About the author
Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, and politician (1891–1937), a founder and leader of the Italian Communist Party. Imprisoned by Mussolini's regime from 1926 until shortly before his death, he filled some thirty notebooks with the reflections — above all on hegemony and culture — that made him the most influential theorist of Western Marxism.
Synopsis
In fragmentary notes written between 1929 and 1935, Gramsci develops the concepts of hegemony (rule through consent and cultural leadership), the war of position (the long struggle to win civil society) versus the war of manoeuvre (frontal seizure of the state), organic intellectuals, and the integral state. He reconceives revolution as a contest over culture and ideas as much as over economics and arms.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Public domainGramsci argues that a ruling class maintains power not by coercion alone but through 'hegemony' — its cultural and moral leadership over civil society, which makes its dominance appear as ordinary common sense.
Hegemony explains the durability of an unjust order without constant force: domination is secured when the ruled adopt the rulers' worldview as simple common sense. It shifted Marxist and much non-Marxist analysis toward culture, media, and ideology as sites of political struggle.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with liberal pluralists who see civil society as a check on power rather than its instrument, and with critics who argue 'hegemony' is so elastic it can explain away any evidence that people genuinely consent to liberal democracy.
Reading note
Fragmentary and difficult — read a good selection with editorial guidance rather than cover to cover. Its concepts (hegemony, war of position, organic intellectuals) now circulate well beyond Marxism, which is why it repays the effort.
Best paired with
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; Louis Althusser, On the Reproduction of Capitalism.