Italian intellectual and political activist, founder of the Communist Party (Ales, Sardinia, 1891 - Rome, 1937). Thanks to the support of his brother and his intellectual capacity he overcame the difficulties produced by his physical deformity (he was hunchbacked) and by the poverty of his family (since his father was imprisoned, accused of embezzlement). He studied at the University of Turin, where he was influenced intellectually by Benedetto Croce and the socialists.
In 1913 he joined the Italian Socialist Party, immediately becoming a leader of its left wing. After working on various party periodicals, he founded, together with Palmiro Togliatti and Umberto Elia Terracini, the magazine Ordine nuovo (1919). Faced with the dilemma posed to socialists around the world by the course taken by the Russian Revolution, Antonio Gramsci chose to adhere to the communist line and, at the Livorno Congress (1921), split with the group that founded the Italian Communist Party.
Gramsci belonged from the beginning to the Central Committee of the new party, which he also represented in Moscow within the Third International (1922); he endowed the formation with an official press organ (L'Unità, 1924) and represented it as a deputy (1924). He was a member of the Executive of the Communist International, whose Bolshevik orthodoxy he defended in Italy by expelling from the party the ultra-left group of Amadeo Bordiga, which he accused of following Trotsky's line (1926).
He soon had to go underground, since since 1922 Italy was under the power of Mussolini, who would exercise from 1925 an iron fascist dictatorship. Gramsci was arrested in 1926 and spent the rest of his life in prison, subjected to humiliation and ill-treatment, which added to his tuberculosis to make prison life extremely difficult, until he died of cerebral congestion.
In these conditions, however, Gramsci was able to produce a great written work (the voluminous Prison Notebooks), containing an original revision of Marx's thought, in a historicist sense and tending to modernize the legacy of Marxism to adapt it to the conditions of Italy and twentieth-century Europe. Already at the Lyon Congress (1926) he had advocated the broadening of the social bases of communism by opening it to all classes of workers, including intellectuals. His theoretical contributions would powerfully influence the adaptation of Western communism that took place in the sixties and seventies, the so-called Eurocommunism. 🤮
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Gramsci saw the ruling class maintaining its power over society in two ways –
Coercion – it uses the army, police, prison and courts to force other classes to accept its rule
Consent (hegemony) – it uses ideas and values to persuade the subordinate classes that its rule is legitimate
Hegemony and Revolution
In advanced Capitalist societies, the ruling class rely heavily on consent to maintain their rule. Gramsci agrees with Marx that they are able to maintain consent because they control institutions such as religion, the media and the education system. However, according to Gramsci, the hegemony of the ruling class is never complete, for two reasons:
The ruling class are a minority – and as such they need to make ideological compromises with the middle classes in order to maintain power The proletariat have dual consciousness. Their ideas are influenced not only by bourgeois ideology but also by the material conditions of their life – in short, they are aware of their exploitation and are capable or seeing through the dominant ideology.
Antonio Gramsci Marxists.org :gramsci-heh:
Antonio Gramsci and the Italian Revolution :anti-italian-action:
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For something so minor and unnecessary to my private landlord they wouldn't have done it anyway. I'm pretty sure the whole faucet needs to be replaced. The cap would've just sat over the hole in the sink where the sprayer lives. I unscrewed the sprayer hose from the faucet and that's when the water stopped flowing. I'm thinking it's a faulty diverter in the faucet. With the faucet detached, the water still flows so at least there's that. The water pressure had slowly been decreasing over time, too. Silver lining is that I accelerated the death throes of the damn thing so hopefully I get a whole new faucet tomorrow
I live in a place where they legally would have no choice and know people on the tenancy board personally. We have no control over quite a bit, no rent caps, fixed term leases are standard (just renewed mine for a third year without anything going to long term) and rent is absurd, like $1500 for a one bedroom situation but once you're in the law does veer towards the tennant
Yeah most of the power rests with the landlords here, there's no tenancy board or anything like that. Now it sounds like "it might take a couple days" because the only person my landlord will hire may not be available. Sooo no running kitchen water til Monday or Tuesday 🫠🫠🫠 and my partner is pissed at me wee
Lesson: never try to do anything yourself ever, have someone else do it
If you rent, yes. If you own, maybe. My go-to is try to fix it myself but then sell a bullshit story to the person fixing it where I did everything that went right and everything thst was wrong was the previous tennant. Learning how to fix stuff is also done through failure, be the weirdo that shadows the plumber and ask them what you did wrong when they do show up. You got a free try that in the end the landlord was gonna have to pay for anyway, if you did fix it yourself you should tell the landlord you did and negotiate less rent that month for.the plumber expense they saved and if the person coming in can teach you a thing or two, you're all the better down the line. Fuck with things sometimes cause it'd the only way to learn how to fix stuff right but pick your battles well. You have a bathroom sink I'm guessing? And a tub? Wash dishes in the tub and get water from the bathroom sink. I lived in a place without working water to the kitchen for a year. It was also basically a squat but lack of access to one sink isn't a big deal