Gramsci is one of the most important thinkers whose ideas have profoundly influenced global politics in our century. It is nearly impossible to develop a political theory without taking into account the concept of “cultural hegemony.” Gramsci’s ideas generate wide interest that transcends the left-right divide, involving diverse circles. We spoke with Francesco Giasi, Secretary General of the Gramsci Foundation, about Gramsci’s intellectual legacy.

Can you tell us about the mission and recent activities of the Gramsci Foundation? What is the Foundation’s role in preserving and reinterpreting Gramsci’s intellectual legacy in the contemporary world?

The Gramsci Foundation is a cultural and research institute and a place of preservation and study of sources on Italy’s twentieth-century political and cultural history. It was founded in 1950 to enhance Antonio Gramsci’s intellectual heritage and to promote research on the history of the labor movement. It preserves Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, the historical archive of the Italian Communist Party, and the papers of its principal leaders. Over the years, it has acquired documents from other leftist organizations in Italy and numerous personal archives of political and cultural figures. The more than 200 archives increasingly gathered in the last decade are available to researchers, along with a library of about 220,000 volumes. The enhancement of archival and library resources—considered of “historical interest” by the Ministry of Culture—requires ongoing efforts aimed at protection and accessibility: cataloging, inventorying, digitizing, and publishing through research tools. Online publication of documents, newspapers, magazines, and books will increasingly facilitate research by scholars around the world. The entire Gramsci archive, with the three thousand pages of the Prison Notebooks, is now accessible to everyone. Among the research tools useful for studying the international reception of Gramsci’s thought, I would mention the Gramscian Bibliography since 1922, a database with more than 23,000 titles published in over forty languages. The digitization and publication program is very ambitious and has already made available online a considerable number of complete editions of magazines (starting with newspapers founded and directed by Gramsci), entire personal archives, photographs, posters, flyers, pamphlets, and documents preserved solely at our archive. The activities of enhancing sources, conducting research, and promoting historical awareness are often carried out in collaboration with universities and cultural institutions through specific agreements and shared projects. This includes creating cultural portals and websites, national and international conferences, documentary exhibitions, as well as more ordinary public discussions on history and politics. Among the most significant projects aimed at understanding Gramsci’s thought—without listing specific conferences, lectures, exhibitions, or mainly collective research publications—I would highlight the complete and critical edition of his writings: a major publishing enterprise involving dozens of scholars from various academic disciplines.

What did Antonio Gramsci mean by the concept of “cultural hegemony”? In your opinion, is today’s cultural production still under the control of the dominant class, or are there visible cracks in this hegemony?

The concept of “cultural hegemony” is often misunderstood. For Gramsci, “hegemony” is first and foremost synonymous with political leadership. One becomes hegemonic if one can lead a political movement, a group of social forces—that is, if one is able to seize and maintain power through consent. There is, therefore, a permanent struggle for hegemony. The phrase “cultural hegemony” appears only a few times in the Prison Notebooks, where the concept of “hegemony” is omnipresent and touches on every aspect of political struggle. The struggle for hegemony concerns needs and interests and is waged by subjects with political awareness, driven by feelings and expectations, adhering to a program of transformation or preservation. Political struggle always involves ideology. Claims about the “end of ideologies” and the devaluation of what is deemed ideological stem from journalistic clichés with no foundation; these are “nonsense” concocted toward the end of the 20th century to discredit the ideals and values promoted by the socialist movement since the mid-19th century. A subject without ideology would be devoid of thought, consciousness, certainties (and doubts), morality, fears, and hopes. Gramsci paid close attention to the factors that shape individual consciousness and public spirit; his research agenda is entirely consistent with his critique of economic determinism and his emphasis on understanding the role of subjectivity in history. He proposed a “return to Marx,” to his humanism and historicism, refuting Marxisms that neglected subjectivity. He saw Lenin as the only Marx interpreter fully aware of the importance of praxis and will, untainted by economic or mechanistic views. The term “hegemony” itself, moreover, comes from Lenin’s lexicon. For Gramsci, political struggle is not an automatic reflection of the “economic base,” and there is always reciprocity between “structure” and “superstructure,” to use the conceptual pair adopted by Marxists. Gramsci’s research focuses on all those capable of producing culture and knowledge, worldviews, systems of certainty and values, of influencing sensibility and taste: schools, universities, newspapers and magazines, publishing houses, theaters, cultural institutes, academies of science and art, and of course, religious and political organizations that produce myths and common sense, always with a focus on the struggle for hegemony.
Total control over cultural production is unfeasible. No state and no “dominant class” has ever monopolized it. When such claims arise, the cracks are immediately evident and tend to widen. Today, we witness the rapid and unprecedented expansion of new media, while television and newspapers still play a significant role. Agencies dominate that disseminate both old and new ideas of the “dominant class,” alongside individuals or groups of varying influence that have gained prestige and credibility from both the right and the left. Democratic political organizations, on the other hand, are in crisis, too weak to assert truths and values, to mobilize and organize, to guide and stabilize opinions and emotions.

In light of the global rise of populist governments, the growing control of media monopolies over information, and the shift of social movements to digital platforms, how should we rethink Gramscian concepts like “cultural hegemony” and “war of position”?

The themes Gramsci addressed, those he most deeply explored, and many of the questions formulated in his writings remain strikingly relevant. Gramsci lived in a world vastly different from ours; he thought and acted in a time when even photography, radio, and cinema had not yet fully shown their potential. He was a political leader who died in the late 1930s—after over a decade in prison—and his thought must be historicized without forcing interpretations or expecting answers to questions he could never have formulated. Still, the richness and depth of his thinking—developed amid the fierce political struggles in Italy from the Great War through the rise of fascism—are undeniable. Yet, we must ask why interest in his analysis of the role of intellectuals continues to grow even in an age of entirely new and previously unthinkable means and forms of production and communication. Why do his ideas on politics and culture still feel so alive? In my view, it is due to his attention to ideology and collective consciousness, to the factors that shape political feelings and public behavior. Today’s media would undoubtedly be part of his investigation, along with everything contributing to consciousness formation. It is up to us to rise to the level of his analysis by properly evaluating the power and spread of new media.
The term “hegemony” is not destined to disappear from political discourse, and the distinction between “war of movement” and “war of position” remains useful. Gramsci often clarifies that political categories cannot be directly borrowed from military art, but he considers this distinction indispensable for understanding how political forces confront and fight each other. In both democratic struggles and dictatorships, parties and movements are in constant confrontation, and issues of culture, opinion formation, judgments, and moral sentiments acquire a significance that cannot be overlooked.

Gramsci emphasized that hegemony is maintained through the production of consent. Why do you think large segments of society today continue to support systems that may not actually serve their interests?

The parties that should represent the interests of the popular classes are often unable to grasp the expectations and basic needs of those suffering from poverty, inequality, and social exclusion. These are hardly new issues, stemming from unemployment, precarious employment, low wages, and a lack of protections. The demands concern housing, healthcare, assistance, education, and a better standard of living. The socialist movement once fought to unify humanity; it achieved gains that brought greater dignity and well-being to the popular classes—mainly peasants and workers; it promoted an emancipation aimed at enabling the subaltern classes to replace the leadership expressed by the dominant classes; it responded to needs and nurtured hope. Today’s progressive parties are unable to reassert the foundational values of democratic and socialist traditions: equality, solidarity, cooperation, emancipation, social justice—all values capable of countering the cultures that fuel nationalism, racism, and the will to dominate by classes and castes. Gramsci speaks of a “sentimental connection” with the people, and I believe this lack of resonance is at the root of democratic parties’ failures, which are also devoid of international ties and a global vision of today’s problems. I believe that only a regeneration (a rebirth) of political forces capable of offering a universal vision of the popular classes’ interests and implementing coherent, clear programs can halt nationalist and xenophobic right-wing forces that empower and legitimize selfishness and particularism worldwide.

Gramsci distinguished between “organic” and “traditional” intellectuals. How relevant is this distinction today? Can social media influencers, public intellectuals, or cultural workers be considered organic intellectuals? What is the role of traditional intellectuals in maintaining or transforming dominant structures?

The most illuminating text by Gramsci on this subject is, in my opinion, his essay on the Southern Question, his last writing before his arrest in November 1926, first published in 1930 by his exiled comrades. In this essay, Gramsci clarifies the role of various categories of “traditional” intellectuals, explains the ties that make them influential among the popular classes, and argues how they can contribute to passivity or resistance to political and social change. Confronting the unresolved “Southern Question”—due to the economic gap between North and South, worsened after Italy’s unification—Gramsci highlights the difference between a fifty-year debate confined to intellectual circles and the novelty of a political party aiming to fuse intellectual reflection and political action to make the popular classes protagonists of change. In short, without ties to a political movement, intellectuals always play a more or less traditional role. The intellectual is organic to a social class, and thus the aristocracy and bourgeoisie also have their organic intellectuals: in his view, one is always organic to social classes striving for transformation or preservation. Gramsci never underestimated the importance of individual intellectuals, but he showed that their progressive or regressive function necessarily derives from their alignment with ideological and political currents. In any case, only a political movement can empower the popular classes to act progressively according to a program. At the same time, if an intellectual does not commit to an ideological and political movement, they cannot consistently play a politically positive role.

Why did Gramsci introduce the concept of the “modern Prince”? How does it draw from Machiavelli, and how does it differ from him in its formulation?

For Gramsci, the modern prince is the collective subject synonymous with the political party. The key difference between Machiavelli’s era and ours (both Gramsci’s and today’s) is that political leadership functions cannot be attributed to an individual alone. In our era, the political party is the subject that aspires to govern. In his studies of Machiavelli, Gramsci places him firmly in his time. He does not allow for reading Machiavelli as “relevant for all times.” He sees him as a theorist and politician to be studied within the context of 15th–16th century Italy and Europe. During his first year in prison in 1927, Gramsci read most of the works published for the 400th anniversary of Machiavelli’s death. Once granted permission to write in January 1929, he annotated and commented on them, beginning a reflection both on Machiavelli’s works and his legacy. Machiavelli criticizes utopias and—Gramsci writes—“lays the foundation for modern politics” by viewing political struggle in “realistic” terms. For Gramsci, he is the most radical critic of wishful thinking and “fantasizing.” The politician must know how to connect means with ends and avoid confusing utopias and dreams with reality. Moreover, Gramsci attributes to Machiavelli a historical conception free from religion, akin to the “philosophy of praxis” and Marx’s “neo-humanism.” In the absence of transcendent forces—without a God to inspire, save, or punish—man’s destiny lies in his own hands. Politics, therefore, assumes unprecedented importance if divine intervention is ruled out from human affairs: it must confront and resolve every public and social issue. Machiavelli is thus the author who gives new foundations to politics as both science and action, by humanizing it and connecting it to concrete goals for which appropriate means must be chosen.
As for Gramsci himself, we should follow the standards he used in approaching Machiavelli’s biography and writings: see him as a thinker and man of action rooted in his time, yet capable of offering us ideas and historical-political categories that remain useful and fruitful.