Gramsci supplemented Marx because conjunctural analysis and ideology were underdeveloped in classical Marxism

Evidence

That is why, as Gramsci moves from the general terrain of Marx’s mature concepts (as outlined, for example, in Capital) to specific historical conjunctures, he can still continue to “work within” their field of reference. But when he turns to discuss in detail, say, the Italian political situation in the 1930s, or changes in the complexity of the class democracies of “the West” after imperialism and the advent of mass democracy, or the specific differences between “eastern” and “western” social formations in Europe, or the type of politics capable of resisting the emerging forces of fascism, or the new forms of politics set in motion by developments in the modern capitalist state, he understands the necessity to adapt, develop, and supplement Marx’s concepts with new and original ones. First, because Marx concentrated on developing his ideas at the highest level of application (as in Capital) rather than at the more concrete historical level (for example, there is no real analysis in Marx of the specific structures of the British nineteenth-century state, though there are many suggestive insights). Second, because the historical conditions for which Gramsci was writing were not the same as those in and for which Marx and Engels had written. (Gramsci had an acute sense of the historical conditions of theoretical production.) Third, because Gramsci felt the need for new conceptualizations at precisely the levels at which Marx’s theoretical work was itself at its most sketchy and incomplete: that is, the levels of the analysis of specific historical conjunctures, or of the political and ideological aspects—the much-neglected dimensions of the analysis of social formations in classical Marxism. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 82

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes ‘conjuncture’ as the level of analysis — specific historical situations — that distinguishes Gramsci’s contribution from Marx’s highest-level abstraction in Capital.
• XREF: Connects to later Islamophobia readings that apply conjunctural analysis to specific historical moments of racialized exclusion; also echoes Foucault’s genealogy of contingent present conditions.