Antonio
Gramsci (1891--1937)
Gramsci was an Italian marxist who engaged in serious political
struggle with Mussolini and the fascists in Italy in the 1930s and
1940s, and established the Italian Communist Party (PCI) . Mussolini
won, and Gramsci died in jail. He became famous for
attempting to apply marxist criticisms to the modern Italian state, and
realised early on that it was not enough just to wait for the
industrial working class to rise up and impose communism. Nor would it
be possible for a small Communist Party to seize power and impose
communism, as had happened in the Soviet Union.
Instead, more conventional political alliances had to be formed. The
industrial working class had to be persuaded to join various
coalitions, including the peasantry. The agricultural southern part of
Italy had to be united with the industrial northern part. The trick was
to develop a series of policies that would not only unite these
different fractions, but also persuade them to sweep away the old
system altogether and impose their own socialist political system.
The struggle had to cover culture as well, trying to persuade people
that revolutionary change was possible and desirable. A new socialist
or communist culture could not simply be imposed, however. Instead, the
Communist Party had to offer some cultural leadership. It should build
on the existing trade union militancy of the car workers in the Fiat
plant, and explain that only revolutionary change meet their demands.
The party, and party intellectuals, had to explain that it had a
superior vision, a better explanation, a more exciting and fulfilling
culture. It had to take on board some of the existing concerns,
including religious belief, and try to tweak it in such a way that it
supported Communist Party policy -- for example, that once the
Communists took power, there would be a new era of religious freedom,
but that the need for religion would gradually disappear.
The problem was that this is what the fascists were doing as well. They
could cheerfully promise that all kinds of interests would be followed
if people supported them. They could simply make things up as they went
along, unlike the Communists. They were successful. They were able to
exert considerable political and cultural leadership of their own.
Enough of the population were persuaded of the fascist vision to
support Mussolini, at least until military disaster and economic
collapse.
There is a particular term used to explain this sort of political
cultural struggle for leadership -- the struggle for hegemony. Hegemony
has an ordinary common sense meaning as usual, referring to the
indirect or what we would now call 'soft' power of one country over
another. Thus when Britain colonised India, the British managed to rule
not just by military force but by political and cultural colonisation
as well. The British introduced their own institutions such parliaments
and a Civil Service, law courts, industrial enterprises, markets and
trade. They persuaded Indians to adopt a British way of life as
superior.
Getting back to Italian politics, the aim of the rival political
parties was to do something similar, to persuade the Italian people to
adopt the communist or fascist way of life. Had either party been
completely successful, their particular way of life and political
system would have seemed 'natural'. The full attainment of hegemony
actually makes any alternative unthinkable. In practice, such full
attainment is rare, and in most cases there is some struggle going on
towards attaining hegemony on the one hand, and resisting it on the
other.
This idea of hegemonic struggle has been applied to much of the work of
the state in Britain as well. The state -- meaning not just government
but the Civil Service, quangos, the state run broadcasting services,
the education system, and the welfare system -- is in the business of
trying to persuade us that there is no alternative to the present
political and economic system. Of course, there are alternatives and
choices within it. You can vote for one party or another, spend your
money on one thing or another, give private companies are smaller or a
greater role in providing recreation -- but the overall system is
rendered as the only one. This attempt to develop full hegemony may not
be possible, and there might be signs of a struggle -- rival
interpretations of new events, ranging from sporting festivals to wars.
One the group will be arguing that these new events can be easily
incorporated inside the existing political and economic system, while
rival groups might be suggesting that new events signal a crisis in the
whole system.
Britain in the 21st century is not Italy in 1940. There is no
well-organised rival party to challenge the rule of the dominant group.
There are no agitators going into factories and standing on street
corners having arguments and trying to persuade people wear their best
interests lie. There is no substantial social unrest (although
there was, arguably, in the 1960s and 1970s). The only ones likely to
be interested in challenging any push towards full hegemony are going
to be intellectuals, very often University intellectuals.
In these circumstances, you might be able to predict what I'm going to
suggest. That we take the technical aspects of the argument and tried
to set to one side the political implications.
Our basic critical question will be to ask to what extent government
policy operates with a set of hegemonic assumptions that effectively
forbid any alternative conception. Again, I suspect this is going to be
quite an easy target to hit. Of course government policy will want to
work within the framework of parliamentary democracy and civil society,
with all that that implies, including a role for commercial interests.
Naturally,you will find government policy spokespersons dismissing as
irrelevant any radical alternatives. If there are to be any
alternatives, it will be non-affiliated intellectuals who will be
coming up with them. You might just be able to detect signs of
hegemonic struggle between policy spokespersons and their intellectual
critics, if there are any in this particular field.
Finally, you might want to try to think of some really radical
alternatives to existing policies for yourself. After all, we are all
often urged to 'think outside of the box'. How easy is it to think
radically? If you can't do this very well is that because you really do
not think there are any real alternatives -- or is it that your beliefs
and practices have been produced out of a hegemonic struggle?
Further stuff by me on Gramsci's legacy and its odd interpretation in
British academic work include this file, and my
book:
Harris, D. (1992) From Class Strugle
to the Politics of Pleasure: the effects of gramscianism on British
Cultural Studies, London: Routledge ( buy now, eg from Amazon)
contents page
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