Gramsci, Antonio (antôn`yô gräm`shē), 1891–1937, Italian political leader and theoretician. Originally a member of the Socialist party and a cofounder (1919) of the left-wing paper L'Ordine Nuovo, Gramsci helped to establish (1921) the Italian Communist party. When Benito Mussolini Mussolini, Benito (bānē`tō m
..... Click the link for more information. outlawed the party, Gramsci was imprisoned (1926–37). His posthumously published prison writings, Lettere del carcere (1947), present his theory of hegemony, which explains how a dominant class controls society and emphasizes a less dogmatic form of Communism that many intellectuals preferred to the increasingly ossified version represented by the former Soviet Union.

Gramsci, Antonio

(born Jan. 23, 1891, Ales, Sardinia—died April 27, 1937, Rome, Italy) Italian intellectual and politician. After entering the University of Turin, he joined the Italian Socialist Party in 1914. In 1921 he left the Socialists to found the Italian Communist Party (see Democratic Party of the Left), and he spent two years in the Soviet Union. In 1924 he became head of the party and was elected to the national legislature. The party was outlawed by the fascist government of Benito Mussolini in 1926, and Gramsci was arrested and imprisoned for 11 years; in poor health, he was released to die at 46. His influential Letters from Prison (1947) and other writings outline a version of communism less dogmatic than Soviet communism. His work has influenced sociology, political theory, and international relations.