Gramsci and the Challenges for the Left: The Historical Bloc as a Strategic Concept

The historical bloc is one of the central concepts of Antonio Gramsci's theoretical elaboration in the Prison Notebooks. It is not a descriptive, nor an analytic, concept. It is a strategic concept. It does not refer to social alliances, but to the intersection between analysis and strategy, representing Gramsci's attempt to theorize the possibility of hegemony in its integral form, namely in the dialectical unity of structure and superstructures. Therefore, in terms of strategy, it implies that the struggle for hegemony is the struggle for a new historical bloc, namely an articulation of transition programs emanating from the collective struggle, ingenuity and experimentation of the subaltern classes, organizational forms, new political practices, and new political intellectualities. Consequently, it offers a way to rethink the strategic challenges that the left faces, in periods when questions of political power and hegemony are indeed becoming crucial.