Product Description

This volume was the first selection published from the Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Nobebooks" to be made available in Britain, and was originally published in the early 1970s. It contains most of the key writings by Gramsci, including the text of "The Modern Prince".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42932 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: Italian
• Binding: Paperback
• 483 pages

Customer Reviews

A must read: One of the most important marxist works
This selection from Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" contains his most important work written during his imprisonment from the italian fascist regime. It includes "the Intellectuals", texts on Education, Notes on Italian History, "The modern Prince", "State and Civil Society", "Americanism and Fordism" and notes on the philosophy of praxis, together with a very informative introduction on the italian Communist Movement in the first decades of the 20th century. In this collection Gramsci's theory of "hegemony" in class societies is fully presented, together with his intepretation of Marxism both in philosophy and in the analysis of the modern world.

Gramsci was on of the foremost leaders of the Italian Communist Party; in his trial in 1927 the fascist Public Prosecutor proclaimed that his brain must be stopped from functioning for twenty years. Fortunately, Gramsci proved to be a devoted fighter in prison and his Notebooks furthered -in many points- the analysis of Marx and Lenin of how capitalism functions and how it could be overthrown.

Gramsci's Prison Notebooks
If you're interested in radical social theory, this is definitely worth a look. Gramsci is in my view the most important of the early western Marxists and his work covers a huge variety of issues and topics. He is best known for his concept of "hegemony", but there's plenty of other stuff here as well, which has hardly been discussed by other authors - for instance, his unusual and original theory of "common sense" and "conceptions of the world".

I've read a lot of Marxist stuff and this is one of the best books I've found, especially in its sensitivity to the issue of everyday life. If you don't like Marxism you might not like it, and there's some annoyingly elitist bits sneak through at times, but this shouldn't stop you exploring Gramsci's very original theorising.