The Suicide of the Revolution

An exploration of Italian cultural-political history from the reception of Marxism and the rise of fascism to the cultural hegemony of Gramscian communism.

First published in Italian in 1978, The Suicide of the Revolution argues that Giovanni Gentile’s nineteenth-century critique of Marxism had a foundational influence on the thinking of Antonio Gramsci and other anti-fascists.

Philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989), one of Italy’s foremost cultural critics and political thinkers, examined the relationship between fascism and Gramscian Marxism in four influential essays. First published in Italian in 1978, The Suicide of the Revolution contends that Giovanni Gentile’s late-nineteenth-century critique of Marxism had a foundational influence on Antonio Gramsci and, ultimately, shaped not only fascism but also the thinking of many anti-fascists. Deeply controversial at the time of publication, Del Noce’s interpretation of twentieth-century Italian cultural history remains vibrant and relevant.

In twentieth-century Italy, the process of modernization and secularization unfolded in a very transparent and consequential way due to a strong parallelism between philosophy and politics. Del Noce argued that Gramsci’s attempted reform of Marxism had the unintended consequence of lending ideological support to a radical form of neoliberalism that ironically nullified Gramsci’s own revolutionary hopes. By the 1970s the Communist party in Italy had become the party of the progressive bourgeoisie, supported by academics, journalists, artists, and intellectuals, all of whom were deeply invested in the status quo. This inversion of the left, which Del Noce saw happening throughout the Western world, marked “the suicide of the revolution” that he regarded as the most important political development of the twentieth century.

Translated into English for the first time, this collection is essential reading for those seeking to understand the deep intellectual currents that shape contemporary politics