Antonio Gramsci, “Selections From the Prison Notebooks.”

Gramsci, Antonio. “Selections From the Prison Notebooks.” An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukács and Gramsci to Socialist-Feminism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.

NB: The Gramsci selection I'm reading is from an anthology and is accordingly edited down a fair amount. I'll be commenting on what is in that selection, but it is likely that there is other context that is not present therein. 

In this section of his larger text, Gramsci is primarily interested in intellectuals and their effect on cultural hegemony. According to Gramsci, the development of intellectuals in a given social strata is a necessary step towards the development of ideology and hegemony for that social group. For Gramsci all labor requires some level of intellectual engagement and creativity, but only certain intellectual labors are upheld as "Intellectuals," and those Intellectuals use apparatuses such as education and media to propogate ideology. As Gramsci states, "all men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals" (115). As intellectualism thus takes on a hegemonic function, it becomes necessary to separate the activity of the proletariat from that of the intellectual. Thus restricted from considering themselves or their labor as intellectual, ideology from the institutionally approved intellectuals can work to maintain the status quo. 

In this section, Gramsci spends some time discussing the role of intellectuals that claim to be "independent" from the state. His primary example is the Roman Catholic Church, which he highly critiques. Gramsci suggests that the claim of independence allows such intellectual organizations to impose ideology within a facade of impartiality. This section reminds me of Kellie Robertson's discussion of the Labor Statutes in late medieval England, specifically in how many Church officials began to orient writings and sermons to suggest that compliance to these statutes is the morally correct method and that violating them is a pathway to sin. Thus, you could use Gramsci's perspective to argue that the specialized, independent intellectuals of the church hierarchy are using their position to push an ideology that agricultural laborers should remain in their plight with low politically and economic power, being satisfied that in doing so they are acting as God mandates.