A Gramsci Reader

Antonio Gramsci is the twentieth century's most original and wide-ranging Marxist thinker. While jailed by Mussolini he wrote a series of notebooks which have become increasingly influential in the post-war period, both in Italy and elsewhere. The flexibility of Gramsci's approach to politics has helped to rescue Marxist thinking from the determinism and economic reductionism to which it has often fallen prey.

This reader offers the first comprehensive selection of Gramsci's writings in one volume. It includes his pre-prison writings as well as the most important passages from the Prison Notebooks. It covers political, cultural, historical and philosophical themes and subjects as diverse as the nature and role of the political party, education, popular culture, fascism and folklore.

Gramsci's use of terms such as hegemony and historical bloc has often confused readers; this edition sets out to make these terms clear and comprehensible, through a glossary which is carefully linked to the selection of key texts from Gramsci's work.