In April 1921 Antonio Gramsci, co-founder of the Italian Communist Party, tried to meet Gabriele D?Annunzio, leader of the irredentist Fiume Endeavour. Though the attempt could apparently seem in contradiction with the internationalist tradition of Marxist ideology, it was perfectly coherent with the dialectical conception of the national problem, formalized by Gramsci in his early works and his Quaderni del carcere