Gramsci and Ideology (between Marx and Croce)

To appreciate the originality of Gramsci's conception of ideology, it is necessary to compare it with that of the thinkers who represent his main theoretical points of reference: Karl Marx and Benedetto Croce. In Marx, Gramsci found not only the negative conception of ideology as false consciousness, but also the observation that ideology is the place of manifestation and resolution of social conflict. For Croce, ideology is linked above all to abstraction and dogmatism, or at least to partiality. This negative meaning of ideology is also found in the Prison Notebooks, but it soon becomes synonymous with a conception of the world, linked to the material conditions of human existence but not mechanically derived from them.