Libertar o Futuro: Textos Políticos

by Antonio Gramsci

Uma curiosa ironia da história levou a que os textos que garantiram, a seu tempo, a reputação pública de Antonio Gramsci e que, por fim, contribuíram para a sua prisão, sejam hoje em dia menos conhecidos do que as obras redigidas na clausura da prisão. Os textos reunidos nesta antologia trazem o sabor da atualidade; a atualidade sendo aqui o tempo compreendido entre 1916 e 1926, em que se sucederam as tragédias e equívocos da Grande Guerra, as ilusões e reveses dos movimentos populares do pós-guerra e a emergência furiosa do fascismo nos anos 1920. Seja pela polémica, seja pela crítica, Antonio Gramsci acompanha todas estas vicissitudes da história italiana e europeia, comentando a Revolução Russa ou sistematizando as lições dos conselhos operários de Turim, debatendo com Mussolini ou verberando as anquilosadas estruturas sindicais da época.

Selecção e Introdução: Bruno Monteiro
Notas Finais: Franco Tomassoni

311 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, where he remained until his death in 1937.

During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources — not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, the state, historical materialism, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture.
Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — use cultural institutions to maintain wealth and power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci's view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. He also attempted to break from the economic determinism of orthodox Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist. He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a philosophy of praxis and an absolute historicism that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.