“We need to create sober, patient people, who do not despair in the face of the worst horror and who do not get excited about every little thing. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Happy birthday to the author of these lines, Antonio Gramsci!
Born in Sardinia in 1891, Gramsci left his island home at a young age to study in Turin, then the stronghold of Italian industrial capitalism. In 1919 and 1920 he was a leading figure in the Turin workers’ council movement.
In 1921, he co-founded the Italian Communist Party and shortly thereafter became its leader. Gramsci died in 1937 after spending years in fascist prisons.
In his Prison Notebooks, which established his reputation as one of the most important Marxist theorists, Gramsci grappled with the failure of revolution in Western Europe and the conditions for socialist politics in a modern, bourgeois society.
Today, Gramsci is remembered not only as a renowned Italian politician, but also as one of the most influential Marxists of the 20th century.
