(1949) - Selections from the Prison Notebooks: The Intellectuals - Antonio Gramsci

In The Intellectuals, Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci argues that a system doesn't just run on force or law — it also runs on the people who explain it to itself. He splits intellectuals into two kinds: "traditional" intellectuals — scholars, judges, clergy — who present themselves as independent thinkers while actually carrying forward the assumptions of whichever class already holds power, and "organic" intellectuals, who rise directly out of a class and give it the ideas and self-awareness it needs to act as a coherent force. For Gramsci, whichever class controls its own organic intellectuals controls how its interests get framed as simply common sense. If every class produces the thinkers who explain its world to itself, what does it mean that some classes' "common sense" gets treated as neutral truth, while others' gets dismissed as bias?