Antonio Gramsci He was a philosopher, politician, sociologist, journalist and Marxist theorist Founder and Italian president of Communist Party of Italy. Because of his thoughts and ideas he was a political prisoner during the fascist regime Benito Mussolini in Turi. The prosecutor who accused him dictated the sentence: “For 20 years we must prevent this brain from functioning.”
He served only eleven years of his sentence for “criminal conspiracy against state power”, and died six days after being released from a brain hemorrhage resulting from mistreatment in prison. During the sentence he wrote Letters from prison, 3,000 page book containing the reflections and notes made during his time as a recruit.
Gramsci became one of the most important Marxist theorists due to his theoretical contributions to concepts such as cultural hegemonyHe hegemonic bloc and the postmodernism linked to the consumer society.
The contributions of the theorist Gramsci to Marxist thought
One of Gramsci’s contributions to Marxist theory is the culture and the intellectuals. For Gramsci the world is the stage of social life in which men act and create their lives in a society. In this way, humans create culture.
Gramsci wrote Letters from Prison, notes of his reflections during his stay in prison. Photo: Getty Images.Gramsci defines culture as “the organization, the discipline of the inner self, the conquest of a superior consciousness through which one comes to understand the historical value one has, its function in life, duties and rights. But this does not happen through spontaneous evolution, independent of the will of each person according to the fatal law of things.”
In his notebooks there is also reference to the political role of culturewhich is one of the producers of hegemony together with the deployment of positions and the formation of consensus.
On the other hand, for the theorist all men are intellectuals, but Not all men have the role of intellectuals in society.. The latter are those who lead the masses to bring about the social revolution. And for this to happen, they must awaken the masses, making them aware of their situation and the nature of the system in which they live.
The politician also developed the concept of cultural hegemony analyze the concepts of superstructure and silver social classes in Marxist theory. Antonio said it Cultural norms in a society are imposed by the ruling classtherefore they should not be perceived as natural or inevitable rules, but rather have been constructed from an artificial reality to be used as a tool of class domination.
The proletariat would use that definition of hegemony defined by Gramsci to be able to claim and create its own class culture.
Source: Clarin
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