The Modern Prince and revolutionary strategy

Gramsci’s analysis of the Modern Prince as included in his Prison Notebooks brings to light his own theory of the political party. Under the influence of Machiavelli’s Prince, Antonio Gramsci elaborates fundamental concepts such as hegemony, historical bloc, war of position etc. and lays out the Modern Prince’s revolutionary strategy and tactics in special relation to western capitalist societies. It is the main target of this chapter to prove that the Gramscian Prince is not an outdated ‘hero’ confined in the prison of the past, but the absent and still required political protagonist of a communist movement. The first section of our analysis focuses on the intellectual and political portrait of the Modern Prince as conceived in the pages of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. The second section of the text engages with modern and contemporary Marxist interpretations in comparison with Neo-Gramscian, Postmodern and post-Marxist versions of the Modern Prince. Finally, I point out the strategic and tactical impact of the Gramscian Prince on the advancement of a future anti-capitalist movement that struggles for the communist transformation of capitalist societies.