Gramsci, politics, philosophy

This paper examines Antonio Gramsci’s conception of politics, understood as one of the most original contributions of twentieth-century Marxism. We argue that the novelty of Gramsci’s approach lies less in his well-known categories – such as civil society, historical bloc, and the distinction between East and West – than in his redefinition of the political sphere vis-à-vis both the reductionist outlook of the Second International and the so-called “Marxism-Leninism” (i.e., Stalinism) that dominated the Third International. Three preliminary aspects guide our discussion: first, the meanings Gramsci attributed to the concept of politics; second, his analysis of the causal nexus between economic relations of production and politics; and third, his ontological understanding of ideology as a constitutive moment of politics itself. We suggest that by conceiving politics as catharsis and ideology as a social-ontological reality, Gramsci offered a non-empiricist and non-idealist response to the central problem of democratic theory: the construction of a general and collective will.