I have argued that two concepts of dialectic inhere in the Prison Notebooks, a formalist one pertaining to “real” dialectic and a judgmental one referring to “ideal” dialectic; that there is a tension (though not an outright contradiction) between them; and that the judgmental concept is the more typically Gramscian one. If this settles the matter from the point of view of interpretation and internal evaluation, it also leads to the problem of assessing the two concepts with independent arguments. One way of proceeding is to point out that the two concepts correspond to Gramsci's theory and his practice of the dialectic, respectively. That is, the formalist concept is the meaning Gramsci attaches to the dialectic when he is most explicit in his pronouncements about what the dialectic is and about how it operates, whereas the judgmental concept is what he means when he is using the term in the context of other issues that relate to the dialectic more implicitly and indirectly. In short, Gramsci's official view is that the dialectic is the process of thesisantithesis-synthesis that exists only at the level of the socioeconomic structure, whereas his implicit view is that it is a way of thinking in which one avoids one-sidedness and searches for unity in diversity and diversity in unity. Thus, Gramsci's dialectical theory and his dialectical practice do not correspond. Assuming the primacy of practice, we would have to conclude that the judgmental notion is what Gramsci really means by dialectic.