Letters from Prison

Political thinker, philosopher, literary critic, and writer, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was one of the major intellectuals in earlytwentieth- century Italy. He was born into a lowermiddle- class family in the rural community of Ales in southern Sardinia. In 1911, a scholarship enabled him to leave the sheltered rural area to attend university in the industrial city of Turin. There, Gramsci witnessed the living conditions of the working classes, joined the Socialist Party, and abandoned his university studies to engage in political activism. A prolific journalist, he wrote articles that influenced the political struggle of northern Italian workers, inspiring the formation of “Factory Councils” (a network of worker-led revolutionary cells that, during the general strikes of 1920, mobilized more than 50,000 workers in Turin). In 1921, Gramsci helped found the Italian Communist Party, going on to serve (1922- 1923) in Moscow as an Italian delegate to the...