Prison Notebooks (Vol. 4)

In this volume 4 of Prison Notebooks , Gramsci promotes criticism of European culture and dissects what is modern and universal in the Fordism-Taylorism of the North American experience.

This Brazilian edition of the Prison Notebooks was organized by Carlos Nelson Coutinho — internationally recognized as one of the greatest experts on Gramsci's thought —, with the collaboration of Luiz Sérgio Henriques, essayist, translator and editor of the online magazine Gramsci e o Brasil , and Marco Aurélio Nogueira, associate professor at the Universidade Estadual Paulista.

The six volumes of the Prison Notebooks are divided, according to Gramsci's own instructions, into "special notebooks" and "miscellaneous notebooks." In the former, Gramsci grouped notes on specific topics; in the latter, he gathered notes on diverse subjects. In addition to reproducing the "special notebooks" as they were bequeathed to us by the Italian thinker, this edition includes the notes contained in the "miscellaneous notebooks," relating to the basic content of each of the "special notebooks."

Volume 4 contains four of the "special notebooks": two dedicated to "Themes of Culture," one to "Catholic Action," and another to "Americanism and Fordism." These are followed by three sections entitled "Miscellaneous Notebooks." The first of these groups together notes on various topics of general culture; the second brings together most of the notes dedicated to organizational themes of the Church, particularly those that Gramsci himself titled "Catholic Action" and "Integrist Catholics—Jesuits—Modernists." The third contains not only the notes directly linked to the theme of "Americanism," but also those relating to the United States, industrial modernization processes, demographic issues, and the 1929 economic crisis.

“Unlike Engels or Kautsky, Gramsci was not interested in early Christianity, or in the communist heresies of the Middle Ages, but in the functioning of the Catholic Church: he was one of the first Marxists to try to understand the contemporary role of the Church and the weight of religious culture among the popular masses.” — Michael Löwy

“There is no one who has come across Gramsci's work, from Marxists to Catholics to liberals, without having experienced the power of his persuasion and creativity.” — Luiz Werneck Vianna