La questione meridionale negli scritti gramsciani del periodo torinese e ordinovista

This essay aims to demonstrate the relevance of the "Southern Question" from Gramsci's

early theory and politics onwards. Since his high school education in Sardinia, Gramsci was faced

with the underdevelopment of his native region, which he believed could be overcome via political

independence and autonomy. Yet, he soon realized the nation-wide dimension of this issue, rooted

in the thousand-year old political division of the country, and in the reunification of Italy thanks to

the allegiance of industrialists in the North with landowners in the South. During the Turin years,

Gramsci contrasted customs protectionism and Giolitti's centralised statism with tactical and

strategic support of economic liberalism. After the success of the October Revolution, Gramsci

believed that in Italy, too, the Soviet-style organisation based on the "Councils of the workers and

farmers" could be established, aiming at the constitution of a federal and socialist republic.

Nevertheless, this approach faded in the background during the first years of existence of the Italian

Communist Party (1921-22), as its first secretary, Bordiga, imposed a rigorously class-conscious

political style, which focused on the working class of large factories. Gramsci did not fully agree,

but aligned himself for reasons of convenience and of party discipline: he emancipated himself from

this approach only during his stay in Moscow (1922-23).