Book Description

This volume is the second of two containing a selection of Antonio Gramsci's political writings from his first entry into Italian politics to his imprisonment under Mussolini's fascist regime. An extensive selection from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks is already available in this English edition of his works, and a volume of further selections from the Notebooks will follow. This present volume covers the momentous years of the foundation of the Italian Communist Party (whose leader Gramsci was from 1924 until his arrest in 1926), the ascendancy of the Soviet Union as the authoritative force in the Communist International, and the rise and eventual triumph of fascism which forced Italian communism into nearly twenty years of illegality and Gramsci into prison. The crucial concerns of the articles, reports and letters in this volume are of central relevance to contemporary Marxism - the functioning of working-class power, the strategy of the united struggle against capitalism and against fascism, and the implications of proletarian internationalism - and the collection is indispensible for a proper understanding of the fighting tradition of the Italian Communist Party. Complete with introductory material, a chronology and full notes, and including relevant texts by other Italian Communist leaders, this English-language edition of the works of Antonio Gramsci makes available to a wider readership than ever before the writings of one of the most outstanding Marxist thinkers of Western Europe.