Antonio Gramsci (18911937) was an Italian intellectual who
joined first the Socialist and then the Communist Party. Between
1924 and 1926 Gramsci was the head of the Italian Communist
Party. In 1926 he was arrested by the Mussolini fascist
government and sent to prison where he remained until 1937. The
excerpt that follows comes from his prison notebooks and
demonstrates his fascination with the French Revolution,
especially its Jacobin phase. Although Gramsci was a devoted
Marxist, he helped turn Marxism toward an interest in local
conditions, particularly toward the alliance between
intellectuals and workers. On the subject of Jacobinism and the
Action Party, an element to be highlighted is the following:
that the Jacobins won their function of "leading" [dirigente]
party by a struggle to the death; they literally "imposed"
themselves on the French bourgeoisie, leading it into a far more
advanced position than the originally strongest bourgeois nuclei
would have spontaneously wished to take up, and even far