Antonio Gramscis Concept of Hegemony

Gramsci’s correspondence (like his Notebooks) was readby the prison authorities and subject to censorship, meaning thatpolitical references to outside events had to be muted or entirelyabsent. The PCd’I, they continued, therefore neededto build mass support among both workers and peasants sothat, when a revolutionary situation eventually returned, it couldexercise effective leadership. The political situation in Italy continued tointensify following the abduction and murder by fascist thugs of thesocialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti and the subsequent withdrawal inprotest of opposition parties from Parliament. In October 1922, Mussolini wasinvited by the King to lead a coalition government, supported byconservative politicians increasingly alarmed at the intensity ofsocial disorder and the prospect of a workers’ revolution. Inspired by the Russian Revolutions of February and October 1917,Gramsci aligned himself with the “intransigentrevolutionary” faction in the PSI, urging it to pursue its“maximalist” program of radical transformation. For this milder resistance to the party’s formalposition, he was thereafter treated with some suspicion by fellowsocialists.

In Moscow, Gramsci was absorbed into the bureaucratic complexities ofinternational communist politics, negotiating with the Comintern overthe PCd’I’s relations to other left parties. Gramsciwas elected to its central committee and Ordine Nuovo wastransformed into the party’s daily paper. Ledby the militant, Amadeo Bordiga, the new party required rigiddiscipline and had firm ideological roots in Marxist doctrine.

This hybrid of classically “Leninist” and mass-basedmodels of the party reflected Gramsci’s concern to steer acourse between sectarian closure and reformist, representationalpolitics. Gramsci’s reflections on communist party strategywere therefore formulated as a treatise on what he conceived as“The Modern Prince” (il moderno Principe). Gramsci still considered the agent of a revolution to be, bynecessity, a centralized and ideologically disciplined party. The philosophy of praxis still aligned to thefoundational Marxist principle that social consciousness“corresponds” to material relations of production,knowledge of which was necessary for any practical effort. Forcefully drawn attention to the importance of cultural andintellectual factors in the development of history … to themoment of hegemony and consent. He sawMarxism as a philosophy aimed at critically engaging popular commonsense, laying the basis for a new hegemony.

• The task remained,therefore, “to make Italians” (fare gli italiani)as one critic put it, that is, to find a model of association toculturally integrate citizens (see Bellamy 1987).
• Gramsci sought aUnited Front policy with other radical organizations and parties inItaly to maintain a presence across the country—particularly inthe South—rather than simply await a crisis to hand leadershipto the party.
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• This idea—with its potential for variation in empirical focusand application—was developed across different notes and topics,sometimes as a methodological device to analyze historical situations,at other times alongside different concepts to make strategicobservations.
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• He noted the influence of southernintellectuals, such as Benedetto Croce and Giustino Fortunato, inideologically legitimating the liberal regime.

Antonio Francesco Gramsci was born on 22 January 1891 in Ales,Sardinia to a middle-class family of Albanian descent. In the Notebooks, Gramsci undertook a series of historicaland theoretical reflections on the conditions for revolution in modernstates—such as Italy’s—where degrees of popularconsent had been achieved. For real-world illustrations of how Marxist ideas continue to shape sociological thinking and activism, check out these examples of Marxism in society today. Gramsci criticised the work of structural Marxism Althusser who had a more structural approach to understanding social change.

Evaluation of Gramsci

In January 1921 in Livorno, the communistsformally split from the PSI and established the Communist Party ofItaly (Partito comunista d’Italia or PCd’I). Intended, initially, as a journal of“socialist culture” it became a medium to discuss theindustrial factory struggles then underway in Turin. After the war Gramsci joined with university and socialist friends tofound and edit a new review, L’Ordine Nuovo (“TheNew Order”). He becamesecretary of the executive committee of the Turin socialists and, inthe same year, took up the role of editor of Il Grido delPopolo.

thoughts on “Gramsci’s Cultural Hegemony and Humanistic Marxism”

Positivism neglected the historically particular andpractically creative dimension of “spirit” (orconsciousness) which, beyond any political program, motivated allsocial and cultural transformation. These themes and influences combined in Gramsci’s criticism ofthe liberal political class and his promotion of socialism. He wrote storiesfor his young sons and reminisced about his own childhood in Sardinia.Initially, with other party members in the prison, he took part inreading groups and political conversations. Entering the war, he hoped, would initiate awider collapse of the liberal order and ignite social revolution.Mussolini was eventually forced out of the party. The firebrand revolutionary socialist,Benito Mussolini, came out for intervention against the PSI’sofficial neutrality.

1 Hegemony

This idea—with its potential for variation in empirical focusand application—was developed across different notes and topics,sometimes as a methodological device to analyze historical situations,at other times alongside different concepts to make strategicobservations. But it hadalso been employed by Italian political thinkers in the nineteenthcentury to imagine gradually building consent across the nation forthe new state—“making Italians”—rather thanrelying exclusively on the exercise of force. The unplannedinterruption brought by his arrest and imprisonment permitted him toexplore many of these issues in much greater depth. Although hebelieved it unlikely in the short term, Gramsci argued the PCd’Ineeded to develop its own supporting intellectuals if it was toundertake an inclusive national strategy to overcome the agrarianbloc. Croce, especially, hadperformed a “national function” by endorsing liberalism,helping to prevent radical southern intellectuals from joining withpeasants in opposition to the conservative agrarian bloc.

He noted the influence of southernintellectuals, such as Benedetto Croce and Giustino Fortunato, inideologically legitimating the liberal regime. Economic crises did not lead automatically to political instabilitybecause forces could be found to support the regime. Gramsci now began tounderline the view that the received model of revolution—aviolent seizure of power in the midst of a catastrophiccrisis—needed to be adapted to conditions that had not appliedin Russia. These topics werecentral points of reference in Gramsci’s mature thinking abouthegemony in the Notebooks.

Those undertaking the function ofintellectuals included industrial technicians, managers,entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and scientists. To understand their role in organizing consent, he argued, np vip it wasnecessary to expand the concept of intellectual. Revolutionary transformation—for anyclass—cannot be focused exclusively on the seizure of coerciveand bureaucratic power but must engage the state’s wider systemof defenses. In theNotebooks he was further suggesting that hegemony described ageneral condition applicable to both bourgeois and proletarian formsof rule.