Their Hegemony and Ours

By Michael LeGore

This article, which focuses on socialist strategy and on Gramsci’s idea of hegemony, was first published by US-based socialist magazine Reform and Revolution. While some of the analysis focuses on US conditions, we feel it is a useful contribution to ongoing debates about how we can build a strong socialist movement. 

How can an individual make change? I have struggled with this question. It has started to become clear that what I am really asking myself is how can I, an individual, make change consciously, through my own activity? This question became most acute to me while participating in the 2020 uprisings for Black lives. As a member of DSA, I took part in the marches, rallies, chants, and autonomous zones, but I could not shake the feeling that I wasn’t consciously doing anything. In the mass movement of people, I was just being carried along with everyone else. Not only that, it seemed like most people were being carried along with everyone else! 

How could we ever win if most people are passive participants? How can people consciously do something so complex as taking power or building a new socialist society? I knew that organizing played some part in it, but it wasn’t until discovering the writings of Antonio Gramsci that I found some answers. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci too grapples with the failures of a previous revolutionary moment, while looking at how conscious action could influence the world and vice versa. 

Gramsci in the revolutionary moment of the 1920s

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian communist active during the first three decades of the 20th century. During this time he was an influential writer and leader within the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and later in founding the Italian Communist Party (PCI). 

As a young revolutionary, Gramsci followed the revolutionary developments that were happening in Europe, and was especially interested in replicating the successes of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. As founder and writer for a socialist paper of the PSI, L’Ordine Nuovo, he became a vocal proponent of dual power. The concept, derived from Lenin, agitates for the creation of workers’ institutions which act as economic and political bases of power from which the working class can challenge the bourgeois state. Writing in 1919, Gramsci argued that the factory councils “must be the organs of proletarian power, replacing the capitalist in all his useful functions of management and administration.” [1] Further, he advocated that those councils form assemblies of delegates to agitate around the demand “All State Power to the Workers’ and Peasants’ committees.” 

Unfortunately, the Turin factory council movement was unsuccessful in spreading its example across the country. Although thousands of workers participated in the takeover — and the broader workers’ movement battled throughout Italy — fascism still managed to consolidate its power during the early ’20s. In the aftermath, the workers’ movement was crushed and its leadership arrested.

““Why does one revolutionary situation result in victory of the proletariat where another one fails?””

Gramsci, as leader of the PCI, was included in these political arrests. First jailed in 1926, he was subsequently tried by Mousollini’s fascist government and spent the remainder of his life in prison. Some of his most interesting work, famously compiled posthumously in his Prison Notebooks, was completed after he was arrested and removed from active struggle. During his incarceration, he was determined not to allow his spirit to be crushed: instead, he dedicated himself to methodical study and reflection on the failures of the socialist movement to take power in Europe. Why does one revolutionary situation result in victory of the proletariat where another one fails? 

As we enter a period of rising protests, unrest, and upheaval — in other words, a revolutionary situation — understanding the answers to this question is crucial to the socialist movement.

Ingredients for revolution

What factors allow for a socialist transformation of society? Lenin identifies that a revolutionary situation exists when three conditions are met:

“(1) when it is impossible for the ruling classes to maintain their rule without any change; when there is a crisis, in one form or another, among the ‘upper classes’, a crisis in the policy of the ruling class, leading to a fissure through which the discontent and indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth. For a revolution to take place, it is usually insufficient for ‘the lower classes not to want’ to live in the old way; it is also necessary that “the upper classes should be unable” to live in the old way; (2) when the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual; (3) when, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses, who uncomplainingly allow themselves to be robbed in ‘peace time’, but, in turbulent times, are drawn both by all the circumstances of the crisis and by the ‘upper classes’ themselves [Lenin’s emphasis] into independent historical action.”[2]

Lenin goes on to say that these conditions are objective and not subject to will. That is to say, they are not under the conscious control of any person or group. Instead, they develop through the course of history: but if that is so, where does conscious action fit into history? 

Italy fulfilled all these conditions in the early 1920s. In fact, the state was toppled, but in the entirely wrong direction, falling to the fascists. If the objective conditions for revolution were there, why did a socialist revolution not materialize? 

In Prison Notebooks, Gramsci grapples with this failure of Western European socialists to successfully take power during the revolutionary upheavals triggered by WWI and the fall of Italy to the fascists. He concluded that one of the decisive elements was their civil society: 

“In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks.” [3]

Western states had a robust set of social institutions that were able to support capitalist society. Even during times of economic crisis and a weakened base brought about by the destruction of the war, these institutions allowed states to weather the storm. Lenin reached a similar conclusion: 

“[It is] not every revolutionary situation that gives rise to a revolution; revolution arises only out of a situation in which the above-mentioned objective changes are accompanied by a subjective change, namely, the ability of the revolutionary class to take revolutionary mass action strong enough to break the old government, which never, not even in a period of crisis, ‘falls’, if it is not toppled over.” [4]

These subjective elements are the areas changeable through conscious action — where we wage class struggle, where we as socialists can actively change things. 

Organic intellectuals

Gramsci explores these forces and their interplay with material reality. As a materialist, Gramsci believed that ideas do not emerge in a vacuum, saying: 

“Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously ‘born’ in each individual brain: they have had a centre of formation, of irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion.” [5]

Gramsci studied intellectuals, who can be understood as the subset of a society that does intellectual labor. While a traditional definition of intellectuals might include only clergy, academics, and other specialized, educated groups, Gramsci believed that all people are capable of being intellectuals and preferred a broader definition. Gramsci formulates a concept of organic intellectuals distinct from traditional intellectuals, in that they arise out of a particular class in order to articulate the interests of that class.

For the capitalist class, organic intellectuals include entrepreneurs and financiers. These intellectuals emerge initially to handle the day-to-day running of capitalist firms and, in the pursuit of more favorable conditions for their enterprise, use their dominant position over production to create or win over civil institutions. And the capitalist intellectual may also help to fill in the general needs of the capitalist state:

“If not all entrepreneurs, at least an élite amongst them must have the capacity to be an organiser of society in general, including all its complex organism of services, right up to the state organism, because of the need to create the conditions most favourable to the expansion of their own class” [6]

““This control over civic and cultural life allows the bourgeoisie to inculcate the ideas and values of their class into society at large.””

These intellectuals create the bourgeois civil institutions that help reinforce and lead capitalist society. They also use their dominant position over production to win over the hegemonic institutions of previous ruling classes: for example, in some previously monarchistic societies, the nobility and royalty became the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie also use their control over surplus to win over traditional intellectuals by providing funding and patronage to religious and academic institutions. This control over civic and cultural life allows the bourgeoisie to inculcate the ideas and values of their class into society at large.

Today we see this through capitalists’ ownership over all of our major news and entertainment media, most recently exemplified in Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. This purchase, while being unprofitable in the most direct sense, provides Musk unprecedented control over popular narratives. This, in turn, helps to win over certain layers of society to the conservative project, a factor that played a role in Trump’s victory. The control over ideology, combined with the judicious use of force, allows Elon Musk and the entire capitalist class to uphold their rule. Gramsci calls this “hegemony.” 

Hegemony

Hegemony is achieved when the ruling class can exercise control over the ruled without the use of bare force. Instead, hegemony seeks tacit acquiescence from the ruled classes, both ideologically and economically, by making their rule seem natural, inevitable, and in the best interests of the whole society. Gramsci elaborates on Marx’s maxim: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the [dominant] ideas,” drawing out how those ideas become dominant through their control over production. This occurs not in the factories, but also in the realm of cultural production through direct bourgeois ownership of newspapers, media, and TV, as well as control over government institutions such as schools. It further establishes indirect control over ideas by winning support from religious and other institutions of culture. However, those ideas are not merely a form of false consciousness; they are reinforced by some material benefits which the ruled receive for their consent:

“Hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed—in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind. But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential; for though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity.” [7]

So while the ruling class must compromise with the dominated classes, this compromise has limits: the bourgeoisie can only offer what portion of economic benefits still allows them to make a profit, the profit which is the basis for their position as the hegemonic class. In other words, to maintain hegemony, the ruling class must act not only as leaders of their own class for their narrow economic class interest, but also take on the role of leaders of the entire nation. In this sense, their hegemony is predicated upon their ability to continue to be a progressive and developmental force within society.

In this lies a possible way forward for workers. Workers must challenge the hegemony of the ruling class, creating a counter-hegemony where all oppressed classes believe that workers’ rule and a socialist state are how they can best resolve their grievances with the current society. The capitalist’s hegemony flows from their control of production. Workers cannot achieve control over production until conquering state power, therefore workers must follow a different path to achieve counter-hegemony. To do so, workers must evolve beyond fighting for individual and class economic self interest. To do this we will need to agitate among all oppressed classes and build our own institutions to articulate our vision for all exploited classes, winning leadership over a bloc that can take state power. For the Bolsheviks this counter-hegemonic vision was put most succinctly with their slogan of “peace, land, and bread,” with land being promised to the peasants to bring them into coalition with the proletariat.

A working class hegemony would take inspiration from some elements of the bourgeoisie’s; but where the ruling class can astroturf their movements, we must painstakingly plant seeds, then water and nurture them to grow terrain that is in our favor. While we do not fight on fair ground, we have the advantage in that we can offer much more to all oppressed classes than the bourgeoisie can. While the bourgeoisie are constrained by profit and can only offer scraps, socialists fight for a society whose production is decided by need. We can offer stability, dignity, and a good life for all. We must create counter-hegemonic institutions to express our vision for a socialist world. 

The problem of consciousness

The subjective factors of revolution (what we do) are important to consider as class-conscious members of the working class, but for them to be subjective factors they must be things we consciously do. Without consciousness, we aren’t actually operating in the subjective realm, we’re just being carried along for the ride. For workers, to be conscious is to be aware of the necessity of socialism in order to realize the interests of the working class and all oppressed people, and that it is the working class that will get us there. Gramsci rejected vulgar Marxist conceptions of history that relied only on automatic processes; he believed that conscious will is a decisive factor between one revolutionary situation and the next: 

“Only the man who wills something strongly can identify the elements which are necessary to the realisation of his will. […] Certainly a conception of the world is implicit in every prediction, and therefore whether the latter is a random series of arbitrary notions or a rigorous and coherent vision is not without its importance; but it precisely acquires that importance in the living brain of the individual who makes the prediction, and who by the strength of his will makes it come true…” [8]

Individuals who are conscious political actors make political predictions and, through participation in the historical process, they become capable of bringing those predictions to fruition. However, individuals — that is to say those not attached to a conscious mass movement — are unable to change society as a whole. To do that, we need to expand the subjective factor: we need to transcend from our individual consciousnesses into a collective consciousness that is able to make decisions, plan ahead, learn from mistakes, and set for itself goals and tasks. 

This collective consciousness is what Gramsci calls a Collective Will, or “will as operative awareness of historical necessity, as protagonist of a real and effective historical drama.”[9] A collective will is how a mass becomes conscious, and only by being conscious can a mass take an active role in accelerating social change above and beyond what already might have happened spontaneously. However, there are hints of collective will in every spontaneous act, and we must make use of each of them. Gramsci asks:

“Can modern theory [Marxism] be in opposition to the ‘spontaneous’ feelings of the masses? (‘Spontaneous’ in the sense that they are not the result of any systematic educational activity on the part of an already conscious leading group, but have been formed through everyday experience illuminated by ‘common sense’) […] It cannot be in opposition to them. Between the two there is a ‘quantitative’ difference of degree, not one of quality. […] Neglecting, or worse still despising, so-called ‘spontaneous’ movements, i.e. failing to give them a conscious leadership or to raise them to a higher plane by inserting them into politics, may often have extremely serious consequences.”[10]

““The party gives a democratic structure to a mass, and gives it the ability to set tasks for itself.””

So we must not shy away from spontaneous resistance of the masses, but see that it is “educated, directed, purged of extraneous contaminations” and incorporated into conscious struggle. How can we organize this collective will? On this Gramsci writes:

“It can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognised and has to some extent asserted itself in action, and begins to take concrete form. History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party—the first cell in which there come together germs of a collective will tending to become universal and total.”[11]

To him the political party is the ideal vehicle for forming a collective will. The party gives a democratic structure to a mass, and gives it the ability to set tasks for itself. It is formed primarily through a long process of coalescence: 

“It is necessary to study precisely how permanent collective wills are formed, and how such wills set themselves concrete short-term and long-term ends—i.e. a line of collective action. [… A collective will in a party is formed through] an endless quantity of books, pamphlets, review and newspaper articles, conversations and oral debates repeated countless times, and which in their gigantic aggregation represent this long labour which gives birth to a collective will with a certain degree of homogeneity—with the degree necessary and sufficient to achieve an action which is co-ordinated and simultaneous in the time and the geographical space in which the historical event takes place.”[12]

The party is a mode of organization that allows its members to find common cause in order to affect political change on society. The party is the memory of the working class, without which we will continue to make the same mistakes. The party should assimilate and come to embody the needs and ideas of the working class. If organic intellectuals are those responsible for the creation and dissemination of ideas, then the party is the central vehicle by which those organic intellectuals are recruited, trained, and organized:

“That all members of a political party should be regarded as intellectuals is an affirmation that can easily lend itself to mockery and caricature. But if one thinks about it nothing could be more exact. [The function of the party] is directive and organisational, i.e. intellectual.” [13]

The party, rather than the trade unions or craft societies, is where workers can come to form a consciousness beyond economic-corporate consciousness, ie. beyond their own personal or narrow class interests, and become aware of the needs of all classes and the role workers have to play as leaders of the socialist movement. The party is where workers can express wider political demands and build a counter-hegemonic coalition capable of winning power.

Michael LeGore is a member of Seattle DSA and helped lead Seattle DSA's 100k campaign. He is also a member of DSA's Reform & Revolution caucus.

Notes

1. Gramsci, A. (1988) Selections from Political Writings 1910–1920. Edited by Q. Hoare. Translated by J. Mathews. London: Lawrence and Wishart, p. 66.

2. Lenin, V. (1915) “The Collapse of the Second International.” Originally published in Kommunist, No 1-No 2, 1915, Section II. 

3. Gramsci, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith. International Publishers/ London: Lawrence and Wishart, p. 238.

4. Lenin, 1915, Section II.

5. Gramsci, 1971, “The Intellectuals,” p. 192.

6. Gramsci, 1971, p. 3-23. 

7. Gramsci, 1971, p. 161

8. Gramsci, 1971, p. 171. 

9. Gramsci, 1971, p. 130.

10. Gramsci, 1971, p. 199

11. Gramsci, 1971, p. 129

12. Gramsci, 1971, p. 130

13. Gramsci, 1971, p. 16.