyian, but maybe not, and maybe no maybe. Not that I am a Trotskyist either. I am afraid I do not really rate his political contribution, although he was much preferable to Stalin. Permanent Revolution. Total Quality Management's continuous improvement. Same thing. derminated

[adelante]

another 1 that mussolini killed was Matteotti in italy hes really famous (im italian) i dunno outside but if u havent heard of him check him out +let me know what u think

[peaccenicked]

Is there any relevant links.
All I know is that hes was made an icon and that the Manic street preachers have heard of him.