Labriola, Gramsci e o materialismo histórico italiano

According to Gramsci, Antonio Labriola, in the scene of Marxism between the 19th and the 20th centuries, was the only one to conceive Marxism as an independent and original philosophy, and to endeavor to “build scientifically” the “philosophy of praxis”. For the Sardinian intellectual, with the development of the productive forces and the assumption, by parts of the proletariat, of a leading role, the primitive and mechanical positions of vulgar Marxism should be overcome. In his maturing process, Gramsci assigned precisely to Labriola’s philosophical method a central function, up to affirming the demand of its predominance among the Italian Marxist’s formulations. Because of that, in a note in Notebook 8, he wrote about the task of an objective and systematic study about Labriola’s dialectics, capable of explaining his intellectual course, “since his initial Herbertian and anti-Hegelian positions up to historical materialism”.