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).