“In the sphere of general capitalist activity, even the worker operates on the plane of free competition, is a citizen-individual. But the starting conditions of the struggle are not equal for all, at the same time: the existence of private property places the social minority in conditions of privilege, makes the struggle unequal… The laws of history were dictated by the proprietorial class organized in the state. The state has always been the protagonist of history, because in its organs it gathers the power of the proprietorial class, in the state the proprietorial class disciplines itself and forms itself in unity, above the infighting and blows of competition, to maintain intact the condition of privilege in the supreme phase of competition itself: the class struggle for power, for pre-eminence in the direction and disciplining of society.”
— (Antonio Gramsci, The Conquest of the State, 1919)
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Nice piece work by Gramsci, written in a time of ideological conflicts in Europe refreshing the two years social experiment of the Russian Revolution with its own contradictions and confrontation with the outsides capitalism of the 20th century.
This is an introductory document on Gramsci and Neo-Marxism. http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/gramscineomarxism.htm