ABSTRACT
Antonio Gramsci is widely viewed as one of the most original and inuential Marxist thinkers of the twentieth century (Hughes 1977: 96-104; Kolakowski 2005: 963; McLellan 2007: 210). This is due in large part to his innovative way of dealing with questions of ideology and culture-questions that had constituted a notorious blind spot in the mainstream Marxist theory of his day. In order to better appreciate Gramsci’s originality, and in order to begin to assess his contribution to our understanding of the politics of religion and morality, it will be helpful to situate his ideas with respect to alternative currents within Marxist theory.
