Gramsci and Lenin 1917-1922

Abstract

Antonio Gramsci was twenty-six at the beginning of 1917. The "sewer of his past" on whose seething resentments he had built a "sardist" view of the world ("Into the sea with the Italians") only showed in too many coffees and cigarettes and an enormous capacity for work. He had given up his "sardist" world-view for what he and a great many other educated Italians regarded as a satisfactory view of the world : "crocianism". Throughout 1917 Gramsci was still "crocian in his views", although he had been a Socialist for over three years and was working full-time for the Socialist newspapers Avanti and Grido del Pojolo, although his "crocian" friends of university days had gone to war, and although he had considerable contact with workers, who were always dropping in from the nearby Casa del Popolo to see him because he "had the great gift of knowing how to talk to everybody".