Gramsci’s Imprisonment @ 100 – introduction by David Kalman and contributions by Nikhil Pal Singh, Robyn Marasco, Alberto Toscano, Sara Salem and Sharad Chari.

On the evening of November 8, 1926, Italy’s Fascist police arrested the leader of the Communist Party of Italy, the revolutionary intellectual Antonio Gramsci. Imprisoned in Regina Coel, the largest prison in Rome, Gramsci saw not just another dozen comrades arrested but the state’s outlawing of the entire Communist Party (this forced the remnants of the party underground, though they would ultimately play a crucial role in the antifascist resistance). In a declaration that now rings with prophetic irony, Gramsci’s prosecutor is said to have proclaimed: “For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning.”