Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is one of the most powerful left strategy documents developed in the last hundred years.  One of Gramsci’s most important concepts was the “historic bloc,” the idea that a narrow workers’ struggle could never win real social change in late capitalism.  Instead, revolutionaries needed to both root their struggles in the working class and build a broader “bloc” of social forces in the struggle for socialism and liberation. The idea of a “historic bloc” is crucial for revolutionaries today who are trying to figure out how to navigate the rapid changes in our current political environment, giving us a vision for how to build strategic unity between struggles over issues like the financial crisis, the environment, the war and immigration. 

The class will begin with a basic introduction to Gramsci’s historical context and the fundamentals of his approach in order to support the participation of people who are new to Gramsci’s thought.  Over the course of four sessions, we will learn about the concept of the “historic bloc,” examine several historic examples and discuss the relevance of this concept to our political work today (with the hope of having participants leave the class with their own assessments of the kind of historic bloc that is needed today). Because Gramsci’s writing can be difficult, we will do most of our class reading during the sessions themselves. The class will combine close readings with group discussion and interactive exercises.