Antonio Gramsci
Power rests on cultural hegemony, not just force.
Antonio Gramsci (1891 – 1937, Sardinia, then Turin; more than ten years under the fascist regime, in prison and then in a guarded clinic) : marxism. A class does not rule by force alone: it also leads, by making its ideas and values seem self-evident. Gramsci calls this hegemony. On AskPhilosophy: 3 reconstructed arguments, 5 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 4 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
Hegemony, civil society, organic intellectuals, war of position: these words of Gramsci's have become everyday tools in political science, sociology and cultural studies, far beyond Marxism. He refuses a Marxism in which the economy alone would explain everything and history would move by itself. He thinks of domination as a mixture of force and consent, which helps explain why people accept an order that does not serve them.
His times
Born into a poor family in Sardinia, a scholarship student at the University of Turin, he became a socialist journalist. In 1919 he founded L'Ordine Nuovo, which backed the factory councils of Turin. He helped create the Communist Party of Italy (1921), was elected a deputy (1924), then arrested by Mussolini's regime in November 1926 and sentenced in 1928 to more than twenty years in prison. Ill, he wrote 29 notebooks in his cell (1929-1935), under the eye of the censor: hence cautious expressions such as "philosophy of praxis" for Marxism. He died in Rome aged 46. His prison writings were published after the war.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceHe hardly discusses God's existence: for him religion is a social fact, an element of common sense, which philosophy must criticise and go beyond. The Modern Prince, that is the party, takes the place of the divinity in people's minds. Yet he judges atheism "negative and sterile" if it stays a mere polemic.
Knowledge is historical and social: "objective" means "humanly objective", valid for a humanity unified by culture. He trusts experimental science, but starts from everyone's "spontaneous philosophy" (language, common sense) rather than from principles drawn from reason alone. He fits no classical school.
He rejects absolute, eternal truth, even for Marxism, which can become an ideology "in the bad sense". But he is no sceptic: truth is a historical conquest, a struggle against partial and false ideologies.
He claims historical materialism, but rejects "vulgar materialism", which makes matter an eternal absolute, and speaks of "absolute humanism". The mind-body question does not occupy him: what interests him is that thought arises from practical activity and history.
He fights fatalism and mechanical determinism, and sees in man a being who can "make himself". But this freedom is above all collective and caught in conditions: collective will is formed in history, not in an isolated individual choice.
Morality is historical: it is the Modern Prince who replaces the categorical imperative in people's minds. Yet his texts are full of moral reproach (the indifferent are cowards). He develops no separate moral theory, hence the debate.
Philosophy is "the criticism and overcoming of religion and common sense". He does not despise common sense for that: it is the starting point, everyone's "spontaneous philosophy", which the philosophy of praxis must make critical. He keeps a secular sense of faith, as unity between a view of the world and a rule of conduct.
No meaning comes from above: man is "the process of his acts". Meaning comes from commitment: "life means taking sides". Readers do not all place him in the same spot, because he speaks mostly about politics.
"Man's nature is the ensemble of social relations": it changes with them. No fixed nature, hence a humanity that can be improved through history and education. The real question, he says, is what man "can become".
Collective will, carried by the party (the "Modern Prince"), counts for more than the isolated individual. But this is not power by force alone: leadership passes through consent, and through intellectuals who come from the masses. Like Marx, he fits this axis badly: he rejects tradition and the established order.
No eternal moral foundation: an action is "useful or harmful, virtuous or wicked" according to its relation to the Modern Prince and to collective will. Moral reform goes with a concrete programme, economic included.