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Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Francesco Gramsci (, , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a founding member and one-time leader of the Italian Communist Party. A vocal critic of Benito Mussolini and fascism, he was imprisoned in 1926, where he remained until his death in 1937.

During his imprisonment, Gramsci wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis. His Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th-century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources — not only other Marxists but also thinkers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel, and Benedetto Croce. The notebooks cover a wide range of topics, including the history of Italy and Italian nationalism, the French Revolution, fascism, Taylorism and Fordism, civil society, the state, historical materialism, folklore, religion, and high and popular culture.

Gramsci is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the state and ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — use cultural institutions to maintain wealth and power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci's view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. He also attempted to break from the economic determinism of orthodox Marxist thought, and so is sometimes described as a neo-Marxist. He held a humanistic understanding of Marxism, seeing it as a philosophy of praxis and an absolute historicism that transcends traditional materialism and traditional idealism.

Early life
Gramsci was born in Ales, in the province of Oristano, on the island of Sardinia, the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci (1860–1937) and Giuseppina Marcias (1861–1932). Francesco Gramsci was born in the small town of Gaeta, in the province of Latina, Lazio (today in the central Italian region of Lazio but at the time Gaeta was still part of Terra di Lavoro of Southern Italy), to  a well-off family from the southern Italian regions of Campania and Calabria and of Arbëreshë (Italo-Albanian) descent. Gramsci himself believed that his father's family had left Albania as recently as 1821. The Albanian origin of his father's family is attested in the surname Gramsci, an Italianised form of Gramshi, which stems from the definite noun of the placename Gramsh, a small town in central-eastern Albania. Gramsci's mother belonged to a Sardinian landowning family from Sorgono, in the province of Nuoro. Francesco Gramsci worked as a low-level official, and his financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in Ghilarza.

In 1898, Gramsci's father was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned, reducing his family to destitution. The young Gramsci had to abandon schooling and work at various casual jobs until his father's release in 1904. As a boy, Gramsci suffered from health problems, particularly a malformation of the spine that stunted his growth, as his adult height was less than 5 feet, and left him seriously hunchbacked. For decades, it was reported that his condition had been due to a childhood accident — specifically, having been dropped by a nanny — but more recently it has been suggested that it was due to Pott disease, a form of tuberculosis that can cause deformity of the spine. Gramsci was also plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life.

Gramsci started secondary school in Santu Lussurgiu and completed it in Cagliari, where he lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had made him a militant socialist. At the time, Gramsci's sympathies then did not yet lie with socialism but rather with Sardinian autonomism, as well as the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants and miners, whose mistreatment by the mainlanders would later deeply contribute to his intellectual growth. They perceived their neglect as a result of privileges enjoyed by the rapidly industrialising Northern Italy, and they tended to turn to a growing Sardinian nationalism, brutally repressed by troops from the Italian mainland, as a response.

Turin
In 1911, Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the University of Turin, sitting the exam at the same time as Palmiro Togliatti. At Turin, he read literature and took a keen interest in linguistics, which he studied under Matteo Bartoli. Gramsci was in Turin while it was going through industrialization, with the Fiat and Lancia factories recruiting workers from poorer regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started to emerge. Gramsci frequented socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants on the Italian mainland. Both his earlier experiences in Sardinia and his environment on the mainland shaped his worldview. Gramsci joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in late 1913, where he would later occupy a key position and observe from Turin the Russian Revolution.

Although showing a talent for his studies, Gramsci had financial problems and poor health. Together with his growing political commitment, these led to him abandoning his education in early 1915, at age 24. By this time he had acquired an extensive knowledge of history and philosophy. At university, he had come into contact with the thought of Antonio Labriola, Rodolfo Mondolfo, Giovanni Gentile, and most importantly, Benedetto Croce, possibly the most widely respected Italian intellectual of his day. Labriola especially propounded a brand of Hegelian Marxism that he labelled "philosophy of praxis". Although Gramsci later used this phrase to escape the prison censors, his relationship with this current of thought was ambiguous throughout his life.

From 1914 onward, Gramsci's writings for socialist newspapers such as Il Grido del Popolo (The Cry of the People) earned him a reputation as a notable journalist. In 1916 he became co-editor of the Piedmont edition of Avanti!, the Socialist Party official organ. An articulate and prolific writer of political theory, Gramsci proved a formidable commentator, writing on all aspects of Turin's social and political events. Gramsci was at this time also involved in the education and organisation of Turin workers; he spoke in public for the first time in 1916 and gave talks on topics such as Romain Rolland, the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and the emancipation of women. In the wake of the arrest of Socialist Party leaders that followed revolutionary riots in August 1917, Gramsci became one of Turin's leading socialists; he was elected to the party's provisional committee and also made editor of Il Grido del Popolo.

In April 1919, with Togliatti, Angelo Tasca and Umberto Terracini, Gramsci set up the weekly newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo (The New Order). In October the same year, despite being divided into various hostile factions, the PSI moved by a large majority to join the Third International. Vladimir Lenin saw the L'Ordine Nuovo group as closest in orientation to the Bolsheviks, and it received his backing against the anti-parliamentary programme of a left communist, Amadeo Bordiga.

In the course of tactical debates within the party, Gramsci's group mainly stood out due to its advocacy of workers' councils, which had come into existence in Turin spontaneously during the large strikes of 1919 and 1920. For Gramsci, these councils were the proper means of enabling workers to take control of the task of organising production, and saw them as preparing "the whole class for the aims of conquest and government". Although he believed his position at this time to be in keeping with Lenin's policy of "All Power to the Soviets", his stance that these Italian councils were communist rather than just one organ of political struggle against the bourgeoisie, was attacked by Bordiga for betraying a syndicalist tendency influenced by the thought of Georges Sorel and Daniel De Leon. By the time of the defeat of the Turin workers in spring 1920, Gramsci was almost alone in his defence of the councils.

Communist Party of Italy
The failure of the workers' councils to develop into a national movement convinced Gramsci that a Communist party in the Leninist sense was needed. The group around L'Ordine Nuovo declaimed incessantly against the PSI's centrist leadership and ultimately allied with Bordiga's far larger abstentionist faction. On 21 January 1921, in the town of Livorno (Leghorn), the Communist Party of Italy (Partito Comunista d'Italia, PCd'I) was founded. In opposition to Bordiga, Gramsci supported the Arditi del Popolo, a militant anti-fascist group which struggled against the Blackshirts. Gramsci would be a leader of the party from its inception but was subordinate to Bordiga, whose emphasis on discipline, centralism and purity of principles dominated the party's programme until the latter lost the leadership in 1924. In 1922, Gramsci travelled to Russia as a representative of the new party. Here, he met Julia Schucht (Yulia Apollonovna Schucht, 1896–1980), a young violinist whom he married in 1923 and with whom he had two sons, Delio (1924–1982) and Giuliano (1926–2007). Gramsci never saw his second son.

The Russian mission coincided with the advent of fascism in Italy, and Gramsci returned with instructions to foster, against the wishes of the PCd'I leadership, a united front of leftist parties against fascism. Such a front would ideally have had the PCd'I at its centre, through which Moscow would have controlled all the leftist forces, but others disputed this potential supremacy, as socialists had a significant, while communists seemed relatively young and too radical. Many believed that an eventual coalition led by communists would have functioned too remotely from political debate, and thus would have run the risk of isolation.

In late 1922 and early 1923, Benito Mussolini's government embarked on a campaign of repression against the opposition parties, arresting most of the PCd'I leadership, including Bordiga. At the end of 1923, Gramsci travelled from Moscow to Vienna, where he tried to revive a party torn by factional strife. In 1924, Gramsci, now recognised as head of the PCd'I, gained election as a deputy for the Veneto. He started organizing the launch of the official newspaper of the party, called L'Unità (Unity), living in Rome while his family stayed in Moscow. At its Lyon Congress in January 1926, Gramsci's theses calling for a united front to restore democracy to Italy were adopted by the party.

In 1926, Joseph Stalin's manoeuvres inside the Bolshevik party moved Gramsci to write a letter to the Comintern in which he deplored the opposition led by Leon Trotsky but also underlined some presumed faults of the leader. Togliatti, in Moscow as a representative of the party, received the letter, opened it, read it, and decided not to deliver it. This caused a difficult conflict between Gramsci and Togliatti which they never completely resolved.

Imprisonment and death
On 9 November 1926, the Fascist government enacted a new wave of emergency laws, taking as a pretext an alleged attempt on Mussolini's life that had occurred several days earlier. The Fascist police arrested Gramsci, despite his parliamentary immunity, and brought him to the Roman prison Regina Coeli. At his trial, Gramsci's prosecutor stated: "For twenty years we must stop this brain from functioning." He received an immediate sentence of five years in confinement on the island of Ustica, and the following year he received a sentence of 20 years' imprisonment in Turi, Apulia, near Bari.

Over 11 years in prison, his health deteriorated. Over this period, "his teeth fell out, his digestive system collapsed so that he could not eat solid food... he had convulsions when he vomited blood and suffered headaches so violent that he beat his head against the walls of his cell." An international campaign, organised by Piero Sraffa at Cambridge University and Gramsci's sister-in-law Tatiana, was mounted to demand Gramsci's release. In 1933, he was moved from the prison at Turi to a clinic at Formia; he was still being denied adequate medical attention. Two years later, he was moved to the Quisisana clinic in Rome. He was due for release on 21 April 1937 and planned to retire to Sardinia for convalescence, but a combination of arteriosclerosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, high blood pressure, angina, gout, and acute gastric disorders meant that he was too ill to move.

Gramsci died on 27 April 1937, at the age of 46. His ashes are buried in the Cimitero Acattolico in Rome. By moving Gramsci from prison to hospital when he became very ill, the Mussolini regime was attempting to avoid the accusation that it was his incarceration that caused his death. Nevertheless, his death was linked directly to prison conditions. Gramsci's grandson, Antonio Jr., speculated that Gramsci had been working with the Soviet government to facilitate a move to Moscow, but changed course as the political climate in Russia intensified in 1936.

Philosophical work
Gramsci was one of the most influential Marxist thinkers of the 20th century, and a particularly key thinker in the development of Western Marxism. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and analysis during his imprisonment. These writings, known as the Prison Notebooks, contain Gramsci's tracing of Italian history and nationalism, as well as some ideas in Marxist theory, critical theory, and educational theory associated with his name, such as:
 * Cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining and legitimising the capitalist state
 * The need for popular workers' education to encourage the development of intellectuals from the working class
 * An analysis of the modern capitalist state that distinguishes between political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent
 * Absolute historicism
 * A critique of economic determinism that opposes fatalistic interpretations of Marxism
 * A critique of philosophical materialism

Hegemony
Hegemony was a term previously used by Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin to denote the political leadership of the working-class in a democratic revolution. Gramsci greatly expanded this concept, developing an acute analysis of how the ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie — establishes and maintains its control.

Classical Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had occurred in the most advanced nations, and those revolutions of 1917–1923, such as in Germany or the Biennio Rosso in Italy, had failed. As capitalism seemed more entrenched than ever, Gramsci suggested that it maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the common sense values of all. People in the working class and other classes identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.

To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. While Lenin held that culture was ancillary to political objectives, Gramsci saw it as fundamental to the attainment of power that cultural hegemony be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests, and neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this union of social forces a historic bloc, taking a term from Georges Sorel. This bloc forms the basis of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re-produces the hegemony of the dominant class through a nexus of institutions, social relations, and ideas. In this way, Gramsci's theory emphasized the importance of the political and ideological superstructure in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.

Gramsci stated that bourgeois cultural values were tied to folklore, popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these. He was also impressed by the influence that the Catholic Church had and the care it had taken to prevent an excessive gap from developing between the religion of the learned and that of the less educated. Gramsci saw Marxism as a marriage of the purely intellectual critique of religion found in Renaissance humanism and the elements of the Reformation that had appealed to the masses. For Gramsci, Marxism could supersede religion only if it met people's spiritual needs, and to do so people would have to think of it as an expression of their own experience.

Intellectuals and education
Gramsci gave much thought to the role of intellectuals in society. He stated that all men are intellectuals, in that all have intellectual and rational faculties, but not all men have the social function of intellectuals. He saw modern intellectuals not as talkers but as practical-minded directors and organisers who produced hegemony through ideological apparatuses such as education and the media. Furthermore, he distinguished between a traditional intelligentsia, which sees itself (in his view, wrongly) as a class apart from society, and the thinking groups that every class produces from its own ranks organically. Such organic intellectuals do not simply describe social life in accordance with scientific rules but instead articulate, through the language of culture, the feelings and experiences which the masses could not express for themselves. To Gramsci, it was the duty of organic intellectuals to speak to the obscured precepts of folk wisdom, or common sense (senso comune), of their respective political spheres. These intellectuals would represent excluded social groups of a society, or what Gramsci referred to as the subaltern.

In line with Gramsci's theories of cultural hegemony, he argued that capitalist power needed to be challenged by building a counter-hegemony. By this, he meant that, as part of the war of position, the organic intellectuals and others within the working-class, need to develop alternative values and an alternative ideology in contrast to bourgeois ideology. He argued that the reason this had not needed to happen in Russia was because the Russian ruling class did not have genuine cultural hegemony. So the Bolsheviks were able to carry out a war of manoeuvre (the Russian Revolution of 1917) relatively easily because ruling-class hegemony had never been fully achieved. He believed that a final war of manoeuvre was only possible, in the developed and advanced capitalist societies, when the war of position had been won by the organic intellectuals and the working class building a counter-hegemony.

The need to create a working-class culture and a counter-hegemony relates to Gramsci's call for a kind of education that could develop working-class intellectuals, whose task was to introduce Marxist ideology into the consciousness of the proletariat as a set of foreign notions but to renovate the existing intellectual activity of the masses and make it natively critical of the status quo. His ideas about an education system for this purpose correspond with the notion of critical pedagogy and popular education as theorized and practised in later decades by Paulo Freire in Brazil, and have much in common with the thought of Frantz Fanon. For this reason, partisans of adult and popular education consider Gramsci's writings and ideas important to this day.

State and civil society
Gramsci's theory of hegemony is tied to his conception of the capitalist state. Gramsci does not understand the state in the narrow sense of the government. Instead, he divides it between political society (the police, the army, legal system, etc.) — the arena of political institutions and legal constitutional control — and civil society (the family, the education system, trade unions, etc.) — commonly seen as the private or non-state sphere, which mediates between the state and the economy. He stresses that the division is purely conceptual and that the two often overlap in reality.

Gramsci posits that the capitalist state rules through force plus consent: political society is the realm of force and civil society is the realm of consent. He argues that under modern capitalism the bourgeoisie can maintain its economic control by allowing certain demands made by trade unions and mass political parties within civil society to be met by the political sphere. Thus, the bourgeoisie engages in passive revolution by going beyond its immediate economic interests and allowing the forms of its hegemony to change. Gramsci posits that movements such as reformism and fascism, as well as the scientific management and assembly line methods of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford respectively, are examples of this.

Drawing from Niccolò Machiavelli, Gramsci argues that the modern Prince — the revolutionary party — is the force that will allow the working class to develop organic intellectuals and an alternative hegemony within civil society. For Gramsci, the complex nature of modern civil society means that a war of position, carried out by revolutionaries through political agitation, the trade unions, advancement of proletarian culture, and other ways to create an opposing civil society was necessary alongside a war of manoeuvre — a direct revolution — in order to have a successful revolution without danger of a counter-revolution or degeneration.

Despite his claim that the lines between the two may be blurred, Gramsci rejects the state-worship that results from equating political society with civil society, as was done by the Jacobins and fascists. He believes the proletariat's historical task is to create a regulated society, where political society is diminished and civil society is expanded. He defines the withering away of the state as the full development of civil society's ability to regulate itself.

Historicism
Like the young Marx, Gramsci was an emphatic proponent of historicism. In Gramsci's view, all meaning derives from the relation between human practical activity (or 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 objects, but rather from the social relations 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.

Critique of economism
In a pre-prison article titled "The Revolution against ", Gramsci wrote that the October Revolution in Russia had invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full development of capitalist forces of production. This reflected his view that Marxism was not a determinist philosophy. The principle of the causal primacy of the forces of production was a misconception of Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which sphere has primacy over the other.

The belief from the earliest years of the workers' movement that it would inevitably triumph due to historical laws was a product of the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to defensive action. This fatalistic doctrine must be abandoned as a hindrance once the working class becomes able to take the initiative. Because Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, it cannot rely on unseen historical laws as the agents of social change. History is defined by human praxis and therefore includes human will. Nonetheless, willpower cannot achieve anything it likes in any given situation: when the consciousness of the working class reaches the stage of development necessary for action, it will encounter historical circumstances that cannot be arbitrarily altered. It is not predetermined by historical inevitability as to which of several possible developments will take place as a result.

His critique of economic determinism extended to that practised by the syndicalists of the Italian trade unions. He believed that many trade unionists had settled for a reformist, gradualist approach in that they had refused to struggle on the political front in addition to the economic front. For Gramsci, much as the ruling class can look beyond its own immediate economic interests to reorganise the forms of its own hegemony, so must the working class present its own interests as congruous with the universal advancement of society. While Gramsci envisioned the trade unions as one organ of a counter-hegemonic force in a capitalist society, the trade union leaders simply saw these organizations as a means to improve conditions within the existing structure. Gramsci referred to the views of these trade unionists as vulgar economism, which he equated to covert reformism and liberalism.

Critique of materialism
By virtue of his belief that human history and collective praxis determine whether any philosophical question is meaningful or not, Gramsci's views run contrary to the metaphysical materialism and copy theory of perception advanced by Friedrich Engels, and Lenin, although he does not explicitly state this. For Gramsci, Marxism does not deal with a reality that exists in and for itself, independent of humanity. The concept of an objective universe outside of human history and human praxis was analogous to belief in God. Gramsci defined objectivity in terms of a universal intersubjectivity to be established in a future communist society. Natural history was thus only meaningful in relation to human history. In his view philosophical materialism resulted from a lack of critical thought, and could not be said to oppose religious dogma and superstition. Despite this, Gramsci resigned himself to the existence of this arguably cruder form of Marxism. Marxism was a philosophy for the proletariat, a subaltern class, and thus could often only be expressed in the form of popular superstition and common sense. Nonetheless, it was necessary to effectively challenge the ideologies of the educated classes, and to do so Marxists must present their philosophy in a more sophisticated guise and attempt to genuinely understand their opponents' views.

Legacy
According to the American socialist magazine Jacobin, Gramsci "is one of the most cited Italian authors — certainly the most cited Italian Marxist ever — and one of the most celebrated Marxist philosophers of the twentieth century.", adding that the Prison Notebooks "allowed his unorthodox Marxism to spread worldwide."

Gramsci's thought emanates from the organised political left but has also become an important figure in current academic discussions within cultural studies and critical theory. Political theorists from the political centre and the political right have also found insight into his concepts; for instance, his idea of hegemony has become widely cited. His influence is particularly strong in contemporary political science, such as neo-Gramscianism. His critics charge him with fostering a notion of power struggle through ideas. They find the Gramscian approach to philosophical analysis, reflected in current academic controversies, to be in conflict with open-ended, liberal inquiry grounded in apolitical readings of the classics of Western culture.

As a socialist, Gramsci's legacy has been met with a mixed reception. Togliatti, who led the party (renamed in 1943 as the Italian Communist Party, PCI) after World War II and whose gradualist approach was a forerunner to Eurocommunism, stated that the PCI's practices during this period were congruent with Gramscian thought. It is speculated that he would likely have been expelled from his party if his true views had been known, particularly his growing hostility towards Joseph Stalin.

One issue for Gramsci related to his speaking on topics of violence and when it might be justified or not. When the socialist Giacomo Matteotti was murdered, Gramsci did not condemn the murder. Matteotti had already called for the rule of law and had been murdered by the fascists for that stance. The murder produced a crisis for the Italian fascist regime that Gramsci could have exploited. The historian Jean-Yves Frétigné argues that Gramsci and the socialists more generally were naïve in their assessment of the fascists and as a result underestimated the brutality of which the regime was capable.

Association football
Like fellow Turinese and communist Palmiro Togliatti, Gramsci took an interest in association football, which was becoming a sport with massive following and was elected by the fascist regime in Italy as a national sport, and was said to have been a supporter of Juventus, as were other notable communist and left-wing leaders. On 16 December 1988, the PCI's newspaper l'Unità published an article on the front page titled "Gramsci Was Rooting for Juve". Signed by Giorgio Fabre, it contained some letters in which Gramsci asked Piero Sraffa for "news from our Juventus". Even though those letters later turned out to be false, the article remains part of the Gramscian bibliography and triggered numerous reactions, including from Giampiero Boniperti, who on behalf of the club the following day told at La Stampa: "We are pleased to know that among our fans there have been personalities who have marked an era from the political, economic, and intellectual point of view. This shows that Juventus truly have something special, a charm that has never lost strength over the years." Gramsci's interest in football dates back to a 16 August 1918 article for the PSI's newspaper Avanti!, titled "Football and Scopone". Fifteen years later, he pointed at the degeneration of stadium cheering, which emerged with the advent of fascism and the consequent nationalisation of the sport that he said extinguished political and trade union commitment.

Collections

 * Pre-Prison Writings (Cambridge University Press)
 * The Prison Notebooks (three volumes) (Columbia University Press)
 * Selections from the Prison Notebooks (International Publishers)

Essays

 * Newspapers and the Workers (1916)
 * Men or machines? (1916)
 * One Year of History (1918)

Institutes

 * The International Gramsci Society
 * Fondazione Instituto Gramsci
 * Associazione Casa Natale Antonio Gramsci
 * Antonio Gramsci, 1891–1937

Texts by Gramsci

 * Gramsci's writings at the Marxists Internet Archive Library
 * journal.telospress.com Gramsci: "Notes on Language" – Telos

Articles on Gramsci

 * Articles on Gramsci at journal.telospress.com
 * Trudell, Megan; et al.: "Gramsci's revolutionary legacy", International Socialism 2007, issue 117
 * Martin, James: Antonio Gramsci, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 13 January 2023.
 * Robaina, Roberto: "Gramsci and revolution: a necessary clarification", International Socialism
 * Jakopovich, Dan: "Revolution and the Party in Gramsci's Thought: A Modern Application"
 * Gramsci's contribution to the field of adult and popular education – www.infed.org
 * "The life and work of Antonio Gramsci" – www.theory.org.uk (Archived)
 * Hedges, Chris: "Antonio Gramsci and the Battle Against Fascism" – Truthdig. 4 June 2017
 * Jessop, Bob: Lectures on Gramsci (Four sessions with audio).

title: Antonio Gramsci


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Talk:Real line

Geez, Axel, we were just talking about the reconfiguring of Topology and Topological_space, and here I can't figure out how to use them correctly! Thanks for catching me. — Toby Bartels, Tuesday, June 11, 2002

"it has been a prolific example": I'm not sure what that means. Does it mean anything? 70.22.82.128 (talk) 19:06, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Merging "Number line"
I suggest that "number line is merged with this article. They cover almost the same idea. Actually, I think the article should be "Real number line", which is currently a redirect to "Real line", because it seems to be more popular in actual usage than just "Real line". Jason Quinn (talk) 15:50, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the merge but I think this should be merged into 'Number line'. The references I'm looking at that phrase as the primary one with 'Real line' given as a synonym if at all.--RDBury (talk) 17:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You would get some college math students mad at you if you did that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.82.115 (talk) 09:33, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

As a teacher using the number line page, I hope you do not merge this into the real line page. The real line page is written at a level appropriate for college students. The number line page is usable in my high school classroom. Please keep them separate. -- Jeffrey Elkner, Arlington Public Schools. Jelkner (talk) 14:26, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

 * I strongly disagree with the merge -- these two articles are about different things. Number line is about the idea that the real numbers can be arranged in a line, something that is familiar to any high-school student.  This article is about the real line as a geometric object in higher mathematics, including its role as a topological space and metric space.  The name is appropriate -- no mathematician would ever say "the number line" when asked to give an example of an uncountable connected metric space, though they might say "the real line", which is some indication that the two concepts are distinct.  Similarly, if asked to explain why 3 + −5 = −2, a mathematician might say "well, think about it on the number line", and would be less likely to say "think about it on the real line".Jim (talk) 00:27, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

 * Agree. Very well put. Do not merge. Andrewa (talk) 17:10, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Another maths teacher here, voting not to merge. I see the number line, as distinct (discrete) points for each of the integers. Almost like beads on a thread. They are separate concepts that only seem the same in hindsight. 21 December 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.220.25.213 (talk) 18:48, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

 * How about combining both article under number line and organizing it in increasing level of sophistication? Is it really so that you picture the number "line as beads on thread" only containing the beads? I suppose at least rational numbers belong to your curriculum. Lapasotka (talk) 11:54, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Merging real line with line (geometry) should also be considered. In fact the real line is the unique line of the Euclidean space of dimension 1 and all lines in any Euclidean space are isomorphic to it. As real line is mainly devoted to the mathematical properties shared by all these lines, it would make sense to merge this article into line (geometry). If it is done number line could remain as an article of explicit basic level, with explicit references to the other articles for "further properties". D.Lazard (talk) 12:15, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree not to merge it too, since "real line" is obviously more abstract, and "number line" is labelled with specific numbers. Also, could someone add material to demonstrate the geometric construction for adding fractions to a number line? I looked at real line, number line, rational numbers, and fraction (mathematics) but none of these pages show how fractions can appear on a number line. I think it could help people understand quantities if they could see this. Wikivek (talk) 19:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Yet another 'maths' teacher, though this time from The States. I support the merge. While they are certainly written at different levels, we could place the early-level, understandable content at the beginning of the article, and move forward in complexity as do most mathematics articles. I see no reason for students to view the number line as "as distinct (discrete) points for each of the integers. Almost like beads on a thread." and think this is a wrong concept for students to have. I strive to remind my students when they look at a number line, that it is not only the numbers that are labeled that are one the line. Otherwise it's not a line at all, but a string of points............. MERGE. Cliff (talk) 04:32, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And another thing,(rant coming, skip if you want :), i think it is inappropriate to try to protect students from higher level knowledge and material. If a student doesn't understand something that is written, they'll probably forget it, but to try to keep the articles separate so that your students cannot see material that could help them, or that they might use in the future is not historically helpful. Textbooks of mathematics today provide faulty conceptions (beads on a line) and do not give students any glimmer of what else there might be to learn. Students who might teach themselves and move very quickly into higher mathematics, and who might be the next Euler or Descartes, are not given the chance to do so when we protect them from learning by compartmentalizing knowledge in this way. Cliff (talk) 04:45, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

I have changed my mind about the merge. I am persuaded by the argument that "number line" and "real line" have different audiences. Will remove merge discussion template after a grace period if there's no opposition. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:20, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Redirect to REAL NUMBER LINE
FOLKS, PLEASE TAKE THE TIME REQUIRED TO FULLY HEAR ME OUT:

I didn’t have enough time to carefully thread my way through the labyrinth of misunderstandings that littered the discussion page I visited yesterday. Something happened between then and now. And I apologize in advance to those well-meaning contributors to that other page, for my being blunt. I also apologize up front for its length, and for not posting this as a link to a file (I didn’t know how). I desire to tell you an interesting story about NUMBERS, and hope the emperor of this page will find my story not just compelling, but memorable. With that said, I will begin:

The history of mathematics, and I have read a fair amount of it, teaches us how unbelievably hard it was to get humanity to understand what today we flippantly call the real numbers. Numbers are REAL, aren't they? Respectfully, I point out that this article says absolutely NADA about the history I am about to provide. I do wonder why.

About small ancient cultures (and some that are still around), we know that some less stressed, or less developed cultures actually counted one, two, many; that's it! And it is said of olden days that as shepherds took sheep from their village into the fields each morning, someone would drop pebbles into a bowl, one for each, so when the sheep returned home at night, they could make sure the correct number of sheep returned, by removing pebbles, one at a time, one for each. An empty bowl must have given the villagers a kind of satisfaction.

More compulsive humans began developing counting numbers, actual symbols that could be written down and used to represent numbers, quite unlike pebbles or sticks or marks cut into sticks, so we humans could more easily count sheep, or anything else, like, say, the number of hectares of land one owned. These counting numbers were eventually given the name positive whole numbers, also known as the positive integers, After what seems like eons of time passed, man gave in and admitted the seemingly ridiculous (number?) zero (like there might have been zero caves available to live in, way back then), but the simple addition of zero to the then existing set of counting numbers lead man to the set of natural numbers (the set of counting numbers plus zero). Each slow step in this steady advance mankind made in understanding numbers seemed the last time man would ever have to make an annoying accommodation to his (consensus) number system.

But then one day some idiot came along who wanted to be able to subtract a larger positive integer from a smaller positive integer, and to make any sense of such an operation, discovered the negative integers, which like doubled the number of elements we then had in the set of integers that man had to work with. But man didn't stop there, he showed genuine cleverness by inventing fractions, numbers representable as p/q, where p and q are elements of the set of integers, and again man thought he was done. Lest I offend anyone, women doubtless figure into this as well!

And later someone wanted to determine the square root of 2, or determine pi, and OMG it turned out there were more of those stupid numbers than there were of the more acceptable fractions. That problem got fixed in man's normally backassward way by deciding to name the stupid numbers irrational (god forbid they had gotten called imaginary; what a fix people would have been in today if that had happened). Correspondingly, the not stupid fractions were given the name rational numbers (as if to say, fractions were somehow qualitatively better, or at least more rational than the irrational numbers). However long all of this took to evolve, voila', man finally arrived at what was thought to be the complete set of numbers that we now call the set of real numbers.

This story (though simplistic, imperfect, and far from complete) doesn't end here, however. Over and beyond the real numbers, man went on to discover complex numbers, in answering the problem of determining the square root of negative real numbers. After that even more extraordinary mathematical constructs were discovered.

But it appears that something like a certain line of human inquiry pretty much ended with the completion of the discovery of the set of real numbers. It must have felt to the participants similar to what humans need so much of now, a thing called closure. The real numbers are so fundamentally important to our concept of number that anyone who today dares to carelessly toss around nomenclature that took centuries to develop, at this moment in our history, when there still exist people who know better, should be hung from a yard-arm! (figuratively)  :(

I am attempting to argue, strongly I hope, that the topic of this Wiki page should be the REAL NUMBER LINE. I do not claim to have my history absolutely correct; I'm not even trying to make the actual chronology work; but I know the rough outline of my story, the essence of which I am trying to communicate, is essentially correct. If it were my goal to teach this as real history, I would have peppered this with citations.

No, I feel that what I am about is far more important than relating a perfect history of the development of the REAL NUMBER LINE. I am telling you that there is a tremendously exciting learning experience awaiting eager students of mathematics who decide to learn about the real number system, and its representation as a real number line, and any compelling story of it must be entertwined with the telling of the correct history of how mankind got to where we now believe we know that the Real Numbers are at least fully categorized.

But this story is incredibly interesting as, for example, we know we can never write down all of the real numbers because there are infinities that bar such enumeration. The set of natural numbers is infinite, as is the set of all squared numbers, or the even numbers, or the odd numbers, or the rational numbers, or the irrational numbers. In fact, if one looks up Georg Cantor's work, one will become truly amazed, because he showed us that there is a hierarchy of these infinities, the so-called transfinite numbers. Georg’s work explored the notion of infinity, as applied to the set of real numbers, and its subsets, and his work spawned set theory, as well. I cannot imagine a student that cannot be jostled to life in order to understand what infinity is. Perhaps that interest might lead that student into areas of mathematics that are yet to be explored.

And that is only part of the excitement of the story, because at this point you can tell the student how amazing it must have been when man discovered that in between any two given real numbers there exists an infinity of real numbers they could not write down but, nonetheless, were able to prove existed. Now, how is that for telling them an exciting story? Here we have the REAL NUMBER LINE, envisioned incorrectly by the untutored as a "string of beads" extending to minus and plus infinity in going from the left and right sides of the point marked ZERO.

In truth, all real numbers could NOT be encountered by a counting mite as it slid itself slowly along that “string of beads” some people imagine a REAL NUMBER LINE, because in taking its first minute step between the number zero and zero point one, the mite would be lost, seemingly forever, going deeper, and deeper, and deeper, down in-between those two specified numbers. Don't believe it? Do a little reading. Perhaps in an amount of time that is on the order of the age of the universe, that mite might actually make a little progress across the REAL NUMBER LINE; at least consider the possibility! Maybe you could calculate its progress.

Again, REAL NUMBER LINE. Please, say it slowly enough that it finds its proper place in your schema, for it is a simple geometric way of encapsulating, concisely expressing, without enumeration, each and every member of our hard won set of Real Numbers.

The mathematical terms line and set, as applied to the real numbers, come from two different philosophical approaches to knowing and naming things. The term line as a representation of the real numbers, such as in the real number line, descended from geometry (Euclid), whereas the use of the term set as a representation of the real numbers, descended from algebra, and specifically set theory, introduced by Cantor. Both terms turn out to be very helpful in visualizing and using the real numbers for purposes practical or pedantic. And both mathematical pursuits—geometry and algebra—are still there, underpinning the skills of pure mathematicians world-wide.

The REAL NUMBER LINE, all by itself, without embellishment, correlation, or other high sounding technical baggage or blather, is so fundamentally important, yet so simple, for young people to learn about that there should be a war if anyone dare upset this mathematical apple-cart, even if a claim is made that “damage, if any, would be minimal”. To diminish, in any way, the concept of the REAL NUMBER LINE, by calling it, say simply NUMBER LINE, while really meaning the REAL NUMBER LINE is to beg the question "What about the Complex Numbers, why can't there be a COMPLEX NUMBER LINE, all complex numbers expressed as a line? Or how about higher order systems of numbers, or abstract mathematical entities like matrices, n-manifolds, even general mathematical structures as complicated as one can imagine under the categorical name number"?

History has shown us that the fractalization of mathematics never stops. Yet here we find one mathematical funda that is something we hold solidly in hand, and it's called the REAL NUMBER SYSTEM, and it is about a set of numbers that can be simply represented as the REAL NUMBER LINE. What else is the Cartesian coordinate system but two such REAL NUMBER LINES drawn to orthogonally cross one another at what is called the origin, used to visualize the mapping of a real function from one real number line called x to another “real number line” called y.

Upon this magnificent mathematical achievement, the rest of mathematics is supported like a great building is supported by its rock-solid foundation. We are talking about the solid cement FOUNDATION OF MATHEMATICS here, nothing less. The REAL NUMBER LINE is as significant a development as, say Pythagoras's Theorem, and is unconsciously passed around even more frequently. But, it ain’t Calculus, so don’t make it any more complex than it is.

And notice that I did not have to stoop to calling it the REAL LINE. The notion of a REAL LINE is an absurdity. No real line is REAL, for starters. Paradoxically, no actual REAL NUMBER LINE exists in our 'real world', for only a crude facsimile of one can be used as one, for a mathematical "line" is so thin (vanishingly thin thing explained as the points of contact between two planes) a construct that no human being has ever been able to actually draw one! A line has no thickness because a line is a mathematical construct conceived as a tightly strung string of points formed by the junction of two planes, each individual point being so tiny (vanishingly tiny) that no human being has ever been able to actually draw one!

Mathematics is all about the precision of carefully defined idealizations that don’t actually exist in our “real world”, other than by approximations, yet this idea of a line that we take to actually BE a REAL NUMBER LINE, even though it is impossible to draw one, is immensely useful to us, despite what might seem to be a horrible drawback. Daily we draw this figment from our mathematical imagination, a figment which can only represent or stand for, a REAL NUMBER LINE, yet we all use them quite effectively; and thus from something imaginary, even Platonic (See Roger Penrose, for example), we get to something extremely practical. Imagine the curious, interestedly asking “How could that be?” Isn’t that a part of the excitement of “learning mathematics?”

I must have been just lucky when I thought to type "REAL NUMBER LINE" on Wikipedia yesterday, for it looks, if I am to believe what I see, someone changed all of this mathematical brilliance by simply changing what they consider to be just a name for something, nothing that should really matter, so long as it makes sense to them, or MERGE it with some other concept. HEY, this isn't a corporation looking to become a monopoly, this is MATHEMATICS; the language of physics and other sciences! The difficulty that many young people have with math, excluding the damage done them by (some) dispassionate or poorly schooled math teachers, is > 50% about the precision of math definitions and terminology, about mathematical concepts, knowledge of which is the price they have to pay for entrance into the priesthood, and about which includes knowing about how those concepts got defined, historically, in the ways they did; so please, please, please, don't screw this up. Put it back the way it was!!! Langing (talk) 17:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

 * TL;DR. The history information you are talking about can be found at the article real number If you want that content and the description of the line in the same place I recommend you attempt to merge real line into real number. It could have it's own section. That said, I wouldn't be involved in that battle. You could also make sure that this article links to real number in a way that you feel is appropriate, be carefule not to start a Farm Cliff (talk) 04:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Real line


text:
Talk:Cholesterol

No Physical Properties or Characteristics provided
Like normal form, specific gravity, ability to withstand heat, melting and boiling points, breakdown temperatures, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2409:4071:220D:7281:3CD0:68FF:FE7F:8333 (talk) 12:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

What about this research?
LDL-C does not cause cardiovascular disease: a comprehensive review of the current literature

Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391 Nemohuman (talk) 08:35, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

 * Blatant pseudoscience. The authors of the paper work for the THINCS organization. The same authors published another review which has been discredited, , . They basically argue that elderly people with lower LDL-c have an increased mortality risk. This isn't a controversial finding it is well known, it's because the elderly people studied have increased risk of chronic disease like cancer and this is known to lower cholesterol. It is a case of reverse causality. It is not evidence that high LDL-c is beneficial for health. There is strong evidence that LDL-c causes cardiovascular disease . Psychologist Guy (talk) 16:45, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Cholesterol


text:
Talk:Human skin color

Colour blind
if skin colour as stated is "ranges from the darkest brown to the lightest hue" where does black and white fall "within" that colour scale? 101.119.167.91 (talk) 17:42, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Skin colour evolution
From under the Geography section, "we do not know when skin color is likely to have evolved" - Templeton 2002. Yes we do, Hanel 2020: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/exd.14142#exd14142-bib-0058 14.2.196.234 (talk) 11:07, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

 * I have completely blanked that section as it was stolen verbatim from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/exd.14142 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC212702/ ... someone should rewrite it, in their own words. Tobus (talk) 00:38, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Sources appear to be unrelated to claims
Specifically numbers 6 through 11 are about testing and preventing various birth defects but do not seem to address the issue of melanin in human evolution. 2601:602:87F:9906:C871:FFCA:724A:3EE0 (talk) 19:06, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed - they are WP:CITEKILL and look more like WP:SYNTH - replaced with a ref that actually states the claim. Tobus (talk) 00:26, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Human skin color


text:
York Rite

In Anglo-American Freemasonry, York Rite, sometimes referred to as the American Rite,  is one of several Rites of Freemasonry. It is named for York, of Yorkshire, England; where in the legend of the Rite, it was first practiced.

A Rite is a series of progressive degrees that are conferred by various Masonic organizations or bodies, each of which operates under the control of its own central authority. The York Rite specifically is a collection of separate Masonic Bodies and associated Degrees that would otherwise operate independently. While the corresponding bodies and degrees are present worldwide, the term is primary used by American freemasons.

The three primary bodies in the York Rite are the Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, Council of Royal & Select Masters or Council of Cryptic Masons, and the Commandery of Knights Templar, each of which are governed independently but are all considered to be a part of the York Rite. There are also other organizations that are considered to be directly associated with the York Rite, or require York Rite membership to join such as the York Rite Sovereign College but in general the York Rite is considered to be made up of the aforementioned three. The Rite's name is derived from the city of York, where, according to one Masonic legend, the first meetings of Masons in England took place.

The York Rite is also one of the concordant bodies of Freemasonry that a Master Mason may join to further his knowledge of Freemasonry. But the York Rite is not found as a single system worldwide, and outside of the United States there are often significant differences in ritual, as well as organization. However, in most cases, provided that the Grand Body in question regards the parent "Craft" jurisdiction as regular, each distinct Order has recognized fraternal inter-relations with the respective Grand Body within the York system.

York Rite bodies

Since the York Rite is actually a grouping of separate organizations joined in order, each body operates with relative autonomy. And though they are referred to as one rite it is common for individuals to be member of some bodies and not others. For example, in many jurisdictions Cryptic Masonry can be skipped allowing the person to be a member of just the Royal Arch and Knights Templar. It is also common for non-Christians to join only the Royal Arch and Council of Royal & Select Masters, as the Knights Templar require members to be willing to defend the Christian faith, if needed. Membership in the Royal Arch is always required and must be kept in order to maintain membership in the other two bodies.

Details on the individual bodies are as follows:

Royal Arch Masonry

Royal Arch Masonry is the first order a Master Mason joins in the York Rite. The Chapter works the following degrees:

 * The Mark Master Mason degree is in some respects an extension of the Fellow Crafts' second degree. In some jurisdictions the degree is conferred in a Fellow Craft Lodge, that is, the second degree of the Blue Lodge.
 * The (Virtual) Past Master degree is conferred because of the traditional requirement that only Past Masters of a Blue Lodge may be admitted to Holy Royal Arch. Because there are so many applicants for this degree, Virtual Past Master is required to qualify them for it in many U.S. jurisdictions. Other places, such as Pennsylvania and UGLE Masonry, do not have this requirement or procedure. Much of the work is the same given to install the Worshipful Master of a Blue Lodge.
 * In the Most Excellent Master degree the building of King Solomon's Temple, which figures so prominently in Blue Lodge, has been completed. In England the degree is conferred by the Order of Royal and Select Masters, along with three other degrees.
 * The Royal Arch Mason (or Holy Royal Arch) degree is said by many to be the most beautiful degree in all of Freemasonry. Following a convocation of the Supreme Grand Chapter in England on November 10, 2004, there are currently significant ritual differences between what is worked in England and that worked in many U.S. jurisdictions. Fraternal inter-relations remain as before. Freemasons who reach this degree may continue to Cryptic Masonry or go straight to Knights Templar where permitted—requirements vary in different jurisdictions.

Cryptic Masonry

Membership in the Council of Royal & Select Masters or the Council of Cryptic Masons is not required for membership in the Knights Templar in some jurisdictions, so it can be skipped. In others it is required. It is called Cryptic Masonry or the Cryptic Rite because a crypt or underground room figures prominently in the degrees.

 * Royal Master
 * Select Master
 * Super Excellent Master

In some jurisdictions, a Most Excellent Master degree is offered between Select Master and Super Excellent Master, while other jurisdictions do not have the Super Excellent Master degree.

Knights Templar (Grand Encampment of Knights Templar of the U.S.A.)

The Knights Templar is the final order joined in the York Rite. Unlike other Masonic bodies which only require a belief in a Supreme Being regardless of religion, membership in the Knights Templar is open only to Christian Masons who have completed their Royal Arch and in some jurisdictions their Cryptic Degrees. This body is modeled on the historical Knights Templar to carry on the spirit of their organization. Throughout history it has been claimed that Freemasonry itself was founded by the Knights Templar or that the Knights Templar took refuge in Freemasonry after their persecution. The Grand Encampment of the United States acknowledges the existence of these theories but states that there is no proof to justify such claims.

A local Knights Templar division is called a Commandery and operates under a state level Grand Commandery as well as The Grand Encampment of the United States. This is unique among Masonic bodies as most report to the state level alone. The Knights Templar confer three orders, and one passing order as opposed to the standard degree system found elsewhere in Freemasonry:

 * The Illustrious Order of the Red Cross
 * ''The Passing Order of St. Paul (or the Mediterranean Pass)
 * The Order of the Knights of Malta (or simply Order of Malta)
 * The Order of the Temple

Mark Master

 * England, India, and parts of Europe and Australasia – The Mark degree is conferred in a separately warranted Lodge of Mark Master Masons. The candidate for Advancement is required to be a Master Mason. A further degree may conferred; one not present in the York Rite, that of Royal Ark Mariner; although strictly speaking this degree is conferred in a Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners – said lodge being 'anchored' or 'moored' to the parent Mark Lodge. In the U.S., this degree forms part of the Allied Masonic Degrees. In Canada, the Royal Ark Mariner degree is conferred by a Council of Royal and Select Masters.
 * Scotland – The Mark degree is conferred in a Craft lodge and is seen as the completion of the Fellow Craft Degree, but the candidate for Advancement is required to be a Master Mason. The Mark may alternatively, and exceptionally, be conferred in a Holy Royal Arch Chapter as a prerequisite for Exaltation to the HRA. If a Candidate has already received his Mark Degree in his Craft Lodge, then his initiation into the Chapter is preceded by a short ceremony of Affiliation to the Mark Lodge associated ("moored") to that Chapter.

Royal and Select Masters
In England and Wales, the degrees of Select Master, Royal Master, Most Excellent Master and Super-Excellent Master are conferred in a separately warranted organization, the Order of Royal and Select Masters.

Holy Royal Arch
The Holy Royal Arch is affiliated with various constitutions worldwide, many of which place different emphasis on the order.

 * England, Europe and Australasia – A Holy Royal Arch Chapter is required to be sponsored by a Craft Lodge and bears the same number, and in almost all cases the same name; however, the HRA is a separate Order from Craft Freemasonry. Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter is governed from the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England, but the administration remains distinct – though many officers of the Grand Lodge hold the equivalent office in the Grand Chapter. In these countries the Order of the Royal Arch consists of a single 'Royal Arch' degree, although there are three related ceremonies, one for the installation into each of the three Principals' chairs. As a compromise, at the union of two rival Grand Lodges in 1813, one of which considered the Royal Arch a 'Fourth Degree', whilst the other almost totally ignored it. English Freemasonry recognized the Royal Arch as part of "pure, ancient masonry," but stated that it was not an additional degree, but merely the "completion of the third degree." However, this was a compromise position, and one which was in opposition to normal masonic practice, and consequently on November 10, 2004, after much deliberation by a special working party,  the Grand Chapter overturned this compromise position at its regular meeting in London, and declared the Royal Arch to be a separate degree in its own right, albeit the natural progression from the third degree. Words in the ritual which propounded the earlier compromise position were removed, by mandatory regulation.
 * Ireland – The Royal Arch degree under the Irish Constitution is unique, and while it is regular and recognized, it bears little resemblance to the same degree in the sister Constitutions of England and Scotland. The Royal Arch Degree under the Irish Constitution contains a legend concerning the first Temple, not the second. The elaborate "Passing of the Veils" ceremony is essential to the Royal Arch Degree in the Irish system and after it is completed it is followed immediately by the Royal Arch degree itself, containing the story of the restoration of Solomon's Temple under King Josiah. The three presiding officers of a Royal Arch Chapter are called the Excellent King, High Priest and Chief Scribe, instead of First, Second and Third Principal. Irish Royal Arch Chapters are also permitted to meet as Lodges of Mark Master Masons, and they are governed by the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Ireland.
 * Scotland – The degree is conferred in a Royal Arch Chapter which is within a wholly different administrative structure, the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland. Due to a difference in ritual, Royal Arch Masons exalted in England may not attend Scottish Royal Arch Chapters without completing the Scottish exaltation ceremony. Before receiving the Holy Royal Arch Degree the Candidate must first have the Mark degree and the degree of Excellent Master. However, those Exalted in Scotland may attend Chapter in England, or indeed any Chapter, provided it be in Amity.

England and Wales
Officially known as The United Religious, Military and Masonic Orders of the Temple and of St John of Jerusalem, Palestine, Rhodes and Malta, of England and Wales, this order is colloquially known as the Knights Templar. Local bodies of Knights Templar are known as Preceptories; local bodies of Knights of St Paul are known as Chapters; local bodies of Knights of Malta are known as Priories; all operate under a Grand or Great Priory, often with an intermediate level of Provincial Priories. Although some jurisdictions maintain a separate Great Priory of the Temple and Great Priory of Malta, as, for example, in England, the Grand Master and other officers of both Great Priories hold simultaneous equal office in both bodies. Three degrees are administered in this system:

 * The Degree of Knight Templar (Order of the Temple)
 * The Degree of Knight of St. Paul (incorporating the Mediterranean Pass)
 * The Degree of Knight of Malta (Order of Malta)

Membership is by invitation and candidates are required to be Master Masons, holders of the degree of the Holy Royal Arch and to sign a declaration that they profess the Doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

title: York Rite