Gramsci’s Hegemony: The Ideological Foundations of Post-War Italian Historiography

The intellectual landscape of post-war Italian historiography was fundamentally shaped by the confrontation between two philosophical giants: the established idealist historicism of Benedetto Croce and the emergent Marxist historicism of Antonio Gramsci. Croce’s “ethical-political” history, akin to a Whig interpretation, celebrated the liberal ruling class and the achievements of the Risorgimento as an optimistic, inevitable progression. This view was directly challenged by Gramsci’s prison writings, which offered a radical alternative for understanding Italy’s flawed modernization.

Gramsci’s analysis centered on the concept of “passive revolution.” He argued that Italy’s unification failed to produce a true social revolution because the bourgeois democrats, unlike the French Jacobins, refused to ally with the peasantry to break the “hegemony” of the traditional landed class. This resulted in a compromised “historic bloc” of northern industrialists and southern landowners, which distorted the nation’s political and economic development and explained the persistent backwardness of the Mezzogiorno.

Gramsci’s influence became pervasive, serving as the primary interpretative schema for Italian historical research until at least the 1970s. It redirected scholarship toward the economic and social conditions of the subordinate classes, their political organizations, and the structural obstacles to national integration. Historians like Giorgio Candeloro explicitly used Gramsci as a “precious guide” for analyzing Italy’s internal contradictions, while cautioning against a simplistic, dogmatic application of his ideas.

This Gramscian turn was institutionalized in new scholarly venues. The journal Studi Storici, founded in 1959 by Gastone Manacorda, distinguished itself through its engagement with Gramscian themes, setting it apart from the more traditionally liberal Rivista Storica Italiana. Historians affiliated with the Italian Communist Party, such as Manacorda and Ernesto Ragionieri, produced deeply researched works on popular classes and socialist movements, viewing their intellectual work as a contribution to building a counter-hegemony.

The link between political identification and historical writing was particularly strong for post-unification history. The fiercely debated interpretations in journals like Movimento Operaio (1949-56) reflected the era’s political fractures. However, the best scholarship, regardless of the author’s ideology—be it Candeloro’s Marxist history, Rosario Romeo’s liberal biography of Cavour, or Renzo De Felice’s monumental study of Mussolini—transcended mere partisanship through rigorous contextualization and scholarly depth.

This period also solidified the Continental tradition of academic “schools” formed around master historians. These schools, often defined by political commitment, introduced new methodologies. For instance, the anti-Marxist Romeo applied Alexander Gerschenkron’s economic theories to argue against Gramsci, contending that an agrarian revolution would have hindered capital accumulation for industrialization. Conversely, Giuliano Procacci shifted his focus to pioneer Soviet studies in Italy.

Thus, post-war Italian historiography was forged in the dialectic between Crocean idealism and Gramscian materialism. Gramsci’s concepts provided the dominant framework for a generation, channeling research into social history, class analysis, and the study of hegemony, while simultaneously existing in creative tension with other methodological imports and the enduring, politically charged quest to define the Italian nation.