Gramsci's Marxism

by Carl Boggs

Carl Boggs introduces Gramsci as the first Marxist theorist to grapple with the problems of revolutionary change in advanced capitalist society and as the first to identify the importance of the ideological-cultural struggle against bourgeois values.

He links the themes of the prison notebooks to Gramsci's earlier work as political activist and leader of the Communist Party of Italy. This is the first introduction in English to Antonio Gramsci's political philosophy.

Genres: Politics

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Carl Boggs is Professor of Social Sciences at National University in Los Angeles. He is the author of Gramsci's Marxism; The Politics of Eurocommunism (with David Plotke); The Impasse of European Communism; The Two Revolutions: Gramsci and the Crisis of Western Marxism; and Social Movements and Political Power.

Reviews

[Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and found it to be a very effective summary of Gramsci's major contributions to Marxism, which can be difficult to distill from the primary texts. Most of this rating is in recognition that the book makes a good account of Gramsci's ideas. On this merit alone, I would recommend it.

I do have some reservations, though. While I find some of the argument for Gramsci's originality convincing, the book does the classic thing that Gramscian academics enjoy: overstating Gramsci's departure from Leninist orthodoxy by somewhat distorting Lenin's Marxism. To his credit, though, Boggs doesn't make Gramsci into a reformist.

A second characteristic that I've found common to Gramscian academics, and which Boggs doesn't break from, is that they remain rather vague about the practical implications of Gramsci's thought. My main motivation in reading this text was in trying to work out what a Gramscian programme of action looks like that isn't Eurocommunist-style reformism. I'm still somewhat unsure. While I understand that Gramsci saw culture and ideology as important terrains of struggle, and developed a useful distinction between wars of position vs wars of manoeuvre, Boggs doesn't attempt to apply these ideas in a concrete way to a contemporary circumstance. Without an explicit turn to the organisational, strategic, and programmatic - we are just left with new concepts with little notion of their applied importance to class struggle.

[Julian · Rating 3 out of 5]

very detailed and clear introduction