Abstract

To understand the original way of thinking about “real democracy” in Gramsci it is necessary to reconstruct two “sequences” strictly connected: the sequence of the “theory” of the relations of force that depict the present hegemony as a form of unstable equilibrium; the sequence of the “philology” of the functional ideological schemata that, deriving from the different forms of common sense, turn into the philosophy of praxis. Moreover: Gramsci as a politician translates himself into Gramsci as philosopher and vice versa. This original, internal self-translation is the form of its absolute and immanent historicism. The non-stability of the two sequences derives from the core issue of Gramsci’s investigation, i.e. the problem of “time of history” – how to understand regularity, law, automatism, necessity: that is the crux of philosophies and naturalistic sciences. Gramsci opens up the path for a new type of “science” that bind together continuity, development and strategy, that means political will. In this framework, dialectics is a transforming and developing form of knowledge and not a closed one. Real history cannot be conceived of as an already-made history, but as a developing process, as a “structure in abyss”.