FROM "PLOWMAN" TO "FERTILIZER" OF HISTORY:
GRAMSCI AS GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE
COMMUNIST PARTY OF ITALY AND GRAMSCI
AS POLITICAL PRISONER OF THE FASCIST REGIME
My aim in this essay is to examine the change of perspective on the tactics to be employed in the struggle for socialism that took place in Gramsci's thought when, after three years of work as representative of the Communist International in Vienna, deputy to the Italian parliament, and then general secretary of the Communist Party of Italy, he became a political prisoner subjected to that "subtle grinding down" of prison life whose transformative and sometimes utterly destructive effects he
fully acknowledged1. [...]