Alastair Davidson, Ph.D. (1966), Australian National University, is Professor Emeritus in Politics at Monash University. He has spent much of his life in Italy and explored the Sardinian background in some detail, as well as researched at the Gramsci Institute in Rome. He is the author of twenty books and hundreds of articles including The Theory and Practice of Italian Communism (Merlin Press, 1982); with Steve Wright eds., ‘Never Give In’ The Italian Resistance and Politics (Peter Lang, 1998); The Immutable Laws of Mankind: The Struggle for Universal Human Rights (Springer, 2012); Migration in the Age of Genocide: Law, Forgiveness and Revenge (Springer, 2015).

“The book [has aged] beautifully. It still reads splendidly, from the beginning call to that which is truly contingent, ‘towards’… . For like its subject, it is written into its own historicity.”—Peter Beilharz, Thesis Eleven“From [this book] we can draw admiration for the moral strength of Gramsci himself, capable of keeping his mental sanity in prison through his commitment to intellectual ideals and loyal friendships.”—Franco Manni, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

• Preface for the New Edition ... ixAcknowledgements ... xxivForeword ... xxvNorberto BobbioIntroduction ... 11 A Country Boy ... 62 Making the Country Boy an Italian ... 563 A Philosophy of Praxis ... 1044 ‘… an International Figure?’ ... 1725 A Revolutionary Theory ... 250Bibliography ... 293Index ... 306