No, not the Canadian dude who posts on here but the Italian marxist chap: Anyone read owt by him? What can be recommended? Haven't read any heavyweight leftie intellectual stuff for a bit.

Did he write anything other than the Prison Notebooks? Not read any of it myself.

There isn't a huge oeuvre - I'm pretty sure he didn't publish any books in his lifetime (he was thrown in jail by Mussolini at a rlatively young age). The Prison Notebooks are pretty long and are not always published as a whole. One section of them, "The Modern Prince" is often published separately.

He was also a journalist - a few bits of his writings are available here, though there is also a collection of his pre-prison writings which may however be out of print.

His stuf isn't that heavy, as ideological treatises go. You'll recignize a lot of it because he was so influential. For the purposes of posterity, it worked out really well for him that his work wasn't really available in English until the 60s. The idea that capitalism's strength was control of the commanding heights of culture, not the commanding heights of the economy, probably "sold" better in the 60s than it would have done in the 20s or 30s.

What AG said.

This Hobsbawm edited collection looks worthwhile.

That collection looks really good. I'd only heard of him because of Scritti Politti.

QUOTE:
In the end we chose 'Scritti Politti' - a name that came from a book called 'Scritti Politici', which was written by someone called Gramsci in prison - a clever Marxist writer. It was a play on of the Italian phrase 'political writings'. It also sounded like the kind of sound we wanted to create with the band.

(And closer to Tutti Frutti.)

I take it 'Scritti Politici' would have been the prison notebooks?

Big problem with Gramsci is that he mostly wrote while in prison so everything is deliberately vague. This suited the eurocommunist types who liked a bit of post-modernism and appropriated his stuff in the late '80s- they could interpret it all to death. I think you have to get to grips with Italian politics in the early 20th century before it makes real sense so if you don't already know that stuff it would be a bit of a project. He does sound dead clever though, even when you aren't really sure what he's on about, that might be why the "so brainy we aren't even left wing anymore" Marxists love him.

Who are these "so brainy they aren't even left wing anymore" Marxists? I know a few "so radical they reject Marxism (though not necessarily Marx) and don't care much for the term 'left-wing'" types, but a non-left wing Marxist?

I know very little about Gramsci. In fact I know sod all other than his concept of hegemony, which is used and abused fairly frequently (it was something of a buzzword a few years ago when Chomsky wrote Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance.

And when I say I know a few, I mean I am one.

born toulouse wrote:

QUOTE:
Big problem with Gramsci is that he mostly wrote while in prison so everything is deliberately vague.

It's true, I get that a lot.

Explains the unusual hours too.

I suspect Born Toulouse is talking about the old Marxism Today crowd, or the now anti-environmentalist libertarian nutters behind the old Revolutionary Communist Party. Or even yer Cohen/Aaranovich/Hitchens "Decent Left" types.

Correct on the Marxism Today types and I was a bit shocked to find that the rump of the RCP was now some strange so left wing we're right wing think tank opposed to recycling etc. Never heard of the last lot though I'm ashamed to say.

Anyway it seems wrong to me that, just because Gramsci had to face up to the fact that if he was too blunt he'd get shot, you get not even vaguely revolutionary people cuddling up to him. I reckon he would have told them to piss off unless his cell was freezing in which case- any port in a storm (as the Italian revolutionaries say).

Agh, I see what you mean. I get very defensive of these things! Hitchens and co are n 'alf twattish though- though if anything I'd say they have a bit of an anti-intellectual sneer about them.

The 2 vol Selections From Political Writings (1910-1920, and 1921-1926) are chronological, which helps the reader. There is a brief outline chronology to help root oneself in the period, and a good intro, esp in the second volume.

These were published by Lawrence & Wishart in English, though they are out of print I believe, though most university libraries/bookshops should have one or maybe both?

There is also a good biography by Giuseppe Fiori called Antonio Gramsci: Life of a revolutionary, which has been translated into English by Tom Nairn, published by Verso (first published in Italy in the 60s and in English in the 70s. It was republished in the 90s I think). It is or at least was well thought of critically and also uses personal letters to family and friends.

The 2 vol Letters from Prison: Antonio Gramsci, edited by Frank Rosengarten. I have only read the second volume (1931-37)and I particularly enjoyed it, as it perhaps gives more insight, through letters to his sister in law, wife and children, and Piero Sraffa, hs friend, into the human being, family man, estranged for so long from his wife and two sons, who were in Moscow then.

Carl Levy [/b]Gramsci and the Anarchists (1999) offers a fascinating look at his relationship with the syndicalists and anarchists in Turin especially, and like Gwyn A Williams's [/b]Proletarian Order[b] looks at the factory council movement and struggles in Italian "socialism".

There are so many books on him now and he is so widely studied it is amazing to think his writings lay somewhat dormant, almost forgotten until the 70s.