Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci was born in Ales (OR) on January 22, 1891. After graduating from elementary school (1902) and studying privately in Ghilarza, in 1905 he enrolled in the high school gymnasium in Santuluszu. After obtaining his gymnastic license, he moved (1908) to Cagliari with his brother Gennaro, secretary of the local socialist section, to attend Dettori High School.
His commitment to the affirmation of freedom of thought and participation in cultural and political discussions dates back to these years.

After finishing his high school studies in 1911, thanks to a scholarship, he enrolled in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Turin. In 1915, already a collaborator of the “People's Cry”, he joined the Turin editorial staff of “the Forward”, an organ of the Italian Socialist Party, drawing general attention to the cultural depth of his interventions.

In 1919, together with Angelo Tasca, Umberto Terracini and Palmiro Togliatti, he founded the weekly magazine “The New Order”, through whose pages he supported the importance of factory councils, thus orienting his ideology in a revolutionary perspective, to the left of the socialist movement. Convinced of these ideas, together with the communist minority of the PSI, he created, on 21 January 1921, the Italian Communist Party (PCD'I).

As a member of the central committee of the party, he went to Moscow in 1922 to participate in the Communist International; his direct knowledge of Leninism and of the developments of the proletarian dictatorship allowed him to measure the problems of Italian communism differently.

Elected Secretary General in 1924, following the dissolution of the opposition parties in 1926, he was arrested and two years later sentenced to twenty years in prison. In 1929, after obtaining permission to write in a cell, he began writing the 'Notebooks from Prison'. In prison, his health condition deteriorated steadily despite obtaining parole in 1934. He died at the Quisisana clinic in Rome on April 27, 1937, at the age of 46, shortly after regaining his freedom

Update

20/3/2025 - 09:44