Gramsci’s concept of Hegemony. (UPSC CSE Mains 2016 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
- Gramsci was one of the founding members of the Italian Communist Party. He was porisoned in 1926 for his political activities and spent the rest of his time in the prison and wrote “Prison Notebooks (1971)”
- Hegemony is most frequently used to describe the most powerful state in the international system. But, Gramsci’s use of hegemony is related to his understanding of power, which is broader and richer than realists: a mixture of coercion and consent.
- Gramsci recognized that while this was true in less developed countries like Russia, it was not the case in the Western Europe. Here the system was maintained not merely by coercion, but also through consent. Consent is created and recreated by the hegemony of the ruling elite in society.
- It is hegemony that makes the political, cultural, and moral values of the dominant group to become widely dispersed throughout society and to be accepted by subordinate groups and classes as their own.
- For Gramsci, dominant ideologies are institutionalized in society as they become the “common sense”. Civil society is the network of institutions and practices in society that enjoy some autonomy from the state, and through which groups and individuals organize, represent and express themselves to each other and to the state. These include media, education system, churches, voluntary organizations, etc.
- Superstructure should be emphasized because although the structure of society may be a reflection of social relations of production in the economic base, superstructure (political and cultural practices) determines whether the society is prone to change and transform itself.
- Historic bloc implies a relation between the cultural and the political and the economic and also requires an organic link between people and intellectuals, governors and governed, leaders and led. Historic bloc reflects the way in which leading social forces within a specific national context establish a relationship over contending social forces. Historical bloc is defined as a situation in which various classes and factions of them are related and implicitly one mode of production is dominant
- If the hegemony of the ruling class is a key element in the perpetuation of its dominance, then society can only be transformed if that hegemonic position is successfully challenged. This entails a counter-hegemonic struggle in civil society, in which the prevailing hgegemony is undermined , allowing an alternative historic bloc to be constructed.
- The hegemons like the United Kingdom and the United States used the hegemonic idea of free trade. Their claim that this system benefits everyone has been so widely accepted that it has attained “common sense” status. However, free trade benefits the hegemonic power as it is the most efficient producer in the global economy, and it can produce goods which are competitive in all markets. The peripheral countries do not benefit from freee trade as much as the hegemon does. As Marxists argue free trade prevents the development of the periphery.
- The power of the United States is based on the hegemony of the neo-liberalism.
- Gramsci shifted the focus of Marxist analysis towards superstructural phenomena. Gramsci explored the processes by which consent for a particular social and political system was produced through the operation of hegemony. Hegemony allows the ideas of the ruling elite to become widespread. Cox attempted to internationalize Gramsci’s thought by transferring his concepts such as hegemony to the global context.
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