Antonio Labriola
For Labriola, historical materialism is not a key that explains everything by economics but a method and a philosophy of praxis: history must be understood from the conditions of human labour and cooperation, through which people change their world and themselves.
Placement
Philosopher from Cassino, professor in Rome, who came to Marxism late and became its first major Italian theorist: he read historical materialism not as economic determinism but as a “philosophy of praxis” that explains history from the conditions of human activity.
Key ideas
- Historical materialism as a theory of history
- Philosophy of praxis
- Against economic determinism
- Society as a complex whole
Students: Benedetto Croce
Influence
Influenced by 2
Karl Marx
influenced by ✓
Labriola’s In memoria del Manifesto dei comunisti (1895) read Marx’s historical materialism as a method for studying history through its mediations, not as a doctrine of economic laws. A. Labriola, In memoria del Manifesto dei comunisti (1895); Del materialismo storico (1896)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Friedrich Engels
influenced by
Labriola turned from Herbart to historical materialism around 1890 and discussed its questions with Engels in a correspondence lasting until 1895. A. Labriola, correspondence with F. Engels (1890–95); L. Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism II (1978)
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Engels › 1820–1895
Influenced 2
Benedetto Croce taught
taught ✓
As a young man in Rome, living with his uncle Silvio Spaventa, Croce attended Labriola’s lectures on moral philosophy from 1884; in 1895 Labriola’s essays on historical materialism drew him into a study of Marx. B. Croce, Contributo alla critica di me stesso (written 1915)
Evidence: AI draft
Benedetto Croce › 1866–1952
Antonio Gramsci
influenced ✓
Gramsci took up Labriola’s term ‘philosophy of praxis’ and his view that Marxism is a self-sufficient philosophy, independent of materialism and idealism (prison notebooks, 1929–35). A. Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, Notebook 11 (1932–33), ed. V. Gerratana (1975); A. Labriola, Discorrendo di socialismo e filosofia (1898)
Antonio Gramsci › 1891–1937
Works
Essays of 1895–96 that present historical materialism as a method for studying the complex structure of societies rather than a system of economic causes.
Letters to Georges Sorel on the philosophy of Marxism, in which Labriola speaks of a “philosophy of praxis” and rejects both positivist and idealist readings.
Position
Labriola is on the map as the founder of Italian Marxism and as a link between Engels’s generation and Gramsci. Against the positivist Marxism of the Second International, which saw history as the working of economic laws, he read historical materialism as a method: the economic structure explains a society only through the many mediations of law, the state, morality and ideas, and these have to be studied historically, case by case. Marxism is for him neither a materialist metaphysics nor an ethical idealism but a “philosophy of praxis”, in which thinking and doing, nature and history meet in human labour. Engels valued his work; Croce and Gentile developed their early studies of Marx in dialogue and in disagreement with him; Gramsci took up the term “philosophy of praxis” in the prison notebooks; and Leszek Kołakowski described his position as an attempt at an “open orthodoxy”. Labriola remained an isolated figure without a school or a party base, and his essays are occasional rather than systematic. In an interview of 1902 he took a favourable view of Italian colonialism in Africa and hoped for an Italian colonisation of Tripolitania, today part of Libya; Gramsci criticised these views sharply, together with a remark on the Papuans reported by Croce, and they belong to the critical assessment of his thought.
Life & context
Antonio Labriola was born on 2 July 1843 in San Germano, today Cassino, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. From 1861 he studied in Naples, where he became a pupil of the Hegelian Bertrando Spaventa; an early essay defended Hegel against Eduard Zeller’s call for a return to Kant. After years as a schoolteacher and a study of Socrates (1871), he was appointed professor of moral philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Rome in 1874 and later also taught the philosophy of history there. In these years he followed Herbart’s ethics and psychology and was at first a moderate liberal in politics. From the late 1880s he turned to socialism, took part in the Roman workers’ movement and from 1890 corresponded with Friedrich Engels. Benedetto Croce, who had attended his lectures in Rome, saw to the printing of his first Marxist essay in 1895; further essays followed in 1896 and 1898, and French translations, one with a preface by Georges Sorel, brought them into the international debate. Labriola kept his distance from party discipline and criticised the reformist course of the Italian Socialist Party. He died in Rome on 12 February 1904.
Further main works
- The Doctrine of Socrates according to Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle (La dottrina di Socrate secondo Senofonte, Platone ed Aristotele, 1871)
- In Memory of the Communist Manifesto (In memoria del Manifesto dei comunisti, 1895)
- Historical Materialism: A Preliminary Clarification (Del materialismo storico. Dilucidazione preliminare, 1896)
As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made