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1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social
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2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens
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Biju
P R
Author,
Teacher, Blogger
Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Government
Brennen College
Thalassery
Kerala,
India
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
Gramsci Introduced
In recent
decades, interest in the theoretical ideas of the Italian revolutionary
philosopher Antonio Gramsci has steadily grown in India. Gramsci sought to
construct a theory of politics as an autonomous sphere in society, and to this
end he devised a number of original concepts.
A
truthful review of the meaning of Gramscian ideas today has become imperative
for more than one reason. On the one hand it is that one of the reasons for the
demise of Asian revolutions is to be sought in the fact that these revolutions,
by and large, failed to develop a dialectical understanding regarding the role
of society's professional intellectuals.
Hence, a
study of Gramsci's theoretical approach which identifies politics as the job of
intellectuals, appears to be crucial for any evaluation of what went wrong with
Asian society in general and India in particular.
Unfortunately,
the adoption of a Gramscian theoretical approach has been complicated by the
work of the socalled Subaltern School. Interest in Gramscian ideas, in
the wake of the demise of Asian revolutions in the 1980s, was initially
promoted by the Calcutta-based Subaltern School. This school of thought
derived its very name from a term Gramsci employed in his writings to pinpoint
the fact that the autonomous experience of society's oppressed is often skipped
in academic writings on history. Yet while the Subaltern School for a
while adopted certain Gramscian concepts, members of the School have
evolved towards a profoundly anti-Marxian position. Partha Chatterjee, for
instance, whose analytical work on the history of India/Bengal has drawn much
attention, has been criticised heavily for his interpretation of the history of
Indian nationalism. In Chatterjee's interpretation, the notion of (religious)
community reportedly replaces that of class. Though Chatterjee initially had
advocated the application of typically Gramscian concepts to Indian history, -
his more recent evolution in thought threatens to discredit any efforts to
apply Gramscian concepts to political life in the subcontinent.
Distinct View Regarding the 'Superstructure'
The last decade of the 20th Century has heralded a new phase
in the history ofMarxism, - a period in which the ideology of
'marxism-leninism' that guided the first period in the building of socialist
societies (1917-1989) will see a powerful transformation. The Marxism of future
generations, I expect, will be qualitatively richer in content than the Marxism
which previous generations of humanity have known. Further, in opting for and
advocating the enrichment of philosophical Marxism, we need to give importance
to the specific theoretical contribution that was made by the Italian socialist
politician and thinker, Antonio Gramsci. While he was imprisoned under fascism,
after having briefly led the Communist Party of his country as General
Secretary, Gramsci performed a vast work of historical and theoretical
investigation, resulting in a unique conceptualisation of political processes
in class society. While defenders of Gramsci, in decades when orthodoxy held
sway in the international workers' movement, have stressed his loyalty towards
leading theoreticians such as Lenin, - Gramsci's originality in thought was
really large.
First, as
wellknown, Karl Marx taught that all class societies consist of a 'base' and a
'superstructure'. The base consists of production relations, i.e the
economic relations between exploiting and exploited classes, which relations
are determinant 'in the ultimate analysis.' The superstructure that
arises on the basis of these economic relations consists in the state's legal
and political apparatus. This is erected by society's dominant class in order
to ensure its control over the entire social life, and in order to provide
guarantees for the economic exploitation by this class. Antonio Gramsci agreed
with and used the framework of analysis laid down by Karl Marx, but he also
carried Marx's work forward, by putting forward a distinct view regarding the
superstructure of class societies. Here he emphasized the point that there
exists an intermediate sphere between the state on the one hand,
- and the economic base of society on the other. In Gramsci's view, the
analysis of this intermediate sphere is essential, if we are to
understand fully how class domination is maintained.
Now, in
pursuing his analysis of the intermediate sphere, Gramsci employed two
concepts which had been used by Marxist and non-Marxist teachers before him,
but without the precise meaning which he attached to them. These two concepts
are those of 'civil society' and of 'ideological hegemony'. Both concepts can
be traced in classical Marxist literature, but it is nevertheless true that
Gramsci employed them in a novel manner, - precisely in order to highlight the
existence and functioning of an intermediate sphere in class society. Moreover,
this intermediate level of society is not a vague or mystical entity, but is a
sphere which is occupied by concrete human beings, i.e. by society's
professional intellectuals. While Gramsci was aware of the fact that all
intellectuals have a class position, that in one way or another they do form
part and parcel of the economic base of society, he nevertheless insisted that
intellectuals have a superstructural task: namely the building of consent, of
public opinion among the diverse social classes and layers, in favour of
society's dominant class. Hence, Gramsci taught us that (professional)
intellectuals perform an autonomous social function, located between
state repression - and the direct appropriation of labour's fruits by
capitalist enterprises.
Gramsci's Use of the Term
'Civil Society'
Let's now
try to delineate the meaning of each of Gramsci's concepts separately. The term
civil society can be traced to the great 19th Century German philosophers. It
was used both by Marx and by Hegel, from whom Marx borrowed (a part of) his
method of analysis. Hegel had used the term civil society to refer to all pre-state
relations, i.e. to all relations beyond the immediate sphere of the state.
Thus, for Hegel, the term civil society included all economic relations.
Further, Marx too had employed the term civil society in his writings, but
contrary to Hegel had restricted it to refer only to the economic base of
society. It can be very confusing to compare the definitions given by various
philosophers for the same concept. Nevertheless, for a proper understanding of
Gramsci's system of thought it is necessary to know that the definition of the
term civil society has historically evolved, and that Gramsci transformed the
meaning of the term to suit his own theoretical ends (3).
To repeat
for the sake of clarity, what has been briefly stated in the section above:
Antonio Gramsci, contrary to Hegel and Marx, used the term civil society
exclusively to describe and conceptualise the superstructure, and in
particular those institutions of the superstructure which do not (or not
officially) form a part of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state.
They include church institutions; the educational establishments, ranging from
primary schools to the academia; the media such as newspapers, journals and the
radio; trade unions and political parties; and all other intermediate
institutions that play a distinct role in the intellectual and moral life of
society. In short, the term civil society covers all the institutions
located in the intermediate sphere of class society. Gramsci
realised perhaps more sharply than other theoreticians of the workers' movement
in his time, that the 'weight', the influence, of these
Hegemony
False consciousness, in relation to invisible power, is itself a ‘theory of power’ in the Marxist tradition. It is particularly evident in the thinking of Lenin, who ‘argued that the power of ‘bourgeois ideology’ was such that, left to its own devices, the proletariat would only be able to achieve ‘trade union consciousness’, the desire to improve their material conditions but within the capitalist system’ (Heywood 1994: 85).
The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned for much of his life by Mussolini, took these idea further in his Prison Notebooks with his widely influential notions of ‘hegemony’ and the ‘manufacture of consent’ (Gramsci 1971). Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil society from the ‘associational’ view common today, which defines civil society as a ‘sector’ of voluntary organisations and NGOs. Gramsci saw civil society as the public sphere where trade unions and political parties gained concessions from the bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were shaped, where bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media, universities and religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy (Heywood 1994: 100-101).
The political and practical implications of Gramsci’s ideas were far-reaching because he warned of the limited possibilities of direct revolutionary struggle for control of the means of production; this ‘war of attack’ could only succeed with a prior ‘war of position’ in the form of struggle over ideas and beliefs, to create a new hegemony (Gramsci 1971). This idea of a ‘counter-hegemonic’ struggle – advancing alternatives to dominant ideas of what is normal and legitimate – has had broad appeal in social and political movements. It has also contributed to the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a social construct that serves to legitimate social structures (Heywood 1994: 101).
In practical terms, Gramsci’s insights about how power is constituted in the realm of ideas and knowledge – expressed through consent rather than force – have inspired the use of explicit strategies to contest hegemonic norms of legitimacy. Gramsci’s ideas have influenced popular education practices, including the adult literacy and consciousness-raising methods of Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), liberation theology, methods of participatory action research (PAR), and many approaches to popular media, communication and cultural action.
The idea of power as ‘hegemony’ has also influenced debates about civil society. Critics of the way civil society is narrowly conceived in liberal democratic thought – reduced to an ‘associational’ domain in contrast to the state and market – have used Gramsci’s definition to remind us that civil society can also be a public sphere of political struggle and contestation over ideas and norms. The goal of ‘civil society strengthening’ in development policy can thus be pursued either in a neo-liberal sense of building civic institutions to complement (or hold to account) states and markets, or in a Gramscian sense of building civic capacities to think differently, to challenge assumptions and norms, and to articulate new ideas and visions.
Hegemony is for Gramsci a political concept developed to explain… the absence of socialist revolutions in the Western capitalist democracies. The concept of hegemony is used by Gramsci to refer to a condition in process in which a dominant class…does not merely rule a society but leads it through the exercise of ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. Hegemony involves a specific kind of consensus: a social group seeks to present its own particular interests as the general interests of the society as a whole
It is the concept of
the dominant class trying to lead a culture to a means but having it adapted to
the general interests of society as a whole.
Hegemony is never
simply power imposed from above: it is always the result of ‘negotiations’
between dominant and subordinate groups, a process marked by both ‘resistance’
and ‘incorporation’…As Gramsci makes clear, they can never be allowed to
challenge the economic fundamentals of class power…when moral and intellectual
leadership is not enough to secure continued authority, the processes of
hegemony are replaced, temporarily, by the coercive power of the ‘repressive
state apparatus’. (Storey 83)
(Popular culture:
)what Gramsci calls ‘a compromise equilibrium’. The commercially provided
culture of the culture industries is redefined, reshaped and redirected in
strategic acts of selective consumption and productive acts of reading and
articulation, often in ways not intended or even foreseen by its producers
The
word ‘hegemony’ is obtained from the Greek terminology hegemonia meaning
leadership. An extensively used specialized concept in matters of international
relations theory, hegemony is habitually used to imply the predominant position
of the most powerful state in the international arena or the commanding state
in a particular given region
The idea of a ‘third
face of power’, or ‘invisible power’ has its roots
partly, in Marxist thinking about the pervasive power of ideology, values and
beliefs in reproducing class relations and concealing contradictions (Heywood,
1994: 100). Marx recognised that economic exploitation was not the only
driver behind capitalism, and that the system was reinforced by a dominance of
ruling class ideas and values – leading to Engels’s famous concern that ‘false
consciousness’ would keep the working class from recognising and rejecting
their oppression (Heywood, 1994: 85).
False consciousness, in relation to
invisible power, is itself a ‘theory of power’ in the Marxist tradition. It is
particularly evident in the thinking of Lenin, who ‘argued that the power of
‘bourgeois ideology’ was such that, left to its own devices, the proletariat
would only be able to achieve ‘trade union consciousness’, the desire to
improve their material conditions but within the capitalist system’ (Heywood
1994: 85). A famous analogy is made to workers accepting crumbs that fall off
the table (or indeed are handed out to keep them quiet) rather than claiming a
rightful place at the table.
The Italian
communist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned for much of his life by Mussolini, took
these idea further in his Prison Notebooks with his widely influential notions
of ‘hegemony’ and the ‘manufacture of consent’ (Gramsci 1971). Gramsci
saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a
‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which
rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil society from the
‘associational’ view common today, which defines civil society as a ‘sector’ of
voluntary organisations and NGOs. Gramsci saw civil society as the public
sphere where trade unions and political parties gained concessions from the
bourgeois state, and the sphere in which ideas and beliefs were shaped, where
bourgeois ‘hegemony’ was reproduced in cultural life through the media,
universities and religious institutions to ‘manufacture consent’ and legitimacy
(Heywood 1994: 100-101).
The political and
practical implications of Gramsci’s ideas were far-reaching because he warned
of the limited possibilities of direct revolutionary struggle for control of
the means of production; this ‘war of attack’ could only succeed with a prior
‘war of position’ in the form of struggle over ideas and beliefs, to create a
new hegemony (Gramsci 1971). This idea of a ‘counter-hegemonic’ struggle
– advancing alternatives to dominant ideas of what is normal and legitimate –
has had broad appeal in social and political movements. It has also contributed
to the idea that ‘knowledge’ is a social construct that serves to legitimate
social structures (Heywood 1994: 101).
In practical terms,
Gramsci’s insights about how power is constituted in the realm of ideas and
knowledge – expressed through consent rather than force – have inspired the use
of explicit strategies to contest hegemonic norms of legitimacy. Gramsci’s
ideas have influenced popular education practices, including the adult literacy
and consciousness-raising methods of Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970),
liberation theology, methods of participatory action research (PAR), and many
approaches to popular media, communication and cultural action.
The idea of power as
‘hegemony’ has also influenced debates about civil society. Critics of the way
civil society is narrowly conceived in liberal democratic thought – reduced to
an ‘associational’ domain in contrast to the state and market – have used
Gramsci’s definition to remind us that civil society can also be a public
sphere of political struggle and contestation over ideas and norms. The goal of
‘civil society strengthening’ in development policy can thus be pursued either
in a neo-liberal sense of building civic institutions to complement (or hold to
account) states and markets, or in a Gramscian sense of building civic
capacities to think differently, to challenge assumptions and norms, and to
articulate new ideas and visions.
Refernces for futher
reading
Freire, Paulo
(1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
New York, Herder & Herder.
Gramsci, Antonio
(1971) Selections from the Prison
Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, New York, International Publishers.
Heywood,
Andrew (1994) Political
Ideas and Concepts: An Introduction, London, Macmillan.
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