An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy

by George Hoare, Nathan Sperber

This is a concise introduction to the life and work of the Italian militant and political thinker, Antonio Gramsci. As head of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s, Gramsci was arrested and condemned to 20 years' imprisonment by Mussolini's fascist regime. It was during this imprisonment that Gramsci wrote his famous Prison Notebooks – over 2,000 pages of profound and influential reflections on history, culture, politics, philosophy and revolution.

An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci retraces the trajectory of Gramsci's life, before examining his conceptions of culture, politics and philosophy. Gramsci's writings are then interpreted through the lens of his most famous concept, that of 'hegemony'; Gramsci's thought is then extended and applied to 'think through' contemporary problems to illustrate his distinctive historical methodology. The book concludes with a valuable examination of Gramsci's legacy today and useful tips for further reading.

George Hoare and Nathan Sperber make Gramsci accessible for students of history, politics and philosophy keen to understand this seminal figure in 20th-century intellectual history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Politics, Philosophy

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 19, 2015

Reviews

[Sylvia]

The book does what it says on the tin.

A solid introduction to Gramsci, at least for me. I think it does a very good job at introducing people to Gramsci's life and the conceptualisation of his cultural, political and philosophical ideas that all contribute to his concept of hegemony.

I read the 2nd edition, which I think is re-structured so that Gramsci's legacy is discussed before Hoare and Sperber introduce their three chapters applying Gramscian ideas to different situations. I think that works better, almost like a palette cleanser. The chapters on Gramsci's politics, philosophy and hegemony are the hardest chapters, with a lot of Gramscian vocabulary to learn and pick up on too.

After reading this, I feel more prepared to read Gramsci and other commentaries, such as Peter D Thomas' 'The Gramscian Moment'. It's also a great book in that Hoare and Sperber are insistent on the importance of contextualising Gramsci and his thought too. Even if some ideas remain confusing, undeveloped, or that Gramsci was writing as a communist leader in the inter-war period. I was surprised at how important the party was to him in his thought because of how he's been misinterpreted over so many years, which the book does talk about too.

There's more to Gramsci than the 'time of monsters' quote and I urge people to begin the long, at times very difficult work, of really trying to delve into his work.

[Dale]

This helped me make more sense of the Prison Notebooks, by putting the various threads of Gramsci's thought into a framework with hegemony as the unifying concept. The book consists of a brief biography, some coverage of Gramsci's early writings, sections on politics, culture, the 'historic bloc', a small amount of discussion of organic vs. conjunctural crises, and a lengthy discussion of the concept of hegemony, by which the above threads are tied together.

The book concludes with a pair of case studies: applications of Gramscian ideas to contemporary questions. I thought this was an especially good idea, since Gramsci's work was versatile and grounded enough to be applicable over a wide spectrum of political and cultural settings.

[David]

Excellent introduction to Gramsci, as well as examples of the application of his thought by various thinkers. Not too sure about the philosophical analysis in chapter 4. Positing Gramsci as maintaing some sort of middle-ground between idealism and materialism seems absurd—Hoare himself notes that the materialism Gramsci is critiquing is a "vulgar materialism," not the broader philosophical position of materialism.

[Bill Perrin]

Not sure what to make of this book. Much of it reads as a discussion of similarly inclined academics which might make them feel important and some of it does a good job of clarifying some of the internal contradictions of capitalism, not entirely a waste of time.