Antonio Gramsci

Marxists support, orient to, and give great importance to trade unions as basic organisations of the working class. But in most circumstances, in capitalist societies, trade unions are dominated by the better-off sections of the working class, and often follow a narrow sectionalist policy. The British labour movement was like that for all the time that Marx was politically active in Britain, and broadened out only after Marx's death and when Engels, though still alive, was an old man. None of the excerpts below is a straightforward "educational" explanation of the socialist and Marxist case...

Antonio Gramsci was a revolutionary Marxist of the early-1920s Lenin-Trotsky stripe. Yet his prison writings of 1929-35 have been used as a source for quite different politics. First, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which had cold-shouldered Gramsci in prison as his criticism of Stalinist policies emerged, took him up from the early 1950s and especially in the 1960s. The PCI took Gramsci’s discussions of “hegemony” and “war of position” as justifying class-collaboration and an idea of transforming society by gradually winning more and more influence (especially, in practice, in local...

Antonio Gramsci was an activist in the Italian socialist and communist movement from his early 20s (shortly before World War One) until 1926, when he was jailed by the fascist regime. He was an important figure in the factory councils and factory occupations in Turin in 1919-20, and the central leader of the (then-revolutionary) Italian Communist Party from late 1923 until he was jailed. In prison, between 1929 and 1935, he wrote the Prison Notebooks which, while fragmentary, are today his most-read writings. He died in 1937. After World War Two, the Italian Communist Party (by then thoroughly...

Alessandro Carlucci, organiser of a forthcoming conference on "New Insights into Gramsci's Life and Work" , spoke with me at a London AWL forum on 18 March about the ideas of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was an activist in the Italian socialist and communist movement from his early 20s (shortly before World War One) until 1926, when he was jailed by the fascist regime. He was an important figure in the factory councils and factory occupations in Turin in 1919-20, and the central leader of the Italian Communist Party from late 1923 until he was jailed. In prison, between 1929...

London AWL forum, Thursday 18 March, 7.30pm, Lucas Arms, 245A Grays Inn Road, London WC1X 8QZ. Speakers: Alessandro Carlucci (organiser of forthcoming conference on "New Insights into Gramsci's Life and Work"); Martin Thomas (AWL) Read: http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/index.php?id=465 http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/12/09/revolutionary-ideas-anto… http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/03/14/other-shore-gramscis-bri… http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2010/01/03/antonio-gramsci-life-and…

Antonio Gramsci was a revolutionary Marxist of the early-1920s Lenin-Trotsky stripe. Yet his prison writings of 1929-35 have been used as a source for quite different politics. First, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which had cold-shouldered Gramsci in prison as his criticism of Stalinist policies emerged, took him up from the early 1950s and especially in the 1960s. The PCI took Gramsci's discussions of "hegemony" and "war of position" as justifying class-collaboration and an idea of transforming society by gradually winning more and more influence (especially, in practice, in local...

Peter Thomas is a Marxist writer and author of The Gramscian Moment . He gave a presentation about his research into the thought of Antonio Gramsci at Workers' Liberty's Ideas for Freedom winter event, 28-29 November 2009. I’ll start by talking roughly about what motivated me to write this book, and then talk briefly about some of the theses, particularly related to questions of political strategy and political organisations. Gramsci is today one of the most widely-known theorists from what we might call, in abbreviated form, the “golden age” of Marxism. I hesitate to use the term “classical...

Readings from Genora Johnson Dollinger, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci. See also: the background notes ; pdf version with these readings and the items below on "How to negotiate" and "How to win a sit-in"; How to win a sit-in , by Amy Offner: excerpts , or full text ; How to negotiate : tips from the US labour movement. The Flint Sit-Down Strike 1936 Genora Johnson Dollinger Remembers the 1936-37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike A considerable amount of preparatory work was done before the strike. That preparatory work was done by radical parties. We had several very active organizations in...

Notes on the readings : FLINT 1936 Excerpts from an account by Genora Johnson Dollinger, who was a leader of the Women's Auxiliary. The occupation was decisive in winning union recognition in the US car industry. Genora Johnson Dollinger was a left-wing member of the Socialist Party USA who became a Trotskyist. * What happened. The car industry in the USA (and elsewhere) had been a bastion of non-unionism. The car firms paid relatively high wages but policed their workers fiercely. Ford had an internal police force, and also monitored workers' lives outside work. Henry Ford sympathised with...