The Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci

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Introduction
Antonio Gramsci was founder of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920’s whose seminal publication “The Prison Notebooks” has proven to be one of the most influential leftist texts of the 20th Century. Echoing aspects of Marxist-Leninist thought, Gramsci was primarily concerned with the dominance of a small ruling elite upon society, both on a national and international scale. Arguably the foundational concept of Gramsci’s vision is that of hegemony, as this concept forms the basis from which the majority of Gramscian ideas evolve. It is essential to distinguish the Gramscian notion of hegemony from its traditional understanding within dominant International Relations theories such as neo-realism. Within such theories, the term refers to a state’s hard and soft power capacity to attain dominance over other sovereign states within the international system. For instance, the neo-realist hegemonic stability theory suggests that stability is achieved in a unilateral system whereby a single state attains sufficient dominance as to act as a hegemonic power within the international arena (Bieler and Morton, 2003). In contrast, a Gramscian vision of hegemony involves the domination of an elite minority over the majority of the population, and is achieved and maintained via the mechanisms of both coercion and consent. In this sense, the Gramscian understanding of the term is far broader than the realist conception as it involves both internal and external elements and is not restricted to the unit of the state.

Gramsci’s Legacy
Recognising the fecundity of his work in relation to the world system, contemporary thinkers have built upon Gramsci’s legacy, interpreting key features of his thought and applying them to contemporar...

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