Italy – Gramsci and the PCI
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Recapitulation: Croce and Gentile (Volume 1)
Before we turn to Gramsci, a brief look back at Italy’s reception of Hegel before 1945 (treated in detail in Volume 1, Chapter 10):[1]
Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) interpreted Hegel in liberal-idealist terms: Hegel’s philosophy is the history of spirit, a philosophy of culture. Dialectic is the method of the humanities – not natural laws (that would be “positivism”), but the understanding of meaning, history, culture.
Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) radicalized Hegel into an “actual idealism”: all being is an act of spirit. Not static being (substance), but becoming, practice, deed. Gentile became the ideologist of fascism – and thereby compromised Hegel in Italy for decades.
After 1945, Italy had to reckon with this legacy: Hegel was either liberal (Croce) or fascist (Gentile) – both readings problematic.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) – Posthumous Impact (1948-1951)
Antonio Gramsci wrote his major works in fascist prison (1926-1937) – the famous Quaderni del carcere (Prison Notebooks). He died in 1937, and his texts remained unpublished. Only in 1948-1951 were they published – and then their impact exploded.[2]
The delayed impact
Why was Gramsci published only 12 years after his death?
1. Political caution: The PCI (under Palmiro Togliatti, who was also the editor) did not want to provoke – Gramsci was idiosyncratic, not entirely aligned with the Moscow line.
2. Editorial difficulties: The notebooks were fragmentary, partly encoded (prison censorship!), difficult to organize.
3. Strategic use: By the time the notebooks appeared (1948-51), the Cold War was in full swing. The PCI needed intellectual weapons – and Gramsci provided them.
The main theses
Gramsci developed three central concepts, all of Hegelian origin:
1. Hegemony: Domination functions not only through coercion (police, military) but through consent – through culture, education, media, religion. The ruling class must make its worldview hegemonic – established as “common sense,” as self-evident.
This is Hegelian: in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel shows that the state is not merely an instrument of coercion but ethical life (Sittlichkeit) – people internalize norms and act in “voluntary” conformity.
Gramsci applies this critically: bourgeois hegemony is not natural but manufactured – through schools, churches, newspapers. The working class must build a counter-hegemony – its own culture, its own education, its own values.[3]
2. Civil society: Gramsci distinguishes political society (the state, coercion) from civil society (culture, church, media, associations). Domination operates through both – not only repression but also consent.
This too is Hegelian: Hegel distinguishes state and civil society – both are necessary, both must be mediated.
Gramsci shows: in developed capitalist countries (Italy, France, Germany), civil society is strong – so a coup is not enough (as it was in Russia in 1917). One must win over civil society – a “war of position,” not a “war of movement.”[4]
3. Organic intellectuals: Every class produces its own intellectuals – not only philosophers, but teachers, journalists, priests, technicians. The bourgeoisie has its intellectuals (Croce, Gentile!), and the working class must develop its own.
Gramsci’s point: intellectuals are not “free-floating” (as Mannheim thought) but organically bound to classes. The question is: which class do they serve?[5]
The international impact
Gramsci became an icon of Western Marxism:
1. For the New Left (1968): Gramsci offered an alternative to the Soviet model – not dictatorship but cultural hegemony. Not a coup, but a long march through the institutions (Rudi Dutschke).
2. For postcolonial theory: Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak – all read Gramsci. The idea of “hegemony” helped in understanding cultural imperialism – not merely economic exploitation, but intellectual domination.
3. For Cultural Studies: Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School used Gramsci to analyze popular culture – how consent is manufactured, how resistance is possible.
Systematic assessment
Gramsci shows: Hegel is not merely a philosopher of the state (Croce), nor merely a philosopher of spirit (Gentile), but a social theorist. Ethical life – family, civil society, state – is the field where domination and resistance are negotiated.
But Gramsci overestimated the stability of hegemony. He thought: in the West, civil society is so strong that revolution takes a long time. But 1989 showed in Eastern Europe: even “stable” systems can suddenly collapse when legitimacy is lost.
Galvano Della Volpe (1895-1968) – Against Hegel, For an Empirical Marxism
Galvano Della Volpe was Gramsci’s rival – also a Marxist, also in the PCI, but anti-Hegelian.[6]
The thesis
Della Volpe said: Hegel is a mystifier. Dialectic is not scientific but speculative – it begins with abstract concepts (being, nothing, becoming) and “develops” them logically. But this is not empirical – it does not test against reality.
Marx, by contrast, is empirical: he analyzes concrete relations (capitalism, commodity production, class struggle) and discovers laws – not through speculation, but through research.
Della Volpe’s program: for a scientific, empirical Marxism – against speculative dialectic.
The dispute with the Hegelian Marxists
Della Volpe clashed with followers of Gramsci, with readers of Lukács, with everyone who took Hegel seriously. He said: you are idealists, you confuse logic with reality!
The counter-position (e.g., Lucio Colletti, initially): Della Volpe reduces Marx to positivism – mere empiricism, without dialectical mediation. This misses Marx’s method.
Systematic assessment
Della Volpe grasped something: one cannot work only speculatively; one must test empirically. But he exaggerated: dialectic is not only speculation – it is also a method for penetrating complex reality.
Marx himself unites both: empirical research (the study of factory reports, of economic statistics) and dialectical presentation (from commodity to capital). Della Volpe sees only one side.
Lucio Colletti (1924-2001) – From Hegel Back to Kant
Lucio Colletti was initially Della Volpe’s student, then went his own way, and finally became an apostate – he abandoned Marxism entirely and became conservative.[7]
The early position (1960s): Hegelian Marxist
In the 1960s, Colletti was still a Marxist – he read Marx dialectically, against Della Volpe’s empiricism. He wrote about “Marx and Hegel” – how Marx materializes dialectic.
The turn (1970s): critique of dialectic as such
But in the 1970s Colletti radicalized his critique: not only Hegel’s dialectic is problematic, but dialectic as such. Why?
His thesis: contradictions exist only in logic (A and not-A are mutually exclusive), not in reality. In reality there are oppositions (capital vs. labor), but these are not logical contradictions – they are empirical conflicts.
Hegel and Marx confuse the two: they think that contradictions in logic correspond to contradictions in reality. But this is mystification.
Colletti’s conclusion: back to Kant! Kant cleanly distinguished logic (analytic, free of contradiction) from empirical reality (oppositions, conflicts). This is clearer than Hegel’s/Marx’s dialectic.[8]
The political consequence
Colletti broke with Marxism – not only theoretically but politically. In the 1980s he became conservative and supported Berlusconi. His former comrades were appalled.
The question: was this the logical consequence of his theoretical position, or personal disillusionment?
Probably both: if dialectic does not work, if Marx’s method is mystification – why remain a Marxist at all?
Systematic assessment
Colletti poses an important question: are there real contradictions? Or are contradictions only logical errors?
Hegel would say: yes, there are real contradictions – for example, self-consciousness, which wants to be at once dependent (on the other) and independent (self-sufficient). This is not a logical error but the structure of the matter itself.
Colletti is right about one thing: one must distinguish between logical contradictions (asserting A and not-A simultaneously = error) and real oppositions (conflicts, tensions). But this does not mean there are no real contradictions – it only means one must clarify what “contradiction” means.
In detail in Volume 1, Chapter 10. Here only a recapitulation. ↩︎
Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks, ed. Valentino Gerratana, Turin: Einaudi, 1975 (critical edition). ↩︎
Gramsci: Prison Notebooks, Notebook 12, §1: “Hegemony is not merely coercion but leadership—intellectual and moral.” ↩︎
Gramsci: Prison Notebooks, Notebook 7, §16: “In the East the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous. In the West there was a proper relation between state and civil society.” ↩︎
Gramsci: Prison Notebooks, Notebook 12, §3: “Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals.” ↩︎
On Della Volpe: [GAP: Limited Western literature. I write what I know.] Galvano Della Volpe: Logica come scienza positiva (1950), Messina: D’Anna. ↩︎
On Colletti: Lucio Colletti: Intervista politico-filosofica (1974), Bari: Laterza. ↩︎
On the chronology: Jiri Valenta, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. ↩︎