Gramsci's Relevance to Contemporary Politics

Gramsci's hegemony theory proves particularly relevant for analyzing contemporary media landscapes. Corporate media conglomerates function as hegemonic institutions, shaping public discourse and manufacturing consent for neoliberal policies. Social media platforms, while enabling counter-hegemonic communication, simultaneously create echo chambers and facilitate manipulation. Understanding media as terrain of hegemonic struggle rather than neutral information channels helps explain phenomena from political polarization to the rise of authoritarianism.

Education and Ideology

Current debates about education directly engage Gramscian concerns. Struggles over curriculum, standardized testing, and university governance involve competing visions of knowledge and social organization. Neoliberal education reform promotes market logic and workforce training, functioning as hegemonic project. Meanwhile, critical pedagogy and popular education movements attempt to create counter-hegemonic learning spaces. Gramsci's concept of intellectuals illuminates tensions between academic expertise and democratic knowledge production.

Social Movements and Political Strategy

Contemporary movements from Occupy to Black Lives Matter to climate justice exemplify war of position—building alternative institutions, challenging common sense, contesting cultural narratives. These movements recognize that changing laws or elected officials proves insufficient without transforming underlying power relations. Gramscian analysis helps explain both movements' achievements in shifting discourse and challenges in achieving lasting institutional change.

Globalization and Hegemony

Gramsci's concepts extend to analyzing global power structures. International institutions like the IMF and World Bank function hegemonically, promoting neoliberal ideology while disciplining resistant states. Global media and consumer culture spread dominant values worldwide. Yet transnational movements also emerge, attempting to construct alternative globalizations. Gramscian framework helps theorize these complex dynamics without reducing everything to economic determination or treating culture as mere reflection of material interests.

Persistent Questions

Gramsci's thought continues generating productive debates: How can movements balance institutional engagement with maintaining radical vision? What forms of organization enable democratic participation while achieving strategic effectiveness? How do we develop intellectual work serving emancipatory purposes? These questions remain central to anyone seeking fundamental social transformation in conditions where coercion alone doesn't explain domination and revolution requires more than seizing state power.

See also:

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Gramsci on War of Position vs. War of Maneuver

Gramsci's Historical Bloc

Overview of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks

Between 1929 and 1935, Antonio Gramsci wrote approximately 3,000 pages in notebooks while imprisoned by Mussolini's fascist regime. Arrested in 1926 as a leader of the Italian Communist Party, Gramsci faced a prosecutor who declared, "We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years." Instead, imprisonment became the occasion for his most profound theoretical work. Writing under harsh conditions, constant surveillance, and deteriorating health, Gramsci developed concepts that would reshape revolutionary theory.

Themes and Structure

The Prison Notebooks comprise 33 notebooks covering diverse topics: philosophy, history, politics, culture, and linguistics. Rather than systematic treatises, they consist of fragmentary notes, observations, and extended reflections. This form reflected both prison constraints and Gramsci's dialectical method—he preferred open-ended investigation to dogmatic conclusions. Major themes include hegemony, intellectuals, the state, civil society, and Italian history, particularly the failure of revolutionary movements to achieve lasting change.

Methodological Innovation

Gramsci developed what he called the "philosophy of praxis"—a sophisticated Marxism that avoided economic reductionism while maintaining materialism's insights. He insisted on analyzing concrete historical situations rather than applying abstract formulas. His approach integrated cultural and political analysis, recognizing that economic structures alone don't determine social outcomes. This methodology proved particularly valuable for understanding why revolutionary movements succeed or fail.

Legacy and Interpretation

The Notebooks weren't published until after World War II and reached international audiences even later. Their fragmentary nature and Aesopian language (necessitated by prison censorship) created interpretive challenges. Different political traditions have claimed Gramsci's legacy, from Eurocommunists seeking democratic socialism to postcolonial theorists analyzing cultural imperialism. The work's richness continues generating new readings, making it indispensable for critical social theory and political practice.

Learn about Gramsci:

Gramsci's Cultural Hegemony

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci's Historical Bloc Explained

Gramsci's concept of the historical bloc describes how successful ruling classes forge alliances across social groups, creating unified political and economic forces. Unlike mechanical base-superstructure models, this concept emphasizes the mutual constitution of economic relations, political institutions, and cultural ideologies. A historical bloc represents the concrete unity of social forces organized under hegemonic leadership, where material interests align with ideological and cultural consensus.

Components and Formation

Historical blocs combine several elements: a fundamental class (typically bourgeoisie or proletariat); allied classes and groups whose interests are incorporated; organic intellectuals who articulate the bloc's worldview; and institutions mediating between sectors. Formation requires dominant groups to make real concessions while maintaining ultimate control—what Gramsci called "hegemonic compromise." For example, postwar welfare states incorporated working-class demands within capitalist frameworks, creating stable historical blocs.

Crisis and Transformation

Historical blocs aren't permanent; they can enter crisis when contradictions emerge between components or when subordinate groups withdraw consent. Economic crisis, political upheaval, or cultural transformation can destabilize existing arrangements. Crisis creates possibilities for constructing alternative historical blocs organized around different class interests. However, crises don't automatically produce progressive outcomes—reaction also attempts to forge new conservative blocs.

Implications for Political Practice

Understanding historical blocs informs coalition-building strategy. Progressive movements must construct alternative blocs uniting diverse groups—workers, marginalized communities, environmentalists, feminists—around shared vision while respecting differences. This requires more than temporary alliances; it demands developing common language, shared institutions, and unified political program. The challenge involves maintaining democratic participation while achieving strategic coherence necessary for effective action.

See also:

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Gramsci on War of Position vs. War of Maneuver

Gramsci on War of Position vs. War of Maneuver

Gramsci borrowed military terminology to describe different revolutionary strategies. A "war of maneuver" involves direct frontal assault—concentrated offensive aimed at seizing state power quickly, exemplified by the Bolshevik Revolution. A "war of position" resembles trench warfare—prolonged struggle to win social positions, build organizations, and establish cultural hegemony before attempting power seizure. These metaphors helped Gramsci explain why revolutionary tactics succeeding in Russia failed in Western Europe.

Social Conditions Determining Strategy

The choice between strategies depends on specific historical conditions, particularly civil society's development. In early 20th-century Russia, weak civil society meant the state stood relatively exposed; revolutionaries could seize power through rapid assault. In Western democracies, robust civil society created complex defensive networks protecting state power. Here, frontal assault would fail; revolutionaries needed to win positions within civil society, building alternative institutions and counter-hegemonic culture.

The War of Position in Practice

War of position requires patient organizational work: developing working-class intellectuals, creating independent media and education, building unions and cooperatives, contesting cultural common sense. Rather than waiting for revolutionary crisis, movements actively construct alternative hegemony. This strategy recognizes that consciousness doesn't spontaneously emerge from economic conditions but requires sustained cultural and political work. Success demands both building popular support and maintaining revolutionary objectives against pressures toward accommodation.

See also:

Gramsci's Cultural Hegemony

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Contemporary Applications

These concepts remain relevant for understanding social movements today. In consolidated democracies with extensive civil society, movements face similar strategic questions. Should activism focus on electoral politics, institutional reform, or building alternative institutions? How can movements maintain radical vision while achieving concrete gains? Gramsci's framework suggests that lasting transformation requires sustained engagement across multiple sites—workplaces, communities, culture, and politics—rather than singular dramatic confrontations.

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Gramsci theorized the modern state as comprising two overlapping spheres: political society and civil society. Political society encompasses the apparatus of state coercion—government bureaucracy, military, police, courts—where force predominates. Civil society includes institutions like schools, churches, unions, media, and cultural organizations where consent is organized. This distinction refined classical Marxist state theory, which tended to focus primarily on coercive institutions.

The Dialectic of Force and Consent

While analytically distinct, these spheres function together in maintaining class domination. Political society provides the ultimate guarantee of existing arrangements through its monopoly on legitimate violence, but stable rule depends primarily on hegemony established through civil society. Force alone proves expensive and unstable; genuine domination requires that subordinate groups accept their position as natural or inevitable. When hegemony weakens, regimes increasingly rely on political society's coercive apparatus.

Historical Development

Gramsci recognized that civil society's size and complexity vary historically and geographically. In Western democracies, civil society developed extensively, creating what he called "trenches and fortifications" protecting state power. Revolutionary movements couldn't simply seize state apparatus as in Russia's "war of maneuver"; they required prolonged "war of position" through civil society institutions. In less developed societies with weak civil society, different strategic approaches might succeed.

Strategic Implications

Understanding this distinction transforms political strategy. Progressive movements must not only challenge state power directly but build alternative institutions and cultural practices. This involves creating counter-hegemonic organizations—independent media, popular education, worker cooperatives—that prefigure different social relations. The distinction also explains why merely capturing government office often proves insufficient for fundamental change without transformation of civil society's hegemonic structures.

See also: 

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci and The Role of Intellectuals in Society

Gramsci's analysis of intellectuals departed radically from conventional understandings. He argued that all people are intellectuals insofar as they think and reason, though not all function as intellectuals in society. He distinguished between traditional intellectuals—those who appear autonomous from class interests, such as priests, teachers, and administrators—and organic intellectuals who emerge from and articulate the worldview of a particular class. Traditional intellectuals maintain an illusion of independence while typically serving existing power structures.

Intellectuals as Organizers of Hegemony

Organic intellectuals serve critical functions in establishing and maintaining hegemony. They don't simply produce ideas but organize culture, create consensus, and provide leadership for their class. For the ruling class, organic intellectuals include business managers, technocrats, and media professionals who translate economic power into cultural authority. They make particular class interests appear universal and develop strategies for incorporating opposition.

Revolutionary Intellectuals

Gramsci's concept became particularly significant for understanding how subordinate classes could challenge hegemony. Working-class movements required their own organic intellectuals—individuals who could articulate working-class experiences, develop alternative worldviews, and provide leadership in cultural and political struggles. These intellectuals emerge from working-class life while gaining theoretical sophistication, maintaining connections to their class rather than becoming absorbed into dominant institutions.

Contemporary Relevance

This framework illuminates current debates about expertise, activism, and knowledge production. It questions the supposed neutrality of academic and professional expertise while recognizing the need for specialized knowledge in social movements. The challenge remains developing intellectual work that serves emancipatory purposes rather than reproducing existing hierarchies, and creating institutions where intellectual labor connects to broader struggles for justice.

Gramsci on Hegemony and Cultural Leadership

Antonio Gramsci revolutionized Marxist theory by introducing the concept of hegemony as a form of power that operates primarily through consent rather than coercion. Unlike traditional notions of domination that rely on force and state apparatus, hegemony functions through the subtle infiltration of ruling class ideology into everyday cultural practices, beliefs, and common sense. This form of leadership becomes so naturalized that subordinate groups actively participate in their own subjugation, viewing the existing social order as inevitable or desirable.

Civil Society as the Arena of Hegemony

Gramsci identified civil society—encompassing institutions like schools, churches, media, and cultural organizations—as the primary terrain where hegemonic struggle unfolds. These institutions shape consciousness and manufacture consent by disseminating values, norms, and worldviews that align with ruling class interests. The education system, for instance, not only transmits knowledge but also instills particular attitudes toward authority, work, and social hierarchy. Media outlets frame public discourse in ways that limit imaginable alternatives to the status quo.

The Mechanics of Cultural Domination

What makes hegemony particularly resilient is its ability to present historically specific arrangements as universal truths. The dominant class achieves leadership by incorporating elements of subordinate groups' interests and culture, creating a seemingly inclusive worldview that actually preserves fundamental inequalities. This process of "transformismo" allows the system to absorb potential opposition by making limited concessions while maintaining core power structures.

Implications for Social Change

Understanding hegemony transforms revolutionary strategy. If domination operates primarily through cultural and ideological means, resistance must involve a "war of position"—a prolonged struggle to build counter-hegemonic institutions and alternative common sense. Social movements must not only challenge state power but also create new forms of culture, education, and organization that prefigure an alternative society. This insight remains crucial for contemporary movements seeking to challenge entrenched power without access to traditional revolutionary conditions.

See also: Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Introduction to Antonio Gramsci's Thought

Antonio Gramsci's name carries a kind of secret weight—invoked in hushed tones by culture critics and leftist theorists alike, but rarely read in the wild. He’s the Marxist thinker whose influence you’ve absorbed even if you’ve never cracked open a Prison Notebook. When you hear someone speak of “cultural hegemony,” of winning hearts and minds as a precondition to political power, you’re hearing Gramsci. And if you've ever wondered why people care more about Marvel movies than Marxist revolutions, well—Gramsci might have something to say about that too.

Born in Sardinia in 1891, a hardscrabble region colonized by its own country, Gramsci grew up in poverty, illness, and alienation—a trifecta that would later fuel his fierce critique of domination and exclusion. As a founding member of the Italian Communist Party, he lived through the rise of fascism and paid for his resistance with his body and his time. In 1926, Mussolini’s regime imprisoned him. "We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years," the prosecutor reportedly said. Instead, it birthed a slow-burning revolution in thought.

Gramsci’s genius wasn’t in rejecting Marx but in renovating him—making the base/superstructure dichotomy more porous, more supple. Where classical Marxists fixated on economic structures as the motor of history, Gramsci asked a subtler question: why doesn’t the proletariat revolt, even when it's materially oppressed? His answer? Hegemony. Not brute force, but consent—manufactured through culture, education, religion, and media. The ruling class doesn’t just dominate; it leads. It convinces the rest of us that its worldview is natural, inevitable, even desirable.

In this way, Gramsci pivoted from the factory floor to the seminar room, the church pew, the film screen. He showed that ideology isn’t merely false consciousness imposed from above; it’s an active, ongoing negotiation—fought over in the classroom, the press, and the parish. His notebooks—smuggled out of prison page by page—explore these “wars of position,” slow cultural struggles that must precede any “war of maneuver” in the streets. Revolution, for Gramsci, wasn’t just a storming of gates; it was a long, patient work of cultural counter-hegemony.

That’s why he resonates so sharply today, in an era when the battleground isn’t just labor rights or land reform but language, identity, and representation. From Fox News to TikTok, from school curriculums to campus protests, the question is no longer just who owns the means of production? but who gets to define reality? Gramsci helps us see how “common sense” is anything but—how even our most casual opinions are stitched through with power.

To read Gramsci now is to glimpse a politics that begins in the realm of culture—not as a distraction from “real” struggle but as its most vital terrain. He understood, long before algorithms or infotainment, that whoever controls the story controls the future.

Learn about Gramsci:

Gramsci's Cultural Hegemony

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Gramsci on War of Position vs. War of Maneuver

Gramsci, Lukács, and Early Influences of fhe Frankfurt School

The Search for a New Marxism After the Catastrophe

In the wake of the First World War, European Marxists faced an uncomfortable reality: the long-predicted revolution had failed to erupt across the industrialized world. While the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, the working classes of Western Europe did not overthrow their ruling classes. The very societies that had seemed on the brink of collapse instead reconstructed themselves, often through reactionary or authoritarian means.

In this climate of disillusionment, certain Marxist thinkers began to rethink the foundations of revolutionary theory. Among them, Antonio Gramsci and Georg Lukács stand out as early figures who recognized that a new form of critical theory was needed—one that took seriously the power of culture, consciousness, and ideology in sustaining social order.

Their work planted seeds that would profoundly shape the Frankfurt School’s project and the wider tradition of Western Marxism.

Georg Lukács: Reification and the Awakening of Consciousness

In 1923, Georg Lukács published History and Class Consciousness, a book that would become one of the cornerstones of Western Marxism. Lukács diagnosed a profound condition he called "reification" (Verdinglichung): under capitalism, social relations become thing-like, appearing natural, inevitable, and outside human control. People experience themselves and others not as dynamic agents, but as fixed objects within an alien system.

For Lukács, this reified consciousness was the true obstacle to revolution. Exploitation alone was not enough to provoke resistance; the structures of everyday experience masked the possibility of change. Revolutionary action would require an act of consciousness: the proletariat needed to recognize its own historical situation as constructed, contingent, and therefore transformable.

This emphasis on subjective awakening, on the necessity of developing a critical historical consciousness, deeply influenced the Frankfurt School’s later work—especially its focus on ideology, culture, and the subtle mechanisms by which domination sustains itself.

Antonio Gramsci: Hegemony and the Cultural Struggle

Around the same time, in the prisons of Mussolini's Italy, Antonio Gramsci was developing a parallel and equally radical rethinking of Marxist theory. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci introduced the concept of "hegemony"—a way of understanding how ruling classes maintain power not just through coercion, but through the consent of the dominated.

Hegemony, for Gramsci, was built through institutions like schools, churches, newspapers, and popular culture, which gradually shape common sense and social norms. In modern societies, control is exercised not merely at the point of a gun but in the minds and habits of everyday life.

Gramsci’s insight redefined the battlefield of politics. Winning power required not only seizing the state but transforming the cultural terrain itself. Revolution became a long, patient struggle for intellectual and moral leadership—a "war of position" rather than a "war of maneuver."

The Frankfurt School, with its intense interest in media, mass culture, and education, would absorb and elaborate Gramsci’s vision, even when their paths diverged in other respects.

Early Intellectual Influences: Marx, Weber, Freud

Gramsci and Lukács did not emerge from a vacuum. They were heirs to a complex intellectual legacy that deeply shaped early Critical Theory.

Karl Marx, of course, remained the foundational figure. His analysis of capitalism as a system driven by internal contradictions, his theory of alienation, and his vision of human emancipation remained essential. But Marx’s emphasis on material conditions was now read alongside newer understandings of culture and subjectivity.

Max Weber’s work also exerted a strong influence, particularly his analysis of rationalization and bureaucracy. Weber’s vision of a "disenchanted" modern world—where instrumental rationality dominates and values are eroded—resonated deeply with thinkers seeking to understand why freedom did not automatically emerge from economic development.

Finally, Sigmund Freud opened a new dimension: the unconscious. Freud’s insights into repression, desire, and the irrational forces shaping behavior suggested that ideology was not merely a matter of false ideas but involved deep psychic investments. Critical Theory would come to integrate these psychological dimensions into its understanding of domination.

Toward a New Critical Tradition

The early work of Gramsci and Lukács, along with these broader intellectual influences, marked a decisive break from the economic reductionism that had characterized much of nineteenth-century Marxism. They showed that modern domination was cultural, psychological, and subjective as much as it was economic—and that revolutionary change would require a revolution in thought, imagination, and everyday life.

The Frankfurt School would inherit these challenges, deepening them into a vast, interdisciplinary project of critique. But it was Gramsci and Lukács who first pointed the way: toward a Marxism that could reckon with failure, complexity, and the stubborn resilience of the status quo.

Their work remains a call not just to change the world, but to understand why it resists change—and how, even so, emancipatory possibilities might still be grasped.

Next article: Horkheimer's Shift from Traditional to Critical Theory

Back to: The Complete Introduction to the Frankfurt School

Gramsci on The Subaltern Classes

For Gramsci, hegemony is the exercise of the functions of intellectual and moral direction together with that of the domain of political power. The problem for Gramsci is to understand how the proletariat or a dominated, subordinate class in general, can become a ruling class and exercise political power, or become a hegemonic class.

The crisis of hegemony manifests itself when, while maintaining their own dominance, the politically dominant social classes cease to be leaders of all social classes, that is, they fail to solve the problems of the entire community and impose their own complex on the entire society. conception of the world. The subaltern social class, if it manages to provide concrete solutions to unsolved problems, becomes the ruling class and, increasing its own worldview to other social strata as well, creates a new social block, becoming hegemonic. The revolutionary moment appears initially, according to Gramsci, at the level of superstructure, in a Marxist sense, that is, political, cultural, ideal, moral, but it penetrates society in its complexity, ramming up to its economic structure,

In Italy, the ruling class is and has been partial: among the forces that contribute to the preservation of the social block are the Catholic Church, which struggles to maintain doctrinal union in order to avoid irremediable fractures among the faithful that nevertheless exist and that the former is not in a position to correct, but only to control: "The Roman Church has always been the most tenacious in the struggle to prevent the official formation of two religions, that of intellectuals and that of simple souls", a struggle that although, it has also had serious consequences, connected "to the historical process that transforms the entire civil society and that as a whole contains a corrosive critique of religions", however,has highlighted "the organizing capacity in the sphere of the culture of the clergy" that has given "certain satisfactions to the demands of science and philosophy, but with such a slow and methodical pace that the mutations are not perceived by the mass of the simple, although they seem revolutionary and demagogic to the integralists "

Nor has the idealist culture in Gramsci's time, dominant and exercised by the Croatian and Gentilian philosophical schools, has not "managed to create an ideological unity between the low and the high, between the simple and the intellectuals", so much so that this culture , although considering religion a mythology, he has not even "tried to build a conception that could replace religion in early childhood education", and these pedagogues, although without being religious, confidential and atheists, "grant the teaching of religion because religion is the philosophy of the childhood of humanity, which is renewed in each non-metaphorical childhood ”. Thus, the "dominant" secular culture also uses religion, because it does not pose the problem of raising the popular classes to the level of the dominant one but, on the contrary,

See also: Meaning of subaltern explained

Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education - short summary

Neo-Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci took a keen interest in the role of intellectuals in society. He said in particular that all men are intellectuals, but that not all have the social function of intellectuals. He put forward the idea that modern intellectuals were not content to produce discourse, but were involved in the organization of social practices and take part in the formation of cultural hegemony. They would produce common sense, that is to say, what goes without saying. Thus the intellectuals engaged alongside the working class would play a major role in producing evidence that would destroy the common sense produced, according to him, by the bourgeoisie.

He further distinguished between a “traditional intelligentsia” which (wrongly) thinks of itself as a distinct class of society, and the groups of intellectuals that each class generates “organically”. These organic intellectuals do not simply describe social life according to scientific rules, but rather express the experiences and feelings that the masses could not express on their own. The organic intellectual would understand by theory but also feel by experience the life of the people.

The need to create a culture specific to workers is linked to Gramsci's call for a type of education that allows the emergence of intellectuals who share the passions of the masses of workers. Supporters of adult and popular education consider Gramsci to be a benchmark in this regard.

See also:

Gramsci on Civil Society vs. Political Society

Meaning of Gramsci's Hegemony Explained (definition and summary)

Cultural Hegemony is a concept developed by Marxist Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. It starts from the postulate that the conquest of power presupposes the conquest of public opinion.  Hegemony describes the cultural domination of the ruling class, as well as the role that daily practices and collective beliefs play in establishing systems of domination.

The analysis of hegemony was first formulated by Antonio Gramsci to explain why the communist revolutions predicted by Marxin industrialized countries had not happened. Marx and his successors had indeed claimed that the growth of industrial capitalism would produce a gigantic working class and cyclical economic recessions. Added to the other contradictions of capitalism, these recessions would lead an overwhelming majority of the population, the workers, to develop, in order to defend their interests, organizations, in particular unions and political parties. The succession of economic crises would finally lead the working class to overthrow capitalism in a revolution, to restructure the economic, political and social institutions, on the basis of scientific socialism, and to begin the transition to a communist society . Although Marx and Engels predicted this scenario in the famous Communist Party Manifesto ( 1848 ), workers in industrialized countries still had not completed this "mission" decades later.

Gramsci believed that the failure of the workers to make the socialist revolution was due to the hold of the bourgeois hegemonic culture on the ideology and the organizations of the workers.

In other words, the cultural representations of the ruling class, that is, the ruling ideology, had rubbed off more than Marx could have thought on the masses of workers. In "advanced" industrial societies, hegemonic cultural tools such as compulsory schooling, mass media and popular culture had instilled a "false conscience" in workers. Instead of bringing about a revolution that would truly serve their collective needs (according to Marxists), workers in "advanced" societies gave in to the sirens of nationalism, consumerism and social advancement, embracing an individualistic ethos of competition and personal success or even lining up behind bourgeois religious leaders.

Noting the relative failure of economic determinism in the face of the strength of the dominant ideology, Gramsci proposed a distinction between “war of position” and “war of movement”. The "war of position" is a cultural war against bourgeois values ​​which present themselves as "natural" or "normal". The socialist elements must therefore seek to break into the news media, mass organizations and educational institutions in order to propagate revolutionary analysis and theory, to increase class consciousness.and to push for revolutionary engagement. This cultural struggle must allow the proletariat to attract all the oppressed classes in its struggle for the seizure of political power. For Gramsci, any class that aims at the conquest of political power must indeed go beyond its simple "economic" interests, take moral and intellectual leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a number of social forces. Gramsci calls this union of social forces a “historical bloc” (term borrowed from trade unionist Georges Sorel ).

See also: Gramsci on Hegemony and Cultural Leadership

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks - summary of main ideas

Antonio Gramsci ( 1891 - 1937 ) was an Italian thinker , leader and socialist-communist theorist who opposed fascism  during the Benito Mussolini era . Today Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" are considered to be one of the main contributions to socialist political thought, although they defer from classical Marxism.

Gramsci was prisonned by the Fascists, during his time in prison he wrote over thirty of notebooks that include political and historical analysis. These writings, known as the "Prison Notebooks," include Gramsci's reflections on the history of Italy and nationalism , as well as ideas in the study of Marxism , critical theory, and the educational theory associated with his name. The notebooks were written in a conscious attempt to leave an intellectual will with an overall worldview, and even in the hope that if he could get out of jail he would have a real plan of action.

Only after the defeat of fascism in Italy, and after World War II could Gramsci's notebooks be published. The main ideas Gramsci developed in these notebooks are:

• Cultural hegemony as the main means of preserving the capitalist state .
• The need for education for the working masses in order to encourage the creation of working class intellectuals.
• The distinction between political society (police, military, legal system, etc.), which directly controls, and civil society (family, education system, trade unions), where leadership is voluntary and non-coercive.
• The historicist absolute.
• The critique of economic determinism .
• The critique of philosophical materialism . .

Although Gramsci's thought originated with the organized left, he became an important figure in academic analyzes of the cultural sciences and critical theory. Members of the Political Science from the center and the right have adopted that ideas about hegemony, for example,= and these ideas are quoted and analyzed in the writings. His influence was great in the field of political science, and in the study of popular culture. The concept of " political correctness " seems to echo a cultural struggle in the spirit of Gramsci's thought.

However, most of Gramsci's influence is on left-wing thinking, especially among thinkers belonging to the school of neo-Marxism .

see also: Gramsci on Intellectuals, society and education