Political Toolbox IV: “Hegemony” via Gramsci

I’ve wanted to move on to apply the tools that I’ve already introduced but it occurred to me that at least one more tool was missing to make some of the points I’d like to make about contemporary American politics.

The next tool is the concept “hegemony” as elaborated by the Italian political thinker, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a Marxist who wrote his most influential works during his incarceration by the Italian Fascist government where he died in 1937. Gramsci’s thinking has always been very influential on the Italian left but was discovered in the English-speaking world in the 1970′s. While his thinking now has broad currency in the democratic left in many countries, I believe his concept of “hegemony” has applicability outside the left and could very well be applied by sectors of the right and the center as the left, as much as the former would disturb Gramsci and Gramscians.

Hegemony in common parlance means “political dominance” but Gramsci made a distinction between coercive political dominance and dominance by consent or acquiescence. Hegemony for Gramsci means that a ruling group establishes its rule as commensensical rather than oppressive. Thus when a ruling group can make its rule seem to be a part of culture rather than the product of political manipulation or worse military and police action, then that ruling group is “hegemonic” or has “achieved hegemony” in the Gramscian sense. The power/influence distinction is analogous to the coercion/hegemony distinction that Gramsci draws, where in hegemony, the ruling group exerts influence more often than it does power.

One of the ways that Gramsci then thought that political power could change hands through the voluntary action of groups not in power was through what he called “a war of position”, which was in part a cultural conflict over what is commonsensical. Traditional politics and open political and military conflict was what he called “a war of movement.” The implication of his thinking is that significant political change is also cultural change and change in what is considered commonsensical and right by the population.

Gramsci’s thinking can be applied to the oppositions between political parties who compete for elected offices as well as the more radical changes in ruling political groups that Gramsci as a Marxist originally intended. Even if applied to the kind of class opposition that Gramsci was talking about, the implications of his work suggest a more gradualist and democratic form of transition than the Bolshevik and Maoist movements inspired.

How is Gramscian hegemony applicable to the US political scene and useful for political actors who are not necessarily wishing to upend or level social distinctions and status hierarchies? Lakoff’s theories about framing and how framing generates public support for a conservative political agenda can be framed by the concept of hegemony. Lakoff is saying that right wing politicians and consultants have cleverly framed the debates about tax policy and abortion with words that make conservative choices commonsensical. While notion of hegemony suggests that it is not just language that maintains a political and cultural order, media and language are pivotal in maintaining public consent for policies that may not ultimately serve the best interests of the population.

The recent growth of both right and left wing media critics implies that the entire political spectrum agrees that what people see and hear on the media about any subject and in any genre can have a decisive impact on their political outlooks. The concept of hegemony would help explain how both sides of the political spectrum are realizing the cultural nature of political attitudes and their changeability.

Using the notion of hegemony, a political group or party would need to think holistically about how to achieve political change or electoral victory. The question that would be at the top of the strategy list would be:

• What would we need to do to make my candidates/party’s policies and actions commonsensical?
• What would we need to say and do to make our opponents’s positions and candidates seem out of touch/manipulative/contrived?

This is not just about framing or choice of language but would involve choosing political stands and positions that interlock as well as developing a cultural strategy that is effective in establishing the common sense of the party’s political positions.

This type of planful and holistic strategizing is thought to have been the strategy of the right starting in the 1970′s that laid the groundwork for Reagan’s victory and what is thought to be the ongoing political trend towards conservatism in the US. Most commentators trace the beginning of this strategic approach to Richard Viguerie, who utilized the tool of direct mail to organize conservatives and helped found the “Moral Majority” in 1979. It is the right’s dominance in the areas of morality and national defense that has allowed Republicans to win the Presidency and hold control of Congress for most of the last 20 years.

Lakoff’s strategy is the closest to a hegemonic or counter-hegemonic strategy on the liberal left, though as suggested above he seems to feel that the action is in the linguistic frames rather than in the choice of issues and policies. Where he seeks to create a holistic vision or at least a consistent linguistic frame is in his notion that there are two distinct visions in American politics and values, a confrontation between what he calls “strict father” morality on the right and “nurturant parent” morality on the left. I believe that Lakoff’s division does not allow the liberal left to aggressively reclaim some important cultural territory that does not fit the “nurturant parent” model. It is more likely that a hegemonic policy has strains of both types of morality rather than being a pure form of one or the other type.

More on the applicability of the hegemony concept later.

Zoon

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