Antonio Gramsci

The Prison Notebooks are the writings Gramsci produced while imprisoned by Italy's Fascist regime. He wrote them mainly between 1929 and 1935, using coded language to discuss politics, culture, and history.

Cultural hegemony describes how a ruling class maintains power by shaping common sense, institutions, and values, not only by force. The idea is one reason Gramsci is widely read beyond Marxist political theory.

Gramsci was a leader of the Italian Communist Party, which he helped found in 1921. Mussolini's regime arrested him in 1926, and he spent much of the rest of his life under imprisonment or guarded medical care.

Organic intellectuals are thinkers, organizers, and cultural workers who emerge from a social class and help articulate its worldview. Gramsci contrasts them with older traditional intellectual roles tied to schools, churches, and established institutions.