The Conception of the State in «Quaderni del carcere» by Antonio Gramsci

Eighty years after his death, this article analyses the conception of the State in Antonio Gramsci s renowned work — «Quaderni del Carcere» (1929-1935) — by considering the crisis of the modern state, which is inter- preted as the main problem created by World War II, and then examining the conception of the state and its legal order. The decision to analyse this specific work relates to the particular level of evolution achieved by Gramsci s thinking at the time of his writing, which, while undergoing continuous evolutions, had by then assumed a systematic and definitive character.