Historico-political dynamics in the Prison Notebooks: passive revolution, relations of force, organic crisis

This chapter presents the general coordinates of the historico-political interpretation offered by the Prison Notebooks. It adopts a philological approach to the text, by relying on the most recent tendencies of Gramscian scholarship. Conceptually speaking, it focuses on the main categories Gramsci deployed to account for the transformations that had shaped the socio-political scenario of his time – ‘passive revolution’, ‘relations of force’ and ‘organic crisis’, and their interrelations. It concludes with some observations on how these concepts inform Gramsci’s analysis of fascism and with some final reflections on the contemporary relevance of his analysis.