The article shows the reading of Gramsci offered by Portantiero, a reading that not only enhances aspects of Gramsci's work on which later critics will dwell extensively, but also connects them, subterraneously, without making it explicit, with the theory of differential temporality, the theoretical heart of Reading Capital. This extraordinary theoretical operation, carried out from Mexican exile during the dictatorship, makes it possible to read not only a “new” Gramsci, but also a “new” Althusser, when not even the treasures hidden in his archive were yet suspected. Beyond Gramsci's historicism and Althusser's structuralism, Portantiero leads us down a path where the dialogue between the two theorists becomes extremely fruitful: the theory of the conjuncture and the concepts necessary to develop its analysis.