Editing Antonio Gramsci (section)

===Historicism===
Like the [[young Marx]], Gramsci was an emphatic proponent of [[historicism]].{{sfn|Gramsci|1971|pp=404–407}} In Gramsci's view, all meaning derives from the relation between human practical activity (or [[praxis (process)|praxis]]) and the objective historical and social processes of which it is a part. Ideas cannot be understood outside their social and historical context, apart from their function and origin. The concepts by which we organise our knowledge of the world do not derive primarily from our relation to  [[object (philosophy)|objects]], but rather from the [[social relation]]s between the users of those concepts. As a result, there is no such thing as an unchanging [[human nature]] but only historically variable social relationships. Furthermore, philosophy and science do not reflect a reality independent of man. Rather, a theory can be said to be true when, in any given historical situation, it expresses the real developmental trend of that situation.

For the majority of Marxists, truth was truth no matter when and where it was known, and scientific knowledge, which included Marxism, accumulated historically as the advance of truth in this everyday sense. In this view, Marxism (or the Marxist theory of history and economics) did not belong to the illusory realm of the superstructure because it is a science. In contrast, Gramsci believed Marxism was true in a socially pragmatic sense: by articulating the [[class consciousness]] of the [[proletariat]], Marxism expressed the truth of its times better than any other theory. This anti-[[scientistic]] and anti-[[positivist]] stance was indebted to the influence of [[Benedetto Croce]]. At the same time, it should be underlined that Gramsci's absolute historicism broke with Croce's tendency to secure a metaphysical synthesis of historical destiny. Although Gramsci repudiates the charge, his historical account of truth has been criticised as a form of [[relativism]].<ref name=Kolakowski2>{{cite book |date=1978 |title=Leszek Kolakowski – Main Currents of Marxism – Its Rise, Growth and, Dissolution – Volume III – The Breakdown |url=https://archive.org/details/maincurrentsofma00kola/page/228 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/maincurrentsofma00kola/page/228 228–231] |isbn=978-0-19-824570-4 }}</ref>