Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Antonio Gramsci was the foremost revolutionary Marxist theorist of the Communist Party of Italy, of which he was a founder, and an insightful critic of society, culture, and politics whose influence can be found among an incredibly large number of theorists, intellectuals, and activists both internationally and across the political spectrum. Born on the island of Sardinia, Gramsci's early years were shaped by his family's economic distress – mainly because his father, a clerk in a state agency, had been suspended from service and put in jail for some misdoings related to his job. In his later years, Gramsci recalled that his poverty made him especially sensitive to social injustices. Thanks to a scholarship, Gramsci was able to enter the University of Turin in 1911 and within two years became an activist within the Italian Socialist Party . In 1919 he helped to found a new weekly, L'Ordine Nuovo (New Order), which sought to apply the lessons of the 1917 Russian Revolution to Italy. This paper became the voice of militant factory workers who engaged in a general strike and factory occupations that in 1920 seemed to threaten the overturn of Italian capitalism and a workers' revolution. Socialist Party moderates who led the trade union movement quickly effected a compromise, however, which ended the strike, resulting in modest concessions for the workers and the continued (if ... log in or subscribe to read full text