Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci, a former leader of the Italian Communist Party, developed a synthetic social theory of political power in capitalist societies. This theoretical framework was developed particularly in his work, Prison Notebooks, which was written while he was imprisoned by the fascist regime between 1929 and 1935.¹⁶ In examining political power, Gramsci applied specific notions to define the quality of power exercised by ruling authorities. A general notion of supremacy subsumes two dimensions: domination and hegemony.¹⁷ In general terms, supremacy refers to an aggregation of political power penetrated in the economic base, civil society and the state. To identify domination and hegemony as reflections of supremacy in exercising power, Gramsci (1971: 170) utilized Machiavelli’s image of the centaur -the mythical half-man, half-horse- the former entailing the ideological power of the dominator or the consent of the dominated whilst the latter refered to the element of physical power,

16 The primary resource of Gramsci’s original political analysis, i.e. philosophy of praxis is the selections from his Prison Notebooks which were published in English in 1971 (Gramsci 1971).

This section follows the interpretation of Antonio Gramsci’s work by neo-Gramscian scholars such as Gill (1993), Cox (1993), and Rupert (1993) with references to his Prison Notebooks.

17 For a distinction between supremacy, domination, and hegemony in Gramsci’s theory see Augelli and Murphy (1988).

coercion. The concept of hegemony helps to understand the translation of the dominant position of a class in the domain of the economic base into its supreme position in the superstructure (civil society and the state), which cannot be conceived as an automatic process. Gramsci (1971: 238) contended that in contrast to illiberal societies where civil society can be weak, in liberal societies an active consent of popular masses is pursued in civil society to legitimise the political authority of ruling classes. The prevailing position of the ruling classes in society may derive from their dominant status in economic production; however their legitimate rule is exercised in the domain of civil society (Gramsci 1971: 261-3). Having an essential role in the economic structure, a social group achieves hegemony in civil society when it can also sustain domination in the state by resorting to the legitimate use of force when deemed necessary (Gramsci 1971: 57).

Gramsci established a correlation between social order and the degree of hegemony.

Although crude force is used in extreme cases by rulers, he believed that some degree of consent exists as a prerequisite of social stability. He defined two extreme ends or ideal typical situations. On one end rests pure domination, which refers to the exclusive use of force by ruling actors without seeking the consent of the dominated.

On the other end, he conceptualised ethical hegemony, which is “intellectual and moral leadership” of the hegemonic classes (Gramsci 1971: 57). The extent to which

the dominated groups give their consent voluntarily, the more hegemony is ethical (Gramsci 1971: 160-1). Where the authority of hegemonic groups is widely questioned, dominant classes deploy coercion through state organs more frequently (Gramsci 1971:

170 fn. 71; 280-1). In this framework, the criterion to assess the hegemonic nature of a given social order is the degree and ethical content of the consent of the general public to the authority of ruling classes and institutions. These dynamics are reflective of the organic unity of the polity such as the relationship between civil and political society (Gramsci 1971: 263).

Gramsci extended his analysis to the domain of civil society to understand how certain social groups obtain hegemonic status. For Gramsci civil society is a political realm in which individuals engage in primary political acts and contacts. Hence to achieve hegemony, or to sustain an “intellectual and moral” leadership throughout society, a potential hegemon needs to develop a universally accepted political formula within civil society (Gramsci 1971: 181-82, 388). Such a formula should not only address the interests of the potential hegemonic actors but also respond to the expectations and aspirations of other groups, and suggest a coherent ideology that captures the wider public. Furthermore, to generate hegemony that reaches the mass public, this formula should be able to sustain the economic development of society as a whole (Gramsci 1971: 60-1; 181-82; 388).

Building hegemony is a long-run process and is realised through a war of position within civil society and entails strategic planning, engagement in sound alliances, and intellectual efforts to capture the ideological sphere. This process also requires inevitable sacrifices from immediate interests, and engagement with other groups in the form of alliances (Gramsci 1971: 119-20; 238-9). Gramsci introduced the term

“historic bloc” to define the organic and ethical alliance that is required for building hegemony. A historic bloc bridges economic, political and cultural realms around an ideologically coherent goal (Gramsci 1971: 330, 366, 377). To construct hegemony and historic blocs, hegemonic classes need organic intellectuals who can develop overwhelming political formulas consolidated with sophisticated theories that support a coherent world view (Gramsci 1971: 330). Thus, the war of position in civil society turns into a war waged on a philosophical level by developing plausible theories to conquer public common sense. It can only be successful if there is a belief that such domination is logical and ethical (Gramsci 1971: 60-1; 330).

A hegemonic relationship is built upon an intersubjective education process in which hegemonic groups engage in acquiring consent of the different layers within civil society in regard to their comprehensive formulas. Using all available channels in civil society, such as media, publishing houses, and education, organic intellectuals work

to disseminate their formulas throughout society. Gramsci applied the analogy of a teacher and pupil to elucidate the cognitive nature of a hegemonic relationship:

Every relationship of “hegemony” is necessarily an educational relationship and occurs not only within a nation, between the various forces of which the nation is composed, but in the international and world-wide field, between complexes of national and continental civilisations (Gramsci 1971: 350).

To sustain not only intellectual but also moral leadership, this process is considered dynamic and inevitably reciprocal: “the relationship between teacher and pupil is active and reciprocal so that every teacher is always a pupil and every pupil a teacher” (Gramsci 1971: 350). If hegemonic classes fail to respond to the expectations of subaltern groups, and pursue their spontaneous interests at the expense of others, hegemony lacks its ethical content. In such a case, ideology morphs into a functional weapon, the reciprocal nature of the learning process is paralysed, consensus is gradually lost, and the authority of the hegemon is challenged. In other words, hegemonic production is an incomplete process that is inherent to the reproduction of capitalism and continues insofar as a capitalist class struggle exists. Hegemony can be challenged by rival classes through waging a counter war of position, by forming new historic blocs, and generating alternative organic intellectuals that can build counter-hegemonic projects. On the other hand, social order may be jeopardised in the cases of

“authority crisis,” which Gramsci also called an “organic crisis.” This means the loss

of organic totality between civil society and political society and implies that the ruling classes are no longer able to play a role of intellectual and moral leadership and fulfil their ethical functions to respond to the expectations of the society. Organic crisis is in fact a “crisis of hegemony,” where coercion becomes the only tool of domination because of the absolute loss of the consent of masses (Gramsci 1971: 210).