Marxism and philosophy of praxis. An Italian perspective from Labriola to Gramsci

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the history of theoretical Marxism in Italy between 1895 and 1935 based on a rigorous philological analysis of the works of the chief exponents of the theory. With the year of the publication of Antonio Labriola’s first essay on historical materialism as starting term (In Memory of the Communist Manifesto, 1895) and the year of Antonio Gramsci's final entries in the Prison Notebooks in 1935 as final term, the book documents the distinctive originality of Marxist philosophy in Italy and its radical departure from the 'orthodoxy' of the Second and Third International. In writing a significant chapter in the history of Marxism, the authors examined in this book also made a substantial contribution to the history of Italian and European philosophy beyond the conventional subdivisions between the traditions of Positivism, Idealism and Marxism.