Antonio Gramsci (1891

Antonio Gramsci

1891–1937

Notice to Readers

All the texts listed below have been published with the kind permission of the translator/copyright holder. However, Lawrence & Wishart, who have published collections of translations by Quintin Hoare, the most prolific Gramsci translator, claim that Hoare gave the MIA permission in contravention of his contract with them, and consequently, in January 2008, Lawrence & Wishart requested the M.I.A. to withdraw the Hoare translations. The Marxists Internet Archive always strives to work in a spirit of cooperation with publishers, so as a result, only those translations done by Mark Camilleri, Mitchell Abidor, Natalie Campbell and Michael Carley under the Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) licence, for marxists.org are provided below.

Gramsci’s Life and Thought

Gramsci’s political and social writings occur in two periods, pre-prison (1910–1926) and prison (1929–35). His pre-prison writings tend to be politically specific, while his prison writings tend to be more historical and theoretical.

For a brief overview of Gramsci’s life and thought see:

An Introduction to Gramsci’s Life and Thought by Frank Rosengarten.

Gramsci’s Arrest: Letter by Tania Schucht, November 1926

Pre-Prison Political Writings 1910–1926

1916

Newspapers and the Workers * (Avanti!, 22 December 1916)
Men or machines? (Avanti!, 24 December)

1917

Character * (Grido del Popolo, 3 March 1917)
Notes on The Russian Revolution (Grido del Popolo, 29 April)
The Russian Maximalists (Grido del Popolo, 28 July)
The Revolution Against ’Capital’,* (Avanti!, 24 November)

1918

One Year of History * (Grido del Popolo, 16 March 1918)

1919

Red Ink * (Avanti!, 4 April 1919)
The Price of History * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 7 June 1919)
Workers’ democracy * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 June 1919)
The conquest of the state * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 12 July 1919)
Workers and peasants * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 2 August 1919)
The development of the revolution * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 13 September 1919)
Chronicles of the new order * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 13 September 1919)
To the section commissars of the FIAT-Brevetti workshops * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 13 September 1919)
Unions and councils * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 11 October 1919)
Unions and the dictatorship * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 October 1919)
Revolutionaries and elections * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 November 1919)
The problem of power * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 29 November 1919)
The events of 2–3 December (1919)* (L’Ordine Nuovo, 13 December 1919)

1920

Workers and peasants, * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 January 1920)
Split or Disorder? * (L’Ordine Nuovo, December 11–18, 1920)

1921

The ape people (L’Ordine Nuovo,* 1 January)
Caporetto and Vittorio Veneto (L’Ordine Nuovo, 28 January)
War is war (L’Ordine Nuovo,* 31 January)
Worker’s control (L’Ordine Nuovo, 10 February)
The general confederation of labour (L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 February)
Real dialectics (L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 March)
Officialdom (L’Ordine Nuovo, 4 March)
Unions and councils (L’Ordine Nuovo, 5 March)
Italy and Spain (L’Ordine Nuovo, 11 March)
Socialists and communists (L’Ordine Nuovo, 12 March)
The Turin factory council movement (L’Ordine Nuovo,* 14 March 1921)
England and Russia (L’Ordine Nuovo, 18 March)
The italian parliament (L’Ordine Nuovo, 24 March)
The Communists and the Elections,* (L’Ordine Nuovo, 12 April 1921)
The Elections and Freedom (L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 April 1921)
Elemental Forces (L’Ordine Nuovo, 26 April 1921)
Men of Flesh and Blood * (L’Ordine Nuovo, May 8, 1921)
The Old Order in Turin (L’Ordine Nuovo, 18 May 1921)
Socialists and Fascists (L’Ordine Nuovo, 11 June 1921)
Reactionary Subversiveness (L’Ordine Nuovo, 22 June 1921)
Referendum (L’Ordine Nuovo, 29 June 1921)
Leaders and Masses (L’Ordine Nuovo, 3 July 1921)
Bonomi (L’Ordine Nuovo, 5 July 1921)
The “Arditi del Popolo”* (L’Ordine Nuovo, 15 July 1921)
The Development of Fascism (L’Ordine Nuovo, 21 July 1921)
Against Terror (L’Ordine Nuovo, 19 August 1921)
The Two Fascisms * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 August 1921)
The Grimace of Gwynplaine * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 30 August 1921)
The Agrarian Struggle in Italy * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 31 August 1921)
The tactic of failure * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 22 September 1921)
Those Mainly Responsible (L’Ordine Nuovo, 20 September 1921)
Parties and Masses * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 25 September 1921)
Masses and Leaders (L’Ordine Nuovo, 30 October 1921)

1922 – 1923

One Year
The “Alleanza del Lavoro”
A Crisis within the Crisis
The Genoa Conference and Italy
Lessons * (L’Ordine Nuovo, 5 May 1922)
To Comrades Cachin, Monmousseou, Treint, Semard, Jacob et al. (International Press Correspondence, 13 March 1923, on behalf of the ECCI, with Trotzky, Radek, Bukharin et al.)

1924

Editorial: March 1924
"Leader"
The Vatican,*
Against Pessimism,*
Gramsci to Togliatti, Scoccimarro, Leonetti, etc. (21 March 1924)
The Programme of L’Ordine Nuovo
Problems of Today and Tomorrow
Gramsci to Zino Zini (2 April 1924)
Gramsci to Togliatti, Scoccimarro, etc. (5 April 1924)
The Como Conference: Resolutions
Gramsci’s Intervention at the Como Conference
The Italian Crisis
Neither Fascism nor Liberalism: Sovietism!,*
Democracy and Fascism
The Fall of Fascism

1925

Report to the Central Committee: 6 February 1925
Introduction to the First Course of the Party School *
Speech to the Italian parliament, 16 May 1925 *
The Internal Situation in our Party and the Tasks of the Forthcoming Congress
Elements of the Situation
Maximalism and Extremism (L’Unità, July 2 1925) *
Sterile and Negative Criticism (L’Unità September 30, 1925) *
On the Operations of the Central Committee of the Party (L’Unità December 20, 1925) *

1926

The Italian situation and the tasks of the PCI (Lyons, January 1926)
The party’s first five years (L’Unita, 24 February 1926)
A study of the Italian situation (Report to Party Executive Commitee, 2-3 August 1926.)
The peasants and the dictatorship of the proletariat (L’Unità, 17 September 1926)
Once again on the organic capacities of the working class (L’Unità, 1 October 1926)
We and the Republican Concentration (L’Unità, 13 October 1926)
Some aspects of the southern question (Unfinished, October 1926)
Letter to Palmiro Togliatti *, October 1926

1928

Letter to Tania Schucht 2 January 1928

Letter from Prison to his Son, Giuliano, * 1936

Prison Notebooks 1929-1935

Contents of Notebooks

Hegel and associationism
The Intellectuals
Military art and political art
On Education

The Modern Prince

State and Civil Society

The Study of Philosophy
Structure and Superstructure [i]
Structure and Superstructure [ii]
Structure and Superstructures [iii]
The Concept of ‘Historical Bloc’
Ethico-Political History
Ethico-Political History and Hegemony
Political Ideologies
Ideologies
Validity of Ideologies
Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force
Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of ‘Economism’ [also in The Modern Prince]
Observations on Certain Aspects of the Structure of Political Parties in Periods of Organic Crisis

War of Position and War of Manoeuvre
War of Position and War of Manoeuvre or Frontal War

Political Parties in Periods of Organic Crisis
Caesarism
The Fable of the Beaver
Agitation and Propaganda
The "Philosophy of the Epoch"

The Problem of Political Leadership in the Formation and Development of the Modern State in Italy
Rationalization of the Demographic Composition of Europe
Some Aspects of the Sexual Question
Financial Autarky and Industry
‘Animality’ and Industrialism
Rationalization of Production and Work
Taylorism and the Mechanization of the Worker

Philosophy: Some preliminary reference points

Collections of Gramsci’s Writings

Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920), ISBN 1-84327-121-4, The Electric Book Company London 1999, selected, introduced and edited by Quentin Hoare and translated by John Mathews, transcribed from the edition published by © Lawrence and Wishart, London 1977.
Selections from Political Writings (1921-1926), translated and edited by © Quintin Hoare, published by Lawrence and Wishart, London 1978. ISBN 0-85315-420-1
Selections from the Prison Notebooks, translated and edited © by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 1971
An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935, edited by David Forgacs (© annotations and the selection), including translations from: Selections from Prison Notebooks (© Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 1971); from Selections from Political Writings (1910-1920) (© Lawrence and Wishart, 1977); from Selections from Political Writings (1921-1926) (© Quintin Hoare, 1978); from Selections from Cultural Writings (© Lawrence and Wishart, 1986), and previously unpubished material (© David Forgacs 1988 and © Lawrence and Wishart 1988)

* Translated by Mark Camilleri for marxists.org.
* Translated by Mitchell Abidor for marxists.org.
* Translated by Michael Carley for marxists.org.
* Translated by Natalie Campbell for marxists.org.
* Translated by Ben W. for marxists.org.
Translations formerly found in this archive were by Quentin Hoare; all translations were used with permission of the translator who is also the holder of the rights in each case. However, Lawrence & Wishart have directed us to remove these translations from the site. See Details of MIA Translators.

The entire Gramsci Archive was proofed and corrected by Kevin Goins in 2007.