Name: Antonio Gramsci.
Age: 46 years (alive), plus 77 (dead).
Appearance: Little body, big hair.
Occupation: Socialist martyr.
What did he do? He wrote some clever books, founded the Italian Communist party, used a lot of jargon, and died in prison under Mussolini.
Poor him. Such a man deserves commemorating. Unlike all those lazy people who died without writing any books at all?
Quite. Well his name is on a plaque in Moscow, there's the Via Antonio Gramsci in Turin, where he lived for a time, and now his old house in the city is being turned into a luxury hotel.
Hooray! No, not hooray.
Oh? Why not? Put it this way. Who is your favourite Marxist academic?
Ooh … that's a tough one. I think I'd have to go with Russell Brand. In that case, who is your second favourite?
Theodor Adorno? Right, so imagine they opened an Adorno Shopping Mall in Frankfurt.
Sounds great! I'd definitely go. Maybe pick up some Walter Benjamin T-shirts for the kids. I think you're missing the point here. If you are a Marxist you're not supposed to enjoy buying things.
Oh right. Sorry. So commemorating Gramsci with a luxury hotel makes a travesty of his work, which argued for the struggle of proletarian culture against bourgeois values and the capitalist apparatus. Were he alive, he might argue that a four-star hotel with gym, swimming pool and shops is an example of just the cultural hegemony that he opposed.
Good point. Cultural hegemony is a real nightmare. Luckily Italy still has a few Marxist academics who can argue for him.
Thank goodness. Dozens of them have got together to write an open letter to the mayor of Turin calling for him to block any attempt to name the hotel after Gramsci, "a martyr who paid for the freedom of his ideas with his life".
How about the freedom of the hotel-owner's ideas? That's a good, if reactionary, question. NH Hotels, the global chain whose hotel this is, says it is looking for a name that "fits from a commercial point of view and that embraces the history of the building".
How about "The Hegemony"? I'll email them straight away.
Do say: "Welcome to the Friedrich Engels Suite."
Don't say: "Where YOU control the Means of Production."
