Gramsci and Class

This article concerns the concept of class in the works published in English that Antonio Gramsci wrote in the sixteen years from about 1920 up to 1935 when he was too ill in prison to continue writing. In 1919 the Turin section of the Socialist Party (PSI) and the local branch of the metalworkers ' union, the FIOM, had formally supported Gramsci's ideas. 1920 was the year of the general strike in Piedmont and the factory occupations in the red triangle, Turin, Milan and Genoa, and in Rome, Naples and Florence, the highpoint of the revolutionary moment, followed, far too swiftly, by the failure of the workers ' councils and the unleashing of the fascist terror squads. In that year, Gramsci turned 29,and had already written over one thousand newspaper articles mainly for the newspaper Avanti!, produced by the Socialist Party which had 180,000 members and a third of the deputies in the Chamber of Deputies. The Socialist trade union federation (CGL) had two million members and the Communist Party was in the process of formation. The communist faction of the PSI published its manifesto, Gramsci co-founded Ordine Nuov