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Historical Materialism #250
Gramsci Contested: Interpretations, Debates, and Polemics, 1922--2012
Antonio Gramsci's work has been considered of paramount importance across the globe, but what of his influence in his native Italy? Gramsci is one of the most widely celebrated figures of twentieth-century Italy, renowned across the globe for his contributions to philosophy, political theory, sociology, cultural studies and historiography. His work has been equally discussed, debated and contested within Italy itself, serving as a constant reference point-whether in fervent agreement or angry polemics-for parties and tendencies across the Italian left from the 1910s down to our present day. In this foundational overview of Gramsci's reception in Italy, and his contest legacy within a range of Italian traditions, Guido Liguori provides a balanced view of the many uses to which Gramsci's thought has been put, with a particular focus on the important relationship with the Italian Communist Party leader, Palmiro Togliatti.
402 pages, Paperback
Published January 31, 2023
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March 12, 2026
To paraphrase Antonio Gramsci, to write the historiography of an individual means nothing less than to write the general history of their party and nation from a monographic viewpoint. Guido Liguori’s Gramsci Contested accomplishes this feat through a systematic history of the many debates and interpretations of Antonio Gramsci’s writings from 1922 to 2012. Liguori’s work analytically traces the debates primarily around the history of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) in relation to Gramsci’s writings and how they were utilized to explain shifting party positions from the Salerno Turn to the end of the party’s existence in 1991. Indeed, this work is so deeply engaged with PCI history that it should be read in tangent with Lucio Magri’s brilliant history of the party, The Tailor of Ulm.
Guido Liguori is a prominent writer on Marxist theory, a professor at the University of Calabria, and president of the Italian section of the International Gramsci Society. Gramsci Contested reads as a follow-up to his previous work, Gramsci’s Pathways. In both works the author deals with the many Italian debates surrounding Gramsci’s Notebooks, from the likes of Norberto Bobbio’s many polemics, to Gramsci’s relationship with Palmiro Togliatti. Having read both, it would not be a stretch to say that Gramsci Contested reads as a highly organized version of the many notes taken to write Gramsci’s Pathways.
The initial chapter focuses more on the earliest construction of the image of Gramsci among his party comrades and within the Italian intelligentsia. The logic which structures the arrangement of the first chapter moves from early interpretations of his pre-prison writings to his untimely death in 1937. While this provides an historical account of how he became a popular leader in the Italian tradition of Dante, Mazzini and Garibaldi, it gives little else. Ultimately, this issue repeats itself throughout the work.
This book was clearly a tremendous undertaking and contributes magnificently to the larger bibliographia gramsciana by encompassing a vast array of debates on Gramsci’s theoretical afterlife within Italy and the West more generally. However, this approach is both a strength and weakness of the book. On the one hand, Liguori is able to expiate on well over a hundred scholars and their various points of emphasis in regards to Gramsci. On the other hand, there is a serious lack of analysis throughout the work. Rarely can one find the author’s opinions anywhere beyond mere description and surface level points. If one attempts to look for an in-depth analysis of the interpretations of Gramsci’s writings by Louis Althusser, Edward Said, Perry Anderson, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Cornel West, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Raymond Williams, Ranajit Guha or other scholars who were deeply influenced by him, then this book would not be the best reference point. Liguori strictly sticks to historicizing the many Italian debates and interpretations, and he very rarely moves from this national focus. Functioning more as an encyclopedia index than a work of theory, one wishes that the writer had offered some in-depth analysis.
Chapter two carefully lays out the Salerno Turn from which Togliatti began to utilize a Gramscian filter for a lot of party policy and to describe the new direction of the PCI. A new history of the party was formulated with Gramsci’s writings in mind as the party swelled from a few thousand militants to over a million in a short time after the war. This arbitrary historiography crafted a utilization of Gramsci intended to rally antifascist intellectuals to the party and to critique the tradition of Italian liberalism spearheaded by Benedetto Croce as opposed to the liberal tradition which led the Risorgimento. While this was certainly an interesting period of PCI history, one wishes that Liguori had expanded this chapter to include the impact it made on party-cadre. How did they interpret this new history for practical purposes? And towards what ends?
Chapter three historicizes the reception of the Notebooks within the PCI and how these were interpreted among party leaders. Particularly interesting was its reception by party-teachers at the central college of the PCI who were at a loss for how to trace the links between the mechanistic Marxism they had been teaching and Gramsci’s brand of political theory for their student-militants; as was the letter from Togliatti to Dimitrov describing how it would be difficult to use the Notebooks for party education given the difficulty of coalescing them with Soviet orthodoxy. Again, one wishes that more reflections on the impact this made on the students was included, as much of this book excludes the popular interpretations of Gramsci’s thought within the party as a whole.
Chapters four through six features the years 1956 to 1975, as key issues were raised from Soviet intervention in Hungary to the arguments made by Althusser against Gramsci’s historicism. During this time, Togliatti often invoked Gramsci as a means to mark the Italian road to socialism as a way to differentiate from the path marked by the official Soviet line. While Liguori spends a great deal of time summarizing the debates surrounding Gramsci, a discerning reader will understand that these chapters are actually about the shifting direction of the PCI under Togliatti. Overall, this is a book as much for those who want to understand Italian political history in the twentieth century as it is for scholars in the academy.
Latent within chapter seven are several key debates surrounding pluralism which was marked by a difference in the party goal of class-hegemony while allowing for formal political democracy, a key debate amongst the party’s Eurocommunist faction between 1976-1977. Polemics broke out regarding the diametrically opposing terms hegemony and democracy. However, the implications for these polemics are clearer for the reader already attuned to the history of the PCI – rather than for those who do not know the history of the party.
While Gramsci Contested focuses heavily on the various debates surrounding Gramsci’s works in Italy and Western Europe as a whole, it ignores the many other debates which have erupted across different countries. Argentine communist Jose Maria Arico’s 1988 book La Cola del Diablo: Itinerario de Gramsci en America Latina is a tremendously important work which surveyed the many writings on Gramsci across the Americas in light of revolutionary guerilla experiences. The radical Argentine journal Pasado y Presente was deeply influenced by Gramsci’s writings and its writers presented his ideas in the national context of the 1960s and 1970s. From self-imposed exile in Mexico, perhaps the most influential Latin American philosopher since World War Two, Enrique Dussel cites Gramsci, in his own words, continuously. Anour Abdel Malek’s Social Dialectics: Civilisations and Social Theory was dedicated to Gramsci and often subtly utilized his ideas in order to expatiate on the state of the varying socialist movements in both Egypt and across the Global South. Lastly, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez often cited Gramsci in his speeches in order to theorize the direction of the Bolivarian Revolution. In short, Gramsci’s ideas were impactful far beyond Europe and the United States, resulting in their own debates, interpretations and polemics outside of the academy and these certainly deserved attention from Liguori.
At no point does Liguori attempt to historicize the popular interpretations among PCI cadre. The focus is strictly limited to the leaders of internal party debates and a handful of scholars outside of Italy. The work would have been made far richer if it had included the viewpoints and polemics of party members who were reading Gramsci within each of these historical contexts and practically applying his ideas everyday in Italian civil society.
Originally published in Italian in 1996, on the cusp of the 60th anniversary of Gramsci’s death, this recently republished work is still timely and necessary. Without a doubt, Gramsci Contested is a great contribution to furthering Gramscian thought for future activists and scholars. Since the point at which the book ends in 2012, there have been many more books creatively using Gramsci’s ideas in order to write history and theory, from Sara Salem’s Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt to Massimo Modonesi’s and Diana Fuentes’ Gramsci en México – both of which are forging new grounds for the study of Gramsci in both English and Spanish.
Some caution should be taken as Liguori’s book is not a study meant for those new to Antonio Gramsci’s work, or Marxist theory more generally, and requires some knowledge of Italian politics in the past century and a general understanding of the Notebooks. Overall, Gramsci Contested is a valuable reference point for those engaged in building from Gramsci’s oeuvre, and is a key work for those engaged in Gramscian studies.
Guido Liguori is a prominent writer on Marxist theory, a professor at the University of Calabria, and president of the Italian section of the International Gramsci Society. Gramsci Contested reads as a follow-up to his previous work, Gramsci’s Pathways. In both works the author deals with the many Italian debates surrounding Gramsci’s Notebooks, from the likes of Norberto Bobbio’s many polemics, to Gramsci’s relationship with Palmiro Togliatti. Having read both, it would not be a stretch to say that Gramsci Contested reads as a highly organized version of the many notes taken to write Gramsci’s Pathways.
The initial chapter focuses more on the earliest construction of the image of Gramsci among his party comrades and within the Italian intelligentsia. The logic which structures the arrangement of the first chapter moves from early interpretations of his pre-prison writings to his untimely death in 1937. While this provides an historical account of how he became a popular leader in the Italian tradition of Dante, Mazzini and Garibaldi, it gives little else. Ultimately, this issue repeats itself throughout the work.
This book was clearly a tremendous undertaking and contributes magnificently to the larger bibliographia gramsciana by encompassing a vast array of debates on Gramsci’s theoretical afterlife within Italy and the West more generally. However, this approach is both a strength and weakness of the book. On the one hand, Liguori is able to expiate on well over a hundred scholars and their various points of emphasis in regards to Gramsci. On the other hand, there is a serious lack of analysis throughout the work. Rarely can one find the author’s opinions anywhere beyond mere description and surface level points. If one attempts to look for an in-depth analysis of the interpretations of Gramsci’s writings by Louis Althusser, Edward Said, Perry Anderson, Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Cornel West, Stuart Hall, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Raymond Williams, Ranajit Guha or other scholars who were deeply influenced by him, then this book would not be the best reference point. Liguori strictly sticks to historicizing the many Italian debates and interpretations, and he very rarely moves from this national focus. Functioning more as an encyclopedia index than a work of theory, one wishes that the writer had offered some in-depth analysis.
Chapter two carefully lays out the Salerno Turn from which Togliatti began to utilize a Gramscian filter for a lot of party policy and to describe the new direction of the PCI. A new history of the party was formulated with Gramsci’s writings in mind as the party swelled from a few thousand militants to over a million in a short time after the war. This arbitrary historiography crafted a utilization of Gramsci intended to rally antifascist intellectuals to the party and to critique the tradition of Italian liberalism spearheaded by Benedetto Croce as opposed to the liberal tradition which led the Risorgimento. While this was certainly an interesting period of PCI history, one wishes that Liguori had expanded this chapter to include the impact it made on party-cadre. How did they interpret this new history for practical purposes? And towards what ends?
Chapter three historicizes the reception of the Notebooks within the PCI and how these were interpreted among party leaders. Particularly interesting was its reception by party-teachers at the central college of the PCI who were at a loss for how to trace the links between the mechanistic Marxism they had been teaching and Gramsci’s brand of political theory for their student-militants; as was the letter from Togliatti to Dimitrov describing how it would be difficult to use the Notebooks for party education given the difficulty of coalescing them with Soviet orthodoxy. Again, one wishes that more reflections on the impact this made on the students was included, as much of this book excludes the popular interpretations of Gramsci’s thought within the party as a whole.
Chapters four through six features the years 1956 to 1975, as key issues were raised from Soviet intervention in Hungary to the arguments made by Althusser against Gramsci’s historicism. During this time, Togliatti often invoked Gramsci as a means to mark the Italian road to socialism as a way to differentiate from the path marked by the official Soviet line. While Liguori spends a great deal of time summarizing the debates surrounding Gramsci, a discerning reader will understand that these chapters are actually about the shifting direction of the PCI under Togliatti. Overall, this is a book as much for those who want to understand Italian political history in the twentieth century as it is for scholars in the academy.
Latent within chapter seven are several key debates surrounding pluralism which was marked by a difference in the party goal of class-hegemony while allowing for formal political democracy, a key debate amongst the party’s Eurocommunist faction between 1976-1977. Polemics broke out regarding the diametrically opposing terms hegemony and democracy. However, the implications for these polemics are clearer for the reader already attuned to the history of the PCI – rather than for those who do not know the history of the party.
While Gramsci Contested focuses heavily on the various debates surrounding Gramsci’s works in Italy and Western Europe as a whole, it ignores the many other debates which have erupted across different countries. Argentine communist Jose Maria Arico’s 1988 book La Cola del Diablo: Itinerario de Gramsci en America Latina is a tremendously important work which surveyed the many writings on Gramsci across the Americas in light of revolutionary guerilla experiences. The radical Argentine journal Pasado y Presente was deeply influenced by Gramsci’s writings and its writers presented his ideas in the national context of the 1960s and 1970s. From self-imposed exile in Mexico, perhaps the most influential Latin American philosopher since World War Two, Enrique Dussel cites Gramsci, in his own words, continuously. Anour Abdel Malek’s Social Dialectics: Civilisations and Social Theory was dedicated to Gramsci and often subtly utilized his ideas in order to expatiate on the state of the varying socialist movements in both Egypt and across the Global South. Lastly, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez often cited Gramsci in his speeches in order to theorize the direction of the Bolivarian Revolution. In short, Gramsci’s ideas were impactful far beyond Europe and the United States, resulting in their own debates, interpretations and polemics outside of the academy and these certainly deserved attention from Liguori.
At no point does Liguori attempt to historicize the popular interpretations among PCI cadre. The focus is strictly limited to the leaders of internal party debates and a handful of scholars outside of Italy. The work would have been made far richer if it had included the viewpoints and polemics of party members who were reading Gramsci within each of these historical contexts and practically applying his ideas everyday in Italian civil society.
Originally published in Italian in 1996, on the cusp of the 60th anniversary of Gramsci’s death, this recently republished work is still timely and necessary. Without a doubt, Gramsci Contested is a great contribution to furthering Gramscian thought for future activists and scholars. Since the point at which the book ends in 2012, there have been many more books creatively using Gramsci’s ideas in order to write history and theory, from Sara Salem’s Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt to Massimo Modonesi’s and Diana Fuentes’ Gramsci en México – both of which are forging new grounds for the study of Gramsci in both English and Spanish.
Some caution should be taken as Liguori’s book is not a study meant for those new to Antonio Gramsci’s work, or Marxist theory more generally, and requires some knowledge of Italian politics in the past century and a general understanding of the Notebooks. Overall, Gramsci Contested is a valuable reference point for those engaged in building from Gramsci’s oeuvre, and is a key work for those engaged in Gramscian studies.
Displaying 1 of 1 review