this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
81 points (98.8% liked)

marxism

3746 readers
80 users here now

For the study of Marxism, and all the tendencies that fall beneath it.

Read Lenin.

Resources below are from r/communism101. Post suggestions for better resources and we'll update them.

Study Guides

Explanations

Libraries

Bookstores

Book PDFs

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Italian intellectual and political activist, founder of the Communist Party (Ales, Sardinia, 1891 - Rome, 1937). Thanks to the support of his brother and his intellectual capacity he overcame the difficulties produced by his physical deformity (he was hunchbacked) and by the poverty of his family (since his father was imprisoned, accused of embezzlement). He studied at the University of Turin, where he was influenced intellectually by Benedetto Croce and the socialists.

In 1913 he joined the Italian Socialist Party, immediately becoming a leader of its left wing. After working on various party periodicals, he founded, together with Palmiro Togliatti and Umberto Elia Terracini, the magazine Ordine nuovo (1919). Faced with the dilemma posed to socialists around the world by the course taken by the Russian Revolution, Antonio Gramsci chose to adhere to the communist line and, at the Livorno Congress (1921), split with the group that founded the Italian Communist Party.

Gramsci belonged from the beginning to the Central Committee of the new party, which he also represented in Moscow within the Third International (1922); he endowed the formation with an official press organ (L'Unità, 1924) and represented it as a deputy (1924). He was a member of the Executive of the Communist International, whose Bolshevik orthodoxy he defended in Italy by expelling from the party the ultra-left group of Amadeo Bordiga, which he accused of following Trotsky's line (1926).

He soon had to go underground, since since 1922 Italy was under the power of Mussolini, who would exercise from 1925 an iron fascist dictatorship. Gramsci was arrested in 1926 and spent the rest of his life in prison, subjected to humiliation and ill-treatment, which added to his tuberculosis to make prison life extremely difficult, until he died of cerebral congestion.

In these conditions, however, Gramsci was able to produce a great written work (the voluminous Prison Notebooks), containing an original revision of Marx's thought, in a historicist sense and tending to modernize the legacy of Marxism to adapt it to the conditions of Italy and twentieth-century Europe. Already at the Lyon Congress (1926) he had advocated the broadening of the social bases of communism by opening it to all classes of workers, including intellectuals. His theoretical contributions would powerfully influence the adaptation of Western communism that took place in the sixties and seventies, the so-called Eurocommunism. 🤮

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Gramsci saw the ruling class maintaining its power over society in two ways –

Coercion – it uses the army, police, prison and courts to force other classes to accept its rule

Consent (hegemony) – it uses ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule is legitimate

Hegemony and Revolution

In advanced Capitalist societies, the ruling class rely heavily on consent to maintain their rule. Gramsci agrees with Marx that they are able to maintain consent because they control institutions such as religion, the media and the education system. However, according to Gramsci, the hegemony of the ruling class is never complete, for two reasons:

The ruling class are a minority – and as such they need to make ideological compromises with the middle classes in order to maintain power The proletariat have dual consciousness. Their ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois ideology but also by the material conditions of their life – in short, they are aware of their exploitation and are capable or seeing through the dominant ideology.

Antonio Gramsci Marxists.org :gramsci-heh:

Antonio Gramsci and the Italian Revolution :anti-italian-action:

Hexbear links

reminders:

  • 💚 You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
  • 💙 Hexbear’s algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
  • 💜 Sorting by new you nerd
  • 🌈 If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
  • 🐶 Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog

Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

Aid:

Theory:

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 15 points 5 days ago (4 children)

So like... I'm listening to Trueanon for the first time in a couple years, and in both episodes (the most recent one and the Luigi one) someone has said the r-slur just totally unmitigated. What's up with that

[–] DeathToBritain@hexbear.net 12 points 5 days ago

a lot of online leftists have decided it's """""funny"""" and """"""epic to own the cons""""" with ableist slurs, and know they can get away with it due to normalised societal ableism. I stopped listening to them over it, and will any other shithead who thinks that can fly

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They've always done that, but it feels like it's been more lately. Not into it. I cut that shit out in like 2009

[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Huh, I don't remember it from before, but maybe I just wasn't listening for it as much

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It got dropped here and there. Seems to have ramped up oddly

[–] hexaflexagonbear@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I’ve been hearing it more IRL from other millennials recently too. Idk if it’s like a nostalgia thing? But weirdly enough seems to be a broader cultural phenomenon.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If you do, tell em to cut it the fuck out. I haven't heard it but also for the most part only am ever around fairly left leaning people, socdems at the worst. That's some major regression. I give leeway with 'gay' as an ironic pejorative if you're queer but as far as I know there isn't any desire to 'take back' the r slur. If I had to guess it's blowback from weaponized therapy speak, which is also awful but it's not the way to react. Just being nice to people seems off the table.

[–] hexaflexagonbear@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

left leaning people, socdems at the worst

One of them is a communist, she’s a slightly older millennial. So there’s this funny thing where she’ll drop the r-slur in text messages and immediately apologize constantly.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 9 points 5 days ago

She is for sure saying it openly in a different friend group

[–] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 9 points 5 days ago

brace still does it a fair bit last i listened, yeah. they have like a millennial flavour of social chauvinism where they just refuse to do growth in certain areas, still socially acceptable in their irl circles i assume. they love to talk shit about poly people too.

I recall them doing this a few years back which led to me stopping listening to them. Given they’re in their 30s, one can assume it’s not just youthful ignorance and that they simply have a hatred of disabled people.