Hegemony and Coercion

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Hegemony
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Hegemony
Studies in Consensus and Coercion
Edited by
Richard Howson
and Kylie Smith
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hegemony : studies in consensus and coercion / edited by Richard Howson and
Kylie Smith.
p. cm.—(Routledge studies in social and political thought ; 56)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-415-95544-7
1. Hegemony 2. Hegemony—Pacific Area. I. Howson, Richard. II. Smith, Kylie.
JZ1312.H44 2008
327.101—dc22
2007046794
ISBN 0-203-92718-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-95544-0 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-92718-4 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-95544-7 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-92718-2 (ebk)
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion 1

RICHARD HOWSON AND KYLIE SMITH
2 Hegemony in the Preprison Context 16

RICHARD HOWSON
3 Hegemony: Political and Linguistic Sources for Gramsci’s

Concept of Hegemony 33
DEREK BOOTHMAN
4 Hegemony and the Elaboration of the Process of Subalternity 51

HIROSHI MATSUDA AND KOICHI OHARA
5 Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 63

ALASTAIR DAVIDSON
6 Hegemony and Power in Gramsci 80

BENEDETTO FONTANA
7 Hegemony, Subalternity, and Subjectivity in Early

Industrial Sydney 107
KYLIE SMITH
8 Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour 125

ANDREW WELLS
viii Contents
9 Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial
Papua New Guinea 142
CHARLES HAWKSLEY
10 The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam 159

SUSAN ENGEL
11 Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism:

The Case of West Bengal, India. 184

RUCHIRA GANGULY-SCRASE AND TIMOTHY J. SCRASE
12 Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc:

The Australian Experience 201
DAMIEN CAHILL
13 Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War 218

YOKO HARADA
Contributors 237
Index 241
Foreword
The concept of hegemony is ubiquitous in critical accounts of the impact

of neoliberalism and globalisation on the Asia-Pacific region. In popular
usage, it is a catch-all term that describes the self-evident domination by
the West and/or the United States of economic, social, cultural, and politi-
cal life within the region. While many scholars have been drawn to the
analytic potential of the concept of hegemony in their analyses of social
and political transformation processes throughout Asia and the Pacific,
few have situated their work within a critical understanding of the term’s
theoretical origins. As a consequence, the term hegemony simply becomes
shorthand for ‘domination,’ and the important insights that it offers to
the study of power are lost. This volume breaks from that approach and
re-engages with the theoretical potential of Antonio Gramsci’s intellectual
legacy. Taking the concept of subalternity as its point of departure, the
authors demonstrate the complex interplay between coercion and consen-
sus in the operation of power. Attention to these processes reveals that
hegemony is both a process that occurs before power is institutionalized
as well as an outcome of that process of institutionalization. It is only by
recognizing this complexity that the nexus between power and legitimacy
in the production of authority can be properly understood.
Each of the chapters in this volume engages directly with this complex
process, either through theoretical studies of a range of concepts and ideas
in Gramsci’s writings, or through detailed empirical case studies that apply
these concepts to examples from the Asia-Pacific. The chapters assembled
here emerged out of two workshops organised by the very successful Hege-
mony Research Group at the University of Wollongong in Australia. The
fi rst workshop, titled “Hegemony: Explorations into Consensus, Coercion
and Culture,” was held from 14–15 February 2005 and included interna-
tional invited keynote speakers Joseph Buttigieg, Derek Boothman, and
Koichi Ohara. The second workshop, titled “Class: History, Formations
and Conceptualisations,” was held from 3–4 March 2006 and included
international invited keynote speaker Leslie Sklair. These workshops were
supported by the faculty of arts at the University of Wollongong and the
Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS),
x Foreword
an Australian Research Council Key Centre for Teaching and Research
based at the Universities of Wollongong and Newcastle in Australia. CAP-
STRANS is a research centre devoted to the study of Asia-Pacific social
transformation processes triggered by national and international develop-
ment policies and their effects at local, regional, and transnational levels.
The Hegemony Research Group’s interest in exploring the ways in which
the processes of hegemony are manifest in the Asia-Pacific emerged out of
long-standing collaborations with CAPSTRANS, and many of the authors
included in this collection are staff or postgraduate student affiliates of our
Centre.
Australia is fast developing an international reputation as a key site
for a resurgent interest in the work of Antonio Gramsci. The Hegemony
Research Group was established in 2005 to explore the life and work of
Gramsci by giving particular emphasis to his theory of hegemony. In 2007,
members of the group formally sponsored the formation of the Gramsci
Society (Asia-Pacific), which is part of the International Gramsci Society
and is based at the University of Wollongong. As the chapters in this vol-
ume clearly attest, the contemporary study of Gramsci’s writings offers a
rich and creative field of scholarly enterprise. Significantly, young scholars
are at the forefront of this endeavour. Their work is both innovative and
compelling and provides us with sorely needed analytical tools to under-
stand the processes of social, economic, and political change taking place
in Asia and the Pacific today.
Lenore Lyons, PhD

Director, CAPSTRANS
University of Wollongong
October 2007
Acknowledgments
Much of the research and writing for this volume was carried out as part of
the inaugural Hegemony Research Group Workshop held at the University
of Wollongong in February 2005.
We would like to warmly thank all contributors for their enthusiasm,
energy, and knowledge.
In addition, we would like to thank Andrew Wells for his continuing
support and knowledge of all things Gramscian; Alastair Davidson for his
encouragement and always insightful comments; and Benedetto Fontana
and Derek Boothman for their knowledge and generous collegiality when
answers to complex questions were required.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the work and memory of Antonio
Gramsci.
1 Hegemony and the Operation of
Consensus and Coercion
Richard Howson and Kylie Smith
HEGEMONY AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC
This volume responds to the recent explosion of interest and research on

hegemony in the social, economic, and political sciences. However, its
approach to hegemony differs from that which is evident in much of the
literature. First, it is an approach that recognises the ‘complex’ nature of
hegemony at both the theoretical and empirical levels. Second, it applies
this complexity to the Asia-Pacific region because it, more than any other
region in the world, has and continues to experience momentous changes at
the social, economic, and political levels. However, while the operation of
hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region has attracted investigation and discus-
sion, most of this work presents a picture of regional economic, social, and
political operations as becoming ossified to Occidental or, more specifi-
cally, US domination within a zero-sum game. This obfuscates the many
sociohistorical antagonisms within the hegemonic process. This volume
will present theory illustrated by empirical case studies that highlight these
antagonisms to show that hegemony is never simply domination but a far
more complex operation of coercion and consensus.
Today, the Asia-Pacific represents the most significant region in terms
of future global social, economic, and political development. As Scalapino
(2005, 231–240) argues, the twenty-fi rst century will be one of momentous
change, both within the nations of the Asia-Pacific and in their interna-
tional relations. This is exemplified in the significant economic successes of
some nations juxtaposed with the abject failure of others. In addition, the
region continues to be drastically altered by the combined forces of social,
economic, and political instability, as well as terrorism and dictatorships.
These factors are important in themselves but become even more so when
operating in a region that contains world powerhouses of people such as
China and India that contain no less than one-third of the world’s popula-
tion—as well as powerhouses of social, economic, and political relations of
force such as Japan, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Malaysia. The region
is also home to some of the poorest and most oppressed nations, includ-
ing Papua New Guinea, India, and Vietnam. Thus, the Asia-Pacific region
2 Richard Howson and Kylie Smith
becomes one of great significance for those concerned with exploring the
space between domination and aspiration, regression and progression or,
in other words, the development and complex operation of hegemony.
However, there is often great confusion about what constitutes the Asia-
Pacific region (Connors, Davison and Dorsch 2004) and even some debate
about whether the Asia-Pacific constitutes a region at all, given its diffuse
geography, ethnicities, and cultures, as well as its social, economic, and
political inequities. While this debate has some merit, it is this fluidity and
dynamism that is precisely the characteristic or thematic that binds the Asia-
Pacific into a region for the purposes of this volume and, more importantly,
makes the Asia-Pacific an important focus for the study of hegemony. As
the chapters that follow will show, the nations of India, China, and then
Japan to the northeast; the ASEAN nations of Vietnam, Indonesia, and
Malaysia; and Papua New Guinea and Australia all represent sociohistori-
cally important case studies that shed new light on the Asia-Pacific as well
as on the constantly evolving global ‘puzzle.’
KEY CONCEPTS IN THE THEORY OF HEGEMONY
The following section briefly presents and describes the set and subsets
of key concepts that will be drawn from the theory of hegemony that, in
turn, will form the basis for the analyses in the later theoretical and empiri-
cal chapters. In the fi rst instance, a set of four key concepts is abstracted,
including: subalternity, common sense, power and ethico-political. There
is no deliberate intent to project the set of framing concepts and the sub-
sets of concepts as existing and operating autonomously, either within the
theory of hegemony or, indeed, in this volume. Rather, Figure 1.1 presents
a conceptual map showing some of the key concepts and their intercon-
nections—that is, the lines of relationships that connect them within the
theory of hegemony.
Presentation of these concepts as distinct serves purely analytical pur-
poses. However, it is only by abstracting each concept from the theory
of hegemony that we are able to develop a framework that: (a) shows the
nature and operation of each concept, (b) shows the relationship these con-
cepts have with each other as well as the other related concepts, and most
importantly, (c) enables their application to empirical analysis and, through
this, the explication of the complexity of hegemony.
Using Figure 1.1, the point of departure for our study of hegemony
is not the concepts of power and domination but, rather, the concept of
subalternity, which for Gramsci represented a way of expressing a ‘lack’
of ‘political autonomy’ (1975, Q25§4). In other words, subaltern social
groups, which may represent slaves, peasants, religious groups, women,
different races, and the proletariat (Gramsci 1975, Q25§1, 4, 5 and 6), are
already subordinate because their experience is the negation, redefi nition,
Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion 3
Disunity intellectuals
SUBALTERNITY COMMON SENSE
lack good sense
integral State
Coercion historical bloc
consensus
POWER
domination/leadership ETHICO-POLITICAL
unstable equilibria
Figure 1.1. A conceptual frame.
and then incorporation of their needs and desires into the activities and
interests promoted by the elites. Thus, hegemony is not an immediately
engaging set of practices and beliefs. It is never imposed aprioristically but
is always developed within the social, economic, and political relations of a
particular situation. Therefore, its study cannot begin with, and then focus
only on, power but rather with the relationship between powerlessness and
power. So to really grasp the theoretical and empirical importance of sub-
alternity to hegemony, requires analytic engagement with the concept of
Integral State.
As a broad structure, the Integral State is the dialectical synthesis of
both political society and civil society and represents hegemony as never
simply the independent operations of political power. So, if in fact subal-
ternity expresses a lack of political autonomy—that is, the ability to use
politics to promote one’s own interests—then the primary sphere of exis-
tence and operation for subaltern groups is civil society (Gramsci 1971,
52). Within civil society there is no single subaltern group into which all
subaltern groups are naturally subsumed, even though there is a common
equivalence about what constitutes subalternity that is, precisely, a discon-
nection from or lack of political autonomy. This ‘lack,’ as Gramsci (1975,
Q25§4) refers to it, ensures that subalternity is locked to civil society and,
more importantly, that civil society is marked by antagonisms and disunity,
whether they are organized around ‘party, trade union [or some other] cul-
tural association’ (Gramsci 1975, Q25§4). Further, subalternity will remain
a disunited antagonism attached to these various forms of organization
until they become unified, and this unification cannot occur and become
power until they become a ‘State’ (Gramsci 1975, Q25§5).
Within the process of constructing hegemony, there is an immediate and
important nexus between subalternity and common sense. This nexus is
central to explaining how lack of political autonomy remains a reality for
subaltern groups, but more importantly, how this lack is based on the dis-
unity that prevails in civil society that, in turn, enables a group or set of
interests to dominate the Integral State. Gramsci (1971, 199, 326) makes
clear that common sense is ‘the traditional popular conception of the world’
and cannot constitute an ‘intellectual order’ because it cannot produce a

‘unity within an individual consciousness, let alone collective conscious-
ness.’ In other words, common sense is what defi nes and describes the
everyday life and beliefs of a particular subaltern social group. Common
sense demands ‘conformism’ to the group’s particular traditional practices
and beliefs (Gramsci 1971, 324), which in turn leads to a fragmentation of
civil society along the various and often competing lines of common sense
ascribed to by subaltern groups. Common sense is antithetical to ‘critical
elaboration’ because only critique enables coherency and, ultimately, unity
(Gramsci 1971, 324). The moment of critique emerges from consciousness
of oneself. But rather than focusing this consciousness on one’s own or
group’s immediate interests, understood as ‘corporativism’ (Gramsci 1971,
255–256), critique must bring about consciousness that is knowledge of the
broad subaltern experience in both its social and historical context; that is,
critique uses the past to inform the future but is always mediated by the
present.
While Gramsci was critical of common sense because on its own it was
incapable of producing collective action, he did not completely dismiss
its efficacy. In fact, throughout his preprison writings, which culminated
in the unfi nished 1971 essay ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question,’
there is the development of a strategy for hegemony that gives recognition
to common sense but that also takes seriously its reconfiguration and
elaboration through practical ideas such as ‘hegemony of the proletariat,’
which at the time were striking and radical (Gramsci 1971, 339–343). This
emphasis was not lost in the Prison Notebooks either, and here Gramsci
gave a new complexity to hegemony. In other words, hegemony as the
highest synthesis1 was marked by an Integral State that was itself based on
a unified civil society and where political lack was minimised. To achieve
this required an understanding of how subaltern social groups, in all their
diversity, think and act through their own common sense. Through this
knowledge, Gramsci argued that a subaltern group can become a leading
group by developing its own practices and interests in such a way as to
incorporate the various other expressions of common sense to produce a
new ‘good sense.’ In other words, subalternity as an identity and practice
has inherently the potential to critical elaboration and, therefore, the
progression from common sense to good sense, from disunity to unity, and
from hegemony marked in the fi nal analysis by dogma and coercion to
hegemony marked in the fi nal analysis by openness and consensus.
The key mediator in this process is the ‘organic intellectual’ (Gramsci
1971, 6), whose task it is to produce progressive self-knowledge through
education (Gramsci 1971, 238–239). Organic intellectuals in this sense are
differentiated from ‘traditional intellectuals’ in that ‘organic’ signifies the
mass-intellectual nexus, so that the ‘ideological’ function of traditional
intellectuals is exposed. Organic intellectuals are informed by, and inform-
ing of, the mass, whereas traditional intellectuals serve to disarticulate the
mass from power, from hegemony (Gramsci 1971, 12–14). The movement
from common sense to good sense, or the development of a new hegemony,
involves the organic intellectual in the reconfiguration of power so that it
organically can only develop through a ‘war of position’ (Gramsci 1971,
229–239). However, explicating the operation of power through the theory
of hegemony and applying it to social, economic, and political reality is not
so easy. In fact, it is one of the most difficult concepts to explain because
it is precisely power that must be reconfigured through a war of position
to produce hegemony—but the reconfiguration does not always happen in
the same way or with the same outcomes. Nevertheless, it is still referred
to as hegemony. 2
In much of the secondary literature that employs or analyses the concept
of hegemony, power is conceptualized and presented as an asymmetrical
politico-economic operation that leads ineluctably to domination. Further,
the State is confi ned to political society and its task is to impose the inter-
ests of the capitalist class over civil society, often silently and with stealth.
The crucial consequence of this view of power is that the resultant critique
emphasises the coercive nature of the State, usually through close and criti-
cal analysis of the political economy inherent in a particular situation. In
other words, economics is seen to give form to political society so that
the nature of the critique of power is constrained to a ‘politico-economic’
operation (Gramsci 1971, 16). However, to assume that this analysis of
power yields a complete picture of hegemony is wrong. Crucially, it fails to
recognise the vast resources that must be mobilised in civil society—such
as the media, education, the family, religion, law, communities, and mar-
kets—to ensure that the political economy can be and is maintained. Thus,
to engage in a complex understanding of power operationalised in hege-
mony, there must also be a focus on resistance, and to see how this oper-
ates we must elaborate the nexus of subalternity and common sense to now
include power.
In the theory of hegemony, when Gramsci speaks of the State acting as
domination, the State has incorporated certain corporatist interests and
exercises its power to maintain these interests by keeping the subaltern
social groups fragmented and passive within civil society. This represents a
situation in which the defi nition and expansion of hegemony is enabled by
the State’s ability to fragment the operations of civil society and therefore
its influence on political society. In the chapters that follow, it will be shown
that this disconnection operates around certain ‘hegemonic principles’
(Howson 2006, 23) that are central to the defi nition and expansion of the
hegemony. 3 Further, when hegemony dogmatically upholds and protects
its hegemonic principles, it is at this moment that the hegemony closes
down and becomes ossified. It is also at this moment that it must resort to
coercion rather than consensus. The consequence is that hegemony must
now manage a diminishing legitimacy about its hegemonic principles that
has become a ‘crisis of authority’ (Gramsci 1971, 210).
By emphasising crisis, Gramsci shows that at the centre of hegemony is

power operating with legitimacy and that, in fact, this authority is ‘dying’
(Gramsci 1971, 276). In other words, the authority of the State to negate,
redefi ne, and then incorporate the needs and desires of subaltern groups
into the activities and interests of the leading social group is no longer
based on progressive but regressive forces. As a consequence, hegemony is
marked by a State that is unable to lead through moral and intellectually
based strategies of consensus but can only dominate and therefore ‘exercise
coercive force alone’ (Gramsci 1971, 276). This gives rise to a ‘dominative
hegemony’ (Howson 2006); that is, when authority has lost legitimacy and
can only operate as power, hegemony becomes regressive because the State
must engage a strategy of coercion to restore its legitimacy and, thereby, its
authority. This begins with the mobilization of the traditional intellectuals
(Gramsci 1971, 6). The immediate task is to reinstate the disunity of civil
society by undermining the authority of the organic intellectuals and the
development of a comprehensive social and historical critique of author-
ity—in other words, to undermine the development of a ‘war of position’
into various ineffective ‘war of movements.’
The interpretations of hegemony as domination tend to equate State
power with authority and ignore the importance of legitimacy. In func-
tional terms, power is presented as disconnected from civil society and the
operation of legitimacy. If hegemony was to be left within this framework,
all following analyses would lack the complexity needed to recognize the
struggles over legitimacy in which the progressive and empowering moments
and efforts are always a central part. In effect, hegemony would emphasise
power but de-emphasise legitimacy. The consequence is that analyses lose
sight of hegemony as ‘unstable equilibria’ (Gramsci 1971, 182); that is, they
lose sight of the historical and social nature of hegemony.
To begin to recognise the complexity of the theory of hegemony is to
begin to recognise inter alia the hegemonic nexus between power and
legitimacy in the production of authority. This exposes the reality that
authority expressed as domination can never exist as legitimate—that is,
with full consensus. Subalternity is evidence of this impossibility. In fact,
hegemonic authority exercised as domination must impose coercion at
some level of intensity and focus so as to ensure the dominant interests
are protected. Gramsci (1971) argues that hegemony always exists between
the politico-economic level of reality—that is, where corporativism creates
disunity of interests, enabling domination to act as the unifying force—
and the ethico-political, that is, where the plurality of interests operate
through moral and intellectual hegemonic logic as a unstable equilibria and
leadership acts as the unifying force.
The concept of ethico-political is central to Gramsci’s project to give the
philosophy of praxis, or Marxism, a ‘real’ philosophy, and the central philos-
opher in this project is Benedetto Croce. In fact, ethico-political represents a
Crocean concept that Gramsci brings to the theory of hegemony and, in so
doing, it becomes both ‘fundamental to the notion of hegemony and . . . . the

historical bloc’ (Boothman 1995, 328) but also its organic and progressive
objective (Finocchiarro 1988, 23). However, a crucial feature of ethico-polit-
ical as a hegemonic expression is that its achievement is always grounded in
a dialectical methodology. For Gramsci, the dialectic method follows prima
facie Georg Hegel’s thesis/antithesis/synthesis model, but more importantly,
underlying Gramsci’s Hegelianism is a complex engagement with Croce’s
own dialectic method. Gramsci’s engagement with Croce is complex because
it is as much a critique of Croce as an endorsement in so far as it critiques
Croce’s interpretation of Marxism as lacking any real philosophy and sim-
ply representing the expression of socio-political action while accepting the
absolute historicist nature of Croce’s (1951, 18–19) philosophy (Finnochiaro
1988, 18–19). But Gramsci questions the historicist dialectical methodology
Croce puts forward because as a process it involves the historical evolution
of four essentially distinct forms of practice and beliefs that are described
by Finnochiarro (1988, 16) as: expressive cognitive acts (identified with art),
ratiocinative cognitive acts (identified with philosophy), general volitional
acts (identified with economic practice), and moral volitional acts (identified
with moral action). To better grasp Gramsci’s critique of Croce’s dialectic in
the context of its application to the theory of hegemony it is useful to exam-
ine Croce’s (1946) text Politics and Morals in which he draws a distinction
between ‘moralistic history’ and ‘moral history,’ where the latter is referred
to as ‘ethico-political history.’
For Croce, ‘[t]he moralist, actually, is a practical corrector or censor who
aims at maintaining a strong and inflexible moral ideal, and judges human
matters from the exclusive point of the perfectio, examining the correctness
of single actions and the greater or lesser goodness of individuals.’ Moral-
istic history, on the other hand, operates as the ‘negative’ expression of lib-
erty because actions are always judged on the basis of nonadherence to, or
infringement of, rules. The moralist always views the epistemological and
ontological aspects of history through the prism of the priority of ‘legality’.
Moralistic history ineluctably must exclude what falls outside of legality.
On the other hand, moral or ethico-political history presents the investiga-
tion of the past in all its relations. ‘[It] pays less attention to the perfectio
. . . . than [it] does to the quality of the actions performed and to the mean-
ing which they acquire in historical development’ (Croce 1946, 69). Croce
goes on to argue that ethico-political history must take as its ‘object’ not
just the ‘State, the government of the State and the expansion of the State,’
but also all that which is external to the State regardless of its relation to the
State. So to engage in an ethico-political history one must always include
‘religious institutions and revolutionary sects, sentiments, customs, fancies
and myths that are practical in tendency and content’ (Croce 1946,73).
In this context, the ethico-political history of State life is always a field of
particular histories that ‘taken by themselves . . . . follow their own laws.’
However, regardless of their differential ‘particularisation,’ they are effec-
tively unintelligible outside of an ethico-political history.

It is in this sense that ethico-political history assumes a dialectic or ‘inte-
gral’ nature by subsuming into it all the particular or distinct histories.
In other words, ‘The activities described by them are presuppositions of
ethico-political history, instruments which it uses for its own purpose and
subject matter which it forms and reforms’ (Croce 1946, 74). In setting out
the basis of ethico-political history, Croce revises the liberalist notion of
liberty in a way that presents a more philosophically modest while histori-
cally concrete appreciation (Bellamy 2000, 845–861). Further, in Croce’s
revisionism, there is a defi nite intention to remove the authoritarianism
inherent in the liberalist notion of liberty through the recognition of dis-
tinct histories, but this is only partial because, ultimately, they converge
within ethico-political history. However, it may be argued that with the
attempt to remove authoritarianism, Croce replaced it with a ‘cumbersome’
elitism. Cumbersome because, while there is a defi nite attempt to recog-
nise, for example, the legitimacy of the panoply of institutions as impera-
tive to ethico-political history and the ‘reciprocal’ nature of ‘force,’ it is
always moral history understood to operate over and above the particular
(histories) that controls and determines their legitimate nature. Even more
problematic in Croce’s ethico-political history is the failure to explain how
the ethico-political develops. Croce simply posits it is both universal and
particular or social and individual. In other words, he lacks a theory of
power and hegemony.
It should not come as a surprise that Croce would write ‘power’ out of
his discussion of ethico-political history. This is particularly so if we anal-
yse his approach to the operation of ‘force.’ In Politics and Morals, Croce
(1946, 14–15) argues that ‘force’ cannot be conceived of as distributed in
such a way as to enable only a few to possess it and, as a result, dominate
others. This is because ‘force’ is not quantitative but qualitative. In other
words, ‘force’ is the expression of a variety of ‘tendencies, abilities and
virtues’ operating through people in a reciprocal fashion. It is such that
each person is able to exert pressure on others to ensure their own interests
and, in so doing, produce a ‘reciprocal accord.’ Further, in this way, ‘force’
is always the basis of consent, whether in the most liberal of States or the
most tyrannical. More importantly, regardless of the nature of ‘State life’ it
is always forced, conditioned, and changeable.
Gramsci (1995, 376–377), as one would expect, is critical of Croce’s
liberalism regardless of its revisionist logic. But importantly, Gramsci does
not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, Gramsci engages the
Crocean ethico-political within a specific and substantive focus on the ‘phi-
losophy of praxis’ and, in so doing, brings a new concrete and political
complexity to the ethico-political that challenges Croce’s (1921, 35–60:
1946, 27–35) revisionist and, ultimately, speculative articulation of ‘par-
ticularisation’ within ethico-political history. Gramsci (1985, 106) States
that:
One can say that not only does the philosophy of praxis not exclude
ethico-political history but that, indeed, in its most recent stage of de-
velopment, it consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony
as essential to its conception of the State and to the ‘accrediting’ of
the cultural fact, of cultural activity, of a cultural front as necessary
alongside the merely economic and political ones. Croce commits the
serious error of not applying to his criticism of the philosophy of praxis
the methodological criteria that he applies to his study of much less
important and significant philosophical currents . . . . The opposition
between Crocism and the philosophy of praxis is to be sought in the
speculative character of Crocism.
Gramsci seeks to maintain the historical nature of ethico-political but

elaborate its operation through a dialectic method that leads to a more con-
crete understanding of life as hegemony. This concreteness is given expres-
sion because it is where the conjunctural gives way to the organic, where
coercion is balanced by consensus, structure by superstructure, and ideal-
ism by materialism. So it is fundamentally dialectic, and in this methodol-
ogy, we can begin to see inter alia how the organisation of power—that is,
politics—operates ethico-politically and produces a synthesis of moral and
intellectual leadership with ‘force,’ expressed as the integration of political
society and civil society into a new form of integral State-life containing
the inter-relations of social, political, and economic forms of life—that is,
the historical bloc.
This articulation goes beyond Croce’s notion of the particularisation of
history and the reciprocal nature of force. Rather, the ethico-political as
hegemony must develop and operationalise a ‘comprehensive awareness’
through systematic analysis of the socio-historical situation (Finochiarro
1988). From this we can see that for Gramsci the real problem of liberal
reformism—particularly in relation to the dialectic nature of ethico-poli-
tics and social life—is that it fragments legitimacy. That is, it disarticulates
the antithesis of the liberal thesis into elements, and through this frag-
mented mass, it ensures the inability of legitimacy to develop all its critical
possibilities. In effect, in this reformist model only the thesis that is, legality
can become true to itself.
In the theory of hegemony, Gramsci employs Croce’s notion of ethico-
political but conceptually reconfigures it to become the moment of the Inte-
gral State and of hegemony as the highest synthesis—that is, the working
together of political society with civil society; of consensus with coercion;
of freedom with constraint; of superstructure with structure—always under
a new moral and intellectual leadership. The operation of hegemony as eth-
ico-political can be expressed as ‘aspirational hegemony’ (Howson 2006);
that is, hegemony that has its basis in moral and intellectual leadership as
opposed to domination through power. In an aspirational hegemony, the
leading group seeks to develop a balance where consensus is emphasised

over coercion and where the hegemony is not defi ned by certain hegemonic
principles that demand the hegemony be closed down or ossified as a way
of protecting them. Aspirational hegemony expresses an open system in
which social justice emerges through the work of organic intellectuals who
in turn emerge out of civil society and the subaltern groups but relies on the
leadership of one group to transcend its own economic-corporativism to
create new hegemonic principles and alliance with other groups and inter-
ests. This produces unstable equilibria that express the constant dynamism
of the dialectic process, where the distinctiveness of civil society and politi-
cal society, of political economy, and the social of power and legitimacy,
have only analytical reality. Further, investigating only one without the
other cannot reveal hegemony.
Hegemony then, is as much a process of socio-historical change as it is
an outcome. It is as much a process that occurs before power is institution-
alised as it is a process of maintaining the institutionalisation of power. In
hegemony, things do not always remain in a State of constant confl ict and
unresolved antagonism; rather, it is a process whereby the goal is to achieve
the highest synthesis. Where this process fails and falls into crisis we can
understand this situation as a dominative hegemony, and where this syn-
thesis is achieved we can recognise features of an aspirational hegemony.
HEGEMONIC OPERATIONS IN THE ASIA-

PACIFIC: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Each chapter in this volume works directly and creatively with the body
of concepts drawn from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. They draw out,
explore, and apply them to particular historical and social situations
within the Asia-Pacific region. The significance of using Gramscian theory
as the point of departure for each chapter is not confi ned to just the setting
out and development of the original meaning of key concepts but also to
show their extension into and/or elaboration within more contemporary
social, economic, and political theory. This allows a broad and complex
understanding of hegemony to develop within each chapter, thereby bring-
ing to life the specific empirical illustrations by enabling a more complex
reading of the convergence between progressive and regressive hegemonic
potentials.
The volume begins with a set of chapters that set out the theory of hege-
mony from different positions by addressing a range of concepts and ideas
relevant to the case studies that follow.
Howson sets the scene by exploring the personal, intellectual, and social
context of Gramsci’s early writings, which began to deal with the difficulty
of reconciling socialist ideas with the practical realities of life as Gramsci
experienced it. His intense connection to his southern origins are seen to
influence, and complicate, his thinking about the possibilities of revolu-

tionary or socially transformative behaviour, and his writing shows the
centrality of the importance of language, common sense, and culture in the
project of social transformation. In this vein, we see the deep humanism
embedded in Gramsci’s thinking and his continual insistence that social
transformation is not possible without a deep understanding of the com-
plex factors that go into making a person, as well as the collective. His
own political outlook, then, is revealed as one that is neither dogmatic nor
unquestioningly accepting of the categories of the past, reminding us that
in his emphasis on history and philosophy, Gramsci was neither an idealist
nor a determinist.
This complexity of thinking is developed with specific relation to the
concept of hegemony in Boothman’s chapter, which sets out the specific
intellectual history of the concept as Gramsci inherited it and as he sought
to develop it, specifically in the Prison Notebooks. Boothman’s chapter
reminds us that Gramsci was no simple Marxist—that his project for social
transformation was not based merely on the replacement of one group’s
dictatorship with that of another, but that in the theory of hegemony he
sought to go beyond both the accepted politics and economism of a more
vulgar Marxism. In this sense, his concept of hegemony stemmed from his
own intellectual endeavours, with their emphasis on language and dialect.
Given this focus, Boothman shows the way in which Gramsci developed
the concept within the Prison Notebooks to take account of the impor-
tance of leadership, as well as the role of consensus in building intellec-
tual and political leadership. It is this dynamic approach to hegemony that
moves beyond Marx’s structure/superstructure paradigm and into Grams-
ci’s innovative conception of the historical bloc.
This expansion or elaboration of the concept of hegemony is the sub-
ject of Matsuda and Ohara’s chapter, which stresses the complexity of the
concept of hegemony and the necessity for contemporary research to apply
the theory in such a way as to do more than merely reinforce the coercive
aspects of politico-social situations. It is in this sense that the concept of
subalternity becomes important. As the authors suggest, through an analy-
sis of the complex interplay of social relations that brings about subalter-
nity, we can come to a better understanding of the nature of hegemony and
the ways in which it can be reconfigured. Following Green’s analysis of the
concept, Matsuda and Ohara argue that to fully elaborate the theory of
hegemony it must be understood in relation to the creation and recreation
of subaltern social groups, for it is here that the prospects for alternative
hegemony lie.
If there is a leit motif, or ‘red thread’ in Gramsci’s work, it can be argued
that it is his concern with the overcoming of subalternity and the creation
of an ethico-political hegemony. Central to this project is the notion of the
national-popular collective will and the conception of common sense. In
Davidson’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom,’ the focus
is on developing the Gramscian conception of common sense by exploring

the linkages between hegemony and language. Common sense, while cru-
cial for Gramsci, has a strong connection to his conception of subalternity
and, in particular, the nexus between subaltern groups and the organic
intellectuals. In particular, the chapter considers Gramsci’s theory of the
mechanisms for translating common into good sense with a focus on his
writings on China and India. These are related to his more specific Italian-
centric work on Cuoco and Italy’s periphery, the Mezzogiorno, to see if,
and how far, Gramsci views these mechanisms as operating differently in
non-European cultures. The chapter considers to what extent, then, we can
consider changes in the Asia-Pacific region as the process of ‘Americanisa-
tion’ or the workings of a more complex hegemony.
Fontana’s chapter ‘Hegemony and Power’ provides an examination of
the nature of power in hegemony. It explores Gramsci’s concept of hege-
mony and its relation to his social and political thought. In particular, it
clarifies and explicates the complex or multilayered nature of hegemony
by exploring why Gramsci employed hegemony as a way of analysing and
discussing bourgeois capitalist society. Further, it shows how hegemony
differs from terms such as power, domination, subjection, and dictator-
ship and, thus, how it adds intellectual and theoretical substance to the
discourse on power.
In the fi rst of the ‘applied’ chapters, ‘‘Hegemony, subjectivity and subal-
ternity,’ Smith explores the complexity of the theory of hegemony by ana-
lysing the creation of subalternity in a particular socio-historical context,
the city of Sydney in the late nineteenth century. Here, she argues that
the way in which a particular group of young people, known as larrikins,
were dealt with by the press and the State demonstrates the creation and
re-creation of hegemony through subalternity. Smith demonstrates that
this subalternity, centered on a type of subjectivity, represented a form of
resistance against a nascent industrial capitalism and its increasing psycho-
logical impositions. Larrikins directly challenged the rhetoric and practices
of respectability and discipline and, as a result, the new type of worker
and human being demanded by capitalism. The chapter innovatively uses
psychoanalytic theory to suggest that the imperative for this new type
of human being required a particular form of sublimation of normative
behaviour, which in turn is linked to Gramsci’s notions of hegemony and
the subaltern. Thus, the larrikin is shown to be an active reclaiming of the
self and a significant resistance to the intervention of the new capitalist
regime in culture and being.
In Wells’s chapter, ‘Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour,’
Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and subalternity are extended into the
colonial setting around the same historical frame as the previous chapter.
There is not a great deal of explicit discussion by Gramsci about colonial-
ism in the Prison Notebooks but it is safe to say that much of his com-
mentary on the ‘Southern Question’ and his briefer notes on Italian foreign
policy and international relations are suggestive and occasionally explicit

about colonial matters. The writings of the Subaltern Studies School rep-
resent one attempt to apply Gramsci to the Indian colonial context; the
most extended work in this idiom is Ranajit Guha’s Dominance Without
Hegemony. However, Guha’s political and ‘culturalist’ approach takes us
some distance from Gramsci and ignores the complexity of the issue by pre-
supposing a rather ahistorical and one-dimensional concept of hegemony.
Using examples drawn from British colonialism in India and Malaya, as
well as French colonialism in Indo-China between 1860–1940, a critique
of Guha’s work is presented that concludes with an extension of a far more
complex reading of hegemony.
Moving the discussion into the contemporary moment, Hawksley’s
chapter ‘Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua New
Guinea’ addresses the twin issues of subalternity and education with spe-
cific reference to the process of social development. The argument begins
by claiming that even imperialism had its beneficial aspects if conducted in
an appropriate manner because it brought skills and understanding to sub-
altern peoples. Australian administration in colonial Papua New Guinea
was faced precisely with this task of taking people from the Stone Age to
a modern social, cultural, and national environment. In many parts of the
country, the Australian administration tried to achieve this transformation
in less than five decades. Much of the transformative work by the admin-
istration was undertaken with the assistance of church missions and later
the operation of specialist agricultural officers who offered a model of a
new society based on the rule of law, property relations, and production for
the market. A whole new national-popular regime was developed, which
quickly became seen not just as ‘common sense’ but ‘good sense.’ Edu-
cation of the subaltern groups was critical to this transformative process
and incorporated both the new technical as well as moral and intellectual
reality. This chapter explores the complexities of the relationship between
education and subalternity from a Gramscian perspective and shows that
the New Guinean development was in fact a complex synthesis of consen-
sus and coercion.
This nascent neoliberalism, while attempting to raise the well-being of
all, exposes its problematic nature through the failure to address the issue
of subalternity. Gramsci emphasises throughout the Prison Notebooks that
for hegemony to develop as the highest synthesis, it is crucial to bring the
subaltern into alliance with the broad mass. There is a tendency in recent
international political economy literature, which uses the concept of hege-
mony, to overlook these connections at the historical level. Beginning with
a critique of this literature, Engel’s chapter, ‘The World Bank and Neolib-
eral Hegemony in Vietnam’, moves into a socio-economic focus through an
assessment of World Bank policy as a central platform of the Washington
Consensus (1980–1996) and its neoliberal reform package. It extends this
analysis to the new situation marked by the post-Washington Consensus
(1997–current), showing that the shift was more a shift in style than sub-
stance. Further, through Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this shift can be
understood as a restorative moment or, in other words, part of a short-term
and regressive, rather than progressive or long-term and structural, devel-
opment of ideology and practice. Effectively, both moments of the consen-
sus about World Bank policy represent different levels of the imposition of
Western hegemony upon a particular ASEAN nation but with resonances
for all similar regional State.
In Scrase and Ganguly-Scrase’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Globalisation, and
Neoliberalisation: The Case of West Bengal, India’, neoliberalism wrapped
up as globalisation is shown to coerce nations such as India to pursue policies
of economic liberalization. The unswerving faith in liberalization policies
expressed by the State is posited as the solution to the overall improvement
of the social and, in particular, the standard of living of the broad popula-
tion. The middle class, whose consensus is crucial, has expanded greatly
and benefited from the structural adjustment reforms imposed on the eco-
nomic and industrial sectors. Based on fieldwork among lower middle class
households in the Indian State of West Bengal, this chapter examines the
concrete experiences of those affected by these policies and, in particular,
examines the ways in which the reforms have made inroads into the lives of
people who were ardent supporters of a different way of thinking.
In much of the literature on the neoliberalist push, the emphasis is on
the methods of controlling the economic sphere. However, in Cahill’s chap-
ter, the extent to which neoliberalism is hegemonic in Australia today is
set out by describing the main contours of neoliberal hegemony and then
exploring the importance of controlling the historical bloc and through it
the national-popular collective will. Its approach is particularly innovative
because, while beginning with class, it argues that the extent to which neo-
liberalism exists is based on the organization of consent that is intellectu-
ally constructed around specific ‘hegemonic principles.’ The chapter shows
that these principles are operationalised through the interconnectedness of
the spheres of the historical bloc and that this has brought about a hege-
monic neoliberalism in Australian society.
The volume concludes with a return to the international workings of neo-
liberal hegemony in Harada’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Japan and the Victor’s
Memory of War,’ which demonstrates that hegemony in the Asia-Pacific
is not simply synonymous with US domination but involves a much more
complex interplay between coercion and consent. The theoretical concepts
of ‘passive revolution’ and ‘historical bloc’ are employed to demonstrate the
way in which traditional intellectuals in both the US and Japan has recon-
figured the language and symbols of war to justify and legitimise current
global confl icts and the realignment of strategic interests. The chapter strik-
ingly demonstrates that these new relationships rely on an active forgetting
of history and have significant implications for the future, especially in the
dynamic and explosive Asia-Pacific region.
NOTES
1. This concept will be elaborated on p. 10.

2. It is this difficulty that makes this brief description of power inadequate, but
taken with a reading of the following section on the complexity of hegemony
allows the nature and operation of power to be developed and explicated.
3. For example, Howson (2006) showed that an example of hegemonic prin-
ciples can be seen in masculinities theory and the attendant concept of hege-
monic masculinity in which heterosexuality, breadwinning, and aggression
act as hegemonic principles of masculinity that must be protected to safe-
guard the hegemony of men.
REFERENCES
Bellamy, R. 2000. ‘A modern interpreter: Benedetto Croce and the politics of Ital-
ian Culture’. The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 5(6): 845–61.
Boothman, D. ‘Introduction’ in Gramsci, A. 1995. Further Selections from the
Prison Notebooks. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Connors, M. K., R. Davison and J. Dorsch. 2004. The New Global Politics of the
Asia-Pacific. London: Routledge.
Croce, B. 1946. Politics and Morals. George Allen and Unwin, London.
———. 1951. My Philosophy: And Other Essays on the Moral and political Prob-
lems of Our Time. George Allen and Unwin, London.
Finocchiaro, M. A. 1988. Gramsci and the History of Dialectic Thought. Cam-
bridge University Press: Cambridge.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-
Smith, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Turin: Einaudi.
Howson, R. 2006 Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. Routledge, London.
Scalapino, R. A. 2005. The Un-Folding Revolution in the Asia-Pacific Region.
American Foreign Policy Interests 27:231–240.
2 Hegemony in the Preprison
Context
Richard Howson
On the evening of November 8, 1926, under Mussolini’s Exceptional

Decrees, the Italian fascists arrested Antonio Gramsci, who was at that
time a member of the Italian Parliament and leader of the Italian Com-
munist Party (PCI). Gramsci was imprisoned for what was effectively the
remainder of his life. However, as Adamson (1980, 1) points out, it is ironic
that without fascism’s victory in Italy and his imprisonment, it may never
have passed that Gramsci would have had the opportunity to sustain a
period of such profound theoretical reflection on social, political, eco-
nomic, and historical issues, all of which were foundational planks to the
theory of hegemony that emerged from his prison writings. The notebooks
that contained these thoughts and writings have become the contemporary
benchmark on hegemony and any debate on this concept and its applica-
tion is inexorably drawn to Gramsci’s work. In effect, he remains the ‘theo-
retician of hegemony’ (Salvadori 1979, 237).
Notwithstanding the importance of Gramsci’s prison-based writings, to
effectively understand the forces that shaped many of the arguments and
ideas contained within them, it is imperative to analyse closely the social,
economic, and political moments that Gramsci passed through prior to his
incarceration. In particular, those in which he made critical decisions or
shifted points of view, for example, his sympathy with the Sardinian cause,
the moment of his commitment to the Socialist Party, the bienno rosso and
the fate of the Factory Councils, the emergence of the Italian Communist
Party, and the new philosophy that underpinned the unfi nished essay on
the Southern Question. In line with Adamson (1980), to develop an under-
standing of Gramsci’s mature (i.e., prison-based) writings it is imperative
to not approach this body of work in isolation from the experiences and
writings of this preprison period.
THE STRUGGLE TO MAKE AN IMPACT
The history of the Sardinian people, at least for the last eleven hundred years
since the Carthaginians, was one dominated by foreign rule, oppression,
Hegemony in the Preprison Context 17
and rebellion (Davidson 1977, 2). It was in this environment that Gramsci
was born on the 22 January 1891. He was the fourth of seven children
born to Francesco and Peppina in the small village of Ales in Sardinia
(Henderson 1988, vii). Francesco Gramsci came to Sardinia searching for
work and eventually found a job as a registrar in the small Sardinian town
of Ghilarza, where he also happened to meet his wife Peppina (Marcias),
the daughter of a local tax inspector. Whatever aspirations the couple
might have had for their children and their own futures were crushed when
Francesco was suspended from his position, without pay, on suspicion of
peculation. The following year he was placed under arrest, and in 1900 he
was sentenced to nearly six years’ imprisonment. To what extent Francesco
was guilty of this crime in an area where bureaucratic corruption was
endemic is unknown. However, his opposition to the local political party,
in all probability, played a significant role in his imprisonment (Gramsci
1971, xviii).
Francesco’s incarceration left the family in severe poverty, with Peppina
effectively raising the seven children on her meagre income as a seamstress
and whatever the children could earn. A further persistent complication
for the Gramsci family was young Antonio’s struggle with various health
problems, which were the outcome of an accident that severely damaged
his spine and caused various internal disorders. Gramsci (1988, 160) would
later recall from prison how these disorders had brought him perilously
close to death as a child. In addition to his internal problems, the accident
had left him severely hunchbacked, which for a young village boy only
encouraged ridicule and produced a solemn and melancholy child (David-
son 1977, 22–23). However, even at an early age Gramsci recognised that
his experiences were only an instance of the social cruelty that existed
everywhere in Sardinia:
It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and
consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes (in Davidson
1977, 34–35).
Gramsci’s school life began in 1898 at Ghilarza but was often inter-
rupted by periods where he was forced to work to help support the family.
Nevertheless, in 1908 he was able to pass all the required examinations that
allowed him entry into the senior liceo in Cagliari. While there, he stayed
with his brother Gennaro, who had recently returned from military service
in Turin and was now a white-collar worker. Gennaro’s experiences on the
mainland had turned him towards socialism, and it was he who introduced
the young Antonio to the politics and writings associated with the move-
ment. However, an equally significant influence upon Gramsci’s nascent
political interest was the protest sweeping through Sardinia in that year
over the continuing oppression of the Sardinian people by the mainland
(or northern) Italian authorities. In particular, the brutality of the military
18 Richard Howson
and legal forces in crushing southern dissent gave Sardinian nationalism a
revitalised impetus and was for the young Gramsci an issue he connected
with quickly (Gramsci 1971, xix).
In 1911 Gramsci passed all the prerequisite liceo examinations, and with
his future student friend and fellow communist activist Palmiro Togliatti,
he won a scholarship to the University of Turin. At university, Gramsci
maintained a lonely and grinding study routine. Apart from the professors,
who quickly recognised the young man’s academic talents, particularly in
linguistics, his only other real acquaintance in these early years was Angelo
Tasca, an arts student who already had some years’ standing as a socialist.
It was also during these fi rst few years at Turin that Gramsci was intro-
duced to the radical intellectual world of his time, which profoundly influ-
enced him intellectually and spiritually (Marks 1957, 11). In particular, the
works of idealist philosophers such as Francesco De Sanctis and Benedetto
Croce would remain influential through his life (Joll 1977, 22).
However, the deficiencies in the Italian political and cultural environ-
ment at this time became manifest in a weak and incoherent form of liber-
alism. This created a certain vogue for socialist ideas of action, even among
the Italian bourgeois and academic groups. Gramsci made various signifi-
cant contacts, particularly within academia, including the literary histo-
rian Umberto Cosmo and Annibale Pastore, whose lectures on Marxism
he attended. Through these contacts he was introduced to, among other
things, a particular brand of Hegelianism that he would remain ambigu-
ously connected to until the end of his working life (Gramsci 1971, xxi).
Gramsci’s conversion and commitment to socialism took place during
his time at university, but it was neither immediate nor inevitable. His
friend Tasca, who was actively courting Gramsci’s interest in socialist
politics at this time (around 1912), failed to convince the young student.
This was partly because of Gramsci’s reluctance to commit to Tasca’s Turi-
nese (northern) socialism while still holding a deep connection with the
south and, specifically, Sardinian nationalism (Adamson 1980, 28). Fur-
ther, Gramsci was wary of Tasca, who he saw as basically avaricious and
lacking any real scholarly integrity. However, by July 1913 this reluctance
had passed, and Gramsci decided to make the intellectual commitment and
applied for membership of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) on Tasca’s rec-
ommendation. He was accepted at the end of 1913 (Davidson 1977, 62).
At the same time, Gramsci’s scholarship grant was proving to be miserably
inadequate, and the inevitable cold and malnutrition was having disastrous
effects on his already precarious health (Gramsci 1971, xxi). Continual
illness, amongst other things, led to his repeated failure to sit for required
examinations, which led to threats that his scholarship would be revoked
(Davidson 1977, 64), but notwithstanding these issues, Gramsci’s thoughts
and efforts were increasingly turning towards political activity.
Gramsci sat for only one examination in November 1914, and as a result,
his scholarship was suspended, leading to an even deeper cycle of poverty
and another bout of nervous disorder, which made surviving the following
year extremely difficult. Nevertheless, he went back to study Marx and sat
for his last university exam in April 1915. During this time, he was begin-
ning to gain some standing in the Socialist Party through his participa-
tion in antinationalist activities on campus. This included writing articles
for the socialist newspaper Il Grido del Popolo and giving lectures to the
Socialist’s Youth Federation and other similar organisations. By 1916, he
was writing a regular column for the socialist newspaper Avanti, and with
this, he left university to begin a career in revolutionary journalism and
politics (Davidson 1977, 70).

Immediately following his withdrawal from university, Gramsci took
formal work with Il Grido del Popolo and Avanti. Although his physical
deformity and concomitant health and emotional problems made sure he
would never become an energetic and charismatic orator or leader, he was
every bit the fiery and intransigent socialist revolutionary. At a personal
level, it was a time for remaking himself by disengaging from the contem-
plative life of study and engaging with the practical world of action, where
his experience and knowledge of politics and socialism would develop and
he could impose his own will on the world (Davidson 1977, 72). This new
will to engage change was never more manifest than during the bienno
rosso of 1919 to 1920. This was a period of turbulence, mass strikes, vio-
lence, and destruction, but it was also a period of great intellectual and
practical value to Gramsci’s political and intellectual development.
THE DEMISE OF THE FACTORY COUNCILS

AND THE RISE OF THE PCI
In the aftermath of World War I, social, economic, and political tensions

reached a fever pitch, with even Antonio Salandra, the authoritative leader
of Italian conservatism, calling for the youth of Italy to assert itself. It was
a time when all of Europe seemed inexorably drawn to revolution (Cam-
mett 1967, 65). The situation for the revolutionary left throughout Western
Europe was more complex, particularly with the success of Lenin’s pro-
letarian revolution in Russia, which created much optimism and antici-
pation for change but also much insecurity. Gramsci profoundly believed
that these events had produced an environment within Italy that would
enable its working people to bring about revolutionary change to their own
oppressive capitalist and liberal State.
During WWI and the years immediately following, Gramsci’s involve-
ment in the PSI was not as a politician in the strict sense. He was far more
interested in educating the working class and elaborating the cultural and
social basis for a new Italian society than in the factional fights within the
PSI. This interest (which remained a defi ning feature of Gramsci’s later
work) led to Gramsci’s involvement in reassembling the old student group
20 Richard Howson
of the Young Socialists to found a collectively managed journal of Marxist
theory and culture. The fi rst issue of L’Ordine Nuovo appeared on the 1st
May 1919. Its existence represents an important moment in the history of
the Italian revolutionary movement because although its founders would
become the crucial nucleus of the Italian Communist Party (Cammett 1967,
71), it also became the vehicle through which Gramsci would embark on
a campaign to turn the Internal Commissions into Factory Councils and
bring about a revolutionary movement (Clark 1977, 46).
At the twenty-sixth Congress of the PSI, held in Bologna between the
fi fth and eighth of October 1919, the party agreed with an overwhelming
majority to take part in the elections to the bourgeois parliament. This
commitment heightened already simmering tensions between the maximal-
ists and the reformists, and as a result, Factory Council ideas rapidly spread
throughout Turin (Clark 1977, 79).
The Factory Council is the model of the proletarian State. All the prob-
lems inherent in the organisation of the proletarian State are inher-
ent in the organisation of the Council. In the one as in the other, the
concept of citizen gives way to the concept of comrade. Collaboration
in effective and useful production develops solidarity and multiplies
bonds of affection and fraternity. Everyone is indispensable, everyone
is at his post, and everyone has a function and a post. Even the most
backward workers, even the most vain and ‘civil’ of engineers, will
eventually convince himself of this truth in the experience of factory
organisation. The Council is the most effective organ for mutual edu-
cation and for developing the new social spirit that the proletariat has
successfully engendered from the rich and living experience of the com-
munity of labour (Gramsci 1977, 100).
However, the success of the Factory Council ideology raised an impor-

tant problem for its broader concrete expansion: how to deal with the
relationship between the unions and the party. Gramsci (1977, 98–102)
argued that both unions and party emerged from the historical moment
dominated by capitalism, and therefore the whole ‘proletarian movement’
organised within the framework set-up by unions and party made it not
‘autonomous’ but constrained within the laws of historical development as
laid down by the ‘property-owning class.’ Therefore, they functioned not
through ‘inner necessity’ but through ‘external influences.’ The role of the
party was inexorably hindered to operate as a revolutionary organ by its
origin in a capitalist society, and the task of the unions was fundamentally
opposed in principle to that of the Councils. The conclusion for Gramsci
(1977, 102) was that primacy should be given to allowing the concrete
expansion of the Factory Councils, because even though he recognised that
there was not a lucid and precise awareness of the means for revolution, the
postwar period had produced a conviction and enthusiasm in the Western
European proletariat to bring about what was already part of a precise and
lucid awareness of the end.
The bienno rosso was a disastrous period for the Italian revolutionary
movement, and no single moment had a more devastating impact on its
project than the great Piedmont General Strike of April 1920. However,
as Cammett (1967, 98) summarises, there were a number of contribut-
ing factors that produced the context for the strike, such as the uncertain
socialist advance, the strengthening of the repressive carabinieri and Royal
Guards, economic chaos, the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie, and
the rapid development of the Factory Councils despite the opposition of

the PSI. Thus, on 29th March, with what seemed like a rather innocuous
dispute over daylight saving time and the unauthorised setting back of the
clock hands at the Industrie Metallurgiche (a subsidiary Fiat plant), which
resulted in the sacking of one worker, the latent revolutionary conscious-
ness began to manifest. The reaction to the sacking developed at pace and
quickly involved the local Factory Council, who called a sit-down strike.
The recalcitrance of the industrialists, who were organised and prepared
for a clash with the workers, set in motion general strikes, lockouts, and
factory occupations.
However, by the following April the struggle had ended with the defeat
of the revolutionary movement and a victory for the reformists, who had
negotiated what would be an unattainable settlement for the workers
with the industrialists (Clark 1977, 193). Although many reasons may be
offered for the failure of the General Strike and thus the revolutionary Fac-
tory Council movement—such as the inability to extend the struggle into
a national struggle, the preparedness of the industrialists, and the false
neutrality of the State (Cammett 1967, 121)—the root cause was the frag-
mentation of the PSI. In effect, the PSI could not project itself as a unified
party in control of the Factory Councils, which were seen as the vanguard
for the whole national movement. The disarticulated nature of the party
ensured that the goal remained unclear. As Gramsci wrote in a letter to A.
Leonetti in 1924:
In 1919–20, we made some extremely serious mistakes which ulti-

mately we are paying for today. For fear of being called upstarts and
careerists, we did not form a faction and organise this throughout Italy.
We were not ready to give the Factory Councils an autonomous direc-
tive centre, which could have exercised an immense influence through-
out the country, for fear of a split in the unions and of being expelled
prematurely from the Socialist Party (Gramsci 1978, 189).
But these continual delays imposed through the factional struggles of

the party were, as Buci-Glucksman (1980, 172) argues, only ‘token’ to the
overall insufficient degree of maturity of the whole worker’s movement at
this time. The anger and disillusionment that had been felt by many left-wing
22 Richard Howson
militants against the trade unions, reformists, and even the maximalists
for their failure to seize power in the previous September during the
occupation of the factories stimulated the split of the PSI at the Livorno
Congress in January 1921. From this split emerged the Italian Communist
Party (PCI) (Joll 1977, 44–45). But all the anger and disillusionment that
surfaced prior to the bienno rosso had dissipated with defeat of the Factory
Councils the following April. So much so that in the general election (held
on 15th May ) the new PCI could secure only 12,509 votes (Clark 1977,
195), confi rming for Gramsci that it was not yet a party of or for the masses
and that socialist reformism continued to hold ideological sway with the
workers. It also confi rmed the demise of the Factory Council movement and
the containment of Gramsci’s own political activity to a small party with
no real mass support (Clark 1977, 196). Thus, the period 1921 to 1926
was for Gramsci a time for rethinking and rebuilding a shattered Italian
revolutionary movement and an equally shattered conception of party.
Although at this time the pragmatics of the party—that is, its organi-
sation and administration—captured much of Gramsci’s attention and
energy, it was also a time of intense reflection upon the previous failures
of the party as vanguard and the effectiveness of spontaneous uprising as
a successful means for the removal of the capitalist system and its replace-
ment with a new hegemony. The two years (1921–1922) following the
bienno rosso were extremely difficult for Gramsci. The nascent fascist
movement was gaining social, economic, and political momentum through
violent and intimidating strategies, the relationship between the Socialist
Party and the traditional parties was of concern, and Bordiga’s ideology,
particularly in relation to the Comintern’s ‘united front policy,’ which initi-
ated the Rome Theses, clashed with Gramsci’s, thus severely straining the
relationship (Cammett 1967, 160–161). On a more personal level, one of
Gramsci’s sisters died, and one of his brothers became a fascist. His health
had completely deteriorated from the strain of the Factory Council cam-
paign and the disillusionment of defeat in the previous two years, yet he
would keep working (Joll 1977, 47).
In May 1922, Gramsci left for Moscow as the PCI’s delegate to the
Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), a position
some have argued was handed to him by Bordiga, even though he was
extremely ill, so as to remove a persistent critic (Joll 1977, 47). By the end
of June, he had retired to a rest home after suffering a complete breakdown
and remained there for the next six months. It was here that he met Giulia
Schucht, whom he would marry and have two children with, Delio and
Giuliano. In January 1925, this relationship would bring Gramsci into con-
tact with Tatiana, now his sister-in-law, who would be of crucial impor-
tance to him and his work in his prison years.
The years following Bordiga’s February 1923 arrest saw Gramsci leave
Moscow for Vienna, where he undertook a period of intense planning to
publish a new theoretical journal, Critica Proletaria. Although it never
alliances in a radically new way, the role of intellectuals and education in
manufacturing consent over corporativism, and the significance of ideol-
ogy in constructing social, economic, and political power, as well as its
reconfiguration into domination. In other words, Gramsci sought to move
from the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to introduce the ‘hegemony of the
proletariat.’ This transformation brings into play the importance of moral
and intellectual leadership over authoritarianism. At this moment, these
initial ideas and insights lacked the weight and power of a major theoretical
breakthrough, but the sheer sweep of the essay, which in itself is impressive
and profound, enables the simultaneous opening up and linking together

of issues of considerable importance that outline the general contours of
Gramsci’s views on the intricate networks of relations that bind social,
economic, and political power with legitimacy to produce a new moral and
intellectual authority. As such, it represents what Buttigieg (1992, 21–22)
aptly calls a ‘prolegomenon to the prison notebooks.’
FROM DICTATORSHIP TO HEGEMONY

OF THE PROLETARIAT
The meaning given to hegemony that can be drawn out of Gramsci’s politi-
cal and intellectual writings prior to 1926 reflects the notion of ‘domi-
nation’ explicitly developed in line with Lenin’s (1967, 14) revolutionary
slogan: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ In other words, hegemony
may be understood as the exercise of command whose objective is to lead
the allies and undertake actions (violent if necessary) to overcome hostile
groups (Salvadori 1979, 237). However, the hegemony/dictatorship nexus,
which was central for Lenin and the revolutionary movement at that time,
as well as having the objective of being fundamentally progressive, was for
Gramsci a continuing and complex problem to overcome (see also Booth-
man and Fontana in this volume). In effect, the transition from dictator-
ship to hegemony was not as yet clear, and the distinction between the
potential for either progressive or regressive outcomes difficult to predict.
For example, in a letter to Togliatti, Terracini, and others, dated 9th Febru-
ary 1924, Gramsci (1978, 165) makes reference to the ‘hegemonic position
[Russia] holds today’ over a prerevolutionary Western Europe, suggesting
a dominant (that is, commanding) yet progressive position. In contrast,
an article published during October 1923 includes a statement in which
Gramsci (1978, 164) refers to the ‘hegemonic positions of the reformists.’
These ‘hegemonic positions’ relate to extensions of organised unionism that
‘as a matter of principle’ the Turin Communists opposed as reformist and
regressive. Earlier, in October 1920, Gramsci referred to the ‘hegemonic
forces’ of the First World War that exploited Italy for their own advantage
(Gramsci 1977, 357), suggesting an oppressive domination. This movement
of Gramsci’s conception of hegemony would remain unchanged through
alliances in a radically new way, the role of intellectuals and education in
manufacturing consent over corporativism, and the significance of ideol-
ogy in constructing social, economic, and political power, as well as its
reconfiguration into domination. In other words, Gramsci sought to move
from the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to introduce the ‘hegemony of the
proletariat.’ This transformation brings into play the importance of moral
and intellectual leadership over authoritarianism. At this moment, these
initial ideas and insights lacked the weight and power of a major theoretical
breakthrough, but the sheer sweep of the essay, which in itself is impressive
and profound, enables the simultaneous opening up and linking together

of issues of considerable importance that outline the general contours of
Gramsci’s views on the intricate networks of relations that bind social,
economic, and political power with legitimacy to produce a new moral and
intellectual authority. As such, it represents what Buttigieg (1992, 21–22)
aptly calls a ‘prolegomenon to the prison notebooks.’
FROM DICTATORSHIP TO HEGEMONY

OF THE PROLETARIAT
The meaning given to hegemony that can be drawn out of Gramsci’s politi-
cal and intellectual writings prior to 1926 reflects the notion of ‘domi-
nation’ explicitly developed in line with Lenin’s (1967, 14) revolutionary
slogan: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ In other words, hegemony
may be understood as the exercise of command whose objective is to lead
the allies and undertake actions (violent if necessary) to overcome hostile
groups (Salvadori 1979, 237). However, the hegemony/dictatorship nexus,
which was central for Lenin and the revolutionary movement at that time,
as well as having the objective of being fundamentally progressive, was for
Gramsci a continuing and complex problem to overcome (see also Booth-
man and Fontana in this volume). In effect, the transition from dictator-
ship to hegemony was not as yet clear, and the distinction between the
potential for either progressive or regressive outcomes difficult to predict.
For example, in a letter to Togliatti, Terracini, and others, dated 9th Febru-
ary 1924, Gramsci (1978, 165) makes reference to the ‘hegemonic position
[Russia] holds today’ over a prerevolutionary Western Europe, suggesting
a dominant (that is, commanding) yet progressive position. In contrast,
an article published during October 1923 includes a statement in which
Gramsci (1978, 164) refers to the ‘hegemonic positions of the reformists.’
These ‘hegemonic positions’ relate to extensions of organised unionism that
‘as a matter of principle’ the Turin Communists opposed as reformist and
regressive. Earlier, in October 1920, Gramsci referred to the ‘hegemonic
forces’ of the First World War that exploited Italy for their own advantage
(Gramsci 1977, 357), suggesting an oppressive domination. This movement
of Gramsci’s conception of hegemony would remain unchanged through
26 Richard Howson
his prison-based work. More importantly though, it is a crucial fi rst step
to recognising and understanding the complexity of hegemony as it would
develop.
In the Southern Question, Gramsci (1978) maintained this progressive/
regressive complexity by outlining the importance of hegemony within a
strategy for a progressive proletarian movement, but he also recognised
the reality of the regressive hegemonic alliance between syndicalists and
the bourgeoisie that had developed in the South to dominate its peasants.
However, it was in explicating the strategic direction for progressive action
that Gramsci introduced some radical and innovative conceptual twists to

the concept of hegemony, which positioned it in contradistinction to how
it was understood in the broad European revolutionary social democratic
context. For example, he argued that:
The Turin Communists posed to themselves concretely the question of

the “hegemony of the proletariat”, in other words, of the social basis of
the proletarian dictatorship and the Worker’s State. The proletariat can
become the leading and ruling class to the extent to which it succeeds
in creating a system of class alliances which enables it to mobilise the
majority of the working population against capitalism and the bour-
geois state (Gramsci 1978, 443).
The need for worker unity, which meant alliance between southern peas-
ants and the northern industrial proletariat, was for Gramsci and the Turin
Communists key to developing a real and effective progressive worker’s
movement throughout Italy. But what is evident here is that Gramsci no
longer saw the battlefield upon which this unity would be won in terms of
political and economic imperatives.
The fi rst problem to resolve, for the Turin Communists, was how to
modify the political stance and general ideology of the proletariat it-
self, as a national element which exists within the ensemble of State life
and is unconsciously subjected to the influence of bourgeois education,
the bourgeois press and bourgeois traditions [my emphasis] (Gramsci
1978, 444).
Instead, he recognised the need to extend and elaborate orthodox Marxist

dogma. The struggle should now involve superstructural phenomena, such
as education, the media, art, literature and drama, law, gender, and the fam-
ily because they were all under the control of the bourgeoisie. Further, they
were all being used to sustain bourgeois ideology and, through this, capital-
ist liberal hegemony.
In extending Marxist orthodoxy, Gramsci’s point of departure remained
with the centrality of the party. The party for Lenin was effectively an elite,
centralised, and authoritarian vanguard. It existed external to the proletariat
mass, and from this transcendent position, it commanded the people, devel-
oped strategy, and put in place action for political and economic emanci-
pation. As I have already shown (above and also see Cammett 1967, 173),
Gramsci at this time was concerned about the ‘nature’ of the party, and it
remained a difficult theoretical and practical problem throughout his prison-
based work. The initial approach to a solution lay in ensuring that the pro-
letariat was guaranteed a ruling function in the party. In other words, the
party had to lead, but not as an external authoritarian imposition either
before or after the conquest of power. Instead the party had to be and act
as an organic mechanism to be hegemonic. In this sense, hegemony stressed

a proletarian ‘leadership’ that grew out of and was always inclusive of the
mass. But further, the emphasis for the leadership would be on rethinking the
basis of progressive action so as to recognise the importance of social impera-
tives as well as economic and political imperatives in the development of a
collective will. In these significant, yet tentative steps to rethink the party,
Gramsci began to develop a new framework for leadership, one that extends
power beyond the orthodox Leninist-Marxist sense into a new organic and
historical hegemony.
This is not to suggest that Lenin, or for that matter Marx, did not recog-
nise the importance of superstructure in leadership. Lenin (1967, 14–15)
states in What Is to Be Done? that, in the interests of ideological develop-
ment, such things as ‘freedom of criticism’ for example, should be allowed.
However, it should be allowed only so far as that criticism does not run coun-
ter to class and party interests. So in the final analysis, leadership is domi-
native, elitist, and authoritarian, and the alliance would always involve the
ultimate and inevitable subordination of all other group interests, whether
allied or antagonistic, firstly to the party’s hegemonic principles and then to
the proletariat’s hegemonic principles (Howson 2006, 23).
CULTURE AND THE PROBLEMATIC OF CORPORATIVISM
Even before his prison writings, Gramsci could be seen to be extending the
critique and struggle beyond the economic and political spheres so as to cre-
ate a new strategy based on a hegemony/leadership nexus and thus set aside
the potential for elitism, closure, and ultimately, domination inherent to
Lenin’s dictatorship project. Further, this would open up an unorthodox and
radical passage to a moment where not even proletarian interests are sacro-
sanct within alliance. In the Lyons Theses, and in particular Theses 27 and
29, Gramsci asserted that the party must be part of the working class, but
more the Communist Party cannot just be a worker’s party:
The working class cannot do without the intellectuals, nor can it ignore
the problem of gathering around itself all those elements driven in one
way or another to revolt against capitalism (Cammett 1967, 173).
28 Richard Howson
This position is revisited in the Southern Question:
The proletariat, in order to become capable as a class of governing,

must strip itself of every residue of corporatism, every syndicalist preju-
dice and incrustation. What does this mean? That, in addition to the
need to overcome the distinctions which exist between one trade and
another, it is necessary—in order to win the trust and consent of the
peasants and of some semi-proletarian urban categories—to overcome
certain prejudices and conquer certain forms of egoism which can and
do subsist within the working class as such, even when craft particular-
ism has disappeared (Gramsci 1978, 448).
These arguments represent what is referred to here as the ‘problematic

of corporativism,’ or the rejection of a situation where one group’s inter-
ests become hegemonic principles that must be dogmatically protected and
upheld, thereby ensuring their domination over all others. The importance
of this radical openness in Gramsci’s thought had its beginnings in his ear-
lier idealist and humanist writings, particularly those on culture.
In an article entitled ‘Socialism and Culture,’ published in Il Grido del
Popolo in January 1916, Gramsci began to develop a conception of culture
by analyzing an argument that begins by introducing Giambattista Vico’s
political interpretation of Solon’s famous saying, ‘Know thyself,’ where it
is suggested that both plebians and nobles are equally a part of humanity,
and secondly, by introducing a quotation from the German romantic writer
Novalis:
The supreme problem of culture is that of gaining possession of one’s

transcendental self, of being at one and the same time the self of one-
self. Thus it should not surprise us that there is an absence of feeling or
complete understanding of others. Lacking a perfect comprehension of
ourselves, we can never really hope to know others (Gramsci 1977, 8).
What Gramsci is alluding to through these arguments is that culture

is always more than the mere acquisition of esoteric information or the
cramming of encyclopedic knowledge, because neither could produce real
self-knowledge. In effect, culture is the ‘organisation, discipline of one’s
inner self, a coming to terms with one’s own personality.’ In effect, it is the
attainment of a higher awareness achieved not through spontaneous evolu-
tion and physiological necessity but rather the incremental movements of
history resulting from intelligent reflection (Gramsci 1977, 10–11). This
was applied to Marxism in his essay ‘Our Marx,’ published in May 1918,
where he spoke of ‘will’ as ‘consciousness of the ends’ that comes from
being able to ‘know one’s own power and being able to express this in
action,’ and thus Marx becomes ‘the master of spiritual and moral life’
(Gramsci 1975, 11).
In these early writings, the influence of Croce’s philosophy also emerges
as a significant influence. For example, Gramsci (1975, 10) begins to
understand that history is an intellectual system—‘the domain of ideas, of
spirit’—that dominates and embraces all other intellectual systems, such
as morals, politics, and art, and moves them as a ‘bloc’ through ‘pure
practical (economic and moral) activity.’ In this way, the importance of
relating the past to the present, from which we can understand the future,
is recognised by Gramsci and, particularly, in terms of developing self-
emancipation as truth. In other words, history gives truth a generative and
often unstable quality. A point Gramsci stresses in his 1918 article entitled
‘Free Thought and Liberated Thought’:
It follows from this that truth must never be presented in an absolute,

dogmatic form, as if already ripe and perfect. In order to be dissemi-
nated, truth must be adapted to the historical (or cultural) conditions
of the social groups in which one wants it to be disseminated (Gramsci
1975, 55).
This antidogmatism would remain a key tenet of his philosophical and

political platform throughout his later reflections from prison, for exam-
ple, in his critique of Bukharin’s economism and in his elaborations of con-
sciousness through the historical bloc. However, it is one thing to challenge
corporativism and dogmatism and stress the importance of self-knowledge
for self-emancipation, and quite another to produce at a concrete level an
organic progressive alliance. In the last section of the Southern Question,
Gramsci began to explore this issue in the discussion of intellectuals and
in particular the nature of the southern intellectuals, of which Croce and
Gentile were important examples. Of significance in this discussion is the
recognition that what is important in terms of hegemony is to understand
intellectuals in terms of their function as organisers and educators.
THE TASK OF EDUCATION
Gramsci held to the Marxist thesis that the liberation of the individual
could only come about with the emancipation of the proletariat, and with
it the whole of humanity, through the destruction of capitalism and the
creation of a communist society. Therefore, he maintained that revolu-
tion would be achieved only by the containment of corporativistic rebel-
liousness and a coming together of interests through alliance in a way
that promoted a collective will under a moral and intellectual leadership.
To achieve this progressive mass movement, discipline was the necessary
compliment to freedom and education its foundation. Education was
always a key aspect of Gramsci’s political philosophy, and as early as
1916 he wrote that:
30 Richard Howson
Culture is a privilege. Education is a privilege. And we do not want it
so. What the proletariat needs is an education system that is open to
all. A system in which the child is allowed to develop and mature and
acquire those general features that serve to develop character (Gramsci
1977, 26).
The whole education project was never an easy task, but when focused
on educating the mass of workers and peasants it became particularly dif-
ficult. This was never more evident than during the biennio rosso when
the lack of organisation and unity within the party led to a disconnection
between the intellectuals and the masses and ultimately a failure to prepare
the masses adequately for revolution (Clark 1977, 133). Notwithstanding
these failures, the connecting idea that remained present throughout every
stage of Gramsci’s thought, particularly in relation to hegemony, is the
supreme importance of constant contact between the masses and the intel-
lectuals in such a way that the leading group’s interests become syntheti-
cally developed with the interests of the subaltern groups (Cammett 1967,
174, 205).
However, the inability of the PCI to bring progressive education to
the south of Italy in such a way that would alter the consciousness of its
peasants and give it homogeneity with that of the proletariat remained
an obstacle to organic action. In effect, the south existed under a bour-
geois system that stifled the expansion of the Italian education system and
effectively excluded peasant children. In addition, the political context in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw Marxism as riddled
with economism and materialism, producing a climate that left no room
for subaltern issues to be taken seriously (Cammett 1967, 205). Almost in
opposition to the ongoing social, economic, and political fragmentation,
Gramsci argued that for an effective hegemony of the proletariat, the mass
of southern intellectuals and not simply individuals, such as Croce or Gen-
tile, would play a crucial role because it was this broad group who would
be needed to organize and educate the mass of peasants.
Historically, the peasants had looked towards secular bourgeois intel-
lectuals, such as doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists, as well as the omnipo-
tent church for social, economic, and political leadership (Joll 1977, 70).
However, these intellectuals had always exercised vested interests to ensure
the ‘traditional’ principles upon which social structures and practices were
grounded remained unchanged. Hence, Gramsci noted:
Intellectuals develop slowly, far more slowly than any other social
group, by their very nature and historical function. They represent the
entire cultural tradition of a people, seeking to resume and synthesise
all of its history. This can be said especially of the old type of intellec-
tual: the intellectual born on the peasant terrain. To think it possible
that such intellectuals, en masse, can break with the entire past and
situate themselves totally upon the terrain of a new ideology, is absurd
(Gramsci 1978, 462).
But if the proletariat is to break the hold of these traditional centres of

influence over the peasantry, two things must happen. The proletariat must
organise the revolutionary elements among the peasants themselves so as to
establish progressive cells in the rural context, and they must also provide
intellectual and moral leadership capable of replacing what has historically
been provided through the secular bourgeoisie and clerical forces. To do
this Gramsci argued that:
The alliance between proletariat and peasant masses requires this for-
mation. It is all the more required by the alliance between proletariat
and peasant masses in the South. But its greater or lesser success in this
necessary task will also depend upon its ability to break up the intel-
lectual bloc that is the flexible, but extremely resistant, armour of the
agrarian bloc (Gramsci 1978, 462).
However, at this time the Italian liberal regime was experiencing a pro-
found decline that was due primarily to the lack of a robust entrepreneurial
market system, a lack of commitment to individual rights, and the corrup-
tion of the parliamentary system (Martin 1997, 44). After the failure of
strike action by the political left in 1920, which was organised around the
Factory Councils, political power shifted to the right and the new fascist
movement. Gramsci saw this new situation as the result of a failure by the
left to provide an adequate, consistent, and coherent social, economic, and
political model as an alternative to the failed liberal state (Martin 1997,
46). This failure grew off the back of an inadequate system of education,
unable to extend beyond the confines of small select groups and therefore
incapable of providing unity of purpose and consciousness. This lack of
consciousness would be a contributing factor in the production of a situ-
ation that Gramsci (1971, 219) would later refer to as a ‘Caesarist’ reac-
tion. In other words, a situation where the two forces in confl ict—in this
case proletariat and bourgeoisie—have balanced each other out with the
catastrophic consequence that a third force, fascism, is able to effectively
dominate the whole national-collective. In such a social and political envi-
ronment, any notion of a progressive revolutionary strategy would require
a significant rethinking of the left’s orthodox revolutionary dogma.
This chapter has explicated the preprison period of Gramsci’s life and
shown why it is important to understand it in the context of the development
of hegemony. In particular, the importance Gramsci placed on coming to
terms both theoretically and practically with hegemony as both consensus
and coercion. This coming to terms focused Gramsci’s attention on foun-
dational concepts such as leadership, party, culture, knowledge, education,
and intellectuals and led almost inexorably to the essay ‘Some Aspects of
32 Richard Howson
the Southern Question’ and the important developments it introduced that
now can be seen to represent a window into the theory of hegemony that
would follow in the Prison Notebooks.
REFERENCES
Adamson, W. L. 1980. Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s

Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley: University Press.
Buci-Glucksman, C. 1980. Gramsci and the State. London: Lawrence and Wis-
hart.
Buttigieg, J. 1992. Chronology. In A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks: Volume One.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Cammett, J. M. 1967. Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism.
Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press.
Clark, M. 1977. Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Davidson, A. 1977. Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. Lon-
don: Merlin Press.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and
Wishart.
———. 1975. History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci. Saint Louis:
Telos Press Ltd.
———. 1977. Selections from Political Writings 1910–1920. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press.
———. 1978. Selections from Political Writings 1921–1926. Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press.
———. 1988. Prison Letters. London: Pluto Press.
Henderson, H. 1988 Prison Letters. London: Pluto Press.
Hoare, Q., and G. Nowell Smith. 1971. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Selections
from the Prison Notebooks. Lawrence and Wishart. London.
Howson, R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Maculinity. London: Routledge.
Joll, J. 1977. Gramsci. London: Fontana.
Lenin, V. I. 1967. What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.
Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Marks, L. 1957. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writ-
ings. New York: International Publishers.
Martin, J. 1997. Hegemony and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Gramsci. In History of
the Human Sciences 10(1):37–56.
Salvadori, M. 1979. Gramsci and the PCI: Two Conceptions of Hegemony. In
Gramsci and Marxist Theory, ed. Mouffe. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul Ltd.
3 Hegemony
Political and Linguistic Sources for
Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony
Derek Boothman
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter we attempt to identify the principal origins of Gramsci’s

concept of hegemony, as he then subsequently developed it, from its fi rst
appearance in the Prison Notebooks, where ‘leadership’ and ‘political
hegemony’ are used synonymously.1 There are about half a dozen of these
sources, some stemming from Gramsci’s university training in linguistics,
not always explicitly stated as origins in the Notebooks, but traceable by
assessing both Gramsci’s comments there and his preprison experience.
Shedding light on this subject helps contrast often unilateral or debatable
interpretations of the concept, either by friendly commentators, who some-
times overlook or deny economic and class factors, or by hostile ones, who
neglect consensual aspects. Both sides all too frequently also ignore hege-
mony’s essential role as the component that transforms Marx’s somewhat
static structure/superstructure metaphor into Gramsci’s more dynamic one
of the historical bloc.
THE STARTING POINT FOR THE

CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY
Gramsci states that his notion of hegemony rests on a fundamental text

of Marx’s, the 1859 preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political
Economy, which he translated in a part of Notebook 7 (Gramsci 1975,
2358–60). 2 A literal English translation of the main lines of interest reads:
With the change in the economic base the immense superstructure is

overturned more or less rapidly. In observing such upheavals one must
always draw a distinction between a material overthrow of the condi-
tions of economic production, which is to be faithfully ascertained by
the methods of the natural sciences, and the juridical, political, reli-
gious, artistic, or philosophical forms: in a word, the ideological forms,
on whose terrain men become aware of this confl ict and resolve it.
34 Derek Boothman
The kernel idea of the fight among confl icting forces on the ideological
terrain is what indeed is developed throughout the Notebooks, and feeds
into the concept of hegemony; just how the ‘superstructures’ are related to
the structure itself is ‘the crucial problem of historical materialism’ (fi rst
draft) and is a problem that has to be ‘accurately posed and resolved if the
forces which are active in the history of a particular period are to be cor-
rectly analysed’ (second draft) (Gramsci 1975, Q4§38, Q13§17; 1996, 171;
1971, 177), which then implies the question of the relations between such
forces, i.e., the whole question of hegemony.
LEFT CONCEPTS OF ‘HEGEMONY’

BEFORE THE PRISON NOTEBOOKS
In order to trace Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and thereby highlight its

innovative character, a fi rst question of importance to be asked regards the
use of the word and concept ‘hegemony’ in socialist and then in communist
circles in the years before his imprisonment.
The background to Italian socialist usage—

hegemony among nations
First of all, it may be observed that, in the decade Gramsci spent in Turin,
the word was in current use among Italian socialists. At this time, control
of the northern and eastern Adriatic was highly sensitive from an Italian
nationalist perspective. For most of the sixty-odd years from the collapse
in 1797 of the Doges’ Republic to the foundation of the kingdom of Italy,
Venice was under Austrian control, but before this it had for centuries
controlled much of Dalmatia (the coastal zone of today’s Slovenia and
Croatia), and a Venetian ‘pan-Italian’ functioned as a Mediterranean lin-
gua franca. 3
The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire then saw the largely Ital-
ian-speaking Istrian peninsula of the northeastern Adriatic come under
Italian rule, passing later on into Tito’s Yugoslavia in the post–World War
II settlement, so it is no surprise that there were polemics about who was
‘entitled’ to what. It is sufficient to leaf through the 1916–17 numbers of
Critica Sociale, then the major theoretical organ of the Italian socialists, to
see articles on ‘wars of hegemony,’ ‘Italo-Serb relationships for hegemony
in the Adriatic,’ and so on. Echoes of this are then to be found in Q2§89,
with its references to ‘irredentism’ and the ‘special form assumed by the
national question in Trieste and in Dalmatia (for the Italians)’ (Gramsci
1992, 331–2). National and ethnic civilization problems stretching back in
time, mainly for the Balkans but also elsewhere, were dealt with in Grams-
ci’s university course on comparative linguistics. Indeed, in his transcrip-
tion of the course we read ‘it is said that, because of its lesser degree of
Hegemony 35
civilization, Rome did not succeed in “Romanizing” Greece. But was Rome
perhaps more civilized than Etruria? And yet in Italy, [Rome] destroyed the
ancient nationalities and the ancient languages and imposed its own hege-
mony on all the activities of the spirit.’4 Analogous positions to this are then
developed in the Notebooks when Gramsci deals with empires (Roman and
modern ones) and the forces external to them and, of course, with capital-
ism and the social forces challenging it.
The concept, stemming from ancient Greece, of hegemony as the system
of power relations between competing—or between dominant and vas-
sal—city-states and nations is found in the Notebooks in sections on, for

example, how United States power was created (Gramsci 1975, Q2§16;
1992, 260–5), and on the history of subaltern States explained by that of
hegemonic ones (Gramsci 1975, Q15§5; 1995, 222–3).
Hegemony—Lenin
However, it was another sector of the left that provided a greater input
for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. For him, the principal contemporary
architect of the modern theory of hegemony was Lenin, who, as a theoreti-
cian, had on ‘the terrain of political organization and struggle, and with
political terminology . . . . reappraised the front of cultural struggle and
constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the
State-as-force and as a contemporary form of the 1848 doctrine of “perma-
nent revolution”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10I§12; 1995, 357). In other words, the
leadership of the proletarian forces had to be developed independently on all
fronts ‘in opposition to the various tendencies of “economism”,’ as Gramsci
writes in the same paragraph in commenting Lenin’s position. 5 Especially
in the light of an internationally influential, but sometimes flawed, article
of Norberto Bobbio’s on Gramsci, where ‘hegemony’ is claimed to be more
characteristic of Stalin (Stalin 1934, 361–2) than of Lenin, whose ‘habitual
language’ is said not to include gegemoniya (Bobbio 1969, 75–100, in Eng-
lish 1988, 73–99), it is doubly worthwhile examining the input from Lenin.
Some of the main policies advocated by Lenin for leadership over both
allied and oppositional classes are outlined in this subsection.
The concept and practice of ‘hegemony,’ but not necessarily the word,
is present under various guises in his work from long before the Bolshevik
revolution. The word gegemoniya makes an early appearance in the classic
1902 pamphlet What Is to Be Done?, although the standard English
translation contains not ‘hegemony’ but a gloss. Advocating strategies
mirrored in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Lenin says the Bolsheviks had
a ‘bounden duty’ in the struggle to overthrow the autocracy to guide the
activities not only of the urban proletariat but also of other ‘opposition
strata’ (Lenin 1967, 84). The concept also comes into Lenin’s writings in
the same decade on the Paris Commune, where he notes that the ‘socialist
proletariat’ could achieve ‘democratic tasks to which the bourgeoisie could
36 Derek Boothman
only pay lip service,’ a task similar to the one he later faced regarding
agrarian reform. This leadership role is also shown in his observation on
Engels, who ‘in calling the Commune a dictatorship of the proletariat had in
view . . . . the ideological leading participation of the representatives of the
proletariat in the revolutionary government’ (Lenin’s emphasis, from Lenin
1931, 18 and 59 respectively).6 The innovative elements to note are, in the
first case, the role of one class (the proletariat) that, by carrying out tasks
classically assigned to other classes, potentially was able to weld together a
class alliance; in the second case, other classes spontaneously recognize the
proletariat’s ideologically superior positions, judged by Gramsci as essential

to hegemony. Later on, in the first period of the Bolshevik government, one
main problem was the modus vivendi between the Russian proletariat and
their former masters, and in May 1918 we find Lenin defending the need to
use the former capitalists to run State industry, because they were the only
ones with the necessary expertise (Lenin 1968, 21–22): the hegemonic aspect
emerges here in the exercise of power by the proletariat over an antagonistic
class. Subsequently, his article ‘The III International and its Place in History,’
written just a month after the International’s foundation, does in fact contain
the word ‘egemonia’ three times in the Italian translation that Gramsci
published (Lenin 1919, 245–6): in the international movement, hegemony,
i.e., a recognized leading position, passed to the German socialists after 1870,
while Kautsky in 1908 said it could pass to the Slavs, as it actually did (to
the Russians) after 1917.7 Other Marxists seem to have used the word in the
official documents of the First Congress of the Comintern, notably Bukharin
and Eberlein in their ‘Platform’ of the International and also, possibly, the
Russian drafter Obolensky (Ovinsky) of the theses on the international
situation and the Entente (Theses . . . . of the Third International, 42 and
54); in the latter case, the English translation has ‘leading position’ where
the Italian has ‘egemonia.’ A particular concept of hegemony, as well as the
word itself, was then, as Anderson describes in a widely quoted essay (1976,
15–18), in use by Marxists including Lenin, in the whole period up to the
foundation of the Comintern.
Just after Lenin raised the question of relations between antagonistic
classes in post-revolutionary Russia, a rather different aspect of hegemony
was posed by another politico-economic issue, namely the nature of the
democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, especially in
the transition from ‘war communism’ to the New Economic Policy (NEP).
In order to rule, the urban proletariat had to come to terms with a back-
ward agricultural system based on the various strata of the peasantry and
reach an understanding with the majority of these latter (Lenin at the Tenth
Congress of the R.C.P, quoted in Carr 1966, 277). Carr goes on to note that
small producers and cultivators, the great majority of the Russian popula-
tion, were present in almost all countries and, according to the Bolsheviks
and the International, ‘the chief question of the revolution’ consisted in the
struggle against them. They could not be expropriated like the capitalists,
Hegemony 37
but at least in Russia the NEP fulfi lled the purpose of maintaining ‘the alli-
ance of the proletariat with the peasantry, in order that the proletariat may
keep the role of leadership and state power’ (Lenin, speech at the Third
Congress of the International, quoted in Carr 1966, 278). The peasantry
was therefore simultaneously both the object of struggle and an essential
ally; the two aspects, dominance and leadership, involving force and con-
sent respectively, that for Gramsci were to characterize hegemony are thus
present. Lenin’s innovative policy towards the peasantry is well known and
requires no further comment, but his theses on the agrarian question at the
Second Congress of the International are equally original and shot through
with the notions of hegemony while the word itself is not actually used
(Theses . . . . of the International, 113–23).
It matters little if the term gegemoniya was, as Bobbio claims, used lit-
tle by Lenin. Nowhere in the Prison Notebooks does Gramsci ascribe the
actual use of the word to Lenin but, as seen, it is in the original Russian
of What Is to Be Done, and it is present in other writings (Two Tactics,
The Electoral Struggle in St Petersburg and the Mensheviks, and even, as
regards the banks, in his Imperialism), as well as in the Italian transla-
tion of the Third International article. More importantly, what Gramsci
would develop as ‘hegemony’ is, as indicated, ever-present in Lenin’s politi-
cal practice. Taking account of such aspects of Lenin, one may appreciate
Gramsci’s comment that it is probable that he ‘[effectively] advanced philos-
ophy as philosophy in so far as he advanced political doctrine and practice’;
indeed, the ‘philosophical fact’ represented by the ‘reform of consciousness
and of the methods of knowledge’ was brought about by the creation of a
hegemonic apparatus (Gramsci 1975, Q10–II§12; 1971, 365–6; ‘probable’
is included here to render a conditional verb not entirely taken account of
in the Selections from the Prison Notebooks translation; ‘effectively’ is a
later addition by Gramsci to his original comment).
Uses by the Bolsheviks and other communists

The above is consistent with what Anderson (1976) writes about the pre-
revolutionary currency of the word hegemony, but his statement that ‘in
the aftermath of October, the term ceased to have much actuality in the
USSR’ needs qualification. In his lectures on Lenin’s contribution to the
revolution, Bukharin, for one, begins by observing that Lenin was ‘the
most outstanding agrarian theoretician existing among Marxists.’ Pre-
cisely on the working class/peasant alliance, he goes on to say that in the
dual struggle against ‘liberal Marxism’ and the Narodniki, ‘the radical
Narodniki always placed the peasantry fi rst. The liberal Narodniki stood
for an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, which was to have hegemony
over the peasantry’; thus ‘it was the problem of an ally of the working class
that was being solved . . . . this problem was connected with yet another
deep-rooted problem which had to be acknowledged both theoretically
38 Derek Boothman
and practically—this was the problem of the hegemony of the proletariat’
(emphases in the original). Attention should be paid to what Bukharin says
shortly afterwards: it is ‘superfluous to speak here about the hegemony of
the proletariat and the role of the working class as leader, because this is a
theoretical point about which we are already acquainted and which does
not need any commentary’ (Bukharin 1925, 44–49). In other words, the
term gegemoniya was well-enough known not to require any further expla-
nation; were the word used the normal one for leadership (rukovodstvo),
there would of course be no need for his comment. In the whole of this part
of the lectures, hegemony is present as a word, and the concept, prefiguring

one Gramscian sense of it, is ever-present in his reasoning.
This general currency of the term among the Bolsheviks is also dem-
onstrated by reference to Trotsky. In the 1904–6 period, when the demo-
cratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, or even, as he says, of
the ‘proletariat, peasantry, and intelligentsia,’ was still something of the
future, he asked, ‘Who is to wield the hegemony on the government itself,
and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers’ govern-
ment, by this we reply that hegemony should belong to the working class’
(Trotsky 1986, 72 and 109). Some twenty years later, in a speech at a meet-
ing on literature organized by the Central Committee of the RCP (May
1924), now in some editions of Trotsky’s anthology Literature and Revolu-
tion, he notes that ‘the task of the proletariat is to bring the peasants over
to socialism, maintaining a complete hegemony over them’ (Trotsky 1973,
503). In the Introduction in the same year to his First Five Years of the
Communist International, he discusses ‘the question of the hegemony of
the Communist Party in the workers’ movement’ and, in his Military Writ-
ings, in relation to inter-state relations, he observes that US hegemony had
supplanted that of Britain on the seas (Trotsky 1981).
Somewhat confusingly, ‘hegemony’ is used in English translations of
Lukács, referring in the essay ‘Class Consciousness’ to the rule of a class in
power (but readers should be warned that the original German is Herrschaft,
not Hegemonie, rendered dominance and domination in Kostas Axelos’s
French translation. Lukács 1971, 52–3 and 65–6; Lukács 1970, 129 and
148) and in his ‘Blum Theses,’ written in the late 1920s for the illegal Hun-
garian Party, to the ‘hegemony of large-scale capital’ (Lukács 1972, 248).
Furthermore, the ‘Class Consciousness’ essay contrasts, in a near-Grams-
cian way, the ruling classes’ Herrschaft with the ‘subordinate role’ (Passiv-
ität in the original) of the ruled.
The predominant sense of hegemony as the political leadership of an
actual (or potential) ruling class seems, on the whole, not to have changed
until Gramsci’s prison writings began to appear in Italy in the late 1940s.8
Summing up, after taking into account linguistic and translation difficul-
ties, it is clear that the germ of the idea that was to become ‘hegemony’ in
Gramsci’s prison reflections was current among communists in the turbu-
lent atmosphere of the 1920s.
Hegemony 39
Hegemony—the working class in the metropolis and the colonies

After the Russian Revolution, including the period Gramsci spent in Rus-
sia, other important subjects were discussed and decisions taken within
the International connected with the relationship between proletarian and
peasant forces. These included the problems at a world level of burgeoning
nationalism and the growth of anti-imperialist movements; in determining
where alliances were advisable and where lines of distinction and demar-
cation were to be drawn, important issues regarding what constitutes the
hegemony of the proletariat were posed. In this context, the word seems to
have gained some international currency so that in a public meeting (appar-

ently with Ruth Fischer on the platform) on his return from the V Comin-
tern Congress, the Scottish communist Bob Stewart9 could assert the need
to ‘establish the complete hegemony of the working class by linking the
workers of the colonies with the workers of this country . . . . ’ (Murphy,
9). He apparently felt no need to simplify his language by using a gloss
for ‘hegemony,’ presumably meaning ‘political leadership,’ thus providing
a hint that the word was comprehensible to his politicized audience, albeit
maybe not in everyday use even among party leaders.
The successful resolution of relations between workers in the metro-
politan and in the colonial countries runs through the Comintern debates
throughout the 1920s, including those at the 1928 VI Congress. While
Gramsci was at that time already imprisoned, some comments on the posi-
tions adopted up to and including the Congress (naturally from a fascist
viewpoint), and even direct quotes from some Congress resolutions, were
included in articles that attracted his attention (Gramsci 1975, Q5§89;
1995, 118; 1996, 343–4, citing Gabrielli 1929, 375–84). Inklings thus
trickled through to him of the substance of the Congress debate, whose
concluding resolution on the colonies declared that in bourgeois-demo-
cratic revolutions, the ‘basic strategical aim of the Communist movement’
was ‘the hegemony of the proletariat’ (emphasis in the original), and that
without this ‘an organic part of which is the leading role of the Communist
Party, the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be carried through to
an end, not to speak of the socialist revolution’ (The Revolutionary Move-
ment in the Colonies 1929, 26 and 21). ‘Hegemony’ as used in the resolu-
tion involved allying with bourgeois forces and even ‘patriarchal and feudal
chiefs and rulers’ who opposed foreign oppressors, while not excluding
struggle by the working-class against them as the situation demanded, a
confl ictual relation not far from Gramsci’s concept.
Hegemony—the first decade after the October Revolution

What emerges from the handful of publications cited is that the term ‘hege-
mony,’ in its several guises, was current in the theoretical and policy elabo-
rations of Communist leaders in the 1920s. From the instances quoted here,
40 Derek Boothman
‘hegemony’ often seems used to indicate a leading role of the proletariat in
class alliances involving consent, as contrasted with the ‘domination of the
capitalist system’ defi ned in the documents of the VI Congress of the Inter-
national. The emergence of an independent working-class force in the colo-
nies ‘directly opposing itself to the national bourgeoisie’ led to a struggle
with this latter ‘for hegemony in the national revolution as a whole’ (The
Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies 1929, 8, 20 and 30). Why a
minority can dominate ideologically did not seem widely discussed, except
in the work of individuals like Lukács; the fall-back position, not further
developed, seems Marx’s dictum that the dominant ideas of an epoch are
those of the ruling class. Just how this may be challenged is a key area of
Gramsci’s prison reflections.
The documents of the various Bolsheviks cited here suggest, schematically
as may be, the following break down to be plausible. For Stalin, ‘hegemony
of the proletariat’ is ‘proletarian leadership of the masses’ (Stalin, loc. cit., on
successive lines). Trotsky uses the term across various contexts, including its
original ancient Greek one of military leadership, and, like Gramsci, recog-
nizes the necessary role in the exercise of hegemony of what he calls the intel-
ligentsia, here at times exaggerating somewhat. In his appreciation of Lenin,
Bukharin uses the term ‘hegemony’ very widely in the context of building
alliances and, indeed, his biographer claims—probably relying on positions
such as those of Bukharin’s 1925 booklet—going beyond the political, he
‘hoped for Bolshevik “hegemony” in economic, cultural and ideological life’
(Cohen 1971, 208). However, there is no clear indication that anyone, apart
from Lenin himself, gives the term a meaning extending beyond a synonym
for ‘political leadership.’ In all this, from summer 1922 to autumn 1923,
Gramsci was in Russia and, as member of the Comintern Executive and del-
egate at its IV Congress, abreast, health permitting, of writings, debates, and
developments there. And it is only shortly afterwards, indeed, that a near
flowering of the word ‘hegemony’ begins to appear in his letters.
THE CROCEAN INPUT
As well as Marxist and other left sources, an important and quite different
type of input consisted in the idealist philosophy of Benedetto Croce, who
functioned for Gramsci rather like Hegel did for Marx. Just as Marx had to
turn Hegel’s dialectic inside out to extract its rational kernel, Gramsci had to
radically reinterpret certain aspects of Croce’s discourse in order to translate
Croce’s concepts into his own paradigmatic scheme.
And it is one element in particular of Croce’s speculative philosophy—his
concept of ‘ethico-political history’—that Gramsci reinterpreted and trans-
lated for use within his philosophy of praxis as a basis for the notion of
the expansion of hegemony, especially after a successful revolution. Gramsci
draws specifically on two of Croce’s essays from the first half of the 1920s
Hegemony 41
that introduce ‘ethico-political history’ viewed as the history of ‘moral or
civil life’—the history of the complex of moral institutions in the broadest
sense—as opposed to histories that consider ‘economic life as the substan-
tive reality and moral life as an appearance’ or ‘merely military and diplo-
matic’ ones (Croce 1946, 67–77, especially 67 and 71–2, and 125–30). For
Gramsci, Croce’s ‘ethico-political history’ represented merely ‘an arbitrary
and mechanical hypostasis of the moment of hegemony, of political leader-
ship, of consent in the life and development of the State and civil society.’ This
side of history was not, however, excluded by the philosophy of praxis, which
‘in its most recent stage of development consists precisely in asserting the
moment of hegemony as essential to the concept of the State and in attaching
“full weight” to the cultural factor, to cultural activity, to the necessity for
a cultural front alongside the merely economic and political ones’ (Gramsci
1975, Q10§7; 1995, 343 and 345). Where Gramsci differs from Croce is in
his refusal to reduce history just to ‘ethico-political history’; this is ampli-
fied a few pages later in the observation that Croce completely neglects the
moment of force in history, essential in the formation of a State. Is it possible,
Gramsci asks rhetorically, to conceive of nineteenth-century European his-
tory without ‘an organic treatment of the French Revolution and the Napo-
leonic wars’ or ‘without dealing with the struggles of the Risorgimento’ in
Italy? By leaving out the moment when one system of social relations disin-
tegrates and another is established, Crocean history becomes ‘nothing more
than a fragment of history,’ which in the European case was, in a phrase that
Gramsci borrows from Vincenzo Cuoco, the ‘“passive” aspect of the great
revolution which began in France in 1789,’ making its effects felt right up to
1871 by ‘a ‘reformist’ corrosion.’10 In Italy, he adds that the hegemonic sys-
tem was maintained ‘and the forces of military and civil coercion kept at the
disposal of the traditional ruling classes’ (Gramsci 1995, Q10§9, 348–50).
His well-known generalization of this is that hegemony is consent backed up
by coercion, i.e., in a classical parliamentary regime ‘the “normal” exercise
of hegemony . . . . is characterised by the combination of force and consent,
which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating exces-
sively over consent’ (Gramsci 1971, Q13§37, 80, note 49). Gramsci takes one
term of Croce’s discourse but radically alters it to render it compatible with
his own paradigm, i.e., he translates it, analogously to the operation he car-
ries out on Cuoco’s ‘passive revolution’ factor.11
MACHIAVELLI
Machiavelli’s ‘centaur’
The combination of coercion and consent within hegemony can also quite
evidently be traced to Machiavelli, whose centaur—‘semi-animal, semi-
man’—indicates ‘that a prince must know how to use both natures, and
that one without the other is not durable’ (Machiavelli 1950, 64). This dual
42 Derek Boothman
nature represents for Gramsci ‘the levels of force and consent, authority
and hegemony, violence and civilization, of the individual moment and the
universal moment (“Church” and “State”), of agitation and propaganda,
of tactics and strategy etc’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§14; 1971, 170, whose fi rst
draft, Q8§86, explicitly refers to Croce’s ‘Church and State’ essay; Croce
1946, 125–30). This description comes very close to his metaphorical one
of Jacobins ‘imposing themselves’ on adversaries (Gramsci 1975, Q1§44
and Q19§24; 1992, 147; 1971, 77) at the same time they built consent by
stimulating the ‘active intervention of the great popular masses as a fac-
tor of social progress’ (Gramsci 1995, 341), and indeed Gramsci portrays
Machiavelli as a Jacobin avant la lettre (1975, Q8§35).
Machiavelli: negotiation and language

Benedetto Fontana has taken the argument regarding the Machiavellian
source of hegemony one step forward by noting that, for a stable State,
Machiavelli required that the ‘prince’ and the people should negotiate and
share common goals. The precondition for this is that individuals should be
converted from a ‘multitude’ (multitudine sciolta, in Machiavelli’s phrase),
in which each member looks to his/her private interests or bene particulare,
into a collective subject, or a ‘people’ (populo) with a public interest or
bene comune, i.e., the people are created as a potentially hegemonic force
in a ‘public space’ where the moment of force is transcended through dia-
logue and agreement is reached between prince and people, leaders and led
(Fontana 1993, 130–31). In contemporary terms, this means the sides come
together as equals with, for Gramsci, an interchange of personnel between
the ‘prince-as-party’ and the people so that, tendentially, substantial differ-
ences become erased, and fusion is obtained. Gramsci explains that ‘in the
hegemonic system there exists democracy between the leading groups and
the led to the extent to which the development of the economy and hence
legislation . . . . favours the molecular passage from the led groups to the
leading [sc. “governing”—DB] ones’ (1975, Q8§191), i.e., the promotion of
individuals of the subaltern classes into the ruling class, analogous, as he
says, to Roman citizenship being possible for conquered peoples. Making
the link back to Machiavelli, without the ‘public space’ that allows dia-
logue and, as seen here for Gramsci, the formation of a collective leader-
ship, the alternative for a nondemocratic leadership based purely on force
is, according to Machiavelli’s Discourses, to ‘build fortresses’ and ‘keep
a good army always ready to take the field,’ or to ‘scatter, disorganize,
and destroy’ the people as a collectivity and reduce them to individuals;
however, he concludes ‘to hold one’s own country, fortresses are injurious’
(Machiavelli 1950, 363 and 368).
Machiavelli’s transformation of multitudine into populo, by way of a
‘public space’ for arriving at a common position, fi nds its equivalent in
Gramsci’s striking metaphor of an orchestra whose single instruments
Hegemony 43
produce a cacophony in tuning up, ‘yet these warm-ups are the necessary
condition for the orchestra to come to life as a single “instrument”’; again,
unless people are bound by a sense of responsibility (Machiavelli’s populo),
they can act like a crowd (the multitudine) forced to take shelter ‘under a
roof during a downpour,’ a situation in which ‘individualism not only is
not overcome but is driven to an extreme through the certainty of impu-
nity and irresponsibility’ (Gramsci 1975, Q15§13 and Q7 §12; 1995, 16
and 275). In this transformation, leaders cannot resort to old-style rhetoric
and fl ights of oratory but must instead convince through reason (Gramsci
1975, Q11§41 and Q10§I41ii; 1995, 297–8 and 406 respectively; 1975,
Q11§25; 1971, 429). Further, while ‘the popular element “feels” but does
not always know or understand, the intellectual element “knows” but does
not always understand and in particular does not always “feel”.’ Gramsci
instead looks forward to the situation in which the relations between ‘intel-
lectuals and people-nation, between the leaders and the led, between the
rulers and the ruled’ become cohesive to the extent that ‘feeling-passion
becomes understanding and thence knowledge’ (1975, Q11§67; 1971, 418,
cited in Fontana 2000, 305). Only then, as Gramsci continues, can the
relationship be ‘one of representation’ with the ‘exchange of individual ele-
ments,’ thus one ‘brings into being the shared life [ . . . . ] one creates the
“historical bloc”.’
The language input in this aspect of hegemony is not to be underesti-
mated; one of Machiavelli’s models was the Greek philosopher Isocrates,
whose dictum logos hegemon panton, or ‘speech and language are the
ruler and guide of all things’ (Fontana 1993, 126), is found in Machia-
velli’s insistence on language as the medium for reaching agreement (pace
Wittgenstein). This approach assumes even greater importance in Gramsci,
for whom speech and language are the principal means for realizing a cul-
ture.
THE UNIVERSITY LINGUISTIC INPUT
In various ways, then, language informs Gramsci’s reflections on and

development of the concept of hegemony. But the role of language in
hegemony does not stop there. Gramsci not only knew his own dialect of
the Sard language but, when appropriate, used it through his adult life,12
always however remaining conscious of its limitations. In general, dia-
lects and even minority languages reflect the relatively narrow world of
their speakers, who have ‘an intuition of the world which is more or less
limited and provincial, which is fossilized and anachronistic in relation
to the major currents of thought which dominate world history’ (Gramsci
1975, Q11§12; 1971, 325) and hence do not participate in or reflect the
world’s great cultural movements, a position fully consonant with those
outlined in Bartoli’s university course.
44 Derek Boothman
In a path-breaking book, the Italian linguist Franco Lo Piparo exam-
ined this question of the dialect-national language nexus in depth, both
as it transpires in the Notebooks and how linguists studied by Gramsci at
university had considered it, in order to show how it feeds into the subal-
tern-hegemonic relationship. Indeed, the notion of ‘linguistic hegemony’
or ‘cultural hegemony,’ with hegemony often replaced by near-synonyms
such as ‘prestige’ or ‘primacy,’ and even ‘dictatorship’ (sic), was fairly wide-
spread among these linguists (Lo Piparo 1979, 106–8). One of them in par-
ticular, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, had taken issue with Alessandro Manzoni,
Italy’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and president of the Parliamen-

tary National Language Commission, which concluded that this language
should be created by teaching, on a national scale, the standard Floren-
tine dialect. Ascoli, on the other hand, ‘more historicist’ than Manzoni,
did ‘not believe in cultural hegemonies by decree, i.e., not supported by
a deeper and more necessary national function’ (Gramsci 1975, Q23§40;
1985, 173); or, according to the fi rst draft, he did ‘not believe in linguistic
hegemonies enacted by legal decree, without a supporting economic-cul-
tural structure’ (1975, Q1§73; 1992, 179). For Gramsci, after the decay
of medieval Florence, Florentine as a national language had become ‘the
language of an exclusive caste which has no contact with a historical spo-
ken language’ (loc. cit.) and, indeed, on unification, Italy—divided linguis-
tically into scores of dialects—numbered less than 3 percent of speakers
of the Florentine that solely among the ‘educated classes’ functioned as a
national language. In other words, Manzoni’s purely rationalistic approach
to language reform represented linguistic ‘force’ rather than ‘consent’ in
using state means to impose from above a linguistic ‘Florentine hegemony,’
regardless both of the absence of trained personnel to teach the language
and even of local variations around Florence, sometimes closer to dialect
forms found elsewhere. Here one may detect in Gramsci the influence of
Francesco De Sanctis, Italy’s greatest literary historian and critic and Min-
ister of Education in the (bourgeois) left government subsequent to that of
the ‘historic right’ of Manzoni’s reforms: dialects were linguistically posi-
tive factors for pupils, if due attention were paid to the elements of simi-
larity between them and the budding national language (Dardano 1984,
143).
Here Gramsci is dealing with what, in terminology borrowed from Ascoli,
may be called ‘substrata’ of the population and their use of language, a
position that foreshadows sociolinguistic ideas of class language, developed
only decades later. Gramsci’s fully fledged position sees language as the
mode of expression of the culture characteristic of a class or other group
of the population (cf. Ives 2004, especially 33–6), different linguistic codes
thus being one aspect of the confl ictual relationships between subaltern
and hegemonic cultures. In his position as a speaker of the Sard language,13
but also through his contacts with the cultures and dialects from all over
Italy present among Turin’s automobile workers, Gramsci had to confront
Hegemony 45
the question of dialect and minority language versus national language.
For him, language and culture, including the culture on which a politics
is based, are more than just closely linked: in one way, as Dante Germino
remarks, ‘in a vital sense language is politics, for it affects the way people
think about power’ (Germino 1990, 27) and, in other ways, as Gramsci
observes, language is to be ‘understood as an element of culture,’ each lan-
guage constituting ‘an integral conception of the world’ (1975, Q3§76 and
Q5§123; 1996, 74 and 366 respectively). The whole question is summed
up in Gramsci’s very last notebook where, yet again, he brings together
language, culture, and politics, concluding that ‘every time the question of
language surfaces,’ other questions, most notably that of the reorganization
of ‘cultural hegemony,’ are being posed (1975, Q29§3; 1985, 183–4).
Lo Piparo is right, then, to maintain that an important input to the sub-
altern-hegemonic relationship comes from the dialect/national language
dyad. Dialect is generally limited to a narrow cross-section, usually but not
always the subaltern classes and strata, Ascoli’s linguistic ‘substrata’ here
showing their influence. For Gramsci, dialect cannot deal with the grand
themes of world culture, for which a national language with all its flex-
ibility, depth, historical development, and capacity of expression is needed.
The overall conclusion to be drawn on language’s input to hegemony is that
Gramsci is influenced partly by the linguists he studied at university but, as
Fontana has shown, also by Machiavelli’s insistence, through Isocrates, on
consent, characteristic of the human part of the centaur, through language
as ‘ruler and guide of all things.’
SOME PREPRISON USES OF HEGEMONY BY GRAMSCI
For the sake of completeness, it is useful to recall here the uses of the word
‘hegemony’ in the period just before Gramsci’s arrest, found especially in
his preprison letters.14 All the references in the letters date from his period
in Vienna, after his stay in Russia and before the election in April 1924
that allowed him to re-enter Italy under parliamentary immunity.
In early January 1924, we fi nd him speaking of ‘an extreme weak-
ening of bourgeois parliamentary hegemony’ in the context of a still
inconclusive ‘triumph of the fascist reactionary petite bourgeoisie.’ The
next month, in explaining to Italian comrades the various currents in the
Russian party, he comments, ‘The statute of the International assigns de
facto hegemony to the Russian party for world-wide organization.’ At
the start of March, this time he observes that the Fiat paper, La Stampa,
wanted ‘to maintain Piedmontese-northern hegemony over Italy and, in
order to reach its aim, is not even averse to allowing the working-class
into its hegemonic system.’ Finally, a few days before his election to Par-
liament, in an important letter on Yugoslavia, he writes of the peasant
leader Stjepan Radič, later admitted to the Red Peasant International (the
46 Derek Boothman
Krestintern), who at the time of Gramsci’s letter was tending ‘to put him-
self forward as the champion of all the Yugoslav nations crushed by the
military and administrative hegemony of the Serbs,’ then going on to say
that this ‘hegemony of the Serbs’ was felt strongly in the army through a
‘secret organization [ . . . . ] which is the strongest instrument of the mon-
archy and of centralism.’ This period in Gramsci’s development is best
considered as one of transition as regards the development of the notion
of hegemony. In the light of the present reconstruction, the reiteration of
the term in these letters, at a time when the debates in Russia were still
fresh in his mind, is probably not without its significance as a stage in the
concept’s development. Further to this, in the essay on the Southern Ques-
tion that he was working on when arrested, we fi nd the ‘hegemony of the
proletariat’ appearing as the ‘social base of the proletarian dictatorship
and the workers’ State’ (Gramsci 1978, 443); the essay in its entirety is of
course a masterpiece in its description of the practical workings of hege-
mony in the Italy of that era. To a different and lesser extent, his report
on the Third Congress of the Italian Party, held in the French city of Lyon
(Gramsci 1978, 379–99), and the Theses for the majority centre group of
the party, written jointly with Togliatti, also sketch out basic hegemonic
relationships then obtaining in Italy, without the word ‘hegemony’ itself
being used. All these uses indicate an already fairly wide-ranging notion
of hegemony developing before Gramsci’s imprisonment and reflecting
uses such as those outlined here.
THE MAIN SOURCES OF HEGEMONY
There can be no defi nitive word on the Gramscian concept and use of
hegemony since, as with other concepts of his, fi rst, it was in continual
evolution and, secondly, it assumes different contours according to the
situation. What may be done when considering its principal uses in the
Notebooks is to bear in mind the multiple origins of the concept, compar-
ing when necessary the early uses with those found later on (i.e., in and
after the central monographic Notebooks 10–13 on philosophy, on the
intellectuals and on Machiavelli), where the notion becomes more fleshed
out. The present reconstruction suggests that the inputs to the concept
include: Marx, the Italian socialists, the early international communist
movement, Croce, Machiavelli, and his linguistics studies including, in
his words, the language question, bound up as it is with the culture of
societal groups and classes, and as such always posing the subaltern-hege-
monic relationship. Last, but by no means least, comes his own reading
of history and social reality, a key factor here being Jacobinism, which
is extended metaphorically by Gramsci from the French revolutionary
movement to other experiences. The examples here quoted from Lenin’s
practice illustrate the fact that hegemony’s range goes wider than the
Hegemony 47
merely political field. One of Gramsci’s central achievements is to have
developed and woven together all these various strands of hegemony for
its innovative application on the civil, social, national, and international
political, cultural and economic planes.
NOTES
1. A version of this chapter appeared as D. Boothman, “The Sources for Grams-

ci’s Concept of Hegemony” in Rethinking Marxism 20 (April 2008). (Taylor

and Francis Ltd). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission
of the publisher.
2. His translation includes the crucial central part of the preface. In quoting the
critical edition of the Notebooks (Gramsci 1975) we shall give the number
of the notebook, denoted by Q, and the note number denoted by the symbol
§, as per the standard adopted in this book in line with the now accepted
international standard of referencing promoted by the International Gramsci
Society. This particular reference, however, forms part of an appendix to the
notebooks and does not have a specific notebook or note number, so page
numbers are given instead.
3. Cf., for example, the sixteenth-century letters in Dubrovnik’s ethnological
museum authorizing Dalmatian sea captains to seek food elsewhere in the
Mediterranean during bad harvests, written not in Croat but in a recogniz-
able and easily readable Venetian Italian, a striking example of linguistic
hegemony. Not the popular dialect as such, but the Venetian language, based
on a Latin model (Gramsci 1975, Q3§76; 1996, 75), was the language of
government in Adriatic territories under Venice’s sway.
4. From the glottology course held at Turin University, 1912–13 (Part II, p.47,
footnote) by Giulio Matteo Bartoli, the professor with whom Gramsci should
have written his degree dissertation and who, when Gramsci had passed the
exam on the course with top marks, encharged him with transcribing the
entire course. The quotation from Gramsci’s handwritten manuscript (not
as yet published) is reproduced here by kind permission of the Fondazione
Istituto Gramsci of Rome.
5. The emergence of the concept in Russian Marxism before Lenin is due to
Plekhanov who, however, ‘never left a clearly worked-out defi nition of hege-
mony in his writings’; see Lester (2000, 17–18, 37, and 40 for the words
quoted).
6. Also on p. 59, Lenin notes the leading position both of members of the First
International (IWMA), and of ‘some of the avowed enemies of the Interna-
tional,’ collaborating within the Commune, thus recognizing the compro-
mises necessary in a hegemonic relationship; the original articles date to
1908 and 1905 respectively.
7. In these three uses of ‘egemonia,’ the English translation (Lenin 1972) has
‘leadership.’
8. A rider has to be added here. Maurice Dobb uses the word in a volume fi rst
published in 1946 but whose gestation dates back to the mid-1920s (Dobb
1967, 13, 106, 144, 155, 156, 385). The reference on p. 13 to challenges to
hegemony has a particularly Gramscian ring (cf. section two of this chap-
ter), and an indirect influence due to Piero Sraffa cannot be excluded, since
Sraffa, with whom Dobb collaborated on the former’s edition of Ricardo,
received in Cambridge copies of all Gramsci’s letters to his sister-in-law
48 Derek Boothman
directly from her, including those of spring 1932 on Croce that use “egemo-
nia” explicitly.
9. Stewart was important especially in fi rst two decades of the British Party,
being British CP representative in Moscow in 1923–24, then acting party
general secretary in 1925 when twelve top leaders were jailed on trumped-up
charges; he himself was arrested three days into the general strike of May
1926.
10. This ‘“passive” aspect’ is taken by Gramsci from Cuoco, the Neapolitan
patriot and leading member of the short-lived Parthenopean Republic (1799)
and, as modified, used fundamentally to mean a ruling class’s tactic of con-
ceding just enough from above to head off demands for radical measures.
11. This brief subsection of the present article summarizes without attempt-
ing to argue fully the positions developed in Boothman 2002, 102–19, esp.
107–11, and, in a slightly revised form, in Boothman 2004, 111–36.
12. Cf. Fiori (1970, 80) who narrates that, when earning a little money in the
summer vacations by coaching a student of Latin and Greek, Gramsci used
dialect to make himself understood unambiguously. Even later on, he used
dialect when, after his election to Parliament, he spoke at a regional party
congress in Sardinia and, in one of his health crises in jail, even delivered long
tirades in Sard during a period of feverish delirium (Fiori, 183 and 276).
13. As such, he aided Bartoli’s comparative research on Latin-based languages.
Discussion of the influence on Gramsci of Bartoli’s glottology course will
appear in a contribution in the proceedings of the International Gramsci
Society’s 2007 conference in Sardinia.
14. An English translation of these is now nearing conclusion.
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Croce, B. 1946. Economico-political and Ethico-political History and The Unend-
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4 Hegemony and the Elaboration
of the Process of Subalternity
Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara
INTRODUCTION
It has often been said that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has a certain
similarity to Max Weber’s notion of legitimate power, as well as Michel
Foucault’s concept of power. Power for Foucault shows one important char-
acteristic—that is, it is not necessarily a negative instance that has nothing
more than the function of repression but can also be positive operating as a
productive network spread over the whole of the social body.1 Needless to
say, Foucault’s approach would also be critical of interpretations of power
that simplify it to a mechanism of class domination in advanced capitalist
countries, such as is found in traditional Marxist theory. Specifically, this
form of Marxism lacks any internal analysis of the complex mechanisms
of power.
Edward Said, too, gives significant attention to Gramsci’s concept of
hegemony, as well as Foucault’s notion of power. Said does not consider
power in authority only as something negative or oppressive, but he rec-
ognizes that the central reality of power in authority is the presence of the
State. So he emphasizes that culture, cultural formations, and intellectu-
als exist and are made possible by virtue of a very interesting network of
relationships with the authority of State. In this context, Said recognises
the importance of Gramsci’s use of the term ‘elaboration’ in evaluating the
importance of hegemony (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). Gramsci’s insight is to
have recognized that subordination, fracturing, diffusing, and reproduc-
ing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, and guiding, are all necessary
aspects of the elaboration of hegemony (Said 1979, 21–23).
The aim of this chapter is to analyze the significance of elaboration as an
innovative and expansive concept in the theory of hegemony as articulated
in the Prison Notebooks. In particular, to explain how the elaboration
of hegemony relates to the complex analysis of power in relation to such
things as State formation, the State, civil society, the economy, intellectuals
and subaltern social groups in an attempt to uncover the complexity of the
Gramscian concept of hegemony.
52 Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara
ELABORATING THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY
Firstly, for Gramsci, the State is ‘hegemony protected by the armour of

coercion’ (1975, Q6§88), and at the same time, the State is the entire com-
plex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not
only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active
consent of those over whom it rules (Gramsci 1975, Q15§10). In addition,
civil society represents a complex network of so-called private apparatuses
in which one exercises ethico-political leadership or hegemony and through
which is produced active consent. It is clear that Gramsci intended to be

critical of, and then supersede, the old theory of States in which the State
is defi ned as a simple instrument or apparatus of domination and oppres-
sion.
Secondly, Gramsci did not only intend to innovate and expand his
concept of hegemony by articulating two opposing moments, that is, the
dichotomy between dominance and coercion and leadership and consent
inherent to the operation of power in authority. He also gave attention to
the process of transforming in the consciousness of subaltern groups these
two moments into hegemony through their interiorisation and capillary
penetration. This effectively represents the process of elaboration, as Said
noted it. In the fi rst paragraph of Notebook 13 (the notebook on Machia-
velli), Gramsci analyzes the function of the ‘Modern Prince,’ which rep-
resents a historical example of a political ideology expressed through the
creation of concrete fantasy that acts on a dispersed and shattered people to
arouse and organize its collective will. The Modern Prince, as it develops,
revolutionizes the whole system of moral and intellectual relations so much
so that in men’s consciences ‘the Prince takes the place of the divinity or
the categorical imperative’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§1). What precisely is the
process in which a dispersed and shattered people wake up and organize a
collective will?
Critical understanding of self takes place . . . through a struggle of po-

litical ‘hegemonies’ and of opposing directions, fi rst in the ethical field
and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working
out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality. Consciousness
of being part of a particular hegemonic force (that is to say, political
consciousness) is the fi rst stage toward a further progressive self-con-
sciousness in which theory and practice will fi nally be one (Q11 §12). 2
In Orientalism (1978, 25), Said draws on these ideas—and also from Note-
book 11§12—to develop the connections between hegemony, conscious-
ness, theory, and practice. In §12, Gramsci argues:
The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what

one really is, and ‘knowing thyself’ is a product of the historical process
Hegemony and the Elaboration of the Process of Subalternity 53
to date which has deposited in you an infi nity of traces, without leaving
an inventory. The fi rst thing to do is to make such an inventory.
Thirdly, the organic intellectual will be involved in every phase of a

long and complex historical process of moral and intellectual reformation.
Thus, a dialectic intellectual/mass relationship3 is born and represents a
complex process in which both the intellectuals and mass of people (sub-
altern groups in particular) become actually autonomous. In other words,
through the dialectic process, a real and organic collaboration and alliance
occurs. For the intellectuals as well as for the mass-subaltern, the dialectic
signifies a process based on the people developing an autonomous histori-
cal consciousness that would lead to challenge and struggle to be free from
hegemonic principles imposed but not accepted (Gramsci 1975, Q16§12).
This process could not be separated from the broader Gramscian project of
social change or transformation, that is, development of a ‘national-popular
collective will’ and of the ‘moral and intellectual reformation’ that, in turn,
leads to the construction of the società regolata, or regulated society.
Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has important significance for
the interpretation of the integral relationship that is developing in vari-
ous fields of the present world, such as politics, the economy, social life,
culture, custom, and the media. Gramsci’s linguistic study of the concep-
tion of hegemony occupied an important position in his theoretical edifice
in his Prison Notebooks. In the course of his long and critical reflections
from prison he addressed two main currents of thought. The fi rst was rep-
resented by mechanistic materialism and its tendency towards economic
determinism and a class-reductionist standpoint (the so-called Marxism-
Leninism as a doctrine officially recognized by the Communist Interna-
tional). The second was the positivism and antipositivism (Georges Sorel
and Benedetto Croce), which had remarkably influenced the former. It is
important, therefore, to bring to light the complex process of Gramsci’s
elaboration of the concept of hegemony through the main study topics he
attempted to take up within his prison writings. These topics represented,
respectively, the fi rst, second, and third periods of his incarceration and
writing in prison.
Even after the publication of the critical edition of the Prison Notebooks
(1975), the understanding of hegemony has been drawn primarily from
the Turi Special Notebooks of the second period, in particular Notebook
13 (Brief Notes on Machiavelli’s Politics) and, as a result, the complex
reflections in the Formia Special Notebooks of the third period (notebooks
16–29) have so far been marginalised. For example, the conception of
‘Americanism’ as a type of hegemony (see Notebook 22) and the concept
of hegemony organized around the critical elaboration of subaltern groups
(see Notebook 25) have had a far lesser influence on understanding hege-
mony. Nevertheless, the concept of ‘Americanism’ was taken up and put
forward in the early 1980s by the regulationist scholars as a Fordist type
of hegemony, and the concept of subaltern social groups was taken in the
1980s by various subaltern studies groups with regard to the question of
hegemony and its relationship to marginalized social groups. These study
groups, as well as many Gramscian scholars, have made significant contri-
butions to the question of hegemony, giving momentum to the research and
the further elaboration of the Gramscian concept.
Before his incarceration, Gramsci utilized the concept of hegemony
in relation to the task of forming the political leadership of the working
class, capable of creating the ‘system of class alliance’ (see Chapter 2 in
this volume). He pointed out that the proletariat can become the lead-
ing (dirigente) and the dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in
creating a system of class alliances that allows it to mobilize the majority
of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois State.
At that time, Gramsci identified hegemony with the level of leadership
achieved by the proletariat. Such a way of seizing hegemony was related
to the bitter experiences Gramsci had in the bienno rosso with the col-
lapse of the revolutionary Factory Councils, the rise of fascist forces, and
the establishment of a fascist regime in Italy. In other words, Gramsci’s
concept of hegemony was based on Leninist ideas and mediated by the
polemic on the policy of ‘united front’ that took place within the Com-
munist International after the death of Lenin. This strategy was focused
on the construction of united revolutionary subjects across Europe and
that included Italy.
The conception of hegemony, however, begins to show a remarkable
level of transformation from the very fi rst notebook in prison. In Note-
book 1 Gramsci begins a process of elaborating the concept of the hege-
mony that was characterized by a shift from hegemony as a class-based
strategic concept to a more universal ‘concept of historical analysis.’
Gramsci analyses the process of historical formation of hegemony after
the French Revolution and in the process of forming a unifi ed Italy as a
nation-state in the Risorgimento. He investigates the problems of hege-
mony related to these processes, and he develops his analysis in order to
dynamically grasp the relationship between the State, political forces,
and social groups, without falling into schematic, determinist, or class
reductionist arguments. For Gramsci, moral and intellectual leadership
implied the crucial moment of hegemony.
A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liq-

uidate,’ or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred
and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already ex-
ercise ‘leadership’ before winning governmental power (this indeed
is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it
subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if
it holds it fi rmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well (1975,
Q19§24).
And Gramsci emphasizes the importance and the prevalence of the
moment of leadership and consent: ‘There can, and indeed must, be hege-
monic activity even before the rise to power, and that one should not
count only on the material force which power gives in order to exercise
an effective leadership’ (1975, Q19§24).
The elaboration of hegemony Gramsci intended to undertake was
deeply connected with his original and creative interpretation of Preface
to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx.4
For Gramsci, the passage from a social order, which can be read as ‘his-
torical bloc’ in Gramscian terminology, to another social order does not

mean a coercive rupture by ‘force,’ nor a lightning process, but a continu-
ity and qualitative reorganization of the precedent society. 5 It is nothing
but a process of the sustainable social transformation characterized by
the process of a ‘war of position.’ This process also means a process of
continuous dialectic between political society (the State) and civil society
that leads to the long-term process of forming società regolata.
In Gramsci’s elaboration of hegemony, much importance is attached
to the private organizations of civil society, or what might be referred to
as associations. It is this associational life that becomes the ‘terrain’ for
creating war of position. In Gramsci’s preprison thought, he already sug-
gested that a future society should be based on ‘minimum coercion and
maximum freedom.’ Later this gives rise to elaboration of a new theoreti-
cal horizon where there is the possibility of ‘reabsorption’ and the realiza-
tion of a società regolata. This represents the development in an original
way of what Marx intended to explain in his argument within the Preface
to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
During the second postwar period, the so-called vulgar Marxists insisted
on some kind of utopian or class determinist illusion such as ‘extinction
of State’ or ‘society without class.’ They never succeeded in theoretically
developing original Marxian ideas. In contrast, seventy years ago, Anto-
nio Gramsci, by interpreting and further developing Marxian ideas in his
own way, had reached a level of originality in articulating the relationship
between the transformation of the social order and what he called hege-
mony. In the contemporary theoretical context, many social movements,
such as trade unions and cooperative movements, associated movements
such as nonprofit organisations, nongovernment organisations, and other
new social movements, as well as other community movements, have been
playing an increasing role challenging hegemony in the contemporary
world. It becomes necessary and indispensable, therefore, not merely to
foster and continuously develop their political voice but also their self-gov-
erning capacity. In this way the Gramscian elaboration of hegemony is a
self-referential and self-reflective conception par excellence. Today these
groups can be viewed as associations born in civil society with components
of political society. In particular, the present situation requires them to be
conscious of the self-referential and self-reflective moment of hegemony, in
order that they are able to exercise the function of the organic intellectual
and access the hegemonic mechanisms in both of the domains of political
and civil society.
The dramatic breakdown of East European socialist states in 1989 and
the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 have clearly shown that any
regime, socialist or not, based on the principle of the ‘minimum freedom, the
maximum coercion’ acts contrary to the Gramscian elaboration of hegemony
and is condemned to become a State through which civil society is oppressed.
This oppression is, in turn, due to a lack of any self-referential moment of
hegemony.
Gramsci’s conception of hegemony has also been elaborated through
his critical analysis of the concept of ‘permanent revolution,’ which is
closely related to his criticism of ‘economism’ (or economic determin-
ism). Economic determinism in the theory of hegemony constitutes an
unscientific precondition for many sorts of erroneous views, such as
the simple and gross view of the linear deepening of capitalist crisis (or
‘general crisis’), the auto-collapse of capitalism, the catastrophic out-
look, and so on. Such economistic and deterministic approaches prevent
the recognition of the necessary and vital nexus that exists between the
structure and superstructure and that leads to understanding the social
order as a historical bloc (Gramsci 1975, Q10§41xii). So, in effect, econ-
omism fails to seize the complex dynamism of political processes and
associational life, as well as the significance of the superstructure and
in particular the active function of ideology in politics. Further, it over-
looks the proper signifi cance of the State as ‘hegemony protected by the
armour of coercion.’ Thus Gramsci was severely critical of the negative
influence of economism by arguing that to maintain it would lead to the
loss of a great part of the intellectual and cultural capacity effective in
Marxian ideas due to a lack of the theoretical moment and the reality of
ideology (Q13§18). It is therefore necessary to combat economism not
only in the theory of historiography, but also and especially in the theory
and practice of politics, and the struggle can and must be carried on by
developing the concept of hegemony (Ibid). In this sense, the elaboration
of the concept of hegemony as a corollary to the criticism of ‘economic
determinism’ should be organically linked with the elaboration of the
State.
In addition, Gramsci’s criticism of the concept of ‘permanent revolution,’
which was theoretically based upon ‘economism,’ was among other
things indispensable for the innovation and amplification of the concept
of hegemony. The formula belongs to an historical period in which the
great mass political parties and the great economic trade unions did not
yet exist, and society was still, so to speak, in a state of fluidity from
many points of view (Gramsci 1975, Q13§7). The social and historical
elements of ‘permanent revolution’ included a greater backwardness of
the countryside, an almost complete monopoly of authority by a few
main cities (like Paris in the case of France), a relatively rudimentary
State apparatus and greater autonomy of civil society from State activity,
a specific system of military forces and of national armed services, and
greater autonomy of the national economies from the economic relations
of the world market. But in the period after 1870, all these elements
changed. The internal and international organizational relations of the
State become more complex and massive, and the Forty-Eightist formula
of the ‘permanent revolution’ is expanded and transcended in political
science by the formula of ‘civil hegemony’ (Ibid). The massive structures
of the modern democracies now included both State organizations and

the complex of associations in civil society that constituted the trenches
and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position
(Ibid).
In this context, Gramsci recognised the concept of the State needed to
be elaborated, and in a letter from prison, Gramsci wrote that the State
is usually understood as a political society (or dictatorship) or coercive
apparatus meant to mold the popular mass in accordance with the type
of production and economy at a given moment. It was not as a balance
between the political society and the civil society (or hegemony of a
social group over the entire national society, exercised through the so-
called private organizations, such as the church, the unions, the schools,
etc.) (Gramsci 1994, 67). The content of this letter corresponds with
the idea articulated in the Prison Notebooks that the general notion of
State includes elements that need to be referred back to the notion of
civil society in the sense that state equals political society plus civil soci-
ety, or in other words, hegemony protected by the armour of coercion
(Gramsci 1975, Q6§88). In this paragraph, Gramsci intends to ‘innovate
and expand the concept of State’ in a dual sense. Firstly, by recognizing
that the State should not be reduced to its coercive and dominative appa-
ratus but that it is possible to extend this position to develop the State as
the whole complex of the political, moral, and intellectual leadership of a
social group. This understanding dynamically seizes the double moments
of the Integral State—that is, political society is simply the government
in a narrow sense that implies coercive dominative aspects while civil
society expands the State because here leadership and consent or persua-
sion is sourced and developed. This idea is clearly expressed by Gramsci
when he posits that ‘the State is the entire complex of practical and theo-
retical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and main-
tains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over
whom it rules’ (1975, Q15§10). Secondly, it will make theoretically and
then practically possible the ‘reabsorption of political society with civil
society.’ This leads to the idea that the coercive element of the State will
wither away by degrees, enabling the elements of regulated society or
ethico-politics and civil society to become more apparent (Ibid, Q6§88).
This approach to the State was indispensable to the elaboration of hegemony.
Through it Gramsci intended not only to restore the intellectual original-
ity of Marx (Gramsci 1975, Q7§33) but, equally, to criticize the liberal
outlook of the State that has the potential to produce fascism and, also,
to supersede the sterile conception of State advocated by the Third Com-
munist International. In other words, it is a theoretical articulation of
the question of reabsorption and that of the formation of the regulated
society that constituted the State as a new horizon in the Prison Note-
books. This is why Gramsci conceives of the State as coercion capable
of withering away and of becoming incorporated into regulated society
(Gramsci 1975, Q6§88). It is now clear that the elaboration of hegemony

was connected with Gramsci’s innovative interpretation of the Preface
to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy where particular
significance and attention was given to the ideas around the social order
and its link to the historical bloc but also the subaltern and their relation
to challenge and struggle in hegemony.
It is important in this elaboration of hegemony to develop the notion of
‘civil society’. ‘Civil society’ is the terrain upon which associations such
as church, schools, and unions are located and operate. It is not only a
place where the struggle for hegemony—that is, between domination and
leadership and subordination and consent—takes place, but also a place
for creating forces to be engaged in the reabsorption of political society.
At the same time, it is a place where the elements for a future regulated
society—that is, a society where ‘political equality based upon economic
equality’—can be born and maintained. In this hegemonic civil society,
the individual can govern himself without entering into confl ict with
political society. Rather, each individual and group becomes the normal
continuation of hegemony and its organic complement (Gramsci 1975,
Q8§130). In Gramsci, the innovation of the notions of hegemony and
State simultaneously involve a renewed outlook of civil society.
The arguments set out above express Gramsci’s acute reflections on the
interruption and defeat of the revolutionary process in Western Europe.
In the East, Gramsci recognised that ‘the State was everything’ while
‘civil society was primordial and gelatinous.’ In the West, however, there
was a proper relation between State and civil society, so much so that
‘when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once
revealed.’ Further, the State was only ‘an outer ditch, behind which there
stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks’ (Gramsci 1975,
Q7§16). It is not correct, therefore, to simplify the notion of State and
reduce it to only an apparatus of coercive domination. In this context, it
is important to understand that the elaboration of hegemony is internally
connected with the elaboration of the State that, in turn, incorporates
research on various topics such as intellectuals, the party, mass media,
popular culture, and common and good sense. In the research that draws
from Gramsci’s elaboration, hegemony is enriched because of its self-
referential and self-innovative character, as well as the emphasis of the
dialectical within the theory of hegemony. A key plank in the theory of
hegemony and its focus on self-knowledge and dialectic is Gramsci’s con-
ception of subaltern. The following section of this chapter will offer an
examination of subalternity through analysis focusing on Notebook 25.
HEGEMONY AND SUBALTERNITY
The analysis of the relation between hegemony and subalternity begins with
a report on subalternity presented by Joseph A. Buttigieg to the International

Gramsci Society as conference held at Naples in 1997. This essay was a reply
to the increased interest in the study of subalternity. This report strongly
impressed on Gramscian scholars from around the world the discrepancy
between the development of research on Gramscian ideas such as hegemony
and the State and the lack of study focusing on subalternity and, in particular,
Notebook 25. For a long time, the concept of subalternity has been mar-
ginalized. After Buttigieg’s presentation an article by Marcus Green entitled
‘Gramsci Cannot Speak’ appeared in Rethinking Marxism (2002). This arti-
cle reinforced the importance and necessity of subalternity in understanding
hegemony (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). A key question emerges from
the idea of subalternity in the theory of hegemony: how can a subaltern group
form an autonomous and independent relation within hegemony and, in so
doing, move beyond and renovate existing hegemonic relations? In order to
answer this question it is imperative to study a series of problems, such as
the creation of an organic relationship between the subaltern and intellectu-
als—that is, movement from development of common sense to good sense;
the operation of the subaltern in civil society; the movement of the subaltern
into political society; the integration of the subaltern in the formation of the
nation-state; the relation between the philosophy of praxis; and the subaltern
in a progressive sense. Following Green’s argument, Gramsci was always con-
scious of the importance surrounding subalternity, and it was identified as
one of the first main topics he planned to address in his notebooks as listed on
the first page of Notebook 1, and also in Notebook 3 §90 Gramsci set out his
‘Methodical Criteria’ for the historical research of the subaltern. The creation
of Notebook 25 clearly indicates Gramsci’s further research and expansion of
the concept (Green 2002, 3). Therefore, ‘One should attempt to understand
Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern within the totality of the Prison Note-
books and general trajectory of his thought’ (Green 2002, 3). However, we
would like to emphasize the importance of studying Notebook 25 in relation
to the other notebooks of the Formia period. Such research, we would argue,
has the potential to expand and deepen the concept of hegemony and link the
concept of the subaltern more closely with other concepts.
The marginalization of the research into subalternity is a serious flaw in
developing a more complex understanding of the theory of hegemony. For
example, it is difficult if not impossible to speak about civil society without
reference to the subaltern. Nor is it possible to speak about the subaltern
developing an ‘organic relation’ without reference to civil society. Certainly
Buttigieg in his 1997 IGS presentation tried to clarify the nature and opera-
tion of this organic relation. This is also successfully explored in Smith’s
chapter in this volume, but otherwise discussions and research that seek to
bring into play subalternity with civil society remain very rare and diluted
as a whole.
In the last part of his article, Green addresses the crucial issue in Grams-
ci’s revolutionary project, that is, subaltern liberation. The elaboration and
clarification of subalternity is the important point of departure for further

deepening the understanding of revolutionary transformation that began in
the historical conditions created by the dramatic collapse of the Soviet-type
model of socialism. It is noteworthy that Green draws attention to this devel-
opment. In conclusion, Green argues that Gramsci’s conceptualization of the
subaltern does not only create a new terrain of struggle but also introduces
the methodological criteria that underpin the formulation of such a struggle.
This methodology is based upon the integral analysis of the social, economic,
and political roots of everyday life (Green 2002, 22).
The elaboration of hegemony and its outcome—that is, the problem of the
dialectical reabsorption of political society into civil society to produce a new
synthesis, or the constitution of a regulated society (società regolata)—always
depends on the degree to which the subaltern express autonomy. It is quite
important to elucidate this part of the theory of hegemony because it is deeply
related to the necessary analysis of Gramsci’s fundamental and theoretical
position of criticizing Stalinism and Comintern doctrine. Both have played a
negative role in the development of the concept of revolutionary change and
practice after the Russian revolution. Therefore, it is an important task for all
Gramscian scholars to understand and investigate these conceptual inter-rela-
tionships. In this regard, we draw attention to the fact that simply studying
political change in one country and only at the level of the State is not enough
to ensure a complete and comprehensive understanding of developing a proj-
ect for hegemonic change that effectively engages the philosophy of praxis. In
order to conceptualise and then transform into practice a project of hegemonic
change—that is, one that engages the historical bloc—Gramsci’s work from
prison attempted to theoretically synthesize the two projects of political and
civic change. We know that Gramsci developed and deepened his criticism of
the Third Communist International’s concept of change from various view-
points. He was consistent in this critique and fundamentally challenged any
tendency to separate from the broader project of change and then emphasise
more mechanistic and deterministic approaches. For Gramsci, the philosophy
of praxis is central to his conception of hegemony, and this enables a focus
on subaltern groups who want to educate themselves in the art of government
(Gramsci 1975, Q10§41xii). In conclusion, it is this focus that is crucial if we
are to seize the significance of Gramsci’s elaboration of hegemony and, even
more importantly, its attainment.
NOTES
1. See Intervista a Michel Foucault, in A. Fontana and P. Pasquino, eds. 1977.

Entretien avec Michel Foucault. Microfisica del potere: interventi politici.
Einaudi. Turin. Foucault, M. 1994. Dits et Ectrits III 1976–1979. Gallimard.
Paris: 148–149. ‘Or il me semble que la notion de répression est tout à fait
inadéquate pour rendre compte de ce qu’il y a justement de producteur dans
le pouvoir. Quand on défi nit les effets de pouvoir par la répression, on se
donne une conception purement juridique de ce même pouvoir; on identifie le
puovoir à une loi qui dit non; il aurait surtout la puissance de l’interdit. Or je
crois que c’est là une conception toute négative, étroite, squelettique du pou-
voir qui a été curieusement partagée. Si le pouvoir n’était jamais que répres-
sif, s’il ne faisait jamais rien d’autre que de dire non, est-ce que vous croyez
vraiment qu’on arriverait à lui obeir? Ce qui fait que le puovoir tient, qu’on
l’accepte, mais tout simplement qu’il ne pèse pas seulement comme une puis-
sance qui dit non, mais qu’en fait il traverse, il produit les choses, il induit du
plaisir, il forme du savoir, il produit du discours; il faut le considérer comme
un réseau productif qui passe à travers tout le corps social beaucoup plus que
comme une instance négative qui a pour fonction de réprimer.’
2. Q11§12. In this case it should be noted that for Gramsci an organic unity
between theory and practice means an ideological unity between the ‘simple’
and the intellectual.
3. Q11§12. ‘Critical self-consciousness means, historically and politically, the
creation of an elite of intellectuals. A human mass does not “distinguish”
itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest
sense, organizing itself; and there is no organization without intellectuals,
that is without organizers and leaders, in other words, without the theoreti-
cal aspect of the theory-practice nexus being distinguished concretely by the
existence of a group of people “specialized” in conceptual and philosophical
elaboration of ideas. But the process of creating intellectuals is long, difficult,
full of contradictions, advances and retreats, dispersals and regroupings, in
which the loyalty of the masses is often sorely tried. (And one must not forget
that at this early stage loyalty and discipline are the ways in which the masses
participate and collaborate in the development of the cultural movement as a
whole.) The process of development is tied to a dialectic between the intellec-
tuals and the mass. The intellectual stratum develops both quantitatively and
qualitatively, but every leap forward towards a new breadth and complexity
of the intellectual stratum is tied to an analogous movement on the part of
the mass of the “simple,” who raise themselves to higher levels of culture
and at the same time extend their circle of influence towards the stratum of
specialized intellectuals, producing outstanding individuals and groups of
greater or less importance. In the process, however, there continually recur
moments in which a gap develops between the mass and the intellectuals
(at any rate between some of them, or a group of them), a loss of contact,
and thus the impression that theory is an “accessory,” a “complement” and
something subordinate.’
4. Gramsci twice translated into Italian an extract from the Preface to a con-
tribution to a critique to Political Economy (1859) of Karl Marx. During his
stay in Moscow in 1923, he translated it from the Russian text of the extract
Lenin had quoted from original German text for his essay ‘Karl Marx’
(1914), and his translation was entitled ‘Marx and His Doctrine’ and pub-
lished in the L’Ordine Nuovo. When he translated it into Italian, he omitted
two passages, as Lenin did in his article. But when he tried to translate the
same extract into Italian during his incarceration, he recovered the passages
he omitted at his precedent translation. We know that Gramsci proceeded
in interpreting and analyzing the two passages in his original way so as to
develop his interpretation and elaboration as very important propositions for
the construction of his project of social change and his concept of historical
bloc. Following are the passages of the Preface Lenin omitted and Gramsci
later restored: ‘No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces
for which there is room in it have developed, and new, higher relations of
production never appear before the material conditions of their existence
have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind
always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter
more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the
material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process
of formation.’
5. With regard to the expression ‘historical bloc,’ Derek Boothman provides
an instructive explanation: ‘The expression deals prevalently with a bloc
between structure and superstructure or with a social totality. Such a bloc is
not merely static as in a “snapshot-like depiction,” but is rendered dynamic
through the introduction of the aspect of hegemony and thus the inclusion
of the direction in which a society is moving. Seen in this light the historical
bloc represents Gramsci’s attempt to transcend the limitations inherent in
Marx’s description of a complex reality by a means of a two-dimensional
base/superstructure metaphor’ (Boothman 1995).
REFERENCES
Boothman, D. 1995. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Further Selections from the

Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. D. Boothman. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Foucault, M. 1977. Intervista a Michel Foucault. In Entretien avec Michel Fou-
cault, eds. A. Fontana and P. e Pasquino. Microfisica del potere: interventi
politici. Turin: Einaudi.
———. 1994. Dits et Ectrits III (1976–1979). Paris: Gallimard.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-
———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Turin: Einaudi.
Green, M. 2000. Gramcsi Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of
Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern. Rethinking Marxism 14;3:1–24.
Said, E. W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul.
———. 1979. Reflections on Recent American ‘Left’ Literary Criticism. bound-
ary 2 8(1). The Problems of Reading in Contemporary American Criticism: A
Symposium.
5 Hegemony, Language, and
Popular Wisdom in the
Asia-Pacific
Alastair Davidson
INTRODUCTION
Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks develop a theory of hegemony that

incorporates ideas about language and popular wisdom (buon senso), which
in turn, are linked to profound analyses of the relations and inter-relations
between Europe and North America. However, these Prison Notebooks say
little about how the theory of hegemony relates to the Asia-Pacific. To make
fruitful use of his work in relation to the Asia-Pacific, we cannot restrict
ourselves to mining it for direct comments but must recognise, as Giorgio
Baratta has reminded us, that Gramsci’s concern was with the exploration
of ‘frontiers’ between the given and the ‘yet to be’ and ‘beyond’ (Baratta
1997). In this context, it is more than appropriate to view Gramsci’s theory
of hegemony (written für ewig) as applicable not just to the European and
American frontiers but also to the Asia-Pacific region. This chapter begins
to develop the application of hegemony, language, and popular wisdom to
the Asia-Pacific.
HEGEMONY, LANGUAGE, AND

POPULAR WISDOM: THEORY
Without doubt, the ‘red thread’ running through Gramsci’s Prison Note-
books is his theory of hegemony. Much attention has already been given to
his development of this concept (see Introduction), but for our purposes it
suffices to recall that it is his term for the way rule is maintained in advanced
capitalism. Gramsci argues that rule in advanced capitalism is maintained
by a combination of coercion and consensus. In other words, hegemony is
never assured by coercive practices alone but must always involve ‘educat-
ing’ the people to accept the economic, social, and political order from
which is built consensus. This education takes myriad forms, mostly uncon-
scious, and occurs mainly through the order of society or social life that
places each individual in a particular situation or site, whence that person
can only comprehend the world in a certain limited way, although he and
64 Alastair Davidson
she can aspire to other possible worlds, or new orders. So their solutions
to life’s problems are limited to particular ways of comprehending their
everyday world that, in turn, is linked to particular ‘languages’.
Gramsci states that the educators are the people who have the ‘func-
tion’ of organising economic, political, and social activities through which
knowledge is dispersed and without whom a social order is impossible.
So from a factory foreman who provides the workers with organisational
knowledge and solutions to a great philosopher who provides an explana-
tion for the purpose of society as a whole, these educators or ‘intellectuals’
are key to the development and maintenance of consensus and, thus, hege-
mony (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12; Gramsci 1975, Q12§1). Gramsci goes on
to argue that intellectuals emerge organically within a particular mode of
production, and without intellectuals no social group conscious of its ‘self’
can exist. This suggests that for Gramsci, hegemony, in the last analysis, is
never a conscious plot by an elite whose machinations can be unmasked,
but rather it is always the outcome of defi nite orders of production linked to
the organisation of knowledge around that production and an engagement
by the intellectuals with the various parts of this process. Most impor-
tantly, the theory of hegemony emphasises that intellectuals, certainly in
the context of capitalism, emerge from the factory, rather than vice-versa.
While the interpretation of the theory of hegemony produces myriad
nuances that still engender much debate, it is now possible to extend ear-
lier views that Gramsci privileged national developments. Gramsci’s start-
ing assumption was the existence of a world capitalist system, and as a
result, in his theory of hegemony the whole world was tendentially moving
towards hegemonic rule if it was not there already. As Vacca has shown,
hegemony is a general theory of gnoseological implication, and thus is
applicable anywhere and at anytime (Vacca 1991, 11–12). However, on a
historical level, he saw that hegemonic rule was typical of capitalism rather
than earlier modes of production. Gramsci focused on the expression of
hegemony at the nation-state level, fi rst in Italy and then in Europe and
America. Because capitalism developed unevenly, there existed contem-
poraneously with the advanced hegemony of Europe and America areas
where the state still ruled by oppression rather than by consensus. It is in
this context that we should understand his famous claim that in the East
rule was still more by naked force of the state than in the West, where it
was already hegemonic. There is some evidence that he thought rule by
force applied in China and India, as well as in Russia. But in all cases, at
all times, and in all places under global capitalism, all rule combined both
force and consensus, or hegemony, whatever the practical mix of force
and consensus. Within this logic, the operation of hegemony at the level
of nation-states follows different and overdetermined histories. We must
also recognise that he wrote at the beginning of the process we know as
globalisation and thought of all his regional, national, and local concerns
within the global perspective of the 1930s.1
Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 65
Within the context of globalising capital (Baratta 1997), Gramsci thought
systematically and critically about the question of ‘frontiers’, for example,
between areas of the world; between discourses and disciplines; between
forms of language and communication; between knowledge and action;
between culture and politics; and between intellectuals and the masses.
This breadth of thought and criticality enabled Gramsci to courageously
and without reticence question the defeat of socialism, particularly in Italy,
and explain the concomitant emergence of fascism in a way that was differ-
ent from classical formulations of the left and right. This was a miraculous
project given the time and location of its undertaking—that is, at the height
of fascism in Italy and from a gaol cell—but also because it continued to
recognise the particular within the universal and philology within ideology.
This enabled Gramsci’s critique to uncover the changes in society that were
often obfuscated behind a taken-for-granted consensus, such as the ‘pas-
sive revolution’ that was all about him with the emergence of Americanism
and Fordism. Gramsci was struck by the frontier between the ‘mathematical
intoxication’ that characterised his contemporary economic, political, and
social world and the ‘metaphysical intoxication’ of the preceding century
that it left behind. This revolution produced a century of ‘big numbers’ and
‘cynical’, ‘brutal’ modernisation. It emphasised the eternal return of the
‘ever-the-same’. But most importantly, it was a century that gave rise to the
great democratic and liberating potential of science—technology that in turn
enabled (even if so distant) a ‘mass intellectual progression’ (Baratta 1997).
What becomes evident from our discussion so far is that the main ques-
tion or the main frontier that Gramsci addressed in the Prison Notebooks
was that between capitalist hegemony and the defeated socialist revolution.
But as Baratta suggests, the aspect of this frontier that really interested
Gramsci was the development of the mass popular creative mind and what
in that mind eluded the capitalist hegemony and, therefore, could never be
controlled completely because of the contradictions of capitalism (Baratta
1997). The development of a theory of hegemony set out the conceptual
mechanisms through which the establishment of capitalist hegemony could
be seen as achieved on the basis of a passive revolution—that is, where the
popular creative mind was not grounded in an interactive process but, rather,
was directed in top-down fashion to accept the legitimacy and maintenance
of the capitalist hegemonic principles (Howson 2005, 23, 74–76). So for
Gramsci, it was this rethinking of the popular creative mind in a way that
brought back the people as active and determining in the socialist revolution
that would unify his project in prison.2 Further, the establishment of a social-
ist war of position and a new hegemony would only be possible through an
active revolution where the mass consent was directed towards changing the
system.
The processes, or languages, particular to a capitalist hegemony actively
obfuscate and disarticulate the revolutionary language of a socialist war of
position (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). So effectively:
The active mass man works practically, but does not have a clear theo-
retical awareness of this work of his that is, however, a way of knowing
the world in so far as he transforms it. His theoretical consciousness
can even be historically in contrast with his action. We could say that
he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or a contradictory conscious-
ness), one that is explicit in his actions and that really unites him with
all his collaborators in the practical transformation of reality and an-
other that is superficially explicit or verbal that he has inherited from
the past or has accepted uncritically. However, this ‘verbal’ conception
is not without consequences: it ties him to a determinate social group,

influences his moral conduct, the direction of his will, in a greater or
lesser way, that can reach the point where the contradictory nature of
his consciousness does not allow any action, any decision, any choice
and produces a state of moral and political passivity. A critical un-
derstanding of oneself therefore comes through a struggle of political
‘hegemonies,’ of contrasting directions, to reach a higher development
of your own conception of reality fi rst in the ethical field and then in
the political field (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12).
Gramsci argued that a socialist-inspired war of position would need to

be constructed from within civil society but operate as a political challenge
to the principles of capitalist hegemony. However, any such war of position
must address traditional forms of maintaining consent, and in the Prison
Notebooks, Catholicism was presented as particularly significant in the
maintenance of consent, certainly in Italy, because of its ability to organise
popular world-views. In effect, the object of Catholicism was not to raise
the people’s understanding but to lower it, to render them not more critical
but less critical. Catholicism, in this setting, helped to bring people into con-
formity with the worldviews that were functional for the existing capitalist
mode of production and thus ensured that people remained unconscious
of the full implications of their conformity to certain mass ideas. So the
task for a war of position is never to just replicate in reverse the conditions
of capitalist hegemony but rather to produce the conditions that render
humans active rather than passive. This activity cannot simply be a rational
response to the impulses of capitalism but a progressive action grounded in
the ‘good sense’ that develops from the experiences of all the social groups
who live under the oppression of capitalism fused with the highest philoso-
phy available (for him, Marxism). This will create a new and richer human
world whose full nature was yet to be known but produces from a chosen
rather than imposed set of ideas the conditions for society.
The starting point for a scholarly investigation (which was all Gramsci
could do in prison) of a possible politics that could produce a war of position
against the capitalist hegemony exemplified in the nascent Americanism
had to begin with the ‘study’ or, more specifically, critical historico-social
analysis of popular ‘folklore’, which in turn, could be ‘worked-up’ into a
‘philosophical’ explanation (Gramsci 1975, Q1§89; Gramsci 1975, Q11§12;
Davidson 1999, 57–68). This approach is reflected in Baratta’s argument
that what is important here is not what exists in concrete form now but
what exists over the frontier and is now immaterial and in-existent. It is
recognising the possibilities across the frontier that enable war of position
to act as the springboard for understanding that, as yet, irrational space.
What exists now, though, for the masses is understood in the theory of
hegemony as popular wisdom, or folklore, which can be reconstructed in
the following points:
1. Folklore is an ‘unofficial’ worldview that is held to by a certain social

group.
2. Folklore is the expression of ‘political autonomy’.
3. Folklore is the ‘reflex’ of the conditions of life of the group and exists in
bizarre combinations of those very conditions.
4. Folklore that comprises popular songs, legends, sayings, religion, language,

or in other words, a whole collective memory, is the expression of com-
mon sense (senso comune) that hides and contradicts the popular ‘wis-
dom’ (buon senso) of the people.
5. Folklore must be studied seriously as popular philosophy that contains

creative and progressive innovations as well as reactionary and conserva-
tive positions; ‘you cannot but start from “common sense” in the first
place, secondly from religion, and only in a third moment, from the phil-
osophical systems developed by traditional intellectuals’ (Gramsci 1975,
Q11§13).
6. The ‘popular wisdom’ or ‘good sense’ lies not only in the details of popu-
lar knowledge but in the way the popular mind thinks, in its capacity to
combine wisdoms learnt from below, and in ‘ . . . their imperativeness
when they produce norms of conduct’.
7. The popular man is not aware of the popular wisdom as a form of phi-
losophy because it seems never to exist except as spontaneous and disag-
gregated thought.
8. This lack of awareness will remain such while the simple people are
deprived of the language necessary to render it coherent, internally, and
with social reality (Davidson 1999, 60–61).
What does a study of the popular mass mind, of folklore, require? What
is a Gramscian theory of reading? How does someone extract or fi nd the
good sense in the commonsense of the populace? Here we need to empha-
sise that just as there are, at least, two different hegemonies each with
their own processes or languages, so there are different languages or read-
ings of matters like the popular mind in 1) its capitalist or commonsense
mode and 2) its socialist or good sense mode. We start with how Gramsci
makes sense of what exists or the commonsense within which good sense
is hidden, that is, with capitalist hegemony. Certainly, as Pasolini (1975)
acknowledges, it is impossible to see Gramsci as a romantic believer in

the already ‘hegemonised’ people or some intrinsic value in its way of life,
or any Bakhtinian belief in their essential creativity. 3 He takes a critical
approach to the content of the ‘average’ person’s views. There is no wis-
dom to be learnt uncritically from street wisdom or emanating from popu-
lar ways of getting by under capitalism. His position, learnt in the bitter
experience of his own treatment by the peasants while a child, was deeply
critical of such populism. This did not mean, however, that he lacked com-
passion for these men and women of ‘flesh and blood’ and their suffering
(Gramsci 1921b).
We can illustrate his attitude after 1927 from a now celebrated account,
where he recounts the ‘theatre’ of knife fighting:
Occasional entertainments are organised in my honour [in prison AD].

Pugliesi, Calabresi, and Siciliani organise a school of knife-fighting ac-
cording to the rules of the four ‘states’ of the Southern underworld.
The victim . . . an old Pugliese, 65 years old, much revered, but without
‘state’ rank, beats all the champions from the other ‘states.’ Then to
cap it, skirmishes with another Pugliese, young, a beautiful body and
surprising agility, a high dignitary whom all the others obey, and for
half an hour, they perform all the normal techniques of all known knife
fighting. A truly grandiose and unforgettable scene for all, actors and
spectators, a whole subterranean world of great complexity, with its
own life and feelings, points of view, points of honour, with formidable
and iron hierarchies, was revealed to me. So I pass my time thinking
about those things, analysing them in capillary fashion. I don’t want
to become monomaniacal and in that a certain ironic and humanistic
spirit that I always have, helps me . . . (Gramsci 1965, 73).
He was horrified to discover how they hated one another. ‘I would never
have believed that such feelings existed among the people [sentimenti
popolari]’ and he wrote that he ‘would need to read a lot of history books
about the last centuries’ to fi nd the origin of such feelings (Gramsci 1965,
73–74).
For a Marxist, such immediate popular feelings had meaning only as a
result or an effect of history. He detested a picturesque interest in folklore,
although, like his fi rst mentor, Grazia Deledda, he was an avid collector
of folklore as he defi ned it4. Even if he could understand why such cul-
tures emerged, he could not believe that they were good and expressed firm
opposition to the notion that mafia and camorra validly expressed popular
culture. We should not forget in this connection his cutting view of the
way of life of the Neapolitan lazzari: ‘Goethe was right to demolish the
legend of the organic “lazzaronismo” of the Neapolitans and to emphasise
instead that they are very active and industrious. But the question is see-
ing what the effective result of such industriousness is: it is not productive,
and it is not directed to satisfying the needs and demands of the produc-
tive classes. Naples is the city in which the majority of landed owners of
the South (nobles or not) spend their agrarian rents. Around a few thou-
sand such people . . . is organised the practical life of an important part of
the city with its artisan industries, its ambulant jobs, with an unheard-of
fragmentation of goods and services offered for sale to passers by. “When
a horse shits a hundred sparrows eat”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q22§2). Gramsci
believed that this life characterised the ‘hundred cities’ of Italy where there
had developed a huge urban petty bourgeoisie who lived off saving and
rents or as state employees and their dependants—living on the backs of
the peasants. Their object was otium cum dignitate. They, together with
their popular clienteles, constituted a semiparasitic subclass that in another
context he called ‘the monkey people.’ He also believed that it was a world
characteristic of ‘old Europe,’ ‘and in even worse form in India and China’
(Gramsci 1975, Q22§2).
As this suggests, he distinguished between the ‘people’—an amorphous
disaggregated mass—and an organised working class, and he regarded
the former objectively as tendentially ‘gentilian’ or fascist in their views
(Gramsci 1975, Q22§5). In places like the South, hegemony did not start
from the factory but from such cross-class populism and from its organis-
ers and the processes or languages for which they were responsible.
One dimension of this organisation was the survival of a popular dialect
or language, aped or spoken by all classes from top to bottom, and which
apparently came from below. 5 Gramsci was totally condemnatory of such
street language and of the notion that it was in any way the source of
valuable understandings or good sense (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). Gramsci
makes no reference to writers from the bourgeoisie who wrote in dialect
except to note that dialectical literature was in decline where it had once
been strong. This is significant, as the writers of major appeal to the popu-
lar mass, like Trilussa, were at the height of their fame when he was in
prison. When he used literature to discover the folk view of Sicilians, he
read Pirandello, who wrote in the national language.
But he thought that where there were such local languages, their gap
with higher national or international languages had to be bridged or no
alternative hegemony would be possible. This was a lesson taught by his
major source for his theory of passive revolution: Vincenzo Cuoco. Cuoco’s
main thesis explaining the failure of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799
was: ‘Our revolution was a passive revolution in which the only way to suc-
ceed was to win over popular opinion. But the view of the patriots6 and of
the people were not the same, they had different ideas, different costumes,
and even different languages.’ (Cuoco 1998, 325–6, 350–1).
Nevertheless, it was in such languages—the everyday life of the mass—
that its commonsense was expressed, and Gramsci made clear that from it
good sense or popular wisdom had to be extracted. They had to be ‘learnt’
by revolutionary intellectuals. It is quite clear that from 1919 onwards he
believed this extraction could only come in a practical politics or mass action
and struggle that united the theory from on high with the knowledge of the
everyday contradictions from below. He restated this belief and the catego-
ries on which it was based in his Notes, above all through the distinction
between those who know and those who feel, and how they must comple-
ment each other to reach a higher understanding. But in a period of defeat,
such politics were not possible, and only the intellectual labour of extract-
ing from commonsense a starting point, nothing more, for popular wisdom
or good sense could be undertaken. His methodology was to study both
authors and audience to complete a circuit of meaning. Meaning is never in
any one place, but ‘in between’ and shifting (Davidson 1977, 55–71).
The commonsense of the average, simple man and woman could cer-
tainly be deciphered, say, in their preferred literature; their folklore and
their media favourites, both theatre and cinema. But these should be
approached with the clinical detachment he had shown from his earliest
days as a theatre critic.7 Already in 1916 Gramsci was writing: ‘I observe.
The stage contains nothing of interest . . . but the public seems interested
. . . it laughs without really getting involved. And an impartial specta-
tor, who observes, is immediately aware that this blessed public from the
suburbs is much more intelligent than the chic one in the armchairs . . .
because it does not give . . . more than is merited . . . the same laugh comes
to the lips of a passer by who has seen an enraged concierge sound off.
The same smile, without malice or evil, comes onto the face of busy people
who, at the street corner, are surprised by the senseless words of a drunk
whose tongue is loosened and who sways uncontrollably . . . the same banal
observations that we hear ‘whoever’ make about the banal daily news. . .’
(Gramsci 1921a).
So Gramsci studies folklore—in the mode of the expression of capitalist
hegemony—in a detached fashion. But he also notes in the same passage:
‘Two shows. One takes place on the stage—the other among the public.
And the second is no less interesting. And the dialect puts both shows more
rapidly in contact, makes them collaborate, creates immediate impressions,
because dialect is still the language of the majority that is most their own,
while the literary language requires an internal translation that reduces
the spontaneity of the reaction of fantasy, the freshness of understanding’
(Gramsci 1921a; Gramsci 1965, 58–60).
So even his early reading of folklore as commonsense was prestructural-
ist and reminiscent of Brecht. Making sense of folklore and religion in the
sense of popular ideology was not decided from on high by the playwright
or the actors, but involved a circuit of sense-making. The meaning of a
play is completed by an audience that must be studied. Gramsci thus shows
himself to be not only a precursor of theories of globalisation but also a
precursor of contemporary theories of reading in the very methodology he
suggested for deciphering the popular mind as the commonsense of every-
day life. This casts doubt on a unilateral lexical or textual approach to
Gramsci. He is, to use contemporary jargon, interested in making silences

speak.
It is important to make this point because in Europe an inadequate view
of Gramsci’s approach to folklore that goes back to Alberto Cirese8 is being
resuscitated. Cirese argued that Gramsci thought that folklore and com-
monsense should be purified of its error in an enlightened and scientific
process. Hence followed an elitist role for intellectuals. They extracted
good sense from commonsense, a purification or cleansing of common-
sense. This so confl icted with Gramsci’s own understanding of a maieu-
tic educational process in which intellectuals learnt from the people and
vice versa that Cirese stopped his projected research. I will not again run
through my own criticism of his views that started in the late 1970s,9 but it
is important for this chapter to note that if Gramsci is read, as he advised,
for what is there and what is not (the ‘absences’), as well as through his
explicit statement that it is the structure of popular belief that contains
popular wisdom rather than the items in it (remember his celebrated refer-
ence to Vico in this sense), then he cannot privilege enlightenment or the
social sciences to sieve out commonsense. Indeed, science for him is no
more than the generally accepted state of certain knowledge and had no
timeless sacrosanct status—or it would never have developed.
What Gramsci suggests that we seek in folklore is the formal structure
and solidity of popular beliefs that make it a guide to mass action as much
as the good content in its combination of ideas. He makes this quite clear.10
We now turn to the applications of his ideas to Europe and America, a
vastly variegated region.
EUROPE AND AMERICA
Gramsci’s theory was elaborated in a constant reference to European his-

tory and, then, in prison, to an increasing focus on Americanism and Ford-
ism, his terms for the mode of production in the USA and its consequent
class formations and their implication for capitalist hegemony. The key
class difference was the absence of parasitic traditional classes and their
intellectuals in New World countries, while they had survived and were
a key to understanding power in the Old World. In a striking passage he
wrote: ‘America does not have great “historical and cultural traditions” but
neither is it weighed down by that lead ball and this is one of the principal
reasons—certainly more important than its so-called natural richness—for
its formidable accumulation of capital, despite the superior lifestyle among
the popular classes than in Europe. The nonexistence of those viscous para-
sitic sedimentations left behind from past stages of history, has allowed the
existence of a base that is healthy for industry and especially for trade . . .
Since these preliminary conditions existed, already rationalised by histori-
cal development, it has been relatively easy to rationalise production and
work, cleverly combining force (the destruction of worker unions based on

territory) with persuasion (high salaries, significant social benefits, ideolog-
ical propaganda, and very clever politics) and succeeding in focussing the
whole country on production. Hegemony starts from the factory and only
needs to be exercised through a minimal number of intermediate political
and ideological professionals.’(Gramsci 1975, Q22§2).
Gramsci noted that American capitalist hegemony had produced a new
type of mass consciousness, that of the ‘trained gorilla’ (Gramsci 1975,
Q 22§12). At the time he wrote, he thought no real alternative hegemony
could emerge from these groups, however, he intimated that the consumer
citizen created in that hegemonic process was, despite the high wages,
so much poorer than the megarich that two different lifestyles already
separated them. The corporate owners’ sybaritic worlds clashed with the
virtues of economy, family, and work preached to the workers (Gramsci
1975, Q22§13). Also, the mindless toil demanded by modern capitalist
production on Taylorist lines could not prevent workers reflecting, even
as they worked, on what they had been reduced to: mere machines whose
good working conditions were not satisfactory without something more
(Gramsci 1975, Q22§12).
Gramsci certainly believed that Americanism represented the wave of the
future for world capitalism—always remembering that he never believed in
a universal, even development—and somewhat mixedly seemed to think it
might provide a model for a transition to socialism, provided the worker/
producers managed the process themselves. But he also recognised that in
Europe, Taylorist production had not got very far and only in bastardised
form. There the parasitic classes of the past, organised by their intellectu-
als, were putting up a battle against Taylorist inroads that would see their
own disappearance. By the 1930s, this resistance had taken on the political
form of fascism, an attempt to modernise economically without changing
entrenched class relations. The common rationalisation for a refusal to go
along the American road was a defence of quality against mass produc-
tion or quantity—a notion he ridiculed. However, if the US represented
modernity against nostalgia for the past, it was not possible to Americanise
without the high wages, as Japan was doing. There, feudal governmental
structures remained and repression replaced the incorporation of the work-
force in a national project of productivism like that of the United States.
This could only bode ill, as he believed further that, necessary to the whole
process, was a liberal, individualistic consumerist society with a democratic
form of government (Gramsci 1975, Q22§6). The characteristic of ‘train-
ing gorillas’ was both coercion and consensus (including high salaries) and
necessarily included an extension of hegemonic intervention to regulate the
spare time of the workers and their relations with their families, down to
a regulation of their sexuality. It could not come about without that exten-
sion of the state to direct as well as dominate a free market.
This brings us to the Asia-Pacific and his few comments on that region,
which is now a highly variegated area, containing societies as diverse

as China and Australia, along with massive parasitic classes and feudal
regimes existing alongside very Americanised modes of production, as they
had done at the time of Gramsci’s writing.
THE ASIA-PACIFIC
Gramsci had indicated that he was aware of the potential of the Asia-Pacific
region and its capacity to replace the USA as the driving force of the world
economy. In Notebook 2 he wondered about ‘the role of the Atlantic in mod-
ern culture and economics. Will this axis move to the Pacific? The largest
masses of population in the world are in the Pacific: if China and India were
to become modern nations with massive industrial production, their break
from European dependence would really rupture the present balance—a
transformation of the American continent, shifting the axis of American life
from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, etc. Examine all these questions in
economic and political terms (trade, etc.)’ (Gramsci 1975, Q2§78).
Given the perspicacity of the observation and the current displacement of
the USA in the region, this examination remained unfortunately incomplete.
Only China, India, and Japan receive more than passing attention and, of
these, only China becomes the subject of theoretical reflection beyond the
initial note-taking stage. Nevertheless, given that these three nations com-
bined are currently more economically significant than the USA, and have
the potential separately to overtake it, what little Gramsci did say is impor-
tant, especially in relation to commonsense and good sense, as these are the
springboards for the application of Gramscian theory to the Asia-Pacific.
In his notes about Asia, Gramsci showed particular interest in the role of
traditional Chinese intellectuals, as intellectuals were the key to his theory of
organizing any hegemonic project. He believed that a detailed examination
of these intellectuals would throw light on hegemony in other countries; that
is, that Chinese history has some lessons for contemporary Europe.
The role and place of intellectuals in China was determined by the
ideographic nature of the script, which was universal. But since it did not
emerge from lived life ‘in Asia there cannot exist a widespread popular
culture—the spoken word and conversation will remain the most popular
form of spreading culture’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). Like medieval Latin, its
universality was ‘esperantistic’ and only its replacement by a Western script
‘would allow “real popular languages” and “new groups of intellectuals”
to emerge. Until that happened the Chinese would remain xenophobic and
nationalistic’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). He believed, then, that in China, the
intellectuals were completely separated from the people and that this meant
an extreme difference in the religion or worldview of the people. Gramsci
also felt that, despite national resistance, sooner or later Western ‘civilisa-
tion’ would ‘win’ and that local culture would become ‘folkloric,’ in the
sense of ‘superstition’ (Gramsci 1975, Q7§62, Q7§50). But he wondered

whether Western intervention might not speed up the break between the
people and the traditional intellectuals and the emergence of organic intel-
lectuals inspired by Marxism (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23).
In relation to India, Gramsci made a similar observation about the func-
tion of the script and the two ‘religions’ in separating people and intellectu-
als, as well as noting the resistance to white culture. Given that he wrote
about India at the time of the national liberation struggle, his thoughts
centred on the effectiveness of that struggle as a form of resistance. He
noted that Gandhism was like primitive Christianity in its encouragement
of passivity, and that in its being a ‘mattress against a bullet,’ it was a
diluted form of resistance. Given this, he speculated that the British might
encourage a premature revolt against it (Gramsci 1975, Q1§134).
In comparison, Gramsci considered Japan to be in a completely different
category to India and China because it had modernized and was adopt-
ing a US economic model, yet remained semifeudal politically (Gramsci
1975, Q1§482). The level of modernization in Japan meant that religious
harmony could only be a myth, without true hegemonic force, and that
this would continue to weaken the hold of the emperor over the mass.
Thinking of it as nation poised at a ‘frontier,’ Gramsci speculated that in
Japan ‘after enlarging the suffrage, (when and in what form?) every election
with its shift in strength of the political parties and the changes that such
results can bring about in government, will function to dissolve actively
the absolutist, theocratic mental forms of the Japanese popular mass. The
conviction that authority and sovereignty does not lie in the Emperor, but
in the people, will lead to a real proper intellectual and moral reform cor-
responding with what took place in Europe through the Enlightenment and
Marxism [classical German philosophy], raising the Japanese people up to
the level of modern economic structures and detaching it from the political
and ideological influence of the barons and feudal bureaucracy’ (Gramsci
1975, Q8§87).
These notes may amount only to miscellanea, and they may be limited
by the epoch in which they were written, in which Gramsci was watching
the development of the capitalism he wrote about, but they show a great
deal of foresight. As with much of Gramsci’s work, they are particularly
useful in a methodological sense, in the same way that he drew parallels
between these countries and conditions in Italy’s south and with earlier
epochs in European history. There are several key examples of this.
Gramsci appears to have considered that both China and India were
stuck within a hegemonic commonsense particular to the 1930s, a stage
of commonsense that made a passive revolution the only foreseeable pos-
sibility. A repudiation of a backward, stagnant system would require the
introduction of American modes of production, plus some democratiza-
tion of local politics along with a new, shared language. In Italy’s south (‘a
European China of unbelievable backwardness’ in the words of commenta-
tors on the southern problem), new sorts of liberal intellectuals like Piero
Gobetti were needed to get out of the vicious cycle of a commonsense that
reproduced the system and move instead towards developing ‘goodsense’
out of that commonsense in which it is buried. As had been demonstrated
by the example of the democratic leftists of Gobetti’s Rivoluzione liberale,
a new class of Asian democratic progressive intellectuals would be required.
Only then could a new capitalist hegemony be fostered. But when Gramsci
considered the indigenous philosophical sources for such intellectuals, he
was not encouraged. Bearing in mind that no ‘ideology’ has force unless it
is organically part of and the source of mass action, and therefore cannot
simply be imposed from outside, or be ‘universal’—that is, abstracted from
the history that is the context of the ideology—Gramsci sought to fi nd
rooted sources for philosophy. He was not convinced by claims that Confu-
cianism could somehow be allied with progress or a popular ‘communism.’
Lao-Tse (a southerner), the most practical philosopher, counselled people
to distance themselves from public affairs, as no human intervention could
ever change the course of things. Gramsci noted that scholars maintained
that in Confucius, Taosim, and Buddhism, real philosophy was suffocated
by religious thought and that for these Chinese ‘philosophies,’ logic was
nonscientific and ‘intuitive’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). But becoming autono-
mous did not mean making a fetish of Western science or Enlightenment
thinking, because for Gramsci, history showed that science was never more
than a contemporary paradigm that would be superseded historically. Sci-
ence could also become a religion, especially when applied to the social.
Enlightenment itself leads to a misguided focus on the self.
We note the typification of Chinese thought as ‘intuitive,’ not logical,
and turn to a reflection on Italy that helps expand this idea. This conceptu-
alization corresponds grosso modo with the irrational, unreflective mode
of thinking that Gramsci suggests is typical of ‘commonsense’ in an Italian
village. He asks then, ‘Is it preferable to think without being critically aware
of it, in an occasional and disaggregated fashion, that is, to participate in a
view of the world that is imposed mechanically by the external surround-
ings, that is, by one of the many social groups in which everyone is auto-
matically involved from the moment he enters the world of consciousness
. . . or is it preferable to develop one’s world view critically and with aware-
ness and thus, in connection with such work by one’s own brain, to choose
one’s own sphere of activity, to participate actively in the production of the
history of the world, to be guided by oneself and not to accept passively and
supinely—from outside—the imprint of ones own personality?’ (Gramsci
1975, Q11§12). All human beings always belong to particular mass groups
or collectivities and conform accordingly. The question to ask is what is the
nature of this conformity? ‘When a conception of the world is not critical
and coherent but occasional and disaggregated, a person belongs simulta-
neously to a multiplicity of mass men, and his personality is made up in a
bizarre fashion. In it are found elements of the cave man and the principles
of the most up-to-date and advanced science; prejudices coming from all
crudely localistic past stages of history and intimations of a philosophy-to-
come that will be that of all human beings globally united’ (Gramsci 1975,
Q11§12). To become autonomous, then, requires an involvement in a mass
movement directed to changing the conditions of one’s own being.
In sum, when Gramsci draws parallels with Italy and the peasants of
Europe, we can assume that they amplify his short comments on the Asia-
Pacific while making allowances for obvious differences in time. New com-
parisons come to mind. Does his work on the popular bases for fascism
throw light on the nature of rule in the Asia-Pacific? Can more mileage be
gained by studying Australia under the rubric of Americanism than from
under the rubric of his comments on old Europe.11
CONCLUSION
Today China, India, and Japan have all moved towards an Americanist
phase of industrial development, with the obvious caveat that China still
has a reactionary political system and has even claimed, contra Gramsci,
that communism can fi nd roots in Confucian thought. It is arguable that
the Asia-Pacific has replaced the Atlantic as the centre of world capitalist
history. This makes the USA—as Gramsci speculated—a state facing the
Asia-Pacific rather than, or as well as, Old Europe, and to be rethought
as part of a ‘new’ history with new hegemonic combinations. Yet, as he
also speculated, Asian-Pacific societies have frequently remained deeply
hostile to innovative hegemonies—even of a passive capitalist type—and
have relied on their millennial traditions to reject them, openly proposing
an ‘Asian’ mode of production. While millions remain part of the parasitic
classes of traders and transporters that Gramsci thought might disappear
but have not done so, all his strictures about the difficulty of getting a real
modern American system going still remain. Only India and Japan have
moved clearly into a stage of a modern passive revolution in which advanced
industrial production has been accompanied by liberal-democratic institu-
tions and a cult of production has similar bases to those in the USA.
We could project Gramsci’s general theory of common and good sense
onto these changing realities of the region despite the difficulties that I have
pointed out in another article.12 As a preliminary, it would still be worth-
while considering the work already done in Asia on national hegemonies
rather than a general regional global hegemony, although only work that
uses Gramsci subsequent to the publication of the 1975 critical edition of
the Prison Notebooks should really interest us.
In this connection it is interesting to note that, in China, work on Grams-
ci’s theory has not flourished. The basic edition of Gramsci used in China
has been for years the truncated Russian edition of Gramsci’s works that
made him a Stalinist nationalist. In India and Japan, on the other hand,
there is a flourishing study of all the aspects of Gramscian theory based on

the 1975 critical edition of his work. This could provide a basic starting
point for analysis of the Asia-Pacific and those states’ place in that region.
This work has emerged since the 1970s above all.13 Major work has been
done on the themes in this book by K. O’Hara and Hiroshi Matsuda.14 In
India, in the fi rst decades of its publication, the influential Subaltern Stud-
ies was expressly Gramscian under the editorship of Ranajit Guha. In most
cases, this work focussed on Gramsci’s politics and political theory, and on
the State and the integrative function of a passive revolution rather than on
the study of the promotion of good sense coming from below.
Extensive research has also been done in the major littoral powers with-
out residues of earlier classes and traditional intellectuals: the US, Aus-
tralasia, and Canada. But little is concerned with those states as part of
an Asia-Pacific region within a global economy. Again the concerns are
with national bourgeois hegemonies informed by a justifiably Americanist
approach. Latin American scholarship on Gramsci is extensive in Mexico
and Chile, both states with a longer history than any other settler regions
of involvement in the Asia-Pacific.15 I merely note that the major schol-
arship from Latin America is both more national and also more politi-
cal—concerned with the creation of an alternative hegemony—than that
in the United States or Australia. It also comes more from Atlantic states
rather than Pacific states.16 Nevertheless, there already exists a rich lode of
scholarship to be assembled and mined.
NOTES
1. See G. Baratta, Le rose e i quaderni (Rome: Carocci, 2003). My own view of

the relation between hegemony and globalisation is developed in ‘Gramsci,
Hegemony and Globalisation,’ Kasarinlan, Philippine Journal of Third
World Studies, 20(2)(2005):4–36; see also G. Liguori, ‘Stato, Nazione,
Mondializzazione’ in Sentieri Gramsciani (Rome: Carocci, 2006), 43–54.
2. See A. Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 58–60.
3. See G. Gri, Intervento in Marina Paladini Musitelli, ed., Gramsci e la societa
di massa, Instituto Gramsci Friuli (Trieste: Venezia-Guilia, 1997).
4. See V. Santoli, ‘Tre osservazioni su Gramsci e il folclore,’ Critica Marxista,
September 1951, 389–397; for Deledda see D. Turchi, ed., Deledda: Tra-
dizioni popolari di Sardegna Credenze magiche, antiche feste, superstizioni
e riti di una volta nei piu significativi scritti etnpografici dell’autrice sarda
(Rome: Newton Lampton, 1995).
5. See generally R. La Capria, Armonia perduta (Milan: Rizzoli, 1986), 109, 124–
5.
6. That is, the revolutionaries.
7. See A. Gramsci, ‘Il Grido del Popolo’ in Sotto la Mole 1916–1920 (Turin: Ein-
audi, 1960), 231–2.
8. See Alberto Cirese, ‘Concezione del mondo, filosofia spontanea, folclore’ in
Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea (Rome: Riuniti, 1967), II.
9. See my ‘Gramsci, Folclore ed autonomia’ in G. Baratta and G. Liguori, eds.,
Gramsci da un scolo all’altro (Rome: IGS/Riuniti, 1999).
10. See for example, Gramsci 1975, Q11§12.

11. On this, see my article ‘People’s History and Popular Culture,’ Labor History
46, May 1984:116–157; also ‘Gramsci, the peasant and popular culture,’ Jour-
nal of Peasant Studies XI, 4 July 1984:139–154.
12. See, for example, ‘Gramsci, Folclore ed autonomia.’
13. For earlier work in Japan see I. Yamazaki, ‘Gli studi di Gramsci in Giappone’
in Gramsci e cultura contemporanea (Rome: Riuniti, 1967), II, 443–451. For
India, see R. Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in
Colonial India (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997).
See also the series of articles by A. Chaudhuri, et al, Economic and Political
Weekly 23, 30 January 1988:19–36.
14. See also H. Matsuda, ‘Stato e rivoluzione passiva in Giappone’ in G. Baratta
and G. Liguori, eds., Gramsci da un secolo all’altro (Rome: Riuniti, 1999),
113–119.
15. See, for example, D. Kanoussi, ed., Los estudios gramscianos hoy (Mexico D.F.:
Plaza y Valdés Editores, 1998); for Chile, see A. Aggio, Frente Popular, Radi-
calismo e Revolução Passiva no Chile (Brazil: Annablume/FAPESP, 1999).
16. See C. Countinho, Pensiero politico di Gramsci (Rome: Carocci, 2006); F.
Alvarez, et al, Gramsci en America Latina: Dal silenzio al olvido. (Caracas:
Fondo editorial tipograficos UV, 1991); A. Boron, et al, America latina en los
90: Gramsci e la teologia de la liberacion (Buenos Aires: Utopias del Sur, 1992);
L. Ferreyra, et al, Gramsci Mirano al sur sobre la hegemonia en los 90 (Buenos
Aires: K and I, 1994); O. Astorga, et al, Perfiles del marxismo I La filosofia
della praxis. De Labriola a Gramsci (Caracas: Alfadil/Collecion Tropicos/
UCV, 1986).
REFERENCES
Aggio, A. 1999. Frente Popular, Radicalismo e Revolução Passiva no Chile. Brazil:

Annablume/FAPESP.
Alvarez, F., et al. 1991. Gramsci en America Latina: Dal silenzio al olvido, Fondo
editorial tipograficos UV. Caracas.
Astorga, O., et al. 1986. Perfiles del marxismo I La filosofia della praxis. De Labriola
a Gramsci. Caracas: Alfadil/Collecion Tropicos/UCV.
Baratta, G. 1997. Intervento. In Gramsci e la società di massa, ed. M. P. Musitelli.
Trieste: Instituto Gramsci, Friuli, Venezia-Giulia.
———. 2003. Le rose e i quaderni. Rome: Carocci.
Boron, A., et al. 1992. America latina en los 90: Gramsci e la teologia de la libera-
cion, Buenos Aires: Utopias del Sur.
Cirese, A. 1967. Concezione del mondo, fi losofia spontanea, folclore. In Gramsci e
la cultura contemporanea. Rome: Riuniti.
Chaudhuri, A., et al. 1988. Economic and Political Weekly 23 January 30:19–36.
Countinho, C. 2006. Pensiero politico di Gramsci. Rome: Carocci.
Cuoco, V. 1998. Saggio sulla rivoluzione di Napoli. Bari: Lacaita.
Davidson, A. 1977. The Literary Criticism of Antonio Gramsci. In Critical Essays
in Language and Literature, eds. S. Knight and M. Wilding. Sydney: W and
W.
———. 1984a. People’s History and Popular Culture. Labor History 46, May.
———. 1984b. Gramsci, the peasantry and popular culture. Journal of Peasant
Studies 4:139–154.
———. 1999. Gramsci, folclore ed autonomia. In Gramsci da un scolo all’altro,
eds. G. Baratta and G. Liguori. Rome: IGS/Riuniti.
———. 2005. Gramsci, Hegemony and Globalisation. Kasarinlan: Philippine

Journal of Third World Studies 20(2).
Ferreyra, L., E. Logiudice and M. Rey. 1994. Gramsci Mirano al sur sobre la hege-
monia en los 90. Buenos Aires: K and I.
Gri, G. 1997. Intervento. In Gramsci e la società di massa, ed. M. P. Musitelli.
Trieste: Instituto Gramsci Friuli, Venezia-Guilia.
Gramsci, A. 1955. Uomini di carne ed ossa. Ordine Nuovo. Turin: Einaudi.
———. 1921a. Ordine Nuovo. January 2. Turin: Einaudi.
———. 1921b. Ordine Nuovo. May 8. Turin: Einaudi.
———. 1960. Il Grido del Popolo. Sotto la Mole 1916–1920. Turin: Einaudi.
———. 1965. Lettere dal carcere. E. Fubini and S. Caprioglio eds. Turin: Ein-
audi.
———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana , ed. Turin: Einaudi.
Guha, R. 1997. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial
India. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Howson, R. 2005. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London: Routledge.
Kanoussi, D., ed. 1998. Los estudios gramscianos hoy. Mexico D.F.: Plaza y Val-
dés Editores.
La Capria, R. 1986. Armonia perduta. Milan: Rizzoli.
Liguori, G. 2006. Stato, Nazione, Mondializzazione. Sentieri Gramsciani. Rome:
Carocci.
Matsuda, H. 1999. Stato e rivoluzione passiva in Giappone. In Gramsci da un
secolo all’altro, eds. G. Baratta and G. Liguori. Rome: Riuniti.
Pasolini, P. P. 1975. Le Ceneri di Gramsci. Italy: Garzanti.
Santoli, V. 1951. Tre osservazioni su Gramsci e il folclore. Critica Marxista Sep-
tember:389–397.
Turchi, D., ed. 1995. Deledda: Tradizioni popolari di Sardegna Credenze magiche,
antiche feste, superstizioni e riti di una volta nei piu significativi scritti etnpo-
grafici dell’autrice sarda. Rome: Newton Lampton.
Vacca, G. 1992. Gramsci and Togliatti. Rome: Riuniti.
Yamazaki, I. 1967. Gli studi di Gramsci in Giappone. Gramsci e cultura contem-
poranea. Rome: Riuniti.
6 Hegemony and Power in Gramsci
Benedetto Fontana
Power and hegemony are important concepts in the study of politics. Power,
especially, is crucial. Most thinkers regard power as the underlying and
unifying concept of politics. In both normative and empirical theory it has
played a central role in the formulation of theoretical frameworks and ana-
lytical models to describe and prescribe political behavior. From Aristotle
and Thucydides, to Hobbes and Machiavelli, to Dahl, Arendt, and Fou-
cault, its meaning, defi nition, and utility have been debated and contested.1
Thus, there is an enormous literature on power and its analysis, a literature
that extends centuries to the origins of political thinking in the West.
Hegemony, however, has gained wide currency only in recent decades
and today has become quite popular in academic as well as in public dis-
course. Though it may be traced all the way back to the ancient Greeks, it
fi rst emerged as a conceptual and theoretical tool in the post–War World II
era as a consequence of the dissemination of the work of the Italian revolu-
tionary and Marxist Antonio Gramsci. 2 Originally used by Gramsci within
a specifically Marxist, European, and Western context, the term has been
deployed throughout the humanities and the social sciences. It is found in
various and widely different disciplines and fields of study, from political
science (and its constituent subfields, especially international studies) to
sociolinguistics, sociology, literary, and cultural studies, to the fields of
education and pedagogy. Indeed, ideas originally formulated by Gramsci
pervade contemporary political and cultural discourses.
This chapter will discuss Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and its relation
to his political thought. It will attempt to clarify and explicate its multi-
layered senses and try to unpack the complex of ideas that together form
the concept. In so doing, it addresses such questions as: why hegemony?
That is, how and why did Gramsci come to talk about hegemony? Why
was hegemony added to the discussion and analysis of bourgeois capitalist
society regarding relations of domination and subordination, class confl ict,
revolution, and reform? And fi nally, in what ways, if at all, does it differ
from such other terms as power, domination, subjection, and dictatorship?
Hegemony and Power in Gramsci 81
Does it add new or novel intellectual and theoretical substance to the dis-
course of power?
II
Gramsci’s thought is the product of three fundamental developments

that came together in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century: fi rst, the
debate within Marxism about the necessary and sufficient conditions for
revolution; second, the victory of fascism and the defeat of the left in Italy
and parts of Western Europe; and third, the Bolshevik revolution in Rus-
sia. 3 All three compelled Gramsci to rethink the theoretical and conceptual
bases of Marxist political thought, especially its understanding of power
and the state.
Before we take up hegemony in Gramsci, however, a discussion of the
way hegemony was understood and used prior to Gramsci will be useful.
It will both place contemporary notions of hegemony in context and at the
same time help to identify Gramsci’s use of it. Moreover, it will be seen
that Gramsci’s notion was especially prefigured in that of ancient Greek
thinkers.4 Hegemony derives from the Greek ¹γεµών (guide, ruler, leader)
and ¹γεµονία (rule, leadership), and generally it means the preeminence or
supremacy that a state, social group, or even an individual may exercise
over others.
In ancient Greece, one meaning attributed to the term ‘hegemon’ is
leader of a military alliance of the various city-states freely and voluntarily
entered into. A second related meaning of hegemon is a polis as the leader of
an alliance constituted by a number of poleis, which join together freely as
a response to military threat. Thus hegemony may be seen as an interstate
system where a given state exercises power and leadership over an alliance
of reciprocally consenting states. Herodotus in his Histories relates the war
of the Greeks against the Persians and sees the Greeks coming together
under the hegemonic leadership of Athens and Sparta. Thucydides, too, in
his History of the Peloponnesian War, often uses hegemony as a means to
describe both a military and a political alliance of autonomous states. Thus
the Delian League, originally established as a consensual alliance of free
states under the hegemony of Athens as a means to repel the Persian threat
against the common interests of the members, gradually turned into the
Athenian Empire in which allies were transformed into dependent subjects.
From an alliance in which Athens’ leadership served the common interest,
the League was transformed into a form of rule in which power was exer-
cised purely in the self-interest of Athens. 5
Thus, with the ancient Greeks, hegemony is used to describe an alliance
in which a state attains preeminent military and political leadership. Such
a hegemonic alliance is characterized by four fundamental elements.6
First, it has dual structure: the leading state or hegemon and its allies are
82 Benedetto Fontana
structurally independent and distinct from each other. The second element
is the absence of an alliance-wide or common citizenship. Each polis retains
its own citizenship criteria. The third element pertains to the fluid nature of
membership in the alliance: poleis joined or left the alliance periodically, and
their membership depended upon both their perceived self-interest and the
shifting power relations of the international environment. And the fourth
element is the historical (but not conceptually or analytically) tendency of
the hegemonic alliance to become transformed into an empire.
In addition, both Aristotle and Isocrates refer to hegemony and use it
to make a dichotomy between despotic or imperial and hegemonic rule.

In the Politics, Aristotle establishes two fundamental forms of rule: des-
potic and political (or constitutional). The fi rst refers to power exercised
over unequals in the self-interest of those who exercise power, whereas
the second refers to power exercised by and among equals in the common
interest of all. The term hegemony is used when Aristotle wants to discuss
the leadership of equals in the interest of all, and despotism is used when he
discusses the domination of others in the ruler’s self-interest.7 The distinc-
tion here is crucial: the fi rst refers to rule or government of free and equal
citizens, while the second describes the power exercised by a master over
slaves. Aristotle directly opposes hegemony (understood as leadership) to
despotism or domination. It is also important to point out that hegemony
in Aristotle is intimately linked to his typology of regimes or constitutions,
in which legitimate or just forms are contrasted with illegitimate and unjust
types, where supremacy of the law and pursuit of the common good are the
distinguishing criteria.
Hegemony is also important to the rhetorician Isocrates. In his Panegy-
ricus, for example, Isocrates criticizes the Athenians’ utilitarian transfor-
mation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire, and simultaneously
ascribes Athens’s defeat by Sparta to its despotic rule over Greeks. Like
Aristotle, he distinguishes hegemonic from despotic rule: the fi rst is leader-
ship exercised over consenting and autonomous allies, and the second is
domination coercively exercised over conquered subjects. At the same time,
Isocrates understands the exercise of hegemony as closely interwoven with
the generation and formulation of moral/intellectual, cultural, and educa-
tional ideas. He sees Athens as the generator and organizer of such ideas,
and thus as the logical and natural hegemonic leader. Athens is the school
of Hellas, the teacher and guide (that is, the hegemon) not only of Greeks
but also of all peoples (Isocrates 2000, 20, 50).
The idea that Athens is the cultural, moral, and intellectual leader of
Greece (an idea depicted by Thucydides in Pericles’ Funeral Oration) sug-
gests another meaning for hegemony, one different from those described
above yet related to them in important ways. This other sense is that of
hegemony as a guiding or governing principle or idea. Again, we can fi nd
this in Isocrates. Elaborating on both Plato and Gorgias, Isocrates posits
the preeminence of reason and discourse in all human and social affairs.
Within the context of Athenian political and social institutions, such a
belief meant that rhetoric, public speech, and dialectical reasoning were
seen to be crucial to both state and society. At the same time, the intel-
lectual and moral controversies (such as those between Plato and the
Sophists) spawned various schools of thought, each formulating oppos-
ing discourses and narratives that competed for recognition and preemi-
nence (Guthrie 1971). In addition, Greek political thought emerged out
of, and tried to grapple with, the perennial problem of the relative value
of power and knowledge, and of the nature of their relation. The prob-
lem was how to wed knowledge (philosophy) and power (political lead-
ership) such that a just and stable political order could be established.
Power denuded of knowledge becomes mere violence and coercion, pur-
poseless and mindless. At the same time, knowledge stripped of power
lacks a social and political foundation, and is thus ineffective. Thinkers
such as Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates delved into the ways that power
and knowledge could mutually reinforce each other. In effect, hegemony
understood as a governing or guiding principle underlines the purpose
and direction of Greek political thought: to achieve a synthesis of power
and knowledge, such that each would inform the other.
Since ancient political thought—and before Gramsci’s social and polit-
ical theory—only two usages of hegemony may be identified. The fi rst,
under the general name of ‘hegemonism,’ equated hegemony purely and
simply with any form of domination or exercise of power (Scruton 1982,
200). Generally, hegemony was viewed as the application of the term to
international politics, in which hegemony referred to states possessing or
exercising a preponderance of power, such that one state dominates and
subjugates other states.
A second understanding of hegemony, one more closely related to
that of the ancients and Gramsci, appeared during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries in the course of the debates and polemics
among the leaders of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Anderson
1977, 15–17). As socialists such as Plekhanov, Axelrod, Lenin, and
Trotsky introduced into a socio-economically and politically backward
Russia a Marxist socialism originally designed for the advanced capitalist
societies of the West, it became necessary to defi ne the role of a minority
working in an overwhelmingly peasant society, as well as to establish the
relation between this class, the peasantry, and the national minorities of
the Russian Empire (Haimson 1966). In the process, they used hegemony
to describe the leading role of the proletariat in a revolutionary system
of alliances among the antitsarist forces. Thus Axelrod writes, ‘By virtue
of the historical position of our proletariat, Russian Social Democracy
can acquire hegemony (gegemoniya) in the struggle against absolutism’
(Anderson 1977, 16). Lenin also called for the establishment of a ‘real
hegemony’ of the working class in Russia (Anderson 1977, 16). And
he notes, ‘As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary
society, it [the proletariat] must be the leader in the struggle of the whole
people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the working
and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters. The proletariat
is revolutionary only in so far as it is conscious of and gives effect to this
idea of the hegemony of the proletariat’ (Anderson 1977, 17). It is clear that
hegemony was understood by Lenin and Trotsky as a tactical alliance between
the working class and other exploited groups (especially the peasantry), one
to be directed at both the political absolutism of the tsars and the socio-
economic supremacy of the ruling groups. At the same time, it is also clear
that the hegemonic leading role assigned to the working class was the product,
not so much of a convergence of values and interests among the revolutionary
groups, but rather of the value, weight, and position the proletariat was
given in a Marxist and later Leninist theory of revolution. That is to say, the
working class is hegemonic precisely because it is the carrier and bearer of
the most advanced political and social knowledge. Thus, the hegemony of
the working class presupposed and required the subordination of the allied
groups and the loss of their political autonomy to the hegemon. In any case,
the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and the subsequent armed
dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in 1918 froze all political activity. The
imposition of party dictatorship and revolutionary terror underlined the
bankruptcy of alliance formation as a means to state power and revealed
hegemony as a mere political formula (to use Mosca’s phrase) that masked
the reality of domination and subjection.
Gramsci, using both the ancient Greek understanding of hegemony and
the experiences of the Bolsheviks in Russia, developed the concept as a means
to understand and to explain the strength and the resilience of modern bour-
geois society. With hegemony, Gramsci tried to capture the power dynamics
and power differences within society and to show the ways and means by
which power persists and endures over time.
III
Gramsci’s political and theoretical enterprise was to discover, within a frag-

mented Italian and European reality, the material and cultural forces that
would lead to the formation of a new, more universal socio-political order.8
All this, of course, was in order to develop the political, theoretical, and
strategic means to organize and mobilize what he called the subaltern (sub-
ordinate) groups so they might usher in a new form of state and a new order.
It is ironic that today hegemony, developed by Gramsci in order to further
the goals of socialist revolution, lives on as a theoretical and conceptual term
while the mass and popular movement for which it was originally developed
no longer exists.
In Gramsci, hegemony means the supremacy of one group or class over
other classes or groups; it is established by means other than reliance
on violence or coercion. In the prison writings, he used hegemony as a
way of explaining political failure; and in his earlier writings, hegemony
is also used to describe the leadership position of the working class
within an alliance of other classes. We should note that the second was
a formulation used by Gramsci in the struggle for power, and the fi rst
was elaborated after the power struggle was lost, and thus was a means
to explain the failure.
Gramsci emphasizes that politics and political activity is fundamen-
tally centered on attaining and maintaining power. And power, accord-
ing to Gramsci, is constituted by a dual or dyadic opposition: force and

consent, violence and persuasion. Here Gramsci is consciously using
Machiavelli’s metaphor of the centaur in Chapter 18 of the Prince.9
Gramsci notes that the ‘dual perspective’ pertains to the two levels or
two elements of political action, which correspond to the ‘dual nature of
Machiavelli’s Centaur—half-animal and half-human. They are the levels
of force and consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilization,
of the moment of the individual and that of the universal (“Church” and
“State”) . . . ’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§13; Gramsci 1971, 169–170).
These oppositions parallel Gramsci’s characterization of the suprem-
acy of a social group in terms of the exercise of moral and intellectual
leadership over allied and associated groups, and of the exercise of
domination—‘even with armed force’—in order to subdue antagonistic
groups. Here is the full reference:
The methodological criterion on which our own study must be based

is the following: that the supremacy of a social group manifests itself
in two ways, as ‘domination’ [dominio] and as ‘moral and intellec-
tual leadership’ [direzione]. A social group dominates antagonistic
groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate,’ or to subjugate perhaps even
by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group
can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning
governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions
for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant
when it exercises power, but even if it holds it fi rmly in its grasp, it
must continue to ‘lead’ as well (Gramsci 1975, Q19§24: Gramsci
1971, 57–58)
It should be noted that this formulation bears a striking resemblance to

the distinction established by Aristotle and Isocrates regarding the exer-
cise of political power: leadership or hegemonia is exercised over equals
and allies in the interest of those over whom power is exercised, and
domination or despoteia is exercised over enemies over unequals, such
as slaves or ‘barbarians,’ in the interest of those who exercise power. The
dominio/direzione dyad, moreover, parallels quite closely the ancient Greeks’
(such as Isocrates’ and Thucydides’) understanding of an inter-state alliance
based on the voluntary consensus of free and autonomous members
(Fontana 2000). Gramsci’s reference to ‘kindred’ and to ‘allied’ must be
linked to the important qualifier to his term ‘leadership,’ namely ‘moral
and intellectual.’ It is the latter that determines the nature of the relation
between leader and led, ruling and led; just as it is the latter that defi nes
the meaning and content of what is kindred and allied.
Leadership (moral and intellectual) is again closely linked with hege-
mony in one of Gramsci’s letters from prison, in which he says that
‘Croce emphasizes solely that moment in historico-political activity
which in politics is “hegemony,” the moment of consent, of cultural

leadership, to distinguish it from the moment of force, of constraint, of
state-legislative or police intervention’ (Gramsci 1965, 616).
Gramsci’s emphasis on the moment of consent, of persuasion, and
of leadership leads him to construct a theory of intellectuals and their
role. Intellectuals are the ‘organizers’ of consent and persuasion. The
stability, legitimacy, and persistence of the overall socio-political sys-
tem is achieved by means of moral, intellectual, and cultural systems
formulated by intellectuals. As such, intellectuals act as links or media-
tors between the subordinate groups and the elites (Gramsci 1971, 12).
Intellectuals, for Gramsci, ‘exercise hegemony, which presupposes a cer-
tain collaboration, i.e., an active and voluntary (free) consent’ (Gramsci
1971, 271) on the part of the people.
In his discussion of intellectuals, Gramsci identifi es civil society as
the locus or space within which the organization of consent is gener-
ated.10 He delineates ‘two major superstructural “levels”: the one that
can be called “civil society,” that is the ensemble of organisms com-
monly called private, and that of “political society” or “the State”’
(Gramsci 1971, 12). Hegemony is exercised within the fi rst level, and
‘direct domination or command’ is exercised within the second. These
two levels are connected by intellectuals. They provide both vertical
and horizontal mediation. That is, within both political society (such
as administrative and public agencies) and civil society (such as sects,
interest groups, political parties) intellectuals act as agents of reciprocal
communication; they simultaneously connect civil society with political
society.
The dual nature of power is revealed more sharply in another letter of
his, in which Gramsci again contrasts ‘political society (or dictatorship,
or coercive apparatus to ensure that the popular masses conform to the
type of production and economy of a given moment’ with ‘civil society
(or hegemony of a social group over the whole national society exercised
through so-called private organizations, like the church, trade unions,
schools, etc.’ (Gramsci 1965, 481).
Thus we have a series of opposing, yet interrelated, dyads. One set,
derived from Machiavelli’s force/persuasion polarity, identifi es as a gen-
eral proposition the defi ning characteristic of politics:
Force Consent
Authority11 Hegemony
Violence Civilization (Civiltà)
A second set locates the foregoing within a particular historical and

political context (namely, the Risorgimento and the formation of the Ital-
ian state): domination is opposed to leadership (moral and intellectual).
The process of Italian unification relied too heavily on domination and not
sufficiently on leadership. Cavour and his party unified the peninsula by

means of conquest and annexation. Because the popular masses—the over-
whelming majority of which were peasants—were not mobilized and were
excluded, the ruling groups established a state with an exceedingly narrow
social and political foundation. Moreover, because the formation of a lib-
eral state meant destroying the political and territorial power of the Papacy,
the new state could not mobilize and deploy religion (the Catholic Church
and its various ancillary organizations within society) to generate social
and cultural support. Thus the Italian state was the result of an imposition
from above (domination), rather than a product of a mass movement from
below (moral and intellectual leadership).
Gramsci’s reference to Machiavelli underlines several important points.
First, politics occurs in the context of confl ict, struggle, and contestation.
As Machiavelli says, ‘There are two methods of fighting [my italics] . . . ’
(Machiavelli 1985, Chapter 18). Second, without consent or persuasion it
would be impossible to wield effective force or violence—in the same way
that force is necessary to guarantee or secure the use of persuasion. As
Machiavelli puts it in the Prince, ‘When they [prophets, or innovators] . . .
are able to use force, then it is that they are rarely in peril. From this it
arises that all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed ones were
ruined . . . [for] the nature of peoples is variable, and it is easy to per-
suade them of something, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion.
And thus things must be ordered in such a mode that when they no longer
believe, one can make them believe by force’(Machiavelli 1985 Chapter
6). Machiavelli’s ‘armed prophet’ corresponds to Gramsci’s polarity domi-
nation/leadership. In addition, by equating political action with confl ict
and competition, Gramsci points to the necessary and intimate connection
with their opposites, namely community and consensus. Indeed, one pre-
supposes the other.
Sheldon Wolin, in his famous Politics and Vision, describes politics, or
the political, as constituted by two apparently contradictory, yet closely
interwoven, elements, each mutually acting on the other (Wolin 1960). The
fi rst is the search for a common ground or topos within which the common
or the public good may be engendered and attained. The second sees politics
as a competition or struggle for advantage and for power, both in terms of
material interest or economic goods and in terms of competing or opposing
values and beliefs. In the fi rst, politics is seen as the activity by which com-
munity, consensus, and shared values are developed. In the second, politics
is the mechanism by which antagonistic groups attain and maintain power
and supremacy. What connects the two is power. It underlies, and gives
meaning to, both views of politics. The history of political thought in the
West may be seen as a dialogue, and as a reciprocal interaction, between
these two perceptions of politics. Since Plato’s polemic against the Soph-
ists, political thinkers have focused now on one, now on the other version
of politics. Polemarchus’ defi nition of justice (Plato, 331E–336A)—helping
one’s friends and harming one’s enemies—anticipates Machiavelli’s ‘two

ways of fighting’ and Gramsci’s domination/leadership dichotomy.
Politics and political action comprise a dynamic interaction of social
groups and structures continually forming and reforming in a process of
construction and deconstruction. In a kaleidoscope of multiple perspectives
and multiple centers of power, where centripetal and centrifugal forces are
simultaneously in play, power shifts and differences appear as instances of
the variations in the relative proportion between confl ict and consensus,
force and persuasion. Transformations in the social group or social struc-
ture are contingent upon the nature and degree of integration or disintegra-
tion, mobilization or fragmentation, which in turn are determined by the
perspective of the engaged actors, as well as that of the observer. Moreover,
the processes of the fragmentation and dissolution of a given social struc-
ture are simultaneously processes for the integration and dynamic growth
of another and different structure. In the same way, what appears as group
confl ict and factional strife is, from a slightly different perspective, also the
generation of community and social cohesion. In effect, the confl ict gener-
ated by antagonistic factions is the mechanism by which those very factions
not only come into existence but also, by developing into determinate and
conscious political forces, might eventually form the basis of a new socio-
political order. At the same time, the generation of community, consent,
and moral and intellectual leadership within a given group is what enables
it to engage in the struggle for power and advantage. The nature and degree
of such consent, that is to say, the degree to which the ruling groups dis-
seminate and proliferate ‘moral and intellectual’ systems of belief through-
out the subordinate groups, reflects and indicates their relative power in
relation to antagonistic groups.
We should recall that Gramsci opposes political society to civil society,
where the latter denotes the realm of consensus, persuasion, hegemony,
and moral and intellectual leadership, and the former denotes the realm of
force, dictatorship, and coercion. These distinctions parallel the conven-
tional and classical liberal and neoliberal (that is, Lockean and Hobbes-
ian) dichotomy between state and society. Society represents the sphere of
free contract, private property, and liberty, where individuals and groups
engage in economic, political, and various other kinds (such as religious,
cultural, etc.) of competition. And the liberal state, what Gramsci calls the
‘night-watchman state’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88) represents force and coer-
cion: it provides the necessary force to guarantee and to secure the liberty
and property that are the bases and the motive force for the competition.
Thus we have:
State as force State as consent

Political society Civil society
Dictatorship Hegemony
The distinctions correspond to Machiavelli’s general formulation regard-

ing the nature of power and politics as the synthesis of force and consent,
incarnated in the figure of the centaur.
Moreover, the Marxist and Leninist critique of liberalism and bourgeois
society reproduces the distinction between state and society and assigns
to the state a purely negative, repressive, and coercive character. In Marx
and Lenin, the state has no positive functions; its organization and pur-
pose are merely to protect and to secure property and the market.12 In this
sense, both liberals and their critics share the view of the state as a coercive
apparatus. Here the state has no redeeming value: to the former it is an
organization of coercive power, which, precisely because it is necessary
to regulate and secure the ‘private’ activities occurring within society, is
dangerous to liberty and prone to abuse of its power; and to the latter it is
a repressive apparatus that, precisely because it is necessary to guarantee
the stability and order of the socio-economic order, is an instrument of the
ruling groups.
IV
Gramsci has a more nuanced, subtle, and articulated understanding of the

state and of its relation to society. He returns to the Hegelian distinction
between the two and, in so doing, gives the state a positive (that is, cultural,
educational, and transformative) character. In a discussion of free trade
and market competition, Gramsci notes that the ideas of the ‘Free Trade
Movement are based on a theoretical error . . . on a distinction between
political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an
organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted
that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not
intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are
one and the same, it must be made clear that laisser faire too is a form of
State “regulation,” introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive
means’ (Gramsci 1971, 159–160). The distinction between state and civil
society, like that between domination and moral and intellectual leader-
ship, is methodological and analytical; it is not meant to reflect the social
and political reality. Similarly, Gramsci expresses a similar notion when he
points to Guicciardini’s assertion that two elements are ‘absolutely neces-
sary for the life of the State: arms and religion’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§87;
Gramsci 1971, 170). Gramsci translates and modernizes Guicciardini’s for-
mulation into the now familiar polar terminology: ‘force and consent; coer-
cion and persuasion; State and Church; political society and civil society;
politics and morality (Croce’s ethico-political history); law and freedom;
order and self-discipline . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 170). This set of polarities
is quite different from the fi rst set noted above, and it reveals a significant
reevaluation of the nature of the state and civil society. In the fi rst polarity,
political society/dictatorship/domination was equated with the state, and
hegemony/consent/persuasion was equated with civil society. This issues
from the conventional liberal dichotomy.
In this last series, however, the polarity political society/civil society,
force/consent no longer denotes the opposition between state and civil soci-
ety, but it is rather subsumed within the idea of the state itself. In effect,
what Gramsci has accomplished is a broadening of the notion of the state.
The state is now seen as the ensemble of socio-economic and political-
cultural relations. The ‘state’ now becomes the ‘integral State,’ where the
latter is defi ned as ‘dictatorship + hegemony,’ and as ‘political society + civil
society’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88; Gramsci 1975, Q8§130). A socio-political
order is therefore formed by the interpenetration of these two analytically
separate, but intimately interwoven, spheres.
Thus Gramsci offers two notions of the state, closely related: one nar-
row, the other more broad. The fi rst is reminiscent of what the classical
liberals and neoliberals understand by state: the administrative, juridical,
and military organization of the governmental apparatus, the guarantor
of peace, security, and order. This limited state is opposed to civil society,
where the two together (state and society, dictatorship and hegemony) con-
stitute what he calls the integral state.
In a note in the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci says that differences in
socio-political structures between Russia and the West require different
revolutionary strategies. He writes: ‘In Russia the State was everything,
civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West there was a proper
relation between the 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’ (Gramsci 1971, 238). The reference to the nature of the state
in Russia means that the governmental apparatus, especially the coercive
organs, is so pervasive that it overwhelms social and political life. It means,
moreover, that the practices and norms specific to ‘political society’ (the
culture and way of life specific to bureaucracy and administrative organiza-
tions) become prevalent and are generalized throughout the society. At the
same time, to say that civil society is ‘primordial’ and ‘gelatinous’ is to say
that civil society does not, or barely, exists. Social, cultural, and economic
activity is not autonomous, and it is permeated with the culture of the
state apparatus. On the other hand, in the West there is a ‘proper relation’
between state and society. ‘Proper’ here would mean not only that the two
spheres cannot exist separately from each other, but that the state is (1) lim-
ited and circumscribed and (2) responsive and subordinate to civil society.
While a state may exist in the East without a civil society, in the West it is
impossible to have one without the other. Thus Lenin was able to launch a
direct attack on the state and seize power successfully: once the tsarist state
fell, there were no socio-political institutions sufficiently autonomous and
sufficiently resilient to withstand the Bolshevik party organizations. Such

a direct assault Gramsci calls the ‘war of movement,’ evidently possible
only in countries politically and economically less advanced. In the West,
however, the strength, resilience, and persistence of civil society account
for the failure of revolution, and thus require a radically different method
of struggle, the ‘war of position.’
What the ‘proper relation’ between state and civil society implies is
shown in a passage where Gramsci discusses the radical and revolutionary
nature of the bourgeoisie and its difference from all other previous social
classes. It is a passage that also reveals Gramsci’s fundamentally Hegelian
perspective. He writes:
The previous ruling classes were essentially conservative in the sense

that they did not tend to construct an organic passage from the other
classes to their own, i.e., to enlarge their class sphere ‘technically’ and
ideologically: their conception was that of a closed caste. The bourgeois
class poses itself as an organism in continuous movement, capable of
absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and eco-
nomic level. The entire function of the State has been transformed; the
State has become an ‘educator,’ etc (Gramsci 1971, 260).
The notion of the state as educator harks back through Hegel, Rousseau,
and Vico to ancient constructions of politics and the state. These assert that
cultural and moral/intellectual life is made possible by, and can only occur
within, the polis or the state.13 Modern or Western civil society is the product
of the cultural, economic, and political activity of the liberal bourgeoisie,
and the state as educator means that the state acts as the bearer of the
cultural and socio-political values and ruling principles of the dominant
groups. As such, force and violence (which are specific to ‘dictatorship’
and to political society) are minimized and delimited (though of course
never eliminated), and, correspondingly, consent and persuasion (which
are specific to hegemony and civil society) are generated by means of the
proliferation and dissemination of moral/intellectual and cultural values
and principles. These values may range from the religious to the secular,
and the principles may be both ethical (‘ideological’) and ‘technical’ (that
is, rational and scientific, economically productive, and technologically
instrumental systems of knowledge). As Gramsci notes, the educative and
‘formative’ role of the state is that ‘of creating new and higher types of
civilisation; of adapting the “civilisation” and morality of the broadest
popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the
economic apparatus of production; hence of evolving even physically new
types of humanity’ (Gramsci 1971, 242).
In effect, the state as educator functions on two related levels. First, on
the material level it makes possible economic/technological and scientific
technical production by establishing stable and regular (more or less pre-
dictable) procedures and structures. In this sense, the state here approxi-
mates Hobbes’s conception of the Leviathan as the ground upon which
trade, arts and sciences, and ‘commodious’ living emerge and develop
(Hobbes 1968, I, 13). And second, the state presents itself as a cultural,
as well as moral and intellectual hegemon—that is to say, it presents itself
as exercising leadership in the ancient Greek sense of power based on a
persuasive and rational discourse. It exercises power by presenting itself as
‘ethico-political,’ as the representative of universal moral values and as the
carrier of rational and objective principles independent of narrow socio-
economic and socio-cultural interests. The state as educator, and as ethico-
political, transcends the narrow liberal conception of the night-watchman
and returns to the Hegelian idea of the state that attempts to realize reason
and liberty by encompassing within its sphere all the activities within civil
society. At the same time it is reminiscent of Hobbes, who calls the state
the ‘mortal God,’ a striking phrase that combines the material, cultural,
(moral/intellectual) and political functions of the modern state (Hobbes
1968, II, 17). In the same way that the immortal God is the ground for the
objective continuity of universal reality and the standard for the determina-
tion of value, so too the state is the founder and generator of socio-political
and socio-cultural reality, as well as the standard for the determination of
meaning in space and time.
As noted above, such a mortal God Gramsci calls the ‘integral State’
and is described by the unity of political society and civil society, dictator-
ship, and hegemony. The dyads depict the state as the embodiment of an
ethical/cultural life reinforced by force and coercion. Or, alternatively, they
represent the rationalization of power, or the enculturation of power. The
state is no longer brute force, nor is it any longer brute interest or narrow
appetite.
It is precisely the ‘proper relation’ between state and civil society, and
between dictatorship and hegemony, that enables the state to appear as
educator and as ethico-political (that is, precisely as rational and as hege-
monic). The state, rather than imposing itself on society, emerges and
gathers its cultural force from society. State power (dictatorship and force)
issues from civil society (most especially from the economic/technical and
the cultural/scientific apparatuses embedded within civil society), and, at
the same time, civil society maintains its coherence and stability through
the rational authority of the state.
All of which brings us back to hegemony and to civil society as the
space within which hegemony emerges and within which it is socially and
politically defi ned and concretized. We should remember that, to Gramsci,
modern society (which, for him, is fundamentally liberal and bourgeois) is
structurally constituted by a multiplicity of independent secondary associa-

tions and by a plurality of autonomous socio-political and socio-cultural
groups (these are political, economic, cultural, educational, religious, or
social). And, at the same time, civil society is characterized by a plurality of
ideological/cultural conceptions and moral/intellectual systems of knowl-
edge. It is here that the ‘war of position’ assumes importance. As Gramsci
notes:
. . . [t]he massive structures of modern democracies, both as State or-

ganizations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, consti-
tute for the art of politics as it were the ‘trenches’ and the permanent
fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely
‘partial’ the element of movement which before used to be ‘the whole’
of war . . . (Gramsci 1971, 243).
The war of position is a cultural confl ict involving ideology, religion,

forms of knowledge, and value systems. It occurs within civil society, which
is itself a ‘complex’ of highly articulated, multilayered associations and
voluntary groups. But the complexity and sophistication of socio-political
life extends beyond the civil sphere. They encompass the ‘State organiza-
tions’ themselves. In effect, the level of articulation and complexity within
civil society is mirrored within political society. For the state organizations,
while juridically and analytically distinct from those of civil society, are
nevertheless rooted and grounded within civil society, which provides the
educational and cultural resources that determine the character of the state
organizations. The greater the complexity of civil society and the more
sophisticated the scientific/technical apparatus of the associations within
society, the more complex and the more articulated will be the state institu-
tions. There is a direct link between the complex articulated structures of
civil society and the structural differentiation and political/constitutional
specialization of the modern state. Referring specifically to parliamentary
forms of government, Gramsci writes that ‘hegemony . . . is characterised
by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other recip-
rocally, without force predominating too greatly over consent’ (Gramsci
1975, Q13§37; Gramsci 1971, 80). Only a modern and democratic state
has the resources (technological and cultural) to develop systems of mass
persuasion and mass mobilization ‘to ensure that force will appear to be
based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of
public opinion—newspapers and associations . . . ’14
Civil society is the sphere in which a continual process of confl ict and
community, dissent and consent, is generated. It is here that the dialectic
between confl ict and consensus, factional strife over particularistic ends
and the generation of common goals, is conducted. Gramsci contrasts what
he calls the economic-corporative with the political. Such an opposition
occurs, and is ultimately resolved, within civil society. The economic-cor-
porative refers to particular, purely economic goods, utilities specific to the

interests of a given group; the political refers to goods that transcend the
purely economic and particular, goods that are universal to the extent that
they encompass the interests of other multiple groups. The movement from
the particular to the universal, from the economic to the political, is pre-
cisely a hegemonic movement where a multiplicity of groups is established
and where moral and intellectual leadership is exercised. Consent is gener-
ated by such leadership because the interests of the federated or associated
groups are aggregated. But such consent is generated within the alliance of
groups in competition with an antagonistic alliance of opposing groups.
Hegemony and civil society have generally been associated with consent
and community, and rightly so. Yet it is important to note that in Gramsci,
civil society, while representing and denoting the sphere of liberty and con-
sensus, is at the same time the sphere in which competition, confl ict, and
factional strife occur. On the one hand, it is the sphere in which different
systems of belief and knowledge, different conceptions of the world, oppose
each other and vie for the favor of the people. In the process, consent is
manufactured, consensus is mobilized, and popular support is attained.
The mobilization and deployment of the people are achieved through the
mediation of ideological and cultural prisms. Moreover, civil society is the
locus wherein the state (and its various political organs and functions) gen-
erates support and consent for itself—both through electoral competitive
mechanisms and through its ability to accumulate and distribute immense
sums in the form of socio-economic and social welfare measures. The
electoral competition and the economic programs mutually reinforce each
other and thus strengthen the authority and legitimacy of the state. In this
sense, the state and the political order in general are deemed legitimate
(that is, consent is generated) to the extent that it is able to penetrate (and,
in turn, be penetrated by) the multifarious associations that together form
civil society. This interpenetration contrasts starkly to liberal and neolib-
eral doctrine, which states there is a distinct separation between the state
and civil society. However, while there is certainly a legal and juridical
distinction between the two, on the political, social, and economic level,
the distinction is purely analytical and formal. For the material and moral
strength of the state depends precisely upon its ability to assimilate the cul-
tural and ideological activity (electoral, educational, political, economic,
even religious) taking place within civil society in order to transform it into
legitimating support.
At the same time, it is important to realize the close link between the
cultural/ideological and the material/economic. The relationship, within
the space formed by civil society, between the economic reality and the
construction of ideological, cultural, and moral/intellectual ways of think-
ing constitutes an important factor in Gramsci’s hegemony. Thus, in a
note entitled ‘Cultural Themes. Material and Ideological,’ Gramsci pro-
poses to analyze the theoretical and ideological bases of the power of the
dominant groups: ‘A study of how the ideological structure of a dominant

class is actually organized: that is to say, material organization understood
as maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical and ideological
“front”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44). This amounts to an inquiry into hege-
mony, how it is expressed, how it is institutionalized, and how it functions
concretely within civil society. His analysis focuses on ‘the most dynamic
part of the ideological structure,’ which comprises
. . . publishing houses (which implicitly and explicitly have a political

program and which base themselves on a given orientation), political
newspapers, journals of every type—scientific, literary, philological,
mass market, etc.-various periodicals including local and parochial
bulletins and gazettes. (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44).
Gramsci looks at institutions such as schools, libraries, voluntary associ-

ations and various clubs, religious groups (especially the Catholic Church),
universities and colleges, and other groups that pluralist theorists today
would call interest or pressure groups. His analysis intends to be thorough-
going and encompasses even the physico-spatial and the urban-architec-
tural structure of civil society, such as buildings, streets, and boulevards,
as well as their names. All these institutions, structures, and socio-cultural
practices are precisely what Gramsci means by the ‘powerful system of
earthworks’ that make up civil society: the ‘formidable complex of trenches
and fortifications of the dominant class’ (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44). These
are the ideological and cultural, and thus hegemonic, apparatus of civil
society. At the same time, they are economic and material. Newspapers,
journals, magazines (the mass media in general), educational and scientific
institutions, publishing houses—the whole complex system devised to con-
struct and generate, to communicate, store, and retrieve, knowledge and
information rests on an economic, technological, and material base. Such
a complex network, moreover, parallels, and is dependent upon, a market
that desires access to it. Such a market extends in progressively ever-wid-
ening concentric circles from narrow, specialized, and technical groups of
intellectuals (with their specialized languages) to popular and mass audi-
ences. In all cases, these markets must be intellectually and economically
capable of generating demand (both in terms of literacy and in terms of
disposable income). Thus the instruments of hegemonic persuasion cannot
emerge or function without a material foundation, at once spatial, physi-
cal, technological, and economic. And it is this base that makes possible
the generation and manufacture of permanent consent—that is, hegemony.
It is indicative that, during and after the three great revolutions of the
West that inaugurated modern mass politics and eventually culminated in
the modern world generally—namely, the English, the American, and the
French—their respective societies underwent a rapid and profound growth
in the proliferation and dissemination of ideas by means of the print media
(newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.). At the same time, such a growth

was accompanied by an expansion in the manufacture and in the market-
ing of printed materials.15
On the other hand, precisely because civil society is the sphere of lib-
erty and competition, such legitimating activity is counterbalanced by
forces and groups antagonistic and hostile to the prevailing group and
to its system of values and beliefs. These forces (what Gramsci calls the
‘subaltern classes’) (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2–5) may exist at various stages
of development, some merely embryonic, some more mature, some barely
politically conscious, others more coherent ideologically and thus bet-
ter organized. In other words, it is here, in the sphere defi ned by civil
society, that the war of position takes place. As the term implies, the
war of position presupposes consensus within the cultural/political and
organizational body of the protagonists, but confl ict and strife among
and between them. The war of position is therefore preeminently a series
of moral and intellectual battles whose goal is the construction of social
and political reality. In a note on ‘“Language,” Languages, and Common
Sense,’ Gramsci says that ‘philosophy is a conception of the world and
philosophical activity is not to be conceived solely as the “individual”
elaboration of systematically coherent concepts, but also and above all as
a cultural battle to transform the popular “mentality” and to diffuse the
philosophical innovations which will demonstrate themselves to be “his-
torically true” to the extent that they become concretely—i.e., histori-
cally and socially—universal’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10§44; Gramsci 1971,
348). What he says about philosophy can also be said about morality,
ethics, knowledge, and culture in general. The generation and organiza-
tion of consent is a competitive struggle—that is, the exercise of moral
and intellectual leadership in a ‘battle’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10§13; Gramsci
1975, Q11§65) whose purpose is to generate, proliferate, and disseminate
a given conception of the world, such that it becomes ‘historically true,’
which, in turn, means its transformation into the ‘commonsense’ of the
people. The exercise of intellectual and moral leadership is simultane-
ously the transformation of philosophy and knowledge into the common-
sense of the people; in turn, such a transformation is simultaneously the
organization and proliferation of consent. And all this occurs within civil
society, by means of a ‘battle,’ through confl ict and strife.
VI
The notion of a battle between and among opposing conceptions of the

world, or Weltanschauungen, is central to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony
and underpins his entire political and theoretical enterprise. It is crucial
because it captures on several levels Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony
and the manner in which it operates both within political society (state in
the narrow sense) and civil society.
In the fi rst place, the battle of hegemonies underlines Gramsci’s origi-
nal purpose in developing his political theory: to understand the failure

of socialism and to identify social groups within bourgeois modern soci-
ety capable of challenging morally and intellectually the supremacy of the
dominant groups. To Gramsci, a subordinate group, or the ‘subaltern,’
would not be equal to ruling unless it developed internally what he calls a
‘critical understanding of self’ (Gramsci 1971, 333). Internally (in terms of
consciousness) and externally (in terms of organization), the subaltern to
Gramsci exhibits, and is characterized by, incoherence, fragmentation, and
disintegration. As such, the subaltern groups are subject to the action and
initiative of the dominant groups (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2–6). As Gramsci
notes, ‘The subaltern classes . . . are not unified and cannot unite unless
they are able to become a “State”; their history is thus interwoven with that
of civil society, it is a functionally “disaggregated” and discontinuous part
of the history of civil society . . . ’ (Gramsci 1975: Q25§5). Thus it is neces-
sary to identify instances of subaltern autonomous activity that indicate
opposition, either cultural or political, to the established system of beliefs
and structures of power. It is only when the subaltern begins to know itself
that it begins the process of becoming hegemonic. Gramsci notes that ‘To
know oneself means to be oneself, to be master of oneself, to free oneself
from a state of chaos, to exist as an element of order—but of one’s own
order and one’s own discipline in striving for an ideal’ (Gramsci 1977, 13).
What is the process by which the popular masses attain critical awareness
and political coherence?
In a note in the Notebooks on the ‘passage from knowing to under-
standing to feeling and vice versa’ Gramsci makes an important analytical
distinction between those who ‘know’—intellectuals—and those who do
not know but merely ‘feel,’ the ‘people-nation.’ Intellectuals may possess
knowledge but not necessarily feeling or understanding, and the people
may possess feeling or understanding but not knowledge. To know some-
thing politically and socially, as opposed to abstractly or purely intellectu-
ally, is to understand it with feeling and with passion. Gramsci says:
The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without
understanding or even more without feeling and being impassioned
(not only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge;
in other words that the intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a
pure pedant) if distinct and separate from the people-nation, that is,
without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding
them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular
historical situation and connecting them dialectically to the laws of
history and to a superior conception of the world, scientifically and
coherently elaborated—i.e., knowledge. One cannot make politics-his-
tory without this passion, without this sentimental connection between
intellectuals and people-nation (Gramsci 1971, 418).
The knowledge of intellectuals becomes life and politics only when

linked to the feeling/passion of the people. The synthesis of intellectual/
people and knowledge/passion is what provides the motive force for polit-
ical and historical activity. Such a synthesis, in turn, is what transforms
a fragmented and disorganized subordinate group into an actor capable
of questioning the established system and presenting a viable alterna-
tive. Such a process is necessarily hegemonic, and it involves a reflexive
and conscious movement, from passive acceptance of the given reality to
active engagement with it, as well as a movement from fragmentation to
integration. Active engagement presupposes a condition of confl ict and
strife, such that the subaltern group understands itself and realizes itself
in opposition to the dominant groups. Thus: ‘[c]ritical understanding of
self takes place . . . through a struggle of political “hegemonies” and of
opposing directions, fi rst in the ethical field and then in that of politics
proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s
own conception of reality’ (Gramsci 1971, 333). This hegemonic process
is precisely the formation of a ‘personality,’ the manufacture of a social
and political subject capable of acting in history. In Gramsci’s words, it
is the giving of a ‘personality to the amorphous mass element’ (Gramsci
1971, 340).
The above passage points to Gramsci’s critique of positivism, scientism,
and evolutionary economism. Gramsci tries to disencumber Marxism of
its positivist and deterministic encrustations, and he presents a theory
of knowledge in which the relation between the subject that knows and
the object of knowledge is active and dynamic. For Gramsci, to know
is to master—and to know is to construct material and social reality by
giving form and structure to it. To know, therefore, is to ‘creare il reale’
(Gramsci 1975, Q11§59; Gramsci 1971, 345–346). Knowing is not sim-
ply an abstract activity, it is a conscious engagement with reality, such
that the very act of knowing gives form, meaning, and ‘personality’ to
the object. Thus, reality is not passively perceived, but it is actively and
passionately seized, captured, and possessed by the subject. In this sense,
Gramsci is fundamentally Vichian. Gramsci, like Vico, understands
knowledge in terms of doing and making: verum et factum convertuntur.
According to Vico, ‘[t]he criterion of the truth is to have made it’ (Vico
1988, 45–46). Man knows truly and fully only what he has made. Indeed,
‘facts’ exist, and are perceived as such, precisely because they come into
being as facta, as the products of man’s historical and political activity.
The battle of hegemonies, in this sense, is the battle to transform reality,
which involves the battle to create alternative facta.
Yet, to act in history also means to speak as a political actor in society:
thus the importance of language in Gramsci. Since hegemony is intimately
related to the development and proliferation of opposing conceptions of
the world and of differing structures of knowledge, the nature and type
of languages are crucial to hegemony. The transition from subaltern to
hegemonic, therefore, equally means the transformation of a subaltern

language (such as a dialect) into a hegemonic language. The language,
in other words, must be equal to the constitution of a knowledge and
a conception of the world that both capture and construct a particular
reality. Language and knowledge mutually presuppose each other. There-
fore, language, like knowledge, does not passively represent reality, and
it does not merely describe a preexistent world; rather, language actively
structures and constructs the world, and subjects it to the ends and values
established by the speaker/knower.16
Such an understanding of knowledge explodes the positivist distinction
between subjective knowledge and objective reality, and simultaneously
undermines the Marxist dichotomy between structure (material objec-
tivity) and superstructure (cultural and moral/intellectual subjectivity).
Thus, for Gramsci, the problem of revolution is no longer the ‘scientific’
analysis and identification of the objective (material/economic) condi-
tions. These had been present in the West since the end of the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth. The question, in the modern
bourgeois world, is the formation and development of the subjective con-
ditions. As Gramsci says, ‘ . . . men become conscious of fundamental
confl icts on the level of ideology . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 164). And fur-
ther, he notes in ‘Utopia,’ one of his early preprison essays: ‘It is not the
economic structure that directly determines political action, but rather
the interpretation given to it and to the so-called laws that govern its
development’ (Gramsci 1958, 281–282). A strictly abstract and scientific
analysis of the material economic conditions, though obviously necessary
for understanding social reality, is not sufficient. What is required is the
formation of a self-disciplined ‘personality’ (collective and institutional)
that is politically and morally determined to act. And political action in
turn presupposes both consciousness and will. These latter recall Grams-
ci’s syntheses of knowledge and passion, and of intellectuals and people.
Nietzsche famously asserted that there are no moral phenomena, only
moral interpretations of phenomena (Nietzsche 1966, 85). Gramsci may
be said to perform a similar operation on knowledge and its relation to
what is known. Thus, structural and material reality is not merely per-
ceived through ideological and cultural prisms, but these prisms condi-
tion and transform the reality itself.
VII
To sum up: Gramsci’s hegemony is a complex and highly articulated

notion, defi ned by means of interlinked yet distinct polarities. It is to be
understood as an element within the duality of force/consent and violence/
persuasion that to Gramsci characterizes the nature of power. It acquires
concrete structure and specific content particularly during those periods
in history in which the people or the masses either form the ground of
political action or have become a force in politics.
In the manner of the ancient Greek dichotomy between political (con-

stitutional) and despotic (dominating) rule, hegemony may be seen as an
alliance or association of groups that share similar interests, a consensual
alliance under the leadership of a group pursuing the interest of the asso-
ciated groups. Conceptually this is expressed by the dyad ‘domination/
leadership.’ A group exercises ‘leadership’ over ‘allied’ groups and exer-
cises ‘domination’ (‘even with armed force’) over antagonistic groups. In
this case, hegemony is opposed to dictatorship, where the latter represents
domination and force and the former represents consent/persuasion/opin-
ion. Underlying such a notion is the reciprocal relation between force and
consent, such that hegemony may also delineate a balanced ‘equilibrium’
between force and consent, where force does not prevail ‘too greatly’ over
consent. Alliance formation based on consent and on the autonomy of the
constituent coalition partners requires the formation of a political-social
group that is able to transcend narrow, particular interests (of a class,
nation, or other social group) to more general universal ones. Thus hege-
mony describes a movement from the economic to the political.
In addition, hegemony understood as the generation and organization
of consent is directly related to the mechanisms and processes by which
knowledge and beliefs are fi rst, produced, and second, disseminated. Here,
the crux is the formation of a ‘conception of the world’ and its dissemina-
tion throughout the people. A conception of the world (an ‘ideology’ or a
system of beliefs) is always opposed to different conceptions of the world.
Thus, these are constantly in confl ict, in a ‘battle’ against each other, and
the hegemonic conception is one that has become the ‘commonsense’ of
the people. But a counter-conception is constantly generated, even if only
embryonically, to challenge the prevailing commonsense.
In effect, to be hegemonic is to be political both at the level of con-
sciousness (subjective and intersubjective) and at the level of rule (power),
such that to be political is to be hegemonic (or to strive towards hege-
mony, that is to be counter-hegemonic). For every hegemony presupposes
a counter-hegemony. If this is the case, that is, if hegemonic = political
= ruling, then the issue is the formation of a group or a subject capable
of rule: thus, as Gramsci says, a hegemonic relationship is a pedagogic
relationship—that is, the development of what Gramsci calls a ‘personal-
ity’ that is conscious, active, and autonomous—autonomous understood
as self -governing and self-ruling. Hegemony operates at two levels: fi rst,
internally, the formation within the social group of self-discipline and
self-government, that is, the self-constitution of the group into a coher-
ent and active political actor, and second, externally, the extension and
dissemination of the group’s conception of the world throughout the
society.
We conclude by recalling the centaur, for Machiavelli and for Gramsci
the metaphor that embodies the dual nature of power: force and consent,
violence and persuasion. Both elements defi ne political action. The ques-
tion is to identify the ‘proper’ balance or proportion in the dyadic relation.

For Gramsci, as for Machiavelli, the exercise of power (or the relation
between ruler and ruled) rests (or should rest) on an inverse relationship
between force and consent, which, in turn, depends upon the generation
of consent. The more weight consent acquires, the less force is neces-
sary. To Gramsci, the power and resilience of a socio-political order (the
‘State’) is defi ned by the individuation of consent and persuasion within
concrete political and social structures. Hegemony is the institutionaliza-
tion of consent and persuasion within both civil society and the state. Yet
the element of force and domination, as the balancing and limiting pole of
the dyad, cannot be eliminated. Machiavelli, Sheldon Wolin wrote, tried
to establish a politics characterized by an ‘economy of violence.’ Hege-
mony represents Gramsci’s attempt in the modern world simultaneously
to delineate and to construct such an economy.
NOTES
1. See M. Haugaard, ed., Power: A Reader (Manchester and New York: Man-
chester University Press, 2002) and H. Goverde, P. C. Cerny, M. Haugaard,
and H. Lentner, eds., Power in Contemporary Politics: Theories, Globaliza-
tions (London: Sage Publications, 2000).
2. The literature on Gramsci’s hegemony is legion, and constantly growing.
See, for example, G. A. Williams, ‘The Concept of Egemonia in the Thought
of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation,’ Journal of the History
of Ideas, 21;4(1960):586–589; G. Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari:
De Donato, 1970); C. Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci et l’Etat: pour une théo-
rie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975); P. Anderson, ‘The
Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,’ New Left Review 100(1977):5–78; W. L.
Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Cul-
tural and Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
D. Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of A New Politics (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1990).
3. See J. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967); A. Davidson, Antonio Gramsci:
Towards an Intellectual Biography (London: Merlin Press, 1977); M. Clark,
Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution That Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1977).
4. On this see B. Fontana, ‘Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on
Hegemony,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 61;2(2000):305–326. See also
B. Fontana, ‘Hegemony,’ in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York:
Scribners, 2004).
5. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2002). Thucydides’ uses the term hegemony in various senses, such as
military leadership (I, 128; II, 11; III, 105, 107), power (I, 94, 130; IV, 91;
V, 7; VII, 15), and political leadership (I, 4, 25, 38, 76, 95–96; III, 10; V, 16,
47, 69; VI, 76, 82; VII, 56).
6. On this, see V. Ehrenburg, The Greek State (New York: W. W. Norton,
1960). See also V. Ehrenburg, From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and
Civilization during the 6th and 5th Centuries BC (London: Meuthen Books,
1973).
7. Aristotle, Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1277

b, 1278 b-1279 b, and 1333 a 39–1334 a 5.
8. On Gramsci’s method and its relation to his political and theoretical enter-
prise, see J. Buttigieg, ‘Gramsci’s Method,’ boundary 2, 17(1990);2:60–81.
See also the invaluable J. A. Buttigieg, ‘Introduction,’ in A. Gramsci, Prison
Notebooks, Volume 1 (New York: Columbia University Press). For an inci-
sive analysis of the relation between politics, language, and conceptual
formulation in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, see the discussion in J. A. But-
tigieg, ‘Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci,’
boundary 2, 21(1994);2:98–138.
9. N. Machiavelli, The Prince. H. C. Mansfield, Jr., trans. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1985). ‘Thus, you must know that there are two ways of
fighting: one with laws, the other with force. The fi rst is proper to man, the
second to beasts; but because the fi rst is often not enough, one must have
recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well
how to use the beast and the man. This was covertly taught to princes by
ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and many other ancient princes,
were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised. . . . To have as teacher a half-
beast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince must know how
to use both natures, and one without the other is not durable’ (translation
somewhat altered).
10. On civil society and Gramsci, see especially N. Bobbio, ‘Gramsci e la con-
cezione della società civile,’ P. Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la cultura contempora-
nea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at
Cagliari, 23–27 April 1967. Vol. I, 75–100 (Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci,
1975); E. Garin, ‘Politica e cultura in Gramsci (il problema degli intellet-
tuali),’ in P. Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings
of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari, 23–27
April 1967. Vol. I, 37–74 (Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci, 1975); G. Nar-
done, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari: De Donato, 1971); C. Buci-Glucksman,
Gramsci et l’Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris:
Fayard, 1975); D. Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of A New Poli-
tics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). See also J. A.
Buttigieg, ‘Gramsci on Civil Society,’ boundary 2, 22(3):1–32; W. L.
Adamson, ‘Gramsci and the Politics of Civil Society,’ Praxis International
3–4(1989):320–39; J. Texier, ‘Sur les sens de “société civile” chez Gramsci,’
Actuel Marx 5(1989):50–68. See also, J. Cohen and A. Arato, Civil Society
and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992).
11. Perry Anderson, in ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,’ renders autorità
as ‘domination.’ While Gramsci directly opposes dominio (domination) to
moral and intellectual leadership, in this case Gramsci opposes ‘authority’ to
hegemony because he wants to stress the nonvoluntary, binding, and coercive
character of this particular type of authority. Here it must be understood as
a legal command enforced by legal sanctions. Thus, in the case of hegemony
dissent or disobedience carries no legal penalties, whereas in the case of
authority disobedience is a violation of the law and penalized by the coercive
force of the state.
12. On the Marxian notion of the state, see K. Marx, ‘The Civil War in France
[1871],’ in D. Fernbach, ed., The First International and After (Harmond-
sworth: Penguin Books, 1974). See also K. Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte [1852],’ in D. Fernbach, ed., Surveys from Exile (Harmond-
sworth: Penguin Books, 1973); and F. Engels, ‘The Origin of the Family, Private
Property, and the State [1884],’ in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow:
International Publishers, 1968). See also S. Avineri, The Social and Political
Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); G.

Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study, 2nd rev. ed. (New York:
Praeger Publishers, 1970) and R. C. Tucker, ‘The Political Theory of Classical
Marxism’ in The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York: Norton, 1969).
13. The notion of the state as educator, which of course harks back to Plato and to
Aristotle, and which is historicized by Hegel, is central to Gramsci. As he notes,
‘The relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship,’ and,
‘The relationship between teacher and pupil is active and reciprocal so that
every teacher is always a pupil and every pupil a teacher . . . [Such a relation-
ship] exists between intellectual and nonintellectual sections of the population,
between rulers and the ruled, élites and their followers, leaders and led, the
vanguard and the body of the army’ (Gramsci 1971, 350). Thus an educational
relation is hegemonic, and is also political.
14. Ibid. Referring specifically to public opinion and its relation to the consensual
basis of state power, Gramsci writes: ‘What is called “public opinion” is closely
linked to political hegemony, that is, it is the point of contact between “civil
society” and “political society,” between consent and force. The State, when
it wants to initiate an action that is not too popular, will preventively create
the public opinion desired, that is, it organizes and centralizes certain elements
within civil society. History of “public opinion:” naturally elements of public
opinion have existed even in Asiatic satrapies; but public opinion as it is under-
stood today was born on the eve of the fall of the absolute states, that is, at the
time of the struggle of the new bourgeois class for political hegemony and for
the conquest of power. Public opinion is the political content of the public polit-
ical will, one which is very possibly discordant and contradictory: thus there
is the struggle for the monopoly of the organs of public opinion: newspapers,
parties, parliament, in such a way that only one force models opinion and thus
the national political will, reducing opposition to atomistic and disorganized
dissent.’ What connects state and civil society is ‘public opinion.’ See Gramsci
1975, Q7§83. Gramsci sees that the formation and organization of opinion
within the sphere of civil society are central to the generation of both hegemony
and an opposing hegemonic movement. Thus public opinion can both legiti-
mate and delegitimate state power.
15. For a historical overview of the relation obtaining among communication
media, politics, and their technological and economic foundation, see P. Starr,
The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications
(New York: Basic Books, 2004).
16. Gramsci 1971, 38–43, 323–325, 348–351. Gramsci’s writings on language,
its relation to knowledge and to thought, and the manner in which it informs
the politics and the socio-economic position of contending factions, are cru-
cially related to his epistemology and to his understanding of revolutionary
activity. The relation Gramsci establishes between hegemony and language is
another important point of contact between Gramsci’s hegemony and that of
the ancients. See F. LoPiparo, Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci (Bari:
Laterza, 1979). For an excellent analysis, see also P. Ives, Gramsci’s Politics of
Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004).
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7 Hegemony, Subalternity,
and Subjectivity in Early
Industrial Sydney
Kylie Smith
Traditional Australian national and labour history has focused on the

major institutional factors and changes, which are said to have fashioned
the nature of Australian society since European invasion in 1788.1 Despite
recent advances in historical methodology and theorising, there are still
vast silences and absences in these histories that have brought about the
marginalization and exclusion of particular groups or people, not only
from history but also from contemporary Australian society. This chap-
ter argues that we can understand these processes of marginalization and
exclusion through an application of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and
by exploring the links between this theory, Gramsci’s notions of common
sense and subalternity, and some psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity.
These ideas are applied in particular to a group of working class youth in
nineteenth century Sydney (Australia) called larrikins and by exploring the
ways in which this group was constructed discursively at both the material
and symbolic level—and its implications for similar groups in contempo-
rary society.
HEGEMONY, COMMON SENSE, AND SUBJECTIVITY
Many words have been written about the concept of hegemony as Gramsci
developed it in the Prison Notebooks, and many of these words explore
the relationships between structures and superstructures in the making of
hegemony. This chapter argues that there is a subjective element to this the-
orisation of hegemony which is often overlooked, but with which Gramsci
was intensely concerned. Gramsci saw clearly the potential for capitalism
to reach right into the heart of the human self, and he expressed his ambi-
guity about this project and its implications for human social and personal
life. The chapter suggests that by exploring the relationship between struc-
tures and superstructures at the level of the subjective, we can see the way
in which subalternity is produced and reproduced in both the theory and
practice of hegemony. There are links then between the notions of common
sense, subalternity, and subjectivity that help to expand the complexity of
108 Kylie Smith
the theory of hegemony and demonstrate how hegemony works in a par-
ticular social and historical moment.
The introduction to this volume raised the idea of hegemony as a com-
plex process. In this theorization, it becomes apparent that the concept of
hegemony, as Gramsci elaborated it, is not a simple shorthand for domi-
nation, but rather it attempts to deal with the complex relations between
structures, superstructures, and human agency. In his concept of the his-
torical bloc, Gramsci demonstrates that hegemony is formed at the inter-
section of social, political, and economic relations, and that it is only when
these relations are aligned around certain nodal points, or “hegemonic

principles” (Howson 2006, 23), that hegemony prevails. Hegemony, then,
is not something that is imposed; rather, it is a form of leadership that is
developed over time, with the active participation of the members of soci-
ety, articulated in and through “civil society” (Buttigieg 1995, 2005; Fon-
tana 2000). That is, it does not operate purely at the level of the economic,
nor is it ever static, nor uncontested. Gramsci makes it quite clear often
enough that hegemony is only really hegemony if it is established through a
war of position that comes before the seizing of power, and that legitimate
power is only that which has active consent based on moral and intellec-
tual leadership. He also makes it quite clear that this process can and must
happen through civil society—that no amount of economic or legislative
coercion or military domination makes for hegemony. Hegemony lies in the
relationship between the economic, political, and social spheres, and these
cannot be separated one from the other. If hegemony is a complex process,
this is because, if it is based on leadership and consent, it must continually
adapt to the organic demands of the people themselves. Gramsci has shown
that where these demands are actively repressed or pacified and absorbed
into the hegemonic principles, without effecting real change, than coercion
comes to dominate and hegemony no longer prevails.
Subalternity and subjectivity are central to the theory of hegemony, and
they operate through the dual concepts of common sense and hegemonic
principles. If these are the core values that characterize a particular hege-
mony, then it is the nature of these values that will determine to what extent
the hegemony is open and based on consent and leadership, or where it has
become coercive and dominative (Howson 2006, 27–31). It is at the level
of subjectivity that human agency operates—where hegemony is resisted,
where it must penetrate into “hearts and minds.” Thus, it is around the
hegemonic principles that both subjectivity and subalternity are created,
and common sense, in this paradigm, is the discourse through which these
principles are negotiated; it is the organic language of subalternity.
The hegemonic principles of developing industrial capitalism in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in this instance in Sydney, Aus-
tralia, were based on the creation of a particular kind of citizen: a wage
worker, a consumer, a private property holder. These principles relied on
a transformation at the level of the self—the sublimation and repression
Hegemony, Subalternity, and Subjectivity in Early Industrial Sydney 109
of so-called “animalistic” behaviours, the internalization of discipline
required for capitalist processes, and the creation of desire for the products
of capitalist markets. These are also the processes Gramsci observed tak-
ing place under Americanism and Fordism—the rationalization of capital-
ist ways of being as a new form of morality requiring the transformation
of animalistic energy away from sexuality, violence, and drunkenness and
into the productive and social relations of industrial capitalism. Hence,
Gramsci argues that “the new type of man demanded by the rationalisation
of production and work can not be developed until the sexual instinct has
been suitably regulated” because
the history of industrialism has always been a continuing struggle . . .

against the element of “animality” in man. It has been an uninter-
rupted, often painful and bloody process of subjugating natural (i.e.,
animal and primitive) instincts to new, more complex and rigid norms
and habits of order, exactitude and precision which can make possible
the increasingly complex forms of collective life which are the neces-
sary consequence of industrial development (Gramsci 1975, Q22§10).
At the time in which he wrote this, that is, 1934, he noted that “the
results to date, though they have great immediate practical value, are to a
large extent purely mechanical: the new habits have not yet become second
nature” (1975, Q22§10). While Gramsci remained ambiguous about the
long-term success and consequence of these processes, he understood that
they were not hegemonic until they were “second nature.” He also noted
that the increase in psychoanalysis could be seen as “the expression of the
increased moral coercion exercised by the state and society on single indi-
viduals and of the pathological crisis determined by this coercion” (1975,
Q22§1). So, while he may have seen some value in these new habits, he
noted that there would be problems where they were imposed coercively
and that resistance to them was not only normal but was significant and
necessary, part of the usual historical process.
Resistance to this process can be linked with the creation of subalternity.
If these principles were not negotiable, they created a discourse where people
who did not comply were made subaltern but they were made subaltern at
the level of the subjective—they were the wrong sort of people, there was
something inherently wrong with them, not with the system or the society in
which they lived. This was particularly evident from the nineteenth century
with the rise of the urban, consumerist middle class, with its attendant
moral and social reform programs (Lake 1986; McConville 1987). These
movements were based on an almost scientific belief in human progress and
improvement, that all people were capable of being productive members
of society if they were self-disciplined, hard workers, moral, and proper.
Human energy should be put into work and self-improvement, mastering of
the mind and body, not dissipated into sexuality or alcoholism, and moral
110 Kylie Smith
reform movements took up the cause of intemperance and prostitution
with religious zeal (Roe 1965). Respectability was seen as the cornerstone
of modern civilisation, an integral part of nation building. As Janet
McCalman has shown, “respectability prescribed disciplines in behaviour
which could alter the conception of the self. In demanding cleanliness,
sobriety, extra-marital chastity, thrift, time-consciousness, self-reliance,
manly independence and self-responsibility, it promoted an ego that
was self-regulating, responsible and mature” (McCalman 1982, 90). As
Gramsci suggests, however, this process of changing human behaviour was
far-reaching and problematic:
In order to achieve a new adaptation to the new mode of work, pres-

sure is exerted over the whole social sphere, a puritan ideology develops
which gives to the intrinsic brutal coercion the external form of persua-
sion and consent (Gramsci 1992, Q1§158).
This is the nature of hegemony, where the factory is more than just a phys-
ical production line; it is a whole way of life. It is not just a structure, but is
a whole set of social relations. The factory is everywhere, it is in culture and
education, religion and leisure—all social relations and institutions become
imbued with the rationality of capitalism. This entails a deliberate attempt
“to create, with unprecedented speed and a consciousness of purpose unique
in history, a new type of worker and of man” (Gramsci 1996, Q4§52). To
effect this change, man must be persuaded, coerced, or forced into accepting
new kinds of morality, ideology, behaviour, and discipline. For Gramsci, this
process is dependent on the social and moral/intellectual realms as much as
on any political or economic coercions. It is only when the practices and dis-
courses of everyday life are so pervasive as to convince man that he changes
himself by his own will and brings about self-discipline that a historical bloc
can be said to be “hegemonic” (Gramsci 1992, Q1§158).
For most, the incentives of evolving capitalism were strong enough to
bring about a complete transformation in work and social life. This is,
however, a tenuous transformation, never fully complete, never stable. This
is particularly true at the level of the personal—as Freud argued, “mod-
ern life” is a kind of nightmare, made bearable by “palliative measures”
which deflect, substitute for, or numb the pain of living. This is because,
“Life, as we fi nd it, is too hard for us; it brings too many pains, disap-
pointments and impossible tasks” (Freud 1975, 12). If man is driven by the
pleasure principle, and this pleasure is “happiness,” its attainment in the
world is problematic. Society is not constructed for the unqualified happi-
ness of every individual; to pursue it brings only suffering. This suffering
is twofold; it stems from the initial repression of man’s natural instincts,
what Gramsci called his “animality”—sexual pleasure, physical comfort,
psychic joy—and it stems from the frustration of fi nding appropriate sub-
limations. For Freud, “the task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims
in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the exter-
nal world” (Freud 1975, 16). These frustrations are relational, they occur
because the instincts are antagonistic with existing social relations that
are working to eliminate instinctual behaviour. Whether for good or bad,
Freud noted that the sublimation of the instincts was becoming essential
for life in the “civilised,” industrial world, and that this would have con-
sequences of a particular psychological nature. While Gramsci remained
suspicious of psychoanalysis itself, this process of repression and sublima-
tion as an aspect of industrialism was evident to him.
In his note on the “Problem of Collective Man,” Gramsci elaborated on the

potentially hegemonic nature of these processes when he wrote that the aim
of the state “is always that of creating new and higher types of civilization:
of adapting the civilization and the morality of the broadest popular masses
to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus
of production: hence of evolving even physically new types of humanity”
(Gramsci 1971, 242). This was not a simple process, firstly because Gramsci
saw quite clearly that people were not determined simply by the economic
circumstances into which they were born; rather, people were made at the
intersection of many different influences on thought and action: “man can-
not be conceived of except as historically determined man—i.e., man who
has developed, and who lives, in certain conditions, in a particular social
complex or totality of social relations” (Gramsci, 1971, 244), and that this
social totality consists of the variety of influences and associations that are
sometimes contradictory (Gramsci, 1971, 265) but which all contribute to
the formulation of a particular conception of the world (Gramsci, 1971,
324).
Secondly, he argued that people were still free to choose their way of being
in the world and that this complicated the matter further—that is, “the will
and initiative of men themselves can not be left out of account” (Gramsci
1971, 244). In the same way that Marx argued that men made themselves
but not in circumstances of their own choosing, so Gramsci was aware of
the tension between structures and human agency. But for Gramsci, the situ-
ation is more complex because of the importance he gave to the dialectical
nature of hegemony. While it may be the case that a particular hegemony
may require a particular kind of person, it is also true that people themselves
shape hegemony and that they do this based on the creation of philosophy,
or through their particular conception of the world: “Every man, in as much
as he is active, i.e., living, contributes to modifying the social environment in
which he develops (to modifying certain of its characteristics or to preserv-
ing others); in other words, he tends to establish ‘norms,’ rules of living and
of behaviour” (Gramsci, 1971, 265), and in so doing “reacts upon the State
and the party, compelling them to reorganize continually and confronting
them with new and original problems to solve” (Gramsci, 1971, 267).
In some notes on “The Study of Philosophy,” Gramsci differentiates,
however, between ways of thinking and being that he classifies as common
112 Kylie Smith
sense as opposed to philosophy. He does this in an attempt to grapple with
the complexities of the formation of human consciousness. If common
sense, in this usage, is the world view that a person takes uncritically
from their environment, philosophy is the ability to be self-reflective, self-
critical. “Is it better to think” he asks, without having a critical awareness,
in a disjointed and episodic way? . . . to take part in a conception of the
world mechanically imposed by some external environment, i.e., by the
many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the
moment of his entry into the conscious world . . . or . . . is it better to work
out consciously and critically one’s own conception of the world and thus,
in connection with the labours of one’s own brain, choose one’s sphere of
activity, be one’s own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from
outside the moulding of one’s personality? (Gramsci 1971, 267).
This does not automatically imply some kind of “right thinking”
(where “common sense” is transformed into the “good sense” of social-
ist consciousness) but can be applied more broadly to the way in which
everyday people make themselves in the world. In some of the work that
has been written about subaltern social groups, there is a tendency to
attribute this critical self-consciousness only to particular elements of
society, for example, the organized working class or the party, and there-
fore to denigrate subaltern conceptions of the world as mere bad common
sense, to assume that the personality of the subaltern is uncritical, pas-
sive, determined.
In the Australian setting, this dichotomy is not so easy to sustain. The
issue of common sense and subaltern social groups in Australia is made
more complex by the historical circumstances in which there was no peas-
ant folklore to be overcome but rather, an already potentially radicalized
and coerced working class. In this situation, the creation of capitalist
“good sense” was based on an attempt to close down society around
hegemonic principles and to negate the ensuing resistance to this project.
This resistance can be seen to have taken place at the level of the subjec-
tive because it was here that the hegemonic principles were aimed. Subal-
ternity was created around subjectivity—the resistance to wage labour, to
respectability and discipline, to consumption and commodification. The
level of the subject, the self, was the last frontier in a war against hege-
mony that had become dominative and coercive at the structural level and
ideological at the superstructural. The self was the last thing for sale, and
many subaltern people in Australia were made subaltern because they
would not sell themselves, because they did not buy either the nightmare
of production or the dream of consumption.
To dismiss subaltern groups for their rejection of these processes would
be to fall prey to the tendency to assume that subaltern worldviews are
nonsense, something that Gramsci himself warned us against. Too often,
for Gramsci, subaltern groups are represented in ways that actively seek
to diminish their importance, that is, “instead of studying the origins of a
collective event and the reasons why it was collective, the protagonist was
singled out and one limited oneself to writing a pathological biography, all
too often starting off from motives that had not been confi rmed or that
could be interpreted differently. For a social elite, the members of subaltern
groups always have something of a barbaric or pathological nature about
them” (Gramsci 1975, Q25§1). In this way, subaltern groups are easy to
dismiss, especially where they operate at the level of the subjective.
LARRIKINS AND LABOUR HISTORY
This is a process that has been facilitated by the discipline of labour history
itself. This chapter, and my research more broadly, is concerned with the
creation of one particular subaltern social group in Australian history who
have come to be known as larrikins. The term larrikin is now ubiquitous in
Australian society, almost synonymous with “Australian-ness” itself. It has
become associated with the quintessential Australian male—fun-loving,
antiauthoritarian, but always lovable, always within the law. Yet this usage
does not reflect the history of larrikins in their own time, how they were
considered, or how they were dealt with. Furthermore, this usage is itself
applied unproblematically; there is no serious history of the term, or of its
origins, and the people who constituted this original group are markedly
absent from both Australian national and labour histories. This is because,
while there has been much work in the vein of social history in Austra-
lia, labour history itself remains largely concerned with the institutions
of organised labour and its related culture. 2 This is problematic, because
when we study only the organised working class, we end up talking about
a particular kind of working class, where it is assumed that a “correct”
consciousness is the kind that agitates for better wages and conditions and
seeks to ameliorate the working experience in general. Those who fall out-
side this area are at best invisible, at worst guilty of a kind of false con-
sciousness and are accused of failing to reach their potential or of taking
energy from the revolutionary cause. This kind of history “reads history in
the light of subsequent preoccupations, and not in fact as it occurred. Only
the successful (in the sense of those whose aspirations anticipated success-
ful evolution) are remembered. The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the
losers themselves are forgotten” (Thompson 1991, 9).
Are larrikins then, a lost cause, a blind alley? For the majority of Austra-
lian historians, they have fallen victim to the “enormous condescension of
posterity” (Thompson 1991, 9), which sees larrikinism as an anathema to
the organised labour movement. For example, Andrew Metcalfe suggests
that the larrikin mode of resistance did nothing to progress the cause of
working people and had the effect of actually dividing the working class
(Metcalfe 1988). Similarly, in their assessment of larrikins, Australian his-
torians Connell and Irving note that “the pushes” (as larrikin “gangs” were
114 Kylie Smith
called) may have taken energy away from a more organised attack on prop-
erty relations (Connell and Irving 1992, 112). This perspective prevails
because, I would argue, Australian labour history traditionally privileges
the respectable. This is not entirely a contemporary problem as it reflects the
importance of respectability in the language and practice of class through-
out the nineteenth century in Sydney itself (Connell and Irving 1992, 83–
125; Smith 2002). Unions could only hope to affect change in working
conditions if they were seen as respectable, an inheritance of their skilled
artisan tradition. Similarly, respectability was often a way of maintaining
dignity in the face of capitalist exploitation (Metcalfe 1988). Respectabil-

ity, however, has always been a double-edged sword, and this is because it
is so intrinsically a part of capitalist rhetoric and is tightly connected to the
project of imposing labour discipline, as Gramsci so clearly articulated in
his work on Americanism and Fordism.
This problem of respectability has been reinforced in Australian
history, and to some extent in international labour history more generally,
largely because of an insistence on a split between the organized and the
spontaneous elements of resistance to capitalist social relations. Resistance
is seen to emerge from the objective conditions of working class life,
and to be worthy of study, only when it takes the form of an apparently
organized and disciplined frontal attack on the institutions of capitalist
power as embodied in the state or workplace. Spontaneous elements who
refused to be part of this process are seen as problematic, pathologised, and
dismissed, but Gramsci warned against this when he said, “Ignoring, and
even worse, disdaining, so-called spontaneous movements . . . may often
have very bad and serious consequences” (Gramsci 1996, Q3§48), not
only because spontaneous movements will be reacted to by the state (and
this reaction is in itself revealing) but because it is in spontaneity that the
seeds of an organic hegemony—a war of position—can reside. It is not the
intention of my research to romanticize particular subaltern social groups
or to attribute to them politically revolutionary consciousness where there
was none. It is the case that larrikins in particular can be said to have
been in “a state of anxious defence” (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2) and that their
rebelliousness occurred through subjectivity at one level at least because
they were given no other way in which to express themselves. But it is
also the case that their actions were consciously and overtly aimed at the
symbols of capitalist life as it was evolving in Australia and that, sensing
the danger they posed, the state acted accordingly. Interestingly, in this
scenario it was not just the state that sought to exclude particular groups
from both political and civil society. Larrikins were workers, but they
did not form part of the “glorious” labour activism of the late nineteenth
century Australia. This is because, at that time, the spontaneous element
of working class resistance was actively marginalized by the organized
working class as much as by the state because of the overt complicity
between that organized working class and the processes and institutions
of capital themselves. Hence, larrikins continue to be marginalized from
the discourse of Australian labour history, and have, in fact, been sanitized
into the wider narrative of mainstream nationalist history.
These histories assume that the existing literature about larrikins is
unproblematic, and in doing so, they leave unanswered some basic ques-
tions; that is, at the level of the material, who were larrikins precisely and
why were they considered so problematic and, at the level of the discursive,
what are the processes by which they were marginalized and excluded, and
what does this reveal about Australian society more broadly?
LARRIKIN SUBJECTIVITY AND SUBALTERNITY
By larrikins, then, I am referring to groups of working class youth

much complained about by the Sydney press and police for their attacks
on “respectable” citizenry, in the form of insults, assaults, loitering,
riots, and resisting arrest. I am also referring to larrikinism as it was
described by its contemporaries: a “culture” of overt sexuality and high
costume, drinking, dancing, gambling, violent sports, and a quasi-gang
organisation. There are similarities between this group of urban working
class youth and the hoodlums and hooligans being noted at the same time
in the world’s major port cities of New York, San Francisco, and London.
This is not a coincidence—Sydney was the great port city of the south
Pacific, and the maritime influence on larrikinism is significant. The daily
traffic through the ports where many larrikins worked as casual labourers
was intense, and the labour force on Sydney’s docks numbered at least
four thousand (Fry 1956, 66). It is from here that the Australian radical
dockworker tradition emerged, as it did in other major port cities around
the world at this time. 3 While it is difficult to make a defi nitive statement
about the national origins of larrikins, this influence was not unnoticed in
their own time. Government census statistics were especially concerned
with the countries of origin of the working classes, and data shows that
more than 30 per cent of the metropolitan population was born overseas.
In 1881, 33.36 per cent of Sydney’s population was born in England,
Ireland, or Scotland, and another 3.6 per cent were listed as “foreign.”
By 1895, this amounted to 149,200 people from England, 75,000 from
Ireland, and 36,800 from Scotland, with a further 3,500 from America
and 1,074 from Canada (Coghlan 1887, 773). Given that most of these
people preferred to settle in the city, because they had come from cities
in their places of origin and were generally semi- and unskilled labourers,
artisans, or sailors (Fry 1956), it is safe to assume that their influence on
larrikin culture was considerable. Irish radicalism and British “cockney”
in particular can be linked to larrikinism through the provenance of song,
poetry, dialect, slang, and distinctive costume, especially hats and shoes
(McLachlan 1950; Pearson 1983). Furthermore, the English and Irish in
116 Kylie Smith
particular are proportionally over-represented in the arrest figures for
“crimes against good order” discussed below, which indicates they were a
significant element in the groups that police considered larrikin.
Ethnic or otherwise, this was a community continually under scrutiny
from the popular press, the police, and other social commentators. In 1878,
in his Annual Report to Parliament, Edmund Fosbery, the inspector gen-
eral of police, referred to larrikins for the fi rst time as a distinct social
group with specific problems:
No one can read the complaints and comments in the Press respecting
the increasing annoyance suffered by the Public from the disorderly
conduct and petty misdemeanours of youths who assemble together
in large numbers . . . without being aware that the nuisance of the so-
called larrikin element is greatly on the increase (Fosbery 1878, 565).
Larrikins’ greatest crime, according to the press, appeared to be their

blatant disregard for respectable society and respectable leisure activities.
Their propensity to be seen in public wearing garish clothes, in overt dis-
plays of sexuality with equally garish women, offended the moral majority
no end (Finch 1993, 76). They were more interested in vulgar pastimes like
bare-knuckle boxing and rough dancing than cricket and rowing (Mur-
ray 1973, 53). This was problematic for a society so heavily concerned
with the creation of a respectable and disciplined citizenry. This was a new
phenomenon in Australia, with a short history of only forty years since
the cessation of transportation. Continuous attempts at social engineering
designed to eradicate the convict stain, or any traces of convictism in the
population, had met with some success but had never been totalising. From
the 1870s onwards, the growth of the idea of Australia as a self-sufficient
nation necessitated the creation of a stable labour market with stable pat-
terns of production, consumption, and acquisition (Davidson 1991). That
this required more than just a work ethic was obvious to those attempting
to organise Australian society. Anyone could be made to work, but they
could not be made to like it, or the way of life it entailed, until it appeared
to be the normal way of social organization. The discursive processes that
accompanied the structural creation of a particular kind of wage-earning
labour force (compliant, self-regulating, punctual, thrifty, sober, and indi-
vidualised) were essential then to the normalisation of life in all its forms
under capitalism in this period. As the theories of both Freud and Gramsci
suggest, there are strong links between respectability, sexuality, and dis-
cipline, which impact on our understanding of larrikinism. It has already
been noted that respectability meant a transformation of the self, not just of
externals but of the way in which people thought and felt about themselves.
Given the animalistic history of the Australian “proletariat,”4 the repres-
sion of the instincts was paramount to this process. In this sense, then, the
factory was everywhere. Social and moral reform programs can be seen
as attempts to instill factory discipline right into the heart of the self. If a
respectable appearance was the defi ner of normalcy, then disciplining of
the self was essential. This was not just a disciplining of external behav-
iours (which anyone could “fake” from nine to five) but was a psychological
process that sought to bring about self-discipline in thoughts, motives, and
understandings. It required a complete identification of self as a particular
kind of worker and human being, and in making work respectable, work
itself became normalised and idealised. So did the disciplines required to
ensure stability in the work force and in capitalist social, economic, and
political relations. A failure to adopt this way of being in the world became,
then, an abnormal and individual “pathology.”
The “pathologising” of the larrikin was evident in the way in which the
contemporary press dealt with the phenomenon. If the term “larrikin” is
now a common one in the Australian lexicon—and is now used to refer
to a person, usually male, who displays a mischievous sort of antiauthori-
tarianism—this is because of a long process by which the real social threat
of larrikinism was romanticized and trivialized, a process actively under-
taken by the press in the late nineteenth century that has defused much
of the larrikins’ original meaning and threat (Connell and Irving 1992;
Rickard 1998). This is in itself a hegemonic process, but Gramsci’s theory
and method of the subaltern helps to make sense of the consequences of this
process. In his analysis of the histories of David Lazzaretti and his group
of followers (who were active in Italy in the same time period as larrikins),
Gramsci noted that bourgeois journalists and authors had the habit of
removing collective events among subaltern groups from their wider histor-
ical context and of pathologising the individuals involved. Subaltern activi-
ties then were seen as a kind of individual madness, barbaric and primitive,
with no real significance for the class struggle of that moment (Gramsci
1975, Q25§1). This is certainly the case with many public responses to lar-
rikins. In 1892, The Bulletin described larrikinism as epitomised by:
Idleness, destruction of property, acts of violence, obstructing the

highway, bad language, the assumption of an aggressively disrespect-
ful attitude, noise, dirt, profanity, ignorance, an unshaven aspect, a
retreating forehead, a fishy eye, a braided coat, a soft black hat, bell
bottomed trousers, high heeled boots and a general and promiscuous
cussedness of demeanour [emphasis added] (Sept 10, 4).
This kind of characterisation was typical and an essential part of

the process of “othering” larrikinism. Larrikins were constructed as an
individual, not social, problem, a choice made willfully, a deviant other
against which the normal was defi ned. Popular fiction and other journal-
istic pieces had the further effect of showing larrikins and larrikinism
in their worst possible light, particularly emphasising their animalistic
or bestial natures, especially in comparison to the fi ner sensibilities of
118 Kylie Smith
the civilised upper classes. A sensationalistic “journalist” Ambrose Pratt
wrote two novels and several journalistic pieces that portrayed larriki-
nism as a system of organised gangs using primitive initiation practices,
based on a coerced form of loyalty, ready to kill those who betrayed them,
and with simplistic and uneducated understandings of politics and soci-
ety (Pratt 1900; Pratt 1901; Pratt 1902). Even the most famous and the
supposedly most sympathetic treatment of larrikins, Louis Stone’s novel
Jonah, portrays larrikins as dim-witted, prone to emotional extremes,
violent and reactionary, and ultimately capable of only tragedy (Stone
1933). The mainstream press varied in its treatment of larrikins over

time, initially showing some sympathy for the exuberance of youth, pro-
gressing to disdain for their supposed immorality and laziness, and later
becoming more active in their portrayal of larrikins as a deviant subcul-
ture of violence and animalism that needed to be eradicated if Australia
was going to progress as a civilised nation. This was particularly so late in
the century as the question of Australian national identity became more
pertinent in the lead up to federation. The Bulletin played a major role in
this process, transforming larrikins from harmless youth into a social and
personal evil as they sought to valorise the romantic image of the noble
bushman as the national type (Morgan 1997). More intense vitriol came
from the pen of bourgeois visitors to Sydney, who lamented this “dark
underworld” for its lack of civilisation, the bestial and primitive nature
of its inhabitants, and their unwillingness to become productive members
of “civilised” (or capitalist) society (Twopenny 1973; Gould 1974). In this
way, the bourgeois press facilitated fear and hysteria about larrikins, but
removed any class content from their activities, paving the way for the
coercive elements of the state to step in.
This coercion is most clearly evident in the changing definitions of, and
responses to, crime in this period. In 1870, for example, a group of behaviours
labelled “Crimes Against Good Order” included offences such as drunken-
ness, drunk and disorderly and indecent, riotous, or offensive behaviour. As
a result of extensive parliamentary debates about the problem of larrikinism,
and the desire to tighten criminal law procedures in an attempt to eradicate
them, by 1891 this category was extended to include crimes such as vagrancy;
threatening or abusive language; being an idle or disorderly person; gambling;
prize fighting; public mischief; escape from custody; conduct lewd or scandal-
ous; and hindering or resisting arrest. It was these activities that larrikin types
were most often arrested for, and arrest rates rose accordingly—in the single
year 1885, there were 32,078 arrests and 28,417 convictions of males alone.
In the ten-year period of 1880–1890, there were 272,364 male and 60,332
female arrests, and 242,544 male and 54,692 female convictions under the
“offences against good order” category. This is a 90 per cent increase in
arrests under this category from the previous ten-year period.5 Whereas, in
1861, arrests in this category accounted for 52 per cent of all arrests, in 1899
they accounted for 88 per cent of all arrests in the city of Sydney (Garton
1991, 22–23). This activity on the part of the state was a deliberate attempt to
control and defuse the threat of larrikinism.
It is interesting to note, however, that at the same time, thinking about the
role of prisons shifted and a debate ensued about whether prisons should not
rather be places of reform than deterrent or pure punishment.6 It was with
this idea in mind that Frederick Neitenstein, who had been in charge of the
industrial school ship system, was appointed to comptroller general of pris-
ons in 1896 (Garton 1982; Scrivener 1996). Neitenstein brought with him an
extensive knowledge of international prison systems and some of the latest
penological theories, as well as strong views on the issue of larrikinism. While

he suggested that “it is an undoubted fact that there is a great deal of undis-
ciplined animalism on the part of certain of our young men” (Neitenstein
1896, 63), he believed the current prison regime of pure physical punishment
would do little to put an end to their animalism. Accordingly, he amended the
harsh physical punishment system and, while keeping the inmates separate,
set them on a course of physical and moral improvement “on the principle of
‘the sound mind, the sound body’ theory.” However, Neitenstein is quick to
point out that prison was not necessarily the answer for larrikinism:
In the suppression of larrikinism, too much has been left to the police and
to the prisons; but other measures should be taken before the disease is
allowed to attain full development. . . . In most cases there is no real vice
or harm about the majority of these lads. They have the spirits and virility
natural to their age. Society should consider that it has some obligation to
them, and should not neglect its duty (Neitenstein 1896, 64).
Neitenstein was not the only official to try and link larrikinism to changes
in the nature of Australian society. While Police Inspector Fosbery’s calls for
increased police and court powers remained consistent, his ideas about pun-
ishment also came to incorporate the need for social change as well as physi-
cal discipline. In 1880 he commented that
The idle and dissolute habits of many of the youth in large cities may I
think be also attributed to a change in the tone of social organization
and an absence of restraint upon the young, especially exemplified in the
discontinuance to a great extent of the practice of apprenticing boys to
a trade or handicraft, in substitution of which, large numbers of young
people of both sexes can now find employment in factories where they
can earn good wages, giving them a command of money and long hours
of leisure, unrestrained by parental control (Fosbery 1880, 138).
There is much in this worth considering. Firstly, Fosbery makes quite

clear the link between larrikinism and the changing nature of work. This
was a problem noted fi fteen years earlier with the establishment of the
industrial school ship system, where Neitenstein had already recognised the
120 Kylie Smith
futility of teaching vagrant youth specific skills when there was no longer
any employment for them in these areas (Smith 2004). Hence, the forms
of punishment instituted in prisons and reform schools were centred on
mental and physical discipline.
Neitenstein’s and Fosbery’s assessments of larrikins are revealing in this
respect. The problem was not that larrikins were unemployed or refused to
work, it was that they conducted themselves outside of work in ways that
showed they were not moral or respectable, they were not disciplined. Both
officials were hesitant to label these young people as particular types, and
Neitenstein especially was hesitant to see them punished, but this did not
prevent the clear articulation, from the state, of an awareness of a problem
that was linked to social changes, and that needed to be dealt with on a psy-
chological basis.
In his theories of the development of the self, Freud stresses the impor-
tance for ““modern civilisation” of the ability to control the human pas-
sions (Freud 2001). Overt expressions of sexuality, violence and aggression,
the lack of self-discipline, the use of alcohol—all of these things in larrikins
Freud would find significant. It is no coincidence that one of the most fre-
quent complaints about larrikin men and women was their lack of morality,
their physical and sexual aggressiveness and openness. Along similar lines to
Freud’s own observations (1975, 41), Gramsci suggests that:
The new industrialism requires monogamy; it does not want the work-
ingman to squander his nervous energies in the anxious and unruly
search for sexual gratification. The worker who goes to his job after a
wild night is not a good worker; excitement of the passions does not go
with the timed movement of machines of productive human motions
(Gramsci 1996, Q4§52).
If, as Freud suggests, there are three ways to deal with the repression of
instincts required from work—to deflect, to substitute, or to intoxicate—then
it is possible that larrikinism is a combination of all three of these responses.
At one level, larrikin behaviour can be seen as substitutions for happiness—if
larrikins found their work so unfulfilling, then it is not surprising they would
turn to wild forms of leisure that can be seen as “essentially a protest against
their own submission to labour discipline throughout the week” (Golder and
Hogg 1987, 67). It is also possible to express those instincts, but as Freud
suggests, this becomes increasingly difficult in a world that cannot tolerate
those outside the “norm.” It is in this sense that the psycho-social theories of
Freud connect with Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Freud was quite clear that
“norms” of human behaviour were socially constructed, indeed, much of his
psychoanalytic practice was based around attempts not just to understand
mental illness but to examine the ways in which “normal” human behaviour
was constructed. The development of the self could not be understood
outside of its social and historical context (Bocock 1983, 157). Of particular
pertinence to this study is Freud’s suggestion that aggression, a natural
human instinct, is an important aspect of healthy sexuality, and that the
forces that would tame this aggression and sexuality, such as disgust, shame,
and morality, are imposed from the outside (Freud 2001, 157). This taming
process was essential to the creation of industrial capitalism in Australia in
this period.
CONCLUSION
Through the prism of larrikins, then, we can see the way in which the
historic bloc operated in late nineteenth century Australia. Larrikins were
constructed at the economic level through structural changes to the nature
of work and the increasing level of deskilling, casualisation, and disciplin-
ing of work places. At the political level, they were created through coercive
measures from the state involving increased surveillance, imprisonment,
and punishments, and they were created at the social level through a nar-
rative of “othering.” These levels demonstrate the spheres of the historic
bloc, but it is important to note that this in itself does not constitute hege-
mony. The economic and political forces that acted upon larrikins were
immediate and conjunctural. They continued, but in different forms, with
differing effects. It is at the level of the social, however, that the hegemonic
processes around larrikins fi nd completion. Without the symbolic practices
that created larrikin behaviour as, fi rstly, a moral pathology, and secondly,
as something quintessentially Australian, then the economic and political
forces that acted on people’s sense of themselves, and their position within
society, would not have been possible. In resisting these forces, larrikins
articulated a refusal to deliver themselves to the factory door of capital, but
they also helped to reinforce the hegemonic principles that they sought to
avoid. This is not to label them failures or to blame them for the actions of
the state. If they had not been excluded from the broader working class at
that time, then the nature of class relations in Australia would have looked
markedly different. It is this lesson that we can take from larrikins into the
contemporary social and political situation.
Gramsci argues that “true” hegemony resides in the process of a war
of position. The idea that revolution lies in a war of movement has been
proven false in theory and in practice, not least because a war of movement,
in a frontal attack on the state, does not have a basis in leadership and con-
sent through which power is maintained, but also because a war of move-
ment does little more than ape the tactics of the enemy. If capitalist social
relations seek to act on the heart of the self, and to exclude from politi-
cal engagement those groups who do not conform to the new hegemonic
principles, then to dismiss or overlook groups who resist at this particular
level is to dismiss and overlook potentials for a truly organic hegemony.
More than this, it is to overlook the fact that capitalist social relations have
122 Kylie Smith
bought about a complete transformation in ways of thinking and being in
the world to the extent that alternatives become unthinkable, and reform-
ism remains the norm. Many are wary of individualism and identity poli-
tics, and sometimes for good reason, but if we continue to ignore the way in
which capitalism seeks to transform human nature itself, we will continue
to ignore possibilities for real social change.
NOTES
1. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as K. Smith, “Sub-

jectivity, Hegemony and the Subaltern in Sydney, 1870–1900,” Rethinking
Marxism 19 (Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2007), 169–179. http://www.informa-
world.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
2. A recent survey of research interests and projects in Labour History revealed
that of sixty researchers surveyed, twenty-one expressed interest in indus-
try studies, twenty in political movements and thirteen in trade unions and
activism. See M. Kerr, “Current Research Interests in Australian Labour
History,” (2004).
3. The significance of maritime culture for larrikinism will be discussed further
in my forthcoming doctoral thesis, especially to what extent larrikins can be
considered part of Linebaugh and Rediker’s “motley crew”. See P. Linebaugh
and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra, (2000)
4. By “animalistic proletariat” I am referring to the longer history of the coerced
working class in Australia, with its origins in transported convicts from Eng-
land. The moral degeneracy of these large groups of young men had been a
major concern for the early administrators of the penal colony, and an even
greater concern when they became free men upon whom the future of “Eng-
lish civilization” in the antipodes rested. See in particular M. Roe, Quest for
Authority (1965) and A. Davidson, The Invisible State (1991).
5. Crime statistics compiled from S. Mukherjee, Sourcebook: 252 (1989) and
NSW Statistical Register (1890), Part III:269–270.
6. Prison Reform, Parliamentary Debates 1894–5;6:973
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8 Hegemony, Imperialism, and
Colonial Labour
Andrew Wells
INTRODUCTION
This paper adapts Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to the colonial

setting.1 Gramsci once speculated that Asia would become central to global
capitalism as the dynamic centre of the world economy would move to the
Pacific Rim. While there is little explicit discussion by Gramsci on colonial-
ism, and none on forms of colonialism in Asia, his writing on the Southern
Question, as well as briefer notes on Italian foreign policy and international
relations, are suggestive and occasionally explicit on colonialism (Kiernan
1995, 171–90). This is not the fi rst attempt to view Asia in a Gramscian
context. The subaltern studies approach has attempted to apply Gramsci’s
problematic to the Indian colonial context, and the most extended work
in this idiom is Guha’s (1977) Dominance Without Hegemony. Guha’s
central argument is that hegemony represents a form of consent negoti-
ated with the subaltern classes and not the imposition of coercive control.
His essential thesis is that British imperialism in India was based on the
imposition of coercive domination lacking tacit or active subaltern consent.
On this basis, there could be no hegemony in India. I will argue here that
Guha’s ‘culturalist’ approach takes us some distance from Gramsci and
presupposes an ahistorical and simplistic concept of hegemony. Further,
this chapter will argue that British imperialism did produce hegemony but
was ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 29) where coercion gave rise to
a constrained consensus. In making this argument, this chapter will begin
with an exposition of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. It will then describe
the operation of British imperialism and the impacts on colonial labour
showing how the application of hegemony proceeded. The conclusion will
elaborate the critique of Guha’s interpretation of hegemony on the basis of
a more complex approach to the nexus between coercion and consensus.
126 Andrew Wells
HEGEMONY IN GRAMSCI—A BRIEF SKETCH
Gramsci’s thinking was saturated by ideas derived from the European

Enlightenment, particularly those of Marx and Hegel. It was also saturated
with a profound knowledge of history, sociology, and linguistics, especially
but not exclusively Italian theorists, including the writings of its leading
liberal intellectual, Benedetto Croce. Gramsci was particularly attentive to
concepts and evidence showing how relations within and between the hege-
monic and subaltern classes in modern Italy were formed and maintained.
Unified Italy—created from disparate states at different levels of ‘develop-

ment’—was a late capitalist state linked to the wider global marketplace.
Understanding hegemony in an Italian context required a detailed under-
standing of its internal structure, including its undeveloped agrarian south
(Gramsci 1957, 28–51), its integration into the wider capitalist economy,
and the trajectory of its advanced industrial and fi nancial north (Gramsci
1971, 419–72). To further complicate matters, global capitalism had moved
beyond the international movement of commodities: fi nance capital and
labour were increasingly internationally mobile. Thus the labour question
had to include an extended analysis of emigration.
In the 1920s and 1930s, it was by no means clear that capitalism would
survive. The capacity of national leaders was sorely tested by internal and
external threats, there was no single global hegemonic power (rather, an
increasingly unstable and competing equilibrium), and the subaltern classes
(nationally and internationally) were beginning to see themselves as poten-
tial ruling classes. Most of the leading capitalist powers relied upon colo-
nial empires to sustain their wealth—but colonial insurrection was on
the rise. The crisis of authority within the capitalist economy was becom-
ing ‘organic’ in the sense that it was based on challenges at the level of
politics and culture, as well as against the intelligentsia. Exceptional and
‘Bonapartist’ regimes were imposed to ‘manage the crisis,’ and the ‘morbid
symptoms’ produced when ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’
were widely observed (Gramsci 1971, 276).
In this specific context, Gramsci sought to address a particularly per-
plexing question: with obvious economic, political, and intellectual crises
in Italy and throughout the capitalist world, how could the system survive?
The strength of capitalist hegemony and the inadequacy and immaturity
of the socialist alternative (the modern prince) was Gramsci’s provisional
answer. As a thinker captured in a fascist goal, the challenge was to rethink
and reconceptualise the communist project.
HEGEMONIC PRINCIPLES2
The hegemony of capitalism brings into being a social order that combines
the universal problems of relations between leaders and led, as well as
Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour 127
specific problems that come from the particular nature of capitalism—
wage labour and commodity production, technological and organisational
innovation, and forms of exploitation and appropriation. The political
problem is restricted citizenship and formal democratic representation
that does not restrict the capacity to govern by the ruling class. Once the
hegemony of private property is well established and inscribed into the
legal order, the organisational bureaucracy (public and private), the subject
and subaltern people (the led), are slowly rewarded for their acquiescence
through the granting of citizenship. However, trade unions and left
political organizations that advocate and practice a transformative notion

of ‘citizen worker’ are rigorously regulated, circumscribed, and if necessary,
proscribed. Thus, the feared and active ‘citizen worker’ must be moulded
into the passive ‘citizen owner/consumer.’
Capitalism cannot remain a viable form of production until a solution
that simultaneously addresses the economic, political, and philosophical
problems inherent in its extended reproduction has been found. Capital-
ist hegemony therefore requires the formation and development of the
appropriate factory, parliament, and university. Each is a distinctive form
of practice, but each operates in a coherent and articulated fashion. The
factory is the foundation of a unique capitalist hegemonic form. It is the
place where labour is redefi ned, where new instruments of production are
introduced, and where new disciplining techniques are refi ned. It imposes
the tyranny of private property by radical dispossession, and it generates
unimaginable wealth to a property owning class. Without control over the
production process and its extension into the ‘life world’ of the workers,
the reproduction of capitalist hegemony is doomed. Though control of the
production process is the necessary condition of this new hegemony, it is
never sufficient. Economic power has to be translated into political and
social (moral and intellectual) power to produce hegemony as a complex
historical bloc. The means of securing private property—political dictator-
ship, conquest, and military occupation—need refi nement into a persuasive
symbolic, legalistic, and partially representative form for the evolution of
the new social structure.
Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony are methodological principles of anal-
ysis rather than prescriptive universal propositions. There are, however,
defi nite hegemonic principles (Howson 2006, 23) that defi ne capitalist
hegemony, and without understanding them, it is difficult to explore its
distinctive hegemonic modalities. On the other hand, every society domi-
nated by capitalists bears the imprint of its past and its spatial location in
the global division of labour. These matters cannot be known a priori; they
require empirical investigation to reveal unique manifestations of capitalist
hegemony. The new formation created by the rising bourgeois class (forged
outside the feudal state, but within the society) transforms into a new state
designed to universalise private property and wage labour. This state pre-
cedes and maintains the determinate capitalist market relations. While the
128 Andrew Wells
essence of this new society can be theorised, its specific manifestation can-
not.
Gramsci’s investigations of capitalist hegemony show it to be the effect
of diverse forms of historical causation—there is no certain path to capi-
talism. Gramsci consequently privileges philosophical and methodological
procedures in analysis, rather than stating ontological certainties. He is
particularly scathing of Bukharin’s crude attempt at a systematic sociol-
ogy of society (Gramsci 1971, 419–72). He reads Marx in a particularly
fruitful way that leads to questions: if we assume the dominance of the
capitalist mode of production, what are its necessary laws of motion? Fur-
ther, what is the appropriate state and ideology that can maintain capitalist
hegemony? He then investigates these questions socio-historically: that is,
how are the circumstances of capitalist hegemony created and reproduced
in particular social and political settings? Finally, he rereads the concept
against history and vice versa. It is not necessarily the case, as Finiocchiaro
(1988) argues in Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, that
Gramsci reads Marx through Croce (and vice versa)—that would justify
an idealist interpretation of Gramsci. Instead, history—congealed human
practices—is the fi nal arbiter in determining the adequacy of the questions
and their underlying concepts.
Gramsci’s assertions that Marxism is an ‘absolute historicism’ and ‘a
theory of practice’ signals the power of his interpretation—he separates his
critique of capitalism from the complicated intellectual legacies of Marx
(and Engels) and provides the means of constantly enriching critical think-
ing without mindlessly invoking the textual authority of its high priests. But
we should be reminded that the production (and reproduction) of capitalist
hegemony is typically a product of violent imposition: hegemony is coer-
cion plus consent. The precise mix of these two is historically determined.
Such methodological propositions invite us to forge a critical theory within
and beyond its Marxist starting point. Our task then is to read Gramsci
and his concept of hegemony in a critical way: can we add anything, or
perhaps clarify the theory of hegemony through its application to colonial
circumstances?
HEGEMONY IN THE COLONIES
Colonies in the capitalist era may be divided into two groups. The fi rst
are generally called ‘settler colonies,’ where indigenous people are margin-
alised, and people, institutions, and hegemonic principles are brought from
a capitalist metropolis. 3 The second and more complicated form of colony
involves the domination of large indigenous populations and the attempt to
impose capitalist hegemony over a refectory and frequently resistant popu-
lation. The object of colonial possession and the formation of a colonial
bureaucracy and officialdom is to effect quite dramatic social change. The
principles of colonial rule appear as surprisingly straightforward. They
include:
Imposing law and order, securing political borders, and marking out ter-
ritory. Negotiate where necessary with existing rulers and incorporate them
or their rivals into the new authority structures to give it some legitimacy.
Negotiate or impose borders with neighbouring rulers or states to minimise
territorial ambiguities.
• Change the existing order of property relations in various ways. Reserved

land for indigenes is required, especially if you are dependent on supply

of food and seasonal labour. Within the reserved land, ‘property rights’
implicitly held by existing or newly imposed headmen might need to be
codified. This strengthens the hand of the headman in relation to his vil-
lagers and creates bonds of dependence on the colonial state. Land out-
side of the reserves (including minerals, forest, and strategic waterways)
become ‘crown’ lands available for sale or gift by the colonial state. The
principle of terra nullius is widely used in most colonial settings.
• Impose market relations in production, with products focused on the

imperial market, the rapid spread of a monetary economy (for taxation
and trade), and relocation and transformation of the nature of control
over labour. The formation of a labour market and the formation of a
disciplined workforce are the most difficult issues. Frequently labour
has to be imported from far afield.
We will now turn to examining some of these issues in colonial India and
Indochina.
COMMODIFYING COLONIAL LABOUR—

INDIA AND INDOCHINA, 1860–1940
Bringing these two ‘colonies’ under formal imperial control was necessarily
complex; needless to say, from different situations, and via divergent pro-
cesses, colonial control was ultimately achieved. The essence of this process
was that state control was exercised by powerful and more economically
advanced European nations with well-organised military and administrative
structures. More than a century of the British East India Company’s control
of South India ceased in 1858 after the Indian Mutiny, when the British gov-
ernment assumed direct control of the Madras presidency. British rule in India
was centred in Calcutta, and then divided into three principal presidencies:
Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. The Madras presidency, our particular area of
interest, comprised much of the southern, and specifically the southwestern,
region of India. It was perhaps the most diverse part of the country. It was
not economically, culturally, or ethnically integrated. Its particular interest
130 Andrew Wells
for the purposes of this discussion was that it encompassed Tamil Nadu, and
more specifically Tanjore, located on the delta of the Kaveri River (van Schen-
del 1991, 81–85). It was from here that millions of Indian indentured workers
left between the 1830s and the 1930s to work in the tea, sugar, and rubber
plantations of Ceylon, the West Indies, Fiji, and Malaya (Tinker 1974). Fort
St. George in the city of Madras ruled the presidency. In reality, the word
‘ruled’ is something of a misnomer because political and economic power
was unstable and shared (perhaps contested is a better word) between Britain,
Calcutta, Fort St. George, and the vast—largely Indian staffed—administra-
tive bureaucracy. In Madras, the British were imposing state control over the
turbulent chaos that emerged from the collapse of the Vijayanagar kingdom
and undisciplined private British interests derived from occupation, seizure,
and purchase. Beneath the British rulers and senior administrators was an
Indian bureaucracy that penetrated into every village (see Washbrook 1976),
though not without struggle and resistance.
In Indochina, the process of achieving colonial control was shorter and
of more recent origin (Murray 1980; Woodside 1976). Private commercial
and religious incursion occurred beginning in 1850, weakening the Nguyen
dynasty and expanding French global colonial interests. This resulted in a
negotiated annexation, the so-called Patenotre-Nguyan van Tuong Treaty in
1884. The southern ‘frontier’ region of the kingdom (Cochinchina) became
a colony, and the Tonkin (north) and Annam (cental) regions became French
protectorates. It then took nearly fifteen years to pacify the fractious villages
and villagers. Despite the different contexts of the colonisation of India and
Indochina, certain similarities emerged. Like the Raj, Indochina became a
single entity under a French governor-general, and the three ‘colonies/pro-
tectorates’ were each administered by resident superiors, beneath whom was
a Vietnamese administrative system, created to parallel and oversee the tra-
ditional mandarin-based system of imperial tribute collection (Adams 1978;
Pham 1984).
Once established, the colonial powers began to interfere directly in village
organisation. There seems no reason to accept the view that the British and
French systems of rule were fundamentally different (indirect versus direct
colonialism) or that these forms of imperialism were a superficial overlay (an
administrative superstructure) on a traditional village (economic infrastruc-
ture) system.
CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE VILLAGE
Perhaps the most contentious issue in historical accounts was the extent and
significance of changes wrought upon peasant societies by the colonisers.
These social relations included power relations within the village commu-
nity and extended into the ownership and access relations over land. More
specifically, they represented tenure relations that were of direct relevance to
the issue of introducing commodity relations. To measure the extent and con-
sequences of changes to land tenure presupposes a base from which to make
comparisons. While we can easily agree that a large number of regional varia-
tions existed, we are nevertheless required to construct something of an ‘ideal
type.’4 Consequently we can make eight generalisations about the Vietnamese
village:
1. Villages were close to self-governing communities of peasants and artisans.

2. There were limited and insecure land ownership rights for village families
that worked the land.

3. There was a significant proportion of land held in common or land available
for temporary occupation and exploitation (to 1980).
4. There was limited capacity to amass large areas of land, though some families
and their kin did control more productive and extensive areas than others.
5. The emperor had ultimate ownership of the land. Thus, the village as a
whole was held responsible for paying its annual taxation burden.
6. Taxation took two broad forms: the provision of a portion of the harvest,
and conscription for either civil construction (corvee labour) or military service
when required.
7. There was limited trade within and between villages and modest
urbanisation; commodity exchanges were not widespread.
8. The emperor’s responsibilities were to provide peace, security, and public
works.
In southern India, especially in the Tanjore area, things were rather more
complicated, yet we can still note the following similarities and differences:
1. Villages were clearly differentiated by class and caste, and while control was
in the hands of local families, power was accumulated by the larger landowners
(Kumar 1965).
2. A long tradition of slave, bonded, and landless labour was evident in these
villages, including a group of hereditary agricultural slaves (the basis of the
Harijans or Scheduled Castes).
3. Ownership rights were more complicated than in Indochina. Until
the late nineteenth century, there was unoccupied agricultural land,
common land, land granted to temples, and seemingly private land. The
shifting kingdoms that dominated the region were, however, the ultimate
landowners, and they extracted considerable tribute.
132 Andrew Wells
4. Taxation combined in-kind harvest, cash, and compulsory labour service
to the state.
5. Trade was similarly limited, and the caste system reflected distinct
artisanal skills in most villages.
6. Unlike the relative stability of the Vietnamese dynasties and the
sophistication of the bureaucracy, southern India was subject to periodic
local and foreign wars and occupation.
Because the real world is more complex than generalisations can grasp,
we should be wary of simplifications that deny many villages (especially
in India) incipient but nevertheless sometimes all-too-real class relations
and well-entrenched pre- or protocapitalist modes of exploitation. There
were intrigues, injustice, and confl ict within villages, and periodic peas-
ant wars and uprisings against exploitative rulers who overtaxed the peas-
antry or underserviced the public hydraulic infrastructure. The tradition
of revolt seemed to have been stronger in Vietnam than in India.
From the point of view of the commodity form, however, three issues
are crucial. Firstly, there had been only limited commodification of land:
there were rarely simple or unambiguous forms of individual or family
tenure, and thus land alienation was technically impossible. 5 Secondly,
there were limited commodities entering the marketplace, at least from
the village economy. There was, however, an extensive internal and inter-
national trade, linking centres of wealth and power. There was an agri-
cultural surplus to both appropriate and trade, and a complex array of
urbanised and aristocratic needs to fulfi l. Lastly, there was only limited
wage labour. Slaves were bought and sold and used for personal service,
military duty, and productive work. Thus, some people were commodi-
fied and bound. Wage labourers certainly existed, and limited rural and
urban proletarianisation occurred. In poor villages, landless proletarians
existed, and poor peasants supplemented their subsistence needs through
wage labour. This was more extensive in India than in Indochina, but in
neither case was it typical.
The principal theoretical point to be made is that in the precolonial
village, when we examine land ownership, commodity exchange, and
labour regimes, the commodity form was limited and subordinate to the
dominant forms of precapitalist production relations (Nguyen Tu Chi
1980; Nguyen Khai Tung 1981). To take the theoretical point one further
step, we can usefully speak of a dominant tribute-based mode of pro-
duction in which the principal form of surplus labour was the coercive
expropriation of produce and labour. Commodity relations were latent
rather than manifest. To relocate labour and impose capitalist discipline
required slavery or indenture. The colonial State was the necessary coer-
cive instrument to realise these changes.
THE IMPACT OF THE COLONIAL STATE
The colonial state was a fairly complex and frequently cumbersome beast:
it was neither omniscient nor omnipresent. In broad terms, the state
worked to reorganise villages, including their internal dynamics and their
relationships, with the wider colonial political economy and, ultimately,
the metropolis. The starting point (at least heuristically) in understand-
ing this transformation was in the field of land taxation and land owner-
ship. Colonies were expected to be self-sufficient and pay tribute to the
coloniser. Self-sufficiency implied that the colonial administration, public

works, law and order apparatuses, and the armed forces would be sup-
ported by taxes extracted from the colonised. Initially, colonial taxation
adapted the precolonial tribute system. Subsequently, as society and its
production relations were transformed, various commodities—especially
salt, alcohol, and opium—and trade (via customs excise and other duties)
expanded and transformed the tax system. Thus the trajectory was from
in-kind to monetary taxes, and it reflected the monetisation of the econ-
omy as a whole. In the initial phase of colonialism, once ‘order’ had been
imposed, the transformation of land ownership was a subsequent but
important step.
In Indochina the following innovations occurred:
1. Taxation was based upon a careful identification of the complex pattern

of fields, as well as their differential fertility and productivity. Cadastral
maps were drawn to identify both ownership and optimal taxation
(Nguyen Duc Nghinia 1980).
2. Ownership was given a clearer and personal form—the producer and
his family was carefully noted.
3. Communal land was taken into state ownership and either granted as
concessions to French settlers or leased to landlords (Wiegersama 1976).
4. Taxation was reassessed on the basis of ownership and fertility, and paid
by individuals in cash.
5. Rates of taxation were significantly increased.
6. The village headman was imposed by the state to collect tax, administer
the law, and maintain control. The maire (mayor), as he was now called,
was not selected or elected by the village but imposed by the colonial
state.
7. Village land was ultimately the property of the state, occupied by
tenants of the state. The state was the legal owner, and its property rights
were transferable.
134 Andrew Wells
8. Land that was unused—that is, vacant, waste, deserted, or previously
used communally—was now directly alienated by government. By this
innovation, some twenty per cent of all arable land was transferred into
imperial ownership (White 1982; Robequain 1944).
In Madras, developments were a little different. There were various forms

of control over the villages (Baker and Washbrook 1975). The first involved
the installation and recognition of a landowning class of zamindars. The
colonial state entrusted them to lease land to the peasants and collect rents
for the colonial state. This system was subject to inevitable corruption and
provided an inefficient mechanism to deliver a large enough surplus. The
alternative form of control, closer to the French approach, was imposed in
the 1850s. The Ryotwari system transformed villages into collectivities of
individual tenant farmers who were individually assessed and provided cash
tribute to the state. The enforcement of taxes required a very large group
of Indian inspectors and tax officials (Speer 1965, 189–201; Beteille 1974;
Frykenberg 1979; Rao 1962). The principal features were as follows:
1. Each field had to be mapped, its features listed and its tenant identified.
2. The taxation rate was raised from around 20 to 25 per cent to 50 per cent
or higher, and was paid principally in cash.
3. State monopoly prices for key crops were established.
4. A large, unwieldy, and corrupt public service was trained to administer a
system that incorporated an unbelievable set of regulatory forms.
5. Previously designated public land was granted in large sections to temples
and to pliant village notables. Indian landed aristocrats were thereby created
by state patronage.
6. The sale of property rights was now simple to negotiate.
7. The British state remained the ultimate landlord and thus frequently
changed ownership and tenure relationships.
8. A considerable level of disturbances, riots, and periodic famines suggested
the destabilisation caused by these changing tenure relations.
9. An already differentiated peasantry became more strongly shaped by
ownership, tenancy, and wage labour relationships.
10. Despite the official ban on slavery, de facto slavery was tolerated well into
the twentieth century and debt bondage remained widespread. Perhaps the
bulk of the 20 to 30 per cent of peasants who were landless were bound for
most of their relatively short lives.
We can reasonably claim that land was commodified as land tenancies
were bought and sold, taxes were paid in cash, and prices for rice, wheat,
and other goods were determined by the state. Within villages, human con-
trol over the land changed significantly. Land ownership was consolidated
and enlarged, the percentage of tenant farmers increased significantly, the
percentage of landless labourers expanded, and the level of rural indebt-
edness grew. The incipient class relations we have already noted became
clearly apparent (Gough 1962).
In Tonkin, the subsistence village dominated by peasants gave way to
a new model of agrarian classes replicating the French rural experience

(Hy 1992). As the taxation impost grew, new ownership relations took
effect, and the demography of the countryside was dramatically altered.
The already overcrowded Red River Delta between Hanoi and Haiphong
witnessed increased starvation, landlessness, and indebtedness (Gorou
1955). Labour was forced to look much further afield for employment,
either because they had been reduced to landlessness or forced into debt
bondage (or perhaps both). Meanwhile, land that had been expropriated by
the state was given as concessions to French colonisers, Catholic religious
orders, and private imperial companies. Some of this land was used for
commercial agriculture, some for mining, and, in the south, vast stretches
for plantations. Workers were recruited to develop and sustain these new
enterprises in Indochina and other French colonies.
In Tanjore, a dire situation emerged. The famines of 1876–78 killed
an estimated four million in the Madras region and affected nearly ten
times that number (van Schendel 1988). The tradition of slavery intensi-
fied. Poverty, illness, and dispossession were especially notorious. It is little
wonder that single male workers were forced into indenture and spent a
minimum of five years trying to ease their debts by working overseas. The
most pernicious form of bondage, debt bondage, was widespread and fre-
quently inherited. It could just as easily be acquired by borrowing in order
to maintain ownership over marginal holdings. Once in debt, and given the
punishing rates of interest extracted by the richer peasants or professional
moneylenders (who were also present in colonial Indochina), it was nigh
impossible to regain nominal freedom. Tanjore and its environs contained
the largest concentration of bound labour in India and supplied much of
the labour needs of other British colonies (Washbrook 1975).
RELOCATING AND COMMODIFYING LABOUR
Encouraging workers to migrate long distances to become wage labourers

proved difficult. Slavery as such was no longer acceptable in a ‘civilised’
colonial state, having been abolished in 1833 throughout Britain and its
empire. Slavery was also unacceptable to the French. So a complex mode
of control somewhere between slavery and free wage labour was used.
136 Andrew Wells
Workers were persuaded and occasionally press-ganged into putting their
thumb print on a contract (an indent) that many could neither read nor
understand. From Madras, some eleven million workers went to work in
the tea and later rubber plantations of Ceylon (the forebears of the Tamil
Tigers), to the sugar plantations of the West Indies, to the tea plantations
of Assam, and hundreds of thousands to the rubber plantations of
Malaya. These indentured workers were organised into gangs by village
recruiters tied to the plantations (Kangani), shipped overseas, and worked
as subcontracted gangs in the planting and harvesting of rubber. These
rubber concessions were granted by the colonial state to British investors

looking for the means to grow and market the profitable tropical harvests.
Indians were much preferred as coolie labour in Malaya and elsewhere. The
more readily available Chinese workers were regarded as too militant and
too well organised. Indians were considered docile and thus better workers
(Omveldt 1980).
In Tonkin, landless peasants signed contracts to be transported to work
on rice plantations in the Mekong Delta, the coalmines near Haiphong,
the nickel mines of New Caledonia, or to the new rubber plantations being
established on the red soils north and west of Saigon. Labour was mobile
and was readied for new forms of work. This ‘new system of slavery’ saw
work undertaken under military style discipline, with dangerous and very
strenuous conditions. Food was inadequate and frequently bad, housing
consisted of rudimentary barracks, corporal punishment was rife, and the
failure to meet work quotas was punished by fi nes. It was possible to work
for months or even years without payment, and on many plantations, the
workers were effectively imprisoned within fenced and patrolled grounds.
This system of plantation wage labour was in many respects more insidi-
ous than slavery. The indenture effectively commodified the person (not
just their capacity to labour) while placing merely a nominal value on their
skills as workers. Unlike many established slave settlements, indentured
labourers were incapable of reproducing themselves as they were denied
the opportunity or resources to establish families. These indentured work-
ers were, it could be argued, more intensively enslaved than many former
and ‘traditional’ slaves. Over time, a substantial section of Vietnamese
and Indian indentured workers settled in these frontier regions of capital-
ism and brought women or married other indentured workers and formed
families. The system of indenture was abolished, workers organised, and
conditions improved. Over decades of struggle, a proletariat, even a class-
conscious proletariat, came into existence.6
PERIPHERAL COMMODITY RELATIONS
We are now in a position to draw some conclusions from this analysis.

The most important observation is that the process of changing labour
relations and the forms of labour exploitation had not occurred by magic
or from a deep-seated individual desire to embrace capitalism. It had been
initiated by colonial states seeking to impose capitalist property and labour
relations. The achievement of these changes required that consistent, per-
sistent, and theoretically informed action had to be taken. The eradication
of communal and nontransferable rights in landed property was the crucial
initial step.
The ideas of Locke and John Stuart Mill were resolutely imposed,
but even this change involved a cruel twist. Race and cultural traditions
(including the reification of religious values) were now mobilised by the

colonisers to draw a rigid distinction between the imposition of new prop-
erty relations and delaying or removing the legal, political, and educational
rights of indigenous citizenship. This was justified on the grounds that the
‘childlike qualities’ of non-European races would require a very long pro-
cess of political adolescence before maturity might be reached. Rather than
seeing ‘tradition’ as something that might be displaced by social change, it
was carefully cultivated and used to justify enslavement and the denial of
citizenship. Looked at from a Gramscian perspective, we might say that
colonialism created a very effective mode of coercion over the indigenous
subjects, but failed to create a self-sustaining form of imperial hegemony.
Race and religion were effectively harnessed as hegemonic mechanisms
used to evade the requirements of recognising the colonial subject as a sub-
ject entitled to share in ‘the rights of man.’7
In our two case studies, land was commodified, while labour was vastly
more complicated. The commodification of land and the dispossession of
the peasantry were the pre-conditions for labour emigration, wage labour,
and ruthless disciplining. The colonial state was either deployed directly
or devolved its authority to private employers to facilitate the disciplining
and punishment of this developing working class. Workers were unable
to leave their employers, and unable to organise, collectively bargain, or
strike. They were beaten, starved, imprisoned, and fi ned. They were preyed
upon by unscrupulous overseers—through the offers of loans for gambling,
alcohol, or opium—while being racially vilified and sexually abused. The
work regimes beggar belief, and death rates were often appalling. The
profits made by companies, banks, and imperial investors were immense.
Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, the state slowly intervened to stop the
worst excesses. Left to their own devices, the companies were becoming
dangerously like genocidal machines.
Labour was thus commodified in a formal sense and subject to the bru-
tal regime of capitalist discipline, but it remained disconnected from the
impersonal laws of motion of capital. The rationality of capitalism as a
mode of production—the result of the amassing of the means of produc-
tion by a class of highly competitive entrepreneurs—the organisation and
strategic deployment of fi nance capital, and the structuring of a competi-
tive labour market was far from complete. Instead we have all the formal
138 Andrew Wells
(totally exploitative) characteristics of capitalism without its social and
productively innovative substance. Kathleen Gough argued in 1981 for
the need to conceptualise a ‘colonial mode of production,’ a mode that
combined market relations in land and labour with a sustained drain of
the economic surplus to the imperial centre. This perpetuated primary
accumulation for the metropolis, without expanded reproduction in the
colony. ‘Therefore, [she argued] most production relations [in the colony]
remained ones of only formal subsumption under capital’ (Gough 1981,
412; McEachern 1976). The evidence presented here supports this claim.
CONCLUSION
There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from these colonial

examples. An understanding of colonialism enables us to better understand
the origins of capitalism, even in its heartlands. The violence and brutality of
its origins in the colonies were clearly on display, but were they so different
from its metropolitan past? Edward Thompson (1993) has suggested that
in order to understand the process of dispossession and transformation of
the English working class, we might look to colonial processes. Gramsci’s
analysis argues that the inclusion of colonial and precapitalist people into the
global marketplace was both necessary and desirable: he rejected empathy
for the ‘primitive’ and ‘traditional.’ Rather, in his judgement, labour control,
psychological and sexual discipline, and the mutual rights and dependencies
implied by citizenship were important benefits derived from the transition
to capitalism, although he remained well aware of the potential problems
these would cause if they were imposed coercively, arguing that an organic
hegemony emerged only when people sought actively to change themselves
(Gramsci 1971, 279–318). However, a connection to a world-historical lan-
guage (Gramsci 1971, 325) and access to the global storehouse of science
and literature was a precondition for self and collective government (Gramsci
1971, 341–342). The very possibility of a socialist society presupposed the
formation of a new good sense, and indeed a new person, in the capitalist
cauldron. Where the real contradiction lay was in the refusal of most colonial
regimes to see the implications of limiting capitalism to the fundamentals of
property and wage labour, and refusing to create a wider and deeper hege-
mony. Racial strategies were deployed, ethnic differences exacerbated, and
pseudo-traditional leaders and customary laws forged while earlier principles
of community self-government were extinguished. Shameless acts of forced
migration, genocidal labour regimes, and inhumane treatment of minorities,
women, and children abounded. There seemed no moral, ethical, or human
principle motivating this orgy of exploitation. Colonialism revealed what
capitalism might contemplate when unrestrained by its collective organiza-
tion and ideology—the modern state—and freed from investigation by the
press, the church, and the moralist.
Although Gramsci had no principled objection to colonialism, he clearly
had a view that, like his argument in the Southern Question essay (Gramsci
1978, 441), the moral resolution could only be a socialist project. An alli-
ance between the new hegemonic class with leading elements of the sub-
altern class would be needed to create the material and moral conditions
for mutual self-advancement. In this context, self-advancement would be
a double act of education—the colonial elite learning the art of hegemony
and thereby increasing their autonomy in dealing with the imperial elite—
and might be thought of as the process of national liberation whereby the
national elite begin dissolving the strong national distinction between lead-
ers and led.
The problem with Guha’s interpretation and concomitant formulation
of hegemony is that it disconnects consent and coercion in a formulaic way.
This chapter has shown that the construction of imperialist hegemony in
India and Indochina, while more reliant on coercion than consensus, never-
theless produced consensus, albeit constrained. For Gramsci, writing from
goal as the leader of a banned party comprising murdered, incarcerated,
dispersed, and intimidated militants, the operation of coercion with con-
sensus was all too obvious. On the other hand, the idea that the imposition
of colonial regimes was overly reliant on coercion and therefore nonhege-
monic reproduces a simplistic and ahistorical distinction between the colo-
niser and colonised. In colonial situations, the movement from coercion
to consent exists and represents a deepening and widening of commodity
relations within an emerging global historical bloc.
NOTES
1. A version of this chapter appeared as A. Wells, ‘Imperial Hegemony and

Colonial Labour,’ Rethinking Marxism 19(2007):2:180–194 (Taylor &
Francis Ltd). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher.
2. The term ‘hegemonic principles’ is drawn from Howson 2006, 23–24.
3. While we shall not be discussing this form of colonialism in any further
detail, it is instructive to analyse these colonies to further understand the
operation of hegemony—frequently they operate closer to the pure logic of
the ‘determinate market’ because residual and oppositional traditions are
absent. The process of labour disciplining and accepting occupational and
geographical mobility as a condition of work has been well inculcated, and
the roles imposed on the new citizen are well understood. To maintain this
‘advanced’ form of hegemony, indigenous people and immigrants are fre-
quently racially stigmatised, regulated, and denied citizenship. Historical
investigations of the principles of territorial annexation and expropriation,
the mobilisation of racist ideology and legitimising restricted citizenship, is
a particularly fertile ground for analysing the economic, political, and theo-
retical principles of advanced capitalist (apparently consensual) hegemony.
4. Vietnamese historiography has a greater consensus on this matter than its
Indian counterpart. We should recognise that this might be the result of
the more homogeneous, controlled, and ideological nature of Vietnamese
140 Andrew Wells
research. See, for example, the Foreign Language Publishing House (Hanoi)
Journal Vietnamese Studies with its ‘The Traditional Village (I),’ Vietnam-
ese Studies 61(1980) and ‘The Traditional Village (II),’ Vietnamese Studies
65(1981).
5. Land was, of course, seized, conquered, exchanged ,and cleared; indeed, the
strength of any kingdom or empire ultimately depended on the stability and
extent of its territory and the surplus labour of those who farmed it. In the
south of India, there was institutionalised slavery (generally war booty) fre-
quently used to relocate labourers into frontier agricultural settlements.
6. Similarly, the indentured Indian labours of Malaya settled, became organ-
ised, and slowly challenged their oppressive work regimes. In both cases,
Japanese invasion slowed and even reversed this assertion of workers’ eco-
nomic and political rights.
7. French socialists, including some of the early governors, were acutely aware
of this contradiction in their imperial project. British liberals, including those
who followed the advanced ideas of John Stuart Mill, seemed less worried
by the racist justifications of imperialism and colonial exploitation (Stokes
1978). This helps explain the complex (and sometimes positive) relationship
between Vietnamese radicalism and French republicanism and the more crit-
ical response of Indian nationalists to English liberalism.
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9 Hegemony, Education, and
Subalternity in Colonial Papua
New Guinea
Charles Hawksley1
INTRODUCTION
Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of Italian and European history informed his

understanding of the social, political, and economic transition of societ-
ies. 2 He was able to chart and connect this change before and during his
lifetime to explain the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, and
specifically how, through hegemony, those who labour for the profits of
others come to support a system that depends on their exploitation. While
explanations of how hegemony has been constructed and maintained in
the West are illuminating, the concern of this chapter is with how this
transformative process operated in a region where, prior to colonial rule,
there was no state, no capitalism, limited trade, and, crucially, no concept
of civil society. How can Gramsci’s theory of hegemony be relevant to these
areas?
This chapter suggests hegemony is not a concept to be confi ned to books
about theory; it is a living concept as valuable today as in the early twen-
tieth century. It not only helps to explain the changes of the past but also
can be used to explain such change today. Indeed, Fontana (2002, 35)
notes hegemony involves ‘the synthesis of culture/knowledge and power
as it moves in history’ and that, in essence, hegemony is the ‘proliferation
throughout the people of a particular worldview.’ This conceptualization
of hegemony is a particularly useful starting point for understanding the
emergence of what Gramsci termed the ‘historical bloc,’ a synthetic sys-
tem of relations of force that incorporates economic, political, and social
dimensions. The historical bloc is always a dialectical process that does
not itself produce change, rather it is the expression of that change, and
therefore the expression of hegemony. As Roger Simon (1999, 96) notes,
the historical bloc indicates ‘the way in which a hegemonic class combines
the leadership of a bloc of social forces in civil society with its leadership in
the sphere of production.’ In Papua New Guinea (PNG) the colonial state
acted as this hegemonic ‘class’ and behaved as an integral state that domi-
nated both civil society and production. Coercion however has its limits,
and for hegemony to actually exist, people need to consent to participate in
Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua 143
capitalist relations: in short, people have to want to be part of the system.
For PNG, the concept of historical bloc thus provides a useful example of
how a colonial administration attempted to create a civil society and then
bind it to capitalist production.
The relevance and explanatory value of hegemony is particularly
important in assessing the relationships between state, citizen and the
historical bloc, and nowhere more so than in the modern world where
debates about the role of the state now centre on good governance, ide-
ology, civil society, the rule of law and the importance of institutions
in the creation of viable states (e.g., Fukuyama 2004). Those states that
lack these characteristics are said to have ‘failed,’ or at least be failing
(e.g., Gros 1996; Kaplan 2006; Rotberg 2005), and there is a significant
debate surrounding the concept of state-building, with calls for histori-
cal and geo-political appreciation of the process of state formation as it
relates to capitalist development (Berger 2006a). In the post war period
in particular we can observe shifting global hegemonies where initially
modernization relied on the vehicle of the state to foster development, but
by the 1970s state-driven development process was ‘exhausted’ and was
replaced by US-led neoliberal globalization. (Berger 2004, 1–24; Berger
2006b; Berger and Webber 2006). If we are to hope to understand cur-
rent thinking about politics and its relations to capitalist production, or
indeed to change it, we need fi rst to examine how the state as a unit has
become naturalized as a feature in world politics. We may then turn our
attention to the historical blocs within states to reveal how they maintain
support through hegemony. Using colonial PNG as an example this chap-
ter aims to explore these issues.
COLONIAL STATE AND PASSIVE REVOLUTION
The modern state of PNG is a product of colonial boundaries (Hawksley

2006, 162). In the early days of World War I, Australia attacked and occu-
pied German New Guinea, and it later secured a League of Nations man-
date over these confi scated German territories. Australia thus officially
administered both Papua and New Guinea from 1921 until independence
in 1975, interrupted only by a short Japanese occupation of parts of New
Guinea from 1942–45. In December 1946, the United Nations confi rmed
that New Guinea was under Australian trusteeship, and the governing
Australian Labor Party, then deeply committed to internationalism and
self-government, voluntarily submitted Papua to similar reporting obliga-
tions (Downs 1980, 4). Building on the unified military administrative
system established during the war by the Australia New Guinea Admin-
istrative Unit (ANGAU), the administrations were fi nally combined, fi rst
under provisional administration in 1946 and then under civilian govern-
ment in 1949 (Smith 1987, 159).
144 Charles Hawksley
The creation of the United Nations at the end of World War II promoted
ideas of self-determination and the universalisation of the nation-state as
the system of political organization for human societies. The expansion of
the state coincided with the effort to entrench capitalism throughout the
world. Empires that had existed for centuries ended in a matter of years. As
they waned, new states emerged in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and, even-
tually, the Pacific, where decolonization was relatively late, just as colonial-
ism had been relatively late. Yet in the immediate aftermath of World War
II some parts of the world were not thought ready for full statehood, so
administering territories concluded trusteeship agreements with the United

Nations. Administering power in these territories then had a responsibility
to promote social and economic progress that would lead to eventual politi-
cal independence. This was in essence a modernizing ‘project’ that involved
both social transformation and state formation. In Europe, such political
and social consolidation that had taken centuries to develop, often vio-
lently, and only fi nally replaced empires (as the ‘nation-state’) after World
War I. After 1945, the state became the only possibility for people emerg-
ing from colonial rule. Our concern here is with the important stage of
state development before independence, particularly how the Australian
administration attempted to create stable conditions for capitalist hege-
mony in what would later become Papau New Guinea.
A trusteeship agreement allows examination of conscious attempts
by a ruling elite—colonial administrators and other agents of the colo-
nial state—to fashion a modern society and a modern state. In Gramscian
terms, this elite tried to transform the ‘folkloric commonsense’ of a gen-
eral populace living essentially outside of modernity into a new ‘capitalist
commonsense’ that underpins popular consent for the economic and social
systems of modern life. In a way, administrators were also organic intel-
lectuals as they tried to create a new hegemony. This process can be under-
stood as a ‘passive revolution’ in that it was initially induced, planned, and
executed without the need for active consent of the populace. The concept
of passive revolution can be understood as the management of existing cri-
ses within capitalism so that nothing really appears to be changing (Mor-
ton 2006, 2007; Showstack Sassoon 2001); however, this view relies upon
the existence of class interests that incorporate or absorb such criticism.
On the other hand, Simon (1999, 55) notes that Gramsci also conceived of
passive revolution as a situation in which, in the absence of class, the state
takes a leading role in the process of renewal. In this sense for PNG, social
transformation was state-directed and was unrelated to popular consent.
This is not to say the colonial state in PNG was ever consciously Gramscian
in its approach, but we may still understand what it tried to do in terms of
passive revolution.
The creation of what might be called ‘state authority’ in PNG was
uneven. In 1949, much of the country was not even fully pacified, and
the level of experience with Europeans among indigenous peoples varied
widely. For example, effective German administration in the Gazelle Pen-
insula of East New Britain dated from the 1880s, and by independence
in 1975, the region’s Tolai people had almost a century of exposure to
Western modernity through colonial administration, Christianity, plan-
tations, wage labour, commercial enterprises, and the early introduction
of self-government. On the other hand, Europeans only ventured into the
highlands regions from the 1930s, and only after the Pacific War did the
administration consolidate its presence and pacify peoples and areas.
The process of ‘bringing people into the state’ through effective patrol-
ling and the dissemination of ideas of peace and commerce were the fi rst
steps in the education of the new ways. In contrast to Gramsci’s own belief
that the liberation of the subaltern rested on a ‘massive educational effort’
that would overcome the structural obstacles erected by the state within the
existing educational curricula (Borg, Buttigieg and Mayo 2002, 4), in PNG
we see that it was actually government policy to encourage education and to
promote self-government and responsibility. This can be seen as an attempt
to encourage critical reassessment of the existing folkloric commonsense
of everyday life and to promote the values of modern capitalist common-
sense. The education of the subaltern, however, came in various ways. It
was both formal in terms of government schools as well as informal life
education. It was seen both by indigenous people and by the administration
as a mechanism through which social change could occur. I argue here that
education was crucial to this project of modernity and state-formation and
that it informed all aspects of people’s lives. In its widest sense, education
in colonial PNG covered not only formal schooling where literacy, numer-
acy, discipline, respect, cleanliness, and Christianity were promoted, but
also manual trades, wage labour, monetization, the rule of law, democratic
representation, and the creation of a common language. Below, I address
formal education fi rst before examining informal education through lived
experience.
FORMAL EDUCATION AND THE SUBALTERN
In the postwar world, Australian administration believed that education

was the key to making a stable and independent state. Working with reli-
gious missions, the state and religion worked in tandem to place an emphasis
on Christianity, cleanliness, discipline, and English language acquisition.
For the most part, the main emphasis in formal schooling was on primary
school students, and while there was a conscious state attempt to create an
intellectual elite for independence, this plan came very late in the piece and
only after a policy of gradual and equal development had been shown to
have essentially failed.
Religious missions were the pioneers of pedagogy in PNG, so historically
the colonial state had left the business of education to the missions and did
not enforce a common syllabus. In the main, the missions instructed in
native languages, but the extent of their teaching was often limited to the
Bible. 3 To bring the missions to contribute to the state’s designs, the fi rst
Director of Education, W. C. Groves (appointed in 1946), drew up a plan in
1948 to pay the salaries of mission teachers. Initially the government recog-
nised five types of schools. Village schools were mission-operated under
administration subsidy and taught in local languages for three years with
a fourth year that included reading and writing in English. Village higher
schools were operated by either the missions or the administration and had
four years of tuition that included English as a subject, but they also used
local languages. Area schools gathered children from a number of close
villages but otherwise operated as village higher schools. Central schools
were divided by gender and conducted by either the administration or the
missions, taught for two years in English only, and were intended to have
a manual training component. Higher training centres taught for three
years, the fi rst of which was preparatory, and the next two were devoted to
teacher training (Smith 1987, 169).
By 1951, the state had not yet made inroads into the missions’ educa-
tional dominance in PNG; it taught less than 3,000 pupils compared to
more than 100,000 taught by missions (Downs 1980, 50). Groves believed
in academic freedom and had allowed administration teachers to set their
own educational curriculum, which they sometimes did in local languages.
In 1955, the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck—who held the portfolio
from 1951 to 1963 in the Liberal government of Robert Menzies (1949–
1965) and who was the main architect of Australia’s post-war policies in
PNG—forced Groves to develop a national curriculum in English. The
revised education strategy set out new priorities, with a concentration on
primary schools in controlled areas that taught children to read and write
in English. It aimed to improve the standard of mission teaching and to
develop manual and technical training where appropriate. The administra-
tion began to inspect and register mission schools if they met the state’s
standards and taught the approved syllabus (Smith 1987, 191).
The revised 1955 curriculum recommended morning schooling from
7:30–10 am, which included, at 7:30, ‘Fall in and personal hygiene inspec-
tion, smartening up exercise, marching,’ and at 7:45, ‘Morning hymn and
prayer.’ From 8 am, the children would separate into the lower and upper
divisions. The lower division would study language (thirty minutes) fol-
lowed by recess (fi fteen minutes), organised game or group activity, numbers
(thirty minutes) and social studies (thirty mins of stories, plays, handicrafts,
or singing). The upper division studied numbers rather than language at 8
am and language rather than numbers at 9 am, but was in other respects
the same. Children commenced school between the ages of five and seven,
and schools were racially segregated. Of the 132 administration schools in
New Guinea in 1956, 113 taught 6,239 indigenous children (86 per cent),
as well as 22 children classified as ‘mixed race,’ with 364 ‘Asian’ children.
Indigenous teachers made up 227 of the 329 teaching staff, but there were
98 European and 4 Asian teachers. Each school catered to different aged
children and needed two divisions, one taught at lower level and one at a
higher level (Smith 1987, 203–204). At three hours a day, education was
regular at five days per week, but rather limited. It was perhaps as much
time as the administration could expect parents to part with their children,
who could otherwise be usefully engaged in gardening, hunting, fishing, or
village obligations.
In the early 1960s, the state began to expand its capacity, with 198
schools in 1960 and 294 by 1963, of which 269 were primary. This still
lagged far behind the missions, which by 1963, operated more than nine
hundred registered primary schools. The administration’s schools taught
more than twenty-six thousand indigenous students and the missions taught
seventy-five thousand (NGR 1962/3, 283–5). The gap continued to narrow
as the country moved toward the 1970s. The state relied on the missions to
shoulder some of the burden of educational instruction and was never in a
position to become the only provider of education. While the missions and
the state to an extent delivered the same package of modernity, state edu-
cation was more clearly linked to a political and governmental structure
as schools were commonly built near to patrol posts. The large number of
mission schools exempted by the state (more than 1700 in 1963) assisted in
the survival of local languages.
As Hasluck had ordered, the bulk of this educational drive effort was
directed towards the youngest children, the primary grades, but from
1960, secondary education also began to receive more attention (Downs
1980, 263). Because of the disparities in levels of exposure to education,
administration schools were categorised primary A (preparatory grades
1–6), primary T (standard grades 1–6), junior high, secondary, technical,
pre-entry and auxiliary training branch, and teacher training, which relied
heavily on expatriates. The fi nal decade before independence was marked
by a shift in emphasis from primary eduction to the creation of an edu-
cated elite that could lead the independent state. Despite a recognition of
only partial success in primary and secondary education, the administra-
tion looked to the creation of an intellectual elite through the University
of Papua New Guinea, established in 1966, although this was largely a
reaction to the report from the visiting United Nations Commission of
1962 (the Foot Report), which drew attention to inadequate provision for
future self-government and slow progress in formal education. State educa-
tional planning shifted focus to high schools and enrollment in government
schools passed those of missions in 1964 (3,050 to 2,593), and by 1968
government schools taught 7,750 students at high schools compared to
5,850 by missions (Smith 1987, 226). These schools were mostly residential
and coeducational. As many as twenty identified students were also sent to
Australia each year under the Australian Scholarship Scheme, which began
in 1954, but a 1967 review of the program found it had not produced the
intended flow-on effect to university enrolments. The 1969 Advisory Com-
mittee (the Weedon Report) was even more observant, fi nding that the dif-
fering viewpoints of the point of education for the state and the missions
was understandable, but ‘if Papua and New Guinea is ever to be a nation
it must be something more than a collection of villages’ (Smith 1987, 255).
Thus a national educational system was still lacking a few years before
independence, and while the mission schools perhaps lacked the kudos of
government schools, they still contributed to the overall formation of a new
commonsense way of thinking about the world. Taken as part of the state,
in the way that church supports state through ideological teaching, we can
see that passive revolution utilised religion as much as the official resources
of government to promote modern thinking. By 1975, the population was
an estimated 3.5 million while formal education perhaps touched 300,000.
With the large number of children in remote areas of PNG, what was meant
to be ‘universal’ primary education was never achieved, and secondary edu-
cation remained extremely limited. A larger educational success, however,
was achieved across the country, where living under colonial rule provided
a wider educational experience.
INFORMAL EDUCATION AND THE SUBALTERN
For the colonial administration to make a nation that would survive

required the imposition of centralised government and the rule of law, but
in parts of PNG there were attempts to resist the new ways. Clan groups
sometimes engaged in what Gramsci termed a ‘war of movement’ against
the officers of the state and their indigenous police. On occasion, such con-
fl ict might result in the deaths of officers or missionaries, but in general,
traditional spears, axes, bows, and arrows were no match for the modern
rifles and guns. Perhaps because of the lack of common language and the
autochthonous nature of clan politics in PNG, no serious and continued
resistance to the state endured long. When physical resistance occurred, it
was pursued by the administration and dealt with quickly and effectively.
Perpetrators were apprehended, tried, often removed from their communi-
ties, and imprisoned. While ‘fi rst contact’ between administration officers
and indigenous people sometimes resulted in deaths, this was against the
official policy of ‘peaceful penetration.’ Force was used when required, but
in the main the administration preferred to encourage consent and accep-
tance of its rule.
The combined strategy of ‘pacify and convince’ was not always possible,
but once peaceful relations had been established, the adherence to the new
rules of the pax Australiana in a region meant it could be said to have come
under ‘government influence.’ Over time, areas outside of this controlled
belt diminished. In 1961, there were still some eight thousand square miles
of territory classed as ‘restricted’ and fit for only armed patrol officers; by
1970, there were just 670 square miles officially ‘restricted,’ all of which
was in the trusteeship of New Guinea. Despite the administration’s policies
that stressed gradual and even advancement across all parts of PNG from
the 1950s, some areas moved much faster than others into the modern
world, and uneven development resulted.
Gramsci saw all life as a continuous process of learning, reflection, and
a reinterpretation. In a situation where there is governing group and a gov-
erned group (the subaltern), the desire to aspire to be like the rulers often
causes changes in a normative grammar or a common language. Reflecting
on grammar, Gramsci noted that the subaltern try to speak like the domi-
nant classes (1999b, 305–6) in order to assimilate more easily, but for the
colonial state the biggest problem for effective communication within PNG
was that there was no common language. As a region, Melanesia is linguis-
tically diverse, with more than a quarter of all the world’s languages, and
PNG alone has more than eight hundred languages (Hawksley 2006, 162).
Melanesian pidgin (Tok Pisin) was used in New Guinea for day-to-day
communication between the administration and people, and later between
indigenous people themselves. An improvised form of the Motu language
(Hiri or ‘Police’ Motu) was also used in some parts of Papua. Tok Pisin
was however widely regarded as a bastardized form of English, even by the
administration. Australia’s Ministry for Territories set policy for PNG, and
the fi rst Minister Eddie War wrote in 1946 that he wanted ‘white people
. . . to make a point of teaching the natives proper English.’ In 1953, the
visiting United Nations mission found few indigenous people with whom
they could converse in English, and in 1954, the nominated representa-
tives to the Papua and New Guinea Legislative Council, Pita Simogun and
Merari Dickson, who rarely spoke in meetings, felt strongly enough about
this issue to criticize the use of pidgin as a language of instruction (Smith
1987, 160, 193, 195).4
With control and communications, the administration imposed its rule.
Through a succession of regulations and ordinances affecting the criminal-
codes, the previous ‘common sense’ world view of the indigenous people—
which had centered on exchanges of pigs and women, ancestor worship,
animist religion, sorcery, tribal fighting, and in some places, ritualistic can-
nibalism—became increasingly restricted, and many aspects of traditional
life came under severe challenge. This ideological assault on folkloric com-
monsense began with contact patrols, but was backed with increased sur-
veillance and apprehension until fi nes and imprisonment diminished the
chance of organized resistance to the colonial state. Laws governed behav-
iour in public and in areas of European settlement, but it could do no more
than restrict. Real hegemony required self-policing and popular consent
for domination, so the encouragement of taking on new ways of thinking
and behaving required more than simply blocking off resistance, but rather
people living within the structural coercion of the state in what Foucault
(Gordon 1980, 109–33) described as governmentality.
While the new system aimed to convince people of the futility of alterna-
tives, it also encouraged them to participate. The administration offered its
alternative in a sort of social contract: obedience to the state in exchange for
peace and economic development. The colonial administrators promoted
commerce and economic exchange using monetary units (coins and notes
for exchange as opposed to shells or pigs), wage labour, production for sale
in a market, Christianity, civil society organizations, and new dress codes.
They offered subaltern people financial and political incentives for partici-
pation in wage labour, production for the capitalist economy, and eventu-
ally even political autonomy. The administration essentially had to create

a civil society that extended past clan boundaries and a market that would
support a capitalist state and capitalist hegemony. For example, in the east-
ern highlands, which only began to be seriously considered for economic
development/exploitation after World War II, the administration promoted
production for sale by distributing seedlings of cash crops such as peanuts,
passion fruit, and later coffee, to go alongside existing staples such as sweet
potato and taro. The colonial state then purchased this produce, often at
above-market rates, to generate economic interest among the population.
It then transported this produce to lowland markets and arranged for the
sale of passion fruit and peanuts to Australian companies. Market farm-
ing quickly became a major revenue raiser for people in the highlands, and
from the mid 1960s, indigenous production of coffee began to exceed that
of the white settler population operating plantations on leased land (Hawk-
sley 2007, 202–4). The colonial state thus encouraged people to become
involved in the agricultural market economy and purchased their produce
in an effort to disperse widely the ideals of capitalism. As most of the people
involved in day-to-day vegetable production for subsistence were women,
effort was made to educate men in cash crops, but younger men were also
considered to be a threat to the stability of the government. Prohibiting
tribal fighting deprived men of opportunities for status advancement, so
the administration instead offered men opportunities to labour on coastal
plantations, for terms of up to two years. Schemes such as the Highlands
Labour Scheme ran from 1950, and between 1952–57 it provided oppor-
tunities for around twenty thousand highlands men to gain money, learn
pidgin, and return home with better knowledge of the new ways (Hawksley
2002, 380). Many returnees were incorporated into the government’s sys-
tem of village officials, with some 1,620 eastern highlands men holding the
office akin to village official by 1958/9.
We have in PNG what Fontana (2002, 30) terms the ‘state as educator’
where it exerts ‘moral, intellectual, and cultural force,’ and represents its
values as universal. Thus, any involvement in the institutions of state and
in civil society with a view to escaping from subalternity and eventually
achieving power fi rst involved people becoming part of those same asso-
ciations and groups, largely created for them by the state. Essentially, the
educator state had to build both civil society and the market before either
could be ‘internally colonized’ by the subaltern. Viewing education in this
wide and informal sense, employment figures reveal wage labour was ini-
tially rather limited. In 1949, there were just forty-five thousand Papuans
and New Guineans from a population of just under 1.4 million in paid
employment, working as police, on plantations, and with the administra-
tion (as medical aids or servants), and this workforce was overwhelmingly
male. By 1956, in New Guinea alone there were forty-five thousand work-
ers in paid employment. By 1962, workers in the towns of Rabaul, Lae,
and Madang had formed workers’ associations with a total of twenty-one
hundred members, but by 1973, there were more than thirty-five thousand
workers in industrial organizations in New Guinea (NGR 1972/3, 229),
and overall employment figures had also grown. By 1971, in New Guinea
alone there were 98,870 ‘residents’ (i.e., indigenous people) who were clas-
sified as receiving salary and wages, up from 71,570 the previous year, of
whom more than 60 per cent received between $4,000 and $10,000 per
year (NGR 1972/73, 286).
The state was heavily involved in regulating employment to restrict pos-
sible abuses by the private sector, with no fewer than eight pieces of major
legislation governing working conditions, including the provision of food,
clothing, washing facilities, toilets, payment of allowances, and provision
of medical assistance. It also moved to provide a legal framework that rec-
ognized industrial organizations and developed an arbitration system for
wages, such as existed in Australia (NGR 1962/3, 97). The state’s objec-
tives of getting people involved in the capitalist mode of production strat-
egy appeared to be working in as much as wage labour was leading to class
formation, the fi rst step in the creation of class-consciousness. In retro-
spect, such changes can be understood as the state’s attempt at a passive
revolution, not to fi x existing problems within capitalism, but to actually
create the conditions for a capitalist mode of production.
Finally, education in terms of political advancement adhered to the prin-
ciple of no taxation without representation, so the poll tax was introduced
along with Native Local Government Councils (NLGCs). These elected
bodies had substantial autonomy over local affairs. Manus Island and the
Rabaul region in New Britain led the way, with councils established from
1950. Those of New Britain covered from 3,000 people in 22 villages up
to 11,000 people in 32 villages (NGR 1962, 199). By 1960, regions in
the highlands and the Sepik river also had their fi rst NLGCs, and there
were more than fi fteen hundred councillors in fi fty councils in the territory
of New Guinea, covering more than half a million people (NGR 1962/3,
28). Although NLGCs were at fi rst assisted by administration officers in
terms of their operations and management, such bodies quickly became the
building blocks for local power plays, with candidates obtaining vital elec-
tioneering practice for later national elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972 for
the House of Assembly, which became the parliament of the independent
state of PNG.
COMMONSENSE, GOOD SENSE, AND HEGEMONY
Papua New Guineans were confronted with an imposed worldview that

claimed the advancement of indigenous peoples through colonial tutelage
was a progressive goal. Only by stepping back can we see the power rela-
tions inherent within such a claim. While preparation for self-government
was, in the minds of colonial administrators, for the ‘good of the people,’ it
involved a conscious attempt to transform their day-to-day lives, a matter
that required the individual consciousness of the subaltern to be applied to
their social, political, and economic conditions. As Diana Coben (2002,

263) has observed, politics itself is a ‘supremely educative process,’ espe-
cially for adults, and in PNG, both adults and their children took advan-
tage of education in the widest sense. They jettisoned previous cultural
practices in favour of new ways of doing things, indicating a reflective
aspect to their understandings of place and power. For those on the receiv-
ing end of colonial rule, they employed what Gramsci termed ‘good sense,’
essentially a capacity to reflect in a philosophical way on one’s own exis-
tence and then to bring this knowledge to bear on everyday life in order to
transform the understanding of one’s own existence (Gramsci 1999b, 693–
698). These notions of commonsense and good sense are frequently misun-
derstood, and Coben draws attention to the problems caused by popular
usage of ‘commonsense’ to mean something like obvious observable facts
or behaviour, which is rather different to how Gramsci employs the term.
Indeed, Gramsci (1999b, 695–8) writes of ‘commonsense’ as a fluid system
of conception of ‘life and man,’ something that is constantly being added
to and improved: it is, in his words, ‘a relatively rigidified phase of popular
knowledge in a given place and time.’ Yet Liguori (2007) argues the mature
Gramsci views commonsense as an essentially negative feature of life, and
that Gramsci sees the subaltern as imbued with passive and negative traits,
like people stuck in tradition unable to escape. Overcoming passivity and
subalternity requires harnessing an understanding of the intellectual order
through which each person makes sense of the world. What is required is
to adapt philosophy (or, for Gramsci, ‘good sense’) to form a new common-
sense, a modified view of the world reached through the accommodation of
old and new knowledge.
This suggests that commonsense itself is continuously in a state of change
as it is constantly being revised through the good sense of reflection and
self-criticism. In essence, what we fi nd in all human societies are compet-
ing versions of commonsense, some of which from time to time appear to
be the dominant way of understanding situations. This is not to say that
things cannot change, merely that certain views become widespread and
accepted as the way to understand events at specific periods of history.
The continuous contest between different worldviews allows us to under-
stand the operations of hegemony. By reflecting on social conditions, we
may move from a state of subalternity, where things happen to us and we
are essentially powerless, to what Gramsci viewed as essential for human
liberation, a philosophy of praxis that involves self-transformation and the
creation of a more informed view of the world that eventually results in
ethico-political action.
When applying Gramsci to colonial PNG, we can see a self-critique
of the old ways that allowed a partial departure from the folkloric com-
monsense and the acceptance of aspects of the capitalist common sense of
modern social and productive relations, a process in which education was
critical. Using hegemony, we can observe how the colonial administration
attempted to entrench capitalist productive relations within the emerging

state of PNG. The success of this attempt, however, ranged widely, largely
due to the different levels of exposure of groups to European ways, to cen-
tral government, commerce, commodities, the capacity of people to adapt to
capitalism, and the varying intensity of government efforts. Formal school
education played a central role for children in establishing respect for these
principles, which were held up as superior to the old ways of village life.
While the colonial state made advances in this area, universal education
remains a significant challenge for the independent state of PNG, with fig-
ures from 2000 (AusAID, 2003) showing 84.9 per cent of school-age chil-
dren enrolled in primary school but fewer than 23 per cent of school-age
children enrolled in secondary school. 5 In 1990, adult literacy (from aged
fi fteen upwards) in PNG was 56.6 per cent and youth literacy (ages 15–24)
was 68.6 per cent (UNDP 2004, 40). The problem appears to be worsen-
ing, with adult literacy in 2002 a little lower at 63.9 per cent (AusAID
2003). None of these figures is surprising given the dispersed and rural
nature of population in PNG, its continued concentration in small villages,
and budgetary difficulties.
A wider view of the lasting effects of education on adults is more reveal-
ing of deeper structural problems for the state. The colonial state sought
to have adults comply with the law, obey a central government, produce
surplus, labour for wages, and engage with a market economy. At inde-
pendence, even the most advanced regions struggled to adapt to this new
commonsense. The Tolai of New Britain were long perceived as the most
economically advanced people in colonial PNG, but even Tolai indepen-
dence leader John Kaputin (1977, 398–406) noted that the cooperatives
introduced in the 1950s had all collapsed by 1970, that in the mid 1970s
trucks broke down as they lacked spare parts, and some five thousand trade
stores had operated for between two and six months before exhausting
their initial capitalization, and then stood empty. The Tolai formed the
New Guinea Development Corporation,6 which functioned both with the
Kina and with traditional Tolai shell money (tabu), indicating a capacity
to live between two worlds (Kaputin 2007). Similarly, a recent study of the
Porgera gold mine in Enga province in the PNG highlands has shown that
a ‘shop’ only sometimes contain goods and is only sometimes open. Actual
commercial trade in such shops is clearly more of a marginal economic
activity than the principal source of revenue. Effectively, the shop is not the
focus of economic activity but a supplement to other revenue. It appears
that in the Porgera region compensation money for relocation has been
used to purchase commodities, but has not really become capital. Former
Porgera landowners act as rentiers rather than businessmen (Banks 2004).
As Eric Wolf (1982, 79 and 302–310) once noted, there is a marked dif-
ference between wealth and capital. The former has always been around,
but to become capital it must seek to internalize the process of produc-
tion, to control social labour, or as Wolf put it: ‘Capitalism to be capital-
ism must be capitalism in production.’ The endurance of shell money or

the limited nature of trade in trade stores point to the limited success of
the overall project of social transformation and the failure to consolidate
capitalist principles. It indicates the transition from premodern to modern
has failed to occur in PNG, and many people remain not fully integrated
into the world capitalist economy, despite some areas being economically
more developed than others and the presence of wage labour relationships
in cities. Land and village remain the focal points of most peoples’ lives
in PNG. The colonial state alienated around 3 per cent of land, and cus-
tomary land ownership is today at around 95 per cent, with 85 per cent
of people engaged in small-holder agriculture as their primary economic
activity (DFAT 2004, 163). Because so many people remain attached to
their lands, formal employment is relatively rare and this affects the capac-
ity of the state to raise funds through taxation. An inability to raise enough
money to fund the service expectations of citizens has meant that PNG has
come to rely on aid, particularly from Australia, which has since the 1990s
emphasised issues of law and order, efficiency and good governance, and
has moved in the new century toward increased intervention (Hawksley
2004, 2005).
CONCLUSION
PNG remains a state inhabited by people living two versions of common-

sense: children go to school, but only for a few years; most go to Christian
churches, but they also engage in important village feats, such as marriage
and moka ceremonies—where pigs are slaughtered and eaten in days of
feasting to, inter alia, preserve alliances, create new alliances, settle out-
standing debts, and confi rm the power of existing leaders who may or may
not be ‘formal’ politicians. People use money, but most appear to spend
it on immediately consumable goods, rather than save it and deploy it as
capital for reinvestment. From a Gramscian perspective, PNG has problems
that stem from the inability of colonial and postcolonial elites to shift the
thinking of indigenous people past folkloric commonsense and to naturalise
capitalist common sense. The durability of folkloric commonsense through
the retention of customary land ownership, limited engagement with wage
labour and the market economy, and the retention of many aspects of
precapitalist social, political, and economic organization (so-called ‘tra-
ditional’ society) has exposed the limitations of externally imposed state-
building, a feature all too common in the modern world, and one that is
accepted most uncritically. The commonsense of capitalism, including the
subjugation of citizen to state, of local politics to the state, and of people
to the market, has failed to take a stranglehold on the people of PNG. Like
other people in developing countries they have used good sense to construct
for themselves a new type of commonsense, one that combines aspects of
both old and new visions of the world.

The challenge for people in PNG today is to navigate the difficult ter-
rain of two competing hegemonies. One of these emerges from the vil-
lages and seeks to retain the old ways while attempting to adapt to newer
notion of state and capitalism. The other, capitalist social relations, is an
externally imposed project, fostered originally through the agency of the
colonial state by means of passive revolution. More recently, this vision has
been mediated through international regimes committed to what Richard
Howson (2006, 23) has described as the ‘hegemonic principles’ of capital-
ism—private property and profit. What we can see is that there exists a
historical bloc within PNG, but it is not one that supports mass consump-
tion and privatization of ailing services, nor even of full engagement with
the market economy. While Australia may view PNG as troublesome in
its failure to respond appropriately to the logic of neoliberal globalization,
many in PNG remain between two worlds of common sense, and they are
perhaps no worse off for it.
NOTES
1. The author thanks Peter Ives, Department of Politics, University of Winni-

peg, Manitoba, Canada, for his very helpful comments and suggestions on a
draft of this chapter. Errors of interpretation or fact are the responsibility of
the author alone.
2. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as C. Hawksley, ‘Con-
structing Hegemony: Colonial Rule and Colonial Legitimacy in the Eastern
Highlands of Papua New Guinea’ in Rethinking Marxism 19:2:195–207
(Taylor & Francis Ltd: 2007). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by
permission of the publisher.
3. There were many Christian missionary organisations in postwar PNG, with
over twenty-three groups operating schools in 1955, and thirty-four operat-
ing schools in 1963 in New Guinea alone (NGR 1955, 204; NGR 1963,
292). Among them were the Assemblies of God, Roman Catholics, and vari-
ous American Protestant missions including the New Tribes Missions. The
oldest and best established were the Lutherans, who operated 700 schools,
of which 221 had been recognised by the state in 1963.
4. While official policy opted for English in schools, both pidgin and Hiri Motu
remained in wide use, and today these three languages are all official lan-
guages. While all are spoken, they have not displaced local languages (ples
tok) as mother tongues, so many people in PNG will normally know and
speak at least five or six languages well: the mother tongue of their clan
group, the languages spoken by neighbouring clan groups, Tok Pisin/Motu,
and English.
5. Statistics for PNG, as for the rest of the Pacific Islands, are notoriously slow
in emerging. When they do become available, they are often imprecise and
unreliable, due to the limited capacity of agencies to assess accurately the
true state of affairs. Such figures as are offered thus provide a general pic-
ture.
6. In a move to secure both political and economic power, and thus ensure a
stable and prosperous future for generations to come, the Tolai formed the
Mataungan Association in 1968 to oppose the formation of a multiracial

local government council that would in their view have put the future devel-
opment prospects of the region in the hands of non-Papua New Guineans. In
seeking to separate the economic power of capital from the political power
of government, the Tolai sought to advance their claims in both realms. This
organization formed the backbone of the New Guinea Development Corpo-
ration (NGDC), which was launched in 1970s and which by its incorporation
in 1972 had raised K125,000 from more than ten thousand people. [At the
time one Kina (K) was equal to one Australian Dollar (AUD)]. The NGDC
purchased a storage facility, a copra drier, a cocoa fermentary, plantations,
and also leased service stations on the Gazelle Peninsula. Later it purchased
properties in Port Moresby, the capital of PNG. While originally a Tolai con-
cern, minority ethnic populations from the Morobe and Sepik regions were
also shareholders in NGDC (Kaputin 1977, 406–412). It became a model of
indigenous business enterprises in PNG.
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California Press.
10 The World Bank and Neoliberal
Hegemony in Vietnam
Susan Engel
There is a growing literature in the discipline of International Political

Economy (IPE) that draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci for theoretical,
political, and methodological inspiration and insight. This chapter provides
an introduction to the ways that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is utilised
in IPE. However, in line with the view that the ‘fabric of hegemony cannot
be analysed at the level of theory but only by a concrete analysis’ (Morton
2003, 139), the main focus of this chapter is an analysis of the role of one
of the key international fi nancial institutions in the world today, the World
Bank, and how it operates in a transition country, Vietnam.
This case study is particularly relevant to the themes in this book in at
least three ways. First, the World Bank claims to have shifted its develop-
ment philosophy and approach in the late 1990s and, given that the Bank
both reflects and constructs the current neoliberal hegemony, studying the
Bank’s turn helps to understand the nature of change in the late 1990s. In
Gramscian terms, I am interested in whether this movement in the Bank
indicates a fundamental and structural shift in the current neoliberal
hegemony, or a short-term and conjunctural one. Second, Vietnam, like
many other countries in the Asia-Pacific, is in the midst of transition and
transformation. Economically, it is pulling off one of the more success-
ful postcommunist transitions whilst maintaining politically a domestic
power structure, or historical bloc, based on the Communist Party. This
bloc appears relatively strong and has provided a basis for some resistance
to pressure for neoliberal ‘reform’ from the Bank and others. Third, analy-
sis of how the Bank acts in Vietnam in terms of Gramsci’s conception of
hegemony as requiring the organisation of consent as much as the use of
coercion can shed light on the nature of neoliberal hegemony.1
HEGEMONY AND WORLD ORDER
Gramsci’s key ideas have been eloquently outlined and debated in other
chapters in this book, so I start this chapter with only a brief introduction
to some of his key ideas, in particular those that have been most influential
160 Susan Engel
in IPE: hegemony, historical blocs, and leadership (Germain and Kenny
1998, 6). Hegemony, in contrast to its use in mainstream IPE as meaning
domination, is used by Gramsci to describe ‘a relation, not of domination
by means of force, but of consent by means of political and ideological
leadership. It is the organisation of consent’ (Simon 1991, 2). Gramsci was
predominantly interested in how the working class can organise to obtain
hegemony within a country; however, he also analysed the nature and form
of bourgeois hegemony. Anderson (1976, 20) claims that it was this later
use of ‘the concept of hegemony for a differential analysis of the structure
of bourgeois power in the West’ that ‘was a new and decisive step’. This
later usage of hegemony is also where he developed it as a combination or
synthesis of coercion and consent (Anderson 1976, 31).
Hegemony operates in society across both the economic structure and
the superstructural levels of civil society and political society. 2 It is organ-
ised through leadership, alliances, and networks in a context of continuous
ideological and political struggle. Consent can be obtained by combining
the interests of various social forces around particular populist causes such
as struggles for democracy; or it can be obtained through compromise and
persuasion. As Gramsci says:
Obviously, the fact of hegemony presupposes that the interests and ten-
dencies of those groups over whom hegemony is exercised have been
taken into account and that a certain equilibrium is established. It pre-
supposes, in other words, that the hegemonic group should make sacri-
fices of an economic-corporate kind; these sacrifices, however, cannot
touch the essential . . . the decisive core of economic activity (Gramsci
1996, 138).
The paragraph offers the idea that each hegemonic system is organised
around a set of core ideas that cannot be challenged without overturning
the hegemony, which following Howson are labelled here as ‘hegemonic
principles’ (2006, 25). The ideological and political struggles of hegemonic
groups are designed to change the theoretical, social, and also cultural
framework of social forces in order to ensure support for hegemonic ones.
Ideology, the framing of knowledge, is one of the key terrains on which
hegemonic struggles are fought. The efficacy of ideology is partly the prod-
uct of specific agents, or ‘organic intellectuals,’ who enunciate, organise,
and reform its components. As Gramsci puts it, every social force ‘creates
one or more strata of intellectuals who give it homogeneity and an aware-
ness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the political
and social fields’ (1971, 4). These intellectuals are the organisers of the
superstructure:
The intellectuals are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’ exercising the sub-
altern functions of social hegemony and political government. These
The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam 161
comprise: 1. The ‘spontaneous’ consensus given by the great masses of
the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the
dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by
the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group
enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.
2. The apparatus of State coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces dis-
cipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ for the whole of society
in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when
spontaneous consent has failed (Gramsci 1971, 12).
Gramsci’s belief in the power of organic intellectuals to transform the

working class is somewhat difficult to understand in today’s climate; at
the same time, there is little doubt that intellectual production has played
a significant role in the ascent of neoliberalism to its current hegemonic
position. Moreover, his discussion and analysis of ideology is a useful
antidote to mainstream IPE, which is generally silent on this issue.
If dominant forces are successful, meaning that they predominate for
long periods, Gramsci terms this an ‘historic bloc’ (Simon 1991, 32–3).
For critical IPE scholars, historical blocs provide a way past the main-
stream international relations closure on the contents of the state. Histor-
ical blocs are not always hegemonic nor are they static—social forces are
constantly shifting, influenced by subaltern movements as well as shifting
internal power. Gramsci highlights two types of change: short-term and
nonstructural versus significant, structural, and often long-lasting. Struc-
tural change generally results in reshaping all elements of the historical
bloc: institutions, alliances, and ideology (Simon 1991, 39). Gramsci does
not dismiss either form of change because ‘a social form always has mar-
ginal possibilities for further development and organisational improve-
ment’ (Gramsci 1971, 222). He has a particular interest in the response of
dominant social forces to significant changes in socio-economic systems
that, when confronted with such change, normally employ a strategy of
‘passive revolution’ or ‘revolution from above.’ The primary form of this
strategy is utilisation of the institutions of the state to achieve structural
changes in the economy to shape a new historical bloc (Simon 1991, 50). 3
This analysis is very relevant to the role of an international institution like
the World Bank.
Gramsci largely analyses hegemony at the national level, though in
one of his key notes, ‘Analysis of Situation. Relations of Force,’ he states
clearly that ‘international relations intertwine with these internal relations
of nation-states, creating new, unique and historically concrete combina-
tions’ (Gramsci 1971, 182). As Anderson points out, the ‘terrain of dis-
course is manifestly universal’ (1976, 20). Examples of Gramsci’s analysis
of the simultaneous operation of social forces in national and international
arenas include his critique of the Comintern, the impact of Fordism on
Europe, and his writing on the structure and organisation of the Catholic
162 Susan Engel
Church.4 Ultimately, though, Gramsci does not have as much to say about
either analysing or challenging hegemony operating across countries or
‘internationally’ as he does about domestic forces. This is where the work
of Robert Cox is useful as he was one of the first IPE scholars to develop a
framework for analysing hegemony at the level of world orders.
Cox develops a schema in which hegemonic and nonhegemonic forces
are analysed utilising three interrelated spheres of historically current
activity: social forces, states, and world orders. Social forces are funda-
mentally shaped by relations of production and this, for him, is the start-
ing point for analysing hegemony. 5 Following Gramsci’s understanding of
the state as the product of the relations between a civil/political society

nexus and the economic arena, Cox does not accept the unity of the state.
Forms of state need to be explained via analysis of state and civil society
(social forces) connections (Cox 1986, 223). They can be influenced by the
structure of the world order and can influence the structure. Cox utilises
the Gramscian idea of an historical bloc to analyse the development of
recent forms of states and their underlying dominant social forces, as well
as their movements towards hegemony. And following Gramsci, too, the
purpose of this is always a practical one—only through such understand-
ings can an understanding of the potentials for resistance and transfor-
mation be developed (Cox 1986, 230).
In the fi nal sphere of world orders, Cox retains (as in Gramsci) the
national sphere as the foundation of the creation of hegemonic historical
blocs. Thus, he suggests, that a ‘world hegemony is thus in it beginnings
an outward expansion of the internal (national) hegemony established
by a dominant social class’ (Cox 1996, 137). A national hegemony can
form the basis of a world order if the hegemony is universalist and the
national state can ensure its progress and protection. As Bieler and Mor-
ton explain:
[h]egemony can therefore operate at two levels: by constructing an

historical bloc and establishing social cohesion within a form of state
as well as by expanding a mode of production internationally and
projecting hegemony through the level of world order (2004, 93).
Thus, the internationalisation of the state can be as important as the

internationalisation of production. Cox sees the current global hege-
mony as an outwards expansion of an American historical bloc, which
he labels the pax Americana. The legitimating ideology of pax Ameri-
cana is, of course, neoliberalism. Under pax Americana, reconciliation
of the world economy and domestic pressures involved factors such as
the practice of policy harmonisation, the role of key state agencies in
both dominant and other states, and the role of international institutions
(Cox 1986, 230–2). Cox also identified a range of ways in which hege-
mony is expressed by international organisations as both the products of
the hegemonic world order and institutions that facilitate the expansion
of the rules of that order, in this case neoliberalism. Institutions function
to legitimate rules, engage social forces in developing countries in an
order, and assimilate (Cox 1996, 138) ideas. 6
Germain and Kenny (1998) have questioned the accuracy of Cox’s (and
other critical IPE scholars’) reading of Gramsci. Morton pointed out,
however, that this critique represents a kind of ‘austere historicism’ that
suggests the ideas of writers in the past are not relevant to the analysis
today (2003, 120). Further, as Morton demonstrated, austere historicism
is not consistent with Gramsci’s theoretical or political project, which

was a transformative one (2003, 120).7 Thus the purpose of understand-
ing Gramsci in critical IPE is not to articulate a universal Gramscian
framework, rather it is to explore concepts and ideas that are useful for
understanding and analysing the forms and operations of IPE today.
While taking the work of Cox as an inspiration, I hope through this
case study of the World Bank in Vietnam to more effectively incorporate
Gramsci’s inspiration and example by building a more in-depth
understanding of pax Americana. Thus the goal is to interrogate the
World Bank and to clarify its nature by exploring five key areas. First,
the Bank needs to be studied as an institution that serves the interests of
the dominant hegemony, pax Americana, via promotion of its historical
bloc expressed as neoliberalism. However, the proviso must be made that
hegemony is both historically contingent and never complete—there are
always challenges. At the same time, pax Americana has fundamental
hegemonic principles that it maintains. Thus this study of the Bank
explores how it defends neoliberal hegemonic principles as well as where
it successfully legitimises rules or supports particular social forces and
ideologies. But it also examines where the Bank has not been successful
and where the gaps or tensions are. Second, one particular complexity
is that the World Bank is an international bureaucracy, and Gramsci
noted that bureaucracies are subject not just to the will of sometimes
competing states, but they have their own dynamics that result in the
development of their own interests and logics (Gramsci 1971, 175). Third,
international institutions operate differently in different locations; they
utilise what Gramsci called democratic centralism to allow adaptation
to different expressions of local social, political, and economic realities
(1971, 188). This adaptive capacity is central to the survival of not just
an organisation but to the social forces they represent. Studying what
can be modified and, more pertinently, what can never be challenged,
sheds much light on the nature of neoliberal ideology. Fourth, a
Gramscian framework directs attention to how World Bank policies
and programs are best understood in the coercion/consent dialectic and
whether the post-Washington Consensus has shifted the Bank’s tactics.
Finally, the Gramscian framework points to questions about whether
the post-Washington Consensus represents structural and fundamental
164 Susan Engel
transformation, or whether it involves utilising the state and international
organisations to continually shape the current historical bloc.
APPLYING HEGEMONY: THE WORLD BANK
Harry Dexter White from the US Treasury conceived the idea for a World
Bank in 1941 as part of planning for the post–World War Two economic
order (Block 1977, 46). It was second in his focus, however, to what was to
become the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Indeed, continued plan-

ning for the Bank was partly due to the focus of the pre-eminent economist
and the head of the British economic planning team, John Maynard Keynes.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), as it
became known, took shape during the conference in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire, in July 1944. It was largely, as its title indicates, designed to assist
in the postwar reconstruction of Europe, though development was included
in its purposes largely at the request of the Mexican delegation (Urquidi
1996, 9). The Bank began operations in 1946. After Marshall Plan aid to
Europe from the US usurped its role in reconstruction, it shifted its focus to
lending for development activities in the less industrialised countries.
In 1961, the International Development Association (IDA) was added to
the IBRD and the Bank became a group.8 The IBRD and IDA operate as one
organisation. Both provide loans to developing countries; however, the IDA
lends only to the least developed countries and the loans are more conces-
sional than IBRD loans. After substantial growth in the 1970s under the
presidency of Robert Strange McNamara, the Bank became the most signifi-
cant international development agency in the world (Gosovic 2000, 454). In
2007, it gained its 185th member, it had offices in more than one hundred
countries, more than ten thousand staff, and it had lent cumulatively $590
billion for development activities. In addition to lending activities, the Bank:
provides technical assistance; organises consultative groups of major donors
to coordinate and direct development assistance; undertakes macro and
microeconomic surveys; and manages international debt relief programs. It
is also the largest development research organisation in the world (Stern and
Ferreira 1997). Private financial companies rely on the Bank’s analyses of a
country’s creditworthiness—this alone gives it tremendous power.
The 1990s were a mixed time for the Bank. In the early part of the decade,
the end of the Cold War increased Bank membership, and demand for funds,
plus bilateral aid from rich countries, waned. Yet historically high levels of
capital flows, in particular foreign direct investment (FDI), poured into many
(if not all) developing countries. Private capital generally comes with fewer
strings than Bank loans and thus is a direct competition for it. In 1997, the
Asian financial crisis dried up short- and long-term capital flows to many
developing countries and again bought the Bank’s significance as a lender to
the fore. After September 11, 2001, global aid flows again increased in real
terms, and by 2002–2003, capital flows to developing countries were again
on the increase, though most of this went to just a handful of countries. How-
ever, many countries remain substantially dependent on the Bank, and the
authoritativeness of its country economic analysis and model of development
has increased.
So what is the Bank’s development model? In the early 1980s, neoliberal
governments came to power in key Western states—UK, US and Germany—
and neoliberalism became the predominant political theory across the globe.
The hegemonic neoliberal government, the US, set about reordering not just
its own economy but the international economic structure as well. The refo-
cused agenda is commonly referred to as the Washington Consensus, and its
core policies were a commitment to macroeconomic stability, outward orien-
tation, and domestic liberalisation.9 This program dominated Bank develop-
ment thinking and practice into the 1990s.
The Washington Consensus was not, however, a panacea for developing
countries; indeed, many performed worse economically in the 1980s than
in earlier decades. It also came with high social costs and created a strong
backlash—too strong in fact. By the time of the Asian financial crisis in late
1997, Washington Consensus prescriptions were under strong challenge from
a number of fronts and the Bank was claiming to have surpassed it with a new
development framework. Most of the assessments of this shift conclude that it
was more about style than substance. It has been labelled the post-Washing-
ton Consensus (PWC) to indicate its continuities with the Washington Con-
sensus. The next section explores the shift to the PWC in a little more detail
and highlights both the continuities and discontinuities with the Washing-
ton Consensus. This provides the framework to examine World Bank opera-
tions in Vietnam in order to demonstrate how neoliberal hegemony expanded
beyond national arenas to become a global phenomenon.
FROM WASHINGTON CONSENSUS TO

POST-WASHINGTON CONSENSUS
The Washington Consensus was labelled as such because it involved development

of shared belief in core economic policies between three Washington-based
institutions: the Bank, the IMF, and the US government.10 The consensus on
economic policy evolved into a common set of policy prescriptions used by the
World Bank and IMF as conditions for their loans. Despite the Bank’s protests
to the contrary, there is little doubt that the Washington Consensus dominated
Bank lending until the mid-1990s. The policies were implemented often quite
simplistically and with some single-mindedness during the mid-1980s; for
example, the prescription for outward orientation led the Bank to push all of
its borrowing countries to expand agricultural exports without undertaking
any macro assessment of the impact this might have on global commodity
prices. The results were predictable, with a protracted and significant decline
166 Susan Engel
in prices in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving many producers facing prices that
did not cover the costs of production (Caulfield 1998, 158).
By the early 1990s, variations in Bank prescriptions between countries and
policies had increased. The process of change was gradual, but 1997 was a
key year: the early reforms of James D. Wolfensohn (appointed as president in
1995) were being felt; the Asian financial crisis again put the Bank under the
spotlight; and the Bank released a controversial World Development Report
indicating a shift in its politico-economic commitments. Indeed, The State in
a Changing World: World Development Report 1997 is a key marker of the
Bank’s ‘reinvention of liberalism.’11 The report maintains neoclassical com-
mitments to markets but recognises the importance of state intervention ‘in

defining the structure of market-mediated economic relations’ (Berger and
Beeson 1998, 499). It is indicative, theoretically, of the impact of new institu-
tional economics on the Bank. Politically, it shows the influence of the Clinton
Administration in the US and of the NGO critique of the Bank, in particular
of the need for more local community participation in projects and a greater
focus on poverty reduction.12
Given space constraints, I briefly outline the key differences between the
Washington Consensus and the PWC that have led to the claim of a distinc-
tive PWC. These are:
1. A fundamental continuation of the neoliberal conservative approach

to monetary and fiscal policy meaning: a preference for monetary policy
(especially interest rates) over demand-side measures to control the economy
and an independent central bank to control interest rates; fully convertible
currencies; and a strong fiscal restraint on the state. However, approaches
to liberalisation of prices and capital accounts, etc., in particular, tend to be
more cautious, given concerns about market failure and applicability to local
conditions. Support for trade liberalisation, however, remains intact (Broad
2004, 136).
2. Following from above, and the (supposed) abandonment of one-size-
fits-all approaches to development, greater attention to the specific country
situation. This should include better developed socio-economic analysis of local
conditions as well as consideration of global and regional impacts.
3. An expansion of the role of state as a complement to, rather than
competition for, markets—in a weak form, this only promotes a state that
provides a good policy environment for business, in other words an active,
procapitalist state (Cammack 2003, 5). A further step allows more space
for state institutions to engage with market imperfections (information
and transaction costs). A strong version analyses actors and interests in the
society and the distribution of power/resources between them, as well as
analysis of who wins and loses from policy proposals (Wodsak 2002, 44).
4. Increased concern with market failure to complement the existing focus
on government failure—this would be indicative of a stronger version of the
PWC. Practical outcomes include analysis of markets prior to promotion of
privatisation.
5. Increased attention to the sequencing of reform programs, in particular
adequate regulatory frameworks relevant to local conditions prior to
liberalisation.
6. A greater concern for the social costs of adjustment and poverty in
general.
7. More appreciation of local knowledge and practices tempered by a
concern about coherence and coordination (Wodsak 2002, 91).
8. Expanded participation in the planning, design, and implementation
of activities; this needs to be considered both in terms of the type of
participants involved and the extent and nature of the participatory process.
9. Increased attention to decentralisation as a policy prescription for
supposedly increasing participation, ensuring local needs are met and
improving governance.
10. A concern with and analysis of social capital—this extends to
economists analysing social factors but not social scientists in the Bank
analysing the economy and state.
11. A slightly broader approach to health and education.
12. Interest in corruption understood as the result of government and
market failure, thus transforming it from a political to an economic issue
relevant to Bank programs.13
13. A rejuvenated focus on property rights and institutions as they are
essential to minimising transaction and information costs, and thus to
economic growth, they are a prerequisite to ‘getting the prices right’ (North
1998, 23–5).
This summary draws on and confirms the analysis of scholars such as Ben
Fine, who concludes that the PWC is, at core, a way of incorporating the ‘dis-
sent against its neoliberal predecessor’ without fundamentally challenging its
model and assumptions (Fine 2001b, 172).14 For example, the Bank’s concern
with social issues addresses community concerns, but the approach rests on
the impact of social factors on ‘economic development or the functioning of
markets’ (Wodsak 2002, 98). All of this suggests that the term post-Wash-
ington Consensus in the hyphenated form—indicating its continuities to the
Washington Consensus—is an appropriate description.
168 Susan Engel
The next section examines whether the PWC has impacted on World
Bank lending through a case study of its program in Vietnam. The case
study commences with an examination of the overall Bank program, includ-
ing its size and influence as a lender; the analysis underpinning its country
program; and the sectors, sizes, and types of loans. The next two sectors
of Bank lending are examined in two periods to correlate to the Washing-
ton Consensus (1993–1997) and PWC (2000–2004). The sectors include
structural adjustment and energy loans, as these are two of the largest sec-
tors of Bank lending. Insights from the overall research are utilised in the
concluding remarks.
THE WORLD BANK PROGRAM IN VIETNAM
Vietnam has a population of around eighty million; it is a socialist republic

with a unitary system of government and an elected National Assembly
that oversees law making. The role of the Communist Party of Vietnam is
not clearly defi ned in the constitution, but it basically parallels the state and
directs it. However, its influence does seem to be slowly declining. Vietnam
was never as collectivised as some of the other socialist states, but weak
economic performance combined with the massive cost of decades of war
with the French, Americans, Chinese, and Cambodians, left some 70 per
cent of the population living in poverty by the mid-1980s. To address this
situation, in 1986 the government of Vietnam (GoV) started a program of
gradual economic reform known as Doi Moi (renovation). The program
has been quite successful in reducing poverty and in promoting economic
growth. By 1993, when the World Bank reengaged with Vietnam, economic
growth was at ten per cent and poverty levels were declining.
The Bank is a very significant source of development funding for Viet-
nam.15 Between 1993 and 2004, it committed over USD $5.125 billion to
Vietnam, an average of $465 million per annum. In 2004, lending shifted
to what the Bank called its high scenario for lending—loans totalled over
$744 million. This placed the Bank at the top of the list of Vietnam’s devel-
opment assistance providers. The Bank’s influence goes beyond the actual
dollars it lends because of the key role it plays in donor coordination. This
is an area the Bank has been active in, particularly after 1999 when Viet-
nam agreed to be part of the pilot Comprehensive Development Frame-
work (CDF) process and the associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
(PRSP) process—new initiatives that were the frontline of the Bank’s PWC
approach. Donor coordination involves the Bank in coordinating other
countries to focus on particular regions or sectors and encouraging joint
funding of loans. The Bank also plays a lead role in promoting a ‘develop-
ment’ agenda. A 2001 study by Nørlund confi rmed this, noting that for
the most, the response to the role of the Bank was positive as it was seen as
having a ‘very open attitude in Vietnam’ (Nørlund 2001, 6).
The Country Assistance Strategy

The document that outlines the Bank’s plan for each country is called the
Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). There are references to a CAS for Viet-
nam in September 1994; however, prior to 1998 the Bank kept its country
programming documents confidential (even from the recipient govern-
ment). A Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC I) provided in 1994, does give
some indications of early Bank priorities. It indicates strong support for
the program of Doi Moi, which is presented as the start of a Washington
Consensus structural adjustment package—conservative monetary and fi s-
cal policy combined with (some) price liberalisation to control the budget
deficit and inflation and to ‘get the prices right’; currency devaluation and
fi nancial sector reforms; reforms to state enterprises; openness to foreign
direct investment; de-collectivisation and property rights; and limited and
highly targeted social programs (World Bank 1994). However, there has
been a debate about whether Doi Moi can really be understood in neo-
liberal terms.16 Conditions on the loan were in the areas of government
budgeting, the program for state enterprise reform, the legal framework for
property rights, and commercial transactions and banking reforms.
SAC I praised ‘ownership’ by GoV of the reform, but the 1998–2002
CAS notes differences between the Bank and the GoV on the pace of
reform, with the Bank urging a faster rate (World Bank 1998, ii). This
issue frequently reappears in Bank documentation—indeed, I think it is
not going too far to suggest that this issue is at the centre of Bank/GoV
relations. The Bank’s overarching focus on pace is ultimately indicative,
too, of the limited extent to which it has taken on board warnings on the
pace and timing of reform over the Washington Consensus concerns with
government failure.
In line with the PWC model, the Bank and other key donors in Vietnam
supported an increased focus on poverty in Vietnam. They started sup-
porting poverty assessments and survey work, and the process was linked
to the development of a PRSP in 1999, which the government was required
to produce if it wished to access structural adjustment lending. An interim-
PRSP, released in mid-2000, was produced quickly in order to maintain
access to structural adjustment lending and involved little public partici-
pation. The full PRSP, called the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and
Growth Strategy (CPRGS), was released in May 2002 (Socialist Republic
of Vietnam 2002). It involved significant consultation with various levels
of government, local NGOs, international NGOs, and donors. An evalua-
tion of the process concluded that, initially it had little impact on the GoV
or the broader community but has progressed to becoming ‘a “second-
track” policy forum, paralleling government and party policy’ with limited
broader impact (Nørlund 2003). Vietnam’s CPRGS has a strong focus on
relatively standard Washington Consensus macroeconomic prescriptions
to create economic growth and thus supposedly reduce poverty. But more
170 Susan Engel
than other PRSPs, it includes a number of fi rm measures to increase GoV
expenditure on redistributive mechanisms.17
The 2003–2006 CAS claims to be based on Vietnam’s CPRGS and sets
out three broad objectives derived from this:
(i) High growth through a transition to a market economy;

(ii) An equitable, socially inclusive, and sustainable pattern of growth; and
(iii) Adoption of a modern public administration, legal, and governance
system (2002a, i).
Although these three themes do appear in the CPRGS, they are not indica-
tive of its structure or priorities. The Bank’s focus only on the Washington
Consensus macroeconomic policy settings ignores the social redistributive
measures. Its presentation of the themes differs subtly but significantly from
the CPRGS, which, drawing from overall objectives in the Government’s
Five Year Plan, aims to:
Bring about a significant improvement in the people’s material, cultural

and spiritual life, lay the foundations for the country’s industrialization
and modernization, build a prosperous people, strong country and a just,
equal, democratic and civilized society, and establish the institutions of
a socialist-oriented market economy . . . (emphasis added) (Socialist Re-
public of Vietnam 2002, 6).
The Bank’s version ignores the socialist-orientation of the market econ-

omy and changes the ‘people’s material, cultural and spiritual life’ into an
‘equitable . . . pattern of growth.’ In terms of public administration and the
legal environment, the Bank’s key descriptor is ‘modern,’ the CPRGS, on
the other hand, refers variously to a fair, level, transparent, and efficient sys-
tem (2002, 7). ‘Modern’ is clearly a synonym for neoliberal capitalism—this
translates in the Bank’s lending as projects focused on the design of key laws
of a ‘market-driven economy’ in particular, land-use rights (aimed at creat-
ing private property), and gas and electricity laws (World Bank 2002a, 63).
Here two of the hegemonic principles of the PWC are revealed—the primacy
of private property and markets.
The CAS’s examination of Vietnam’s historical bloc is revealing: social
aspects receive little attention and account for only one paragraph of four-
teen. Indeed, the limited space means the economic analysis is limited and
consists of broad claims. It focuses on promoting a faster pace of policy
reform and building a market economy. Monetary and fiscal policy analysis
continues the Washington Consensus approach. There is no consideration of
potential impacts from the external environment, which is surprising given
that the Asian financial crisis was still fresh in people’s minds. The CAS
proposes three possible scenarios regarding lending volumes with the actual
outcome linked only to the ‘pace of progress on the Government’s policy and
institutional agenda’ (World Bank 2002a, iii). It is not linked to performance
on poverty outcomes or to the potential impact on Vietnam of regional or
global events. There are no alternative scenarios in case the economy or pov-
erty levels do not respond to the proposed policy prescriptions. So, although
the Bank needs and wants to be more ‘organic’ in the PWC period, both its
structures as a Bank and commitment to the hegemonic principles of the
Washington Consensus ultimately prevent it from moving this commitment
beyond more surface interventions.
The Bank’s Lending Program

If the Bank has significantly shifted from the Washington Consensus, this
might be reflected in the overall nature of its country lending operations.
Thus, this section examines the evolution of Bank lending in terms of sec-
toral focus, types of loans, and the size of loans in the two case-study
periods: 1993–1997 and 2000–2004. In terms of sectoral focus the trans-
port and energy sectors were the focus of Bank activities in 1993–1997
(see table), accounting for almost half of total lending. Transportation is
comprised mainly of projects to rehabilitate highways and ports; energy
projects are predominately electricity generation, distribution, and man-
agement; and fi nance, the third major sector, comprises predominately
Table 10.1. World Bank New Loan Approvals to Vietnam as a Per Cent of Total
Lending by Sector 1993–97 and 2000–04
Sector 1993–1997 2000–2004

(%) (%)
Transportation 29 16
Energy 20 23
Finance 16 7
Law, justice and public 9 18
administration
Health and other social 9 1
services
Agriculture, fishing and 7 11
forestry
Water, sanitation and flood 6 18
protection
Education 4 6
Source: World Bank Projects Database
172 Susan Engel
banking reform projects. Health and education receive scant attention in
either period.18
The 1998–2002 Vietnam CAS indicated that its program would shift to
focus more on poverty and social issues. Looking at the table, in terms of
the relative focus on health and education, that shift cannot be said to have
occurred. There were some poverty-focused projects in the area of rural
developments, which was also a Bank focus. Energy and transport remain
key sectors, though law, justice, and public administration projects push
transport into third place. This focus was suggested by the analysis of the
PWC, in particular its emphasis on property rights and business and regula-
tory frameworks to reduce market and government failures. The nature of
this governance lending is explored in the section on structural adjustment
lending.
Structural Adjustment Lending in Vietnam

Vietnam has had four structural adjustment credits, one in the 1993–1997
period and three in 2000–2004. Structural adjustment lending increased
from almost 9 per cent of lending in 1993–1997 to more than 16 per cent
in 2000–2004. This is less than the current bank average of 33 per cent of
lending (World Bank 2003, 36). As noted earlier, there is limited information
available on the 1994 credit, however, conditionalities are in core Washing-
ton Consensus areas and the documentation presents a neoliberal reading
of Doi Moi. The gap in adjustment loans until 2001 was because the Bank
could not reach consensus with GoV about a program, which indicates the
Bank’s commitment to its hegemonic principles over country ownership of
its economic program (World Bank 2001, 1). As a result, the Bank attempted
to implement aspects of its structural reform program through sector pro-
grams.
Structural adjustment credits in the second case-study period are called
Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs); there are three of these, com-
mencing in 2001. There is a significant shift from PRSC I to II / II (2003/4)
whereby the policy reform agenda is expanded to incorporate social reform
issues.19 PRSC I covers reform in five areas: the private sector climate; SOE
reform; banking reform; trade reform; and public expenditure management.
All five are core Washington Consensus concerns. From PRSC II, additional
items include health, education, land use and transferability, environmental
sustainability, government planning, and legal reform. However, the five sec-
tors from PRSC I, which conform to the Washington Consensus agenda, con-
tinue to receive the most attention. Decentralisation and corruption appear
in PRSC II and become more prominent in PRSC III; these are part of the
PWC focus on governance and provide additional grounds for the Bank to
propose ‘reforms’ in Vietnam’s legal and regulatory system.
The number and types of conditions changes over the loans—PRSC I
for $250 million contains twenty-four conditions for the two tranches in
the five sectors mentioned above. In PRSC II ($100 million), conditions are
dropped in favour of ‘policy actions,’ nineteen of which are specified across
twelve sectors, plus there are fourteen ‘triggers’ for PRSC III. By PRSC
III ($100 million) only triggers remain—fi fteen of them. Conditionality
is a controversial area for the Bank, particularly in relation to structural
adjustment loans. The Bank claims that triggers ‘are not conditions,’ but
their explanation of what they are suggests otherwise: ‘[p]rogress on most
triggers and no backtracking on any of them leads in principle to the prepa-
ration of the next PRSC operation . . . ’ (2004a, 17). The triggers for PRSC
IV include both broad directives and specific actions, for example Viet-
nam must draft new ‘Enterprise and Investment Laws in accordance with
the Guiding Concepts and Principles date April 26, 2004’ (2004a, 32). As
Griffi n notes, these broad ‘postconditionality’ mechanisms often increase
the Bank’s ‘encroachment into the day-to-day governance of developing
countries’ (Griffi n 2006, 578).
One of the most controversial aspects of the PRSCs is the requirement for
‘equitisation’ of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). GoV describes ‘equitisation’
as transforming the ownership of the mode of production. 20 A study of the
forms of equitisation suggests that it is increasingly little more than privati-
sation (Evans 2004, 1). From 1992 to 2000, pilot equitisation of about 450
firms took place. PRSC I required equitisation of more than 450 firms prior
to the release of the first tranche of funding (which was obviously already the
case) and adoption of a five-year SOE reform program covering one-third of
SOEs. The second tranche release included five conditions (of twelve) on equi-
tising SOEs: streamlining the equitisation process, completing equitisation of
200 major and 200 minor SOEs, equitisation of noncore assets of general
corporations, and modification of a redundancy fund for SOEs (World Bank
2001a, 41–2). PRSC II and III continued the push; PRSC III gives an overall
aim of equitising, selling, or liquidating around twenty-four hundred SOEs
from 2004–2006 (World Bank 2004a, 22).
The actual pace of equitisation has been slower than envisaged by the
Bank, and this has been a significant source of tension between the Bank and
GoV. The Bank was concerned that smaller, less strategic enterprises were
being equitised to meet targets. Thus, in an indication of the Bank’s more
coercive techniques to pursue hegemonic principles, from PRSC II the Bank
shifted from broad numerical targets to a program actually listing enter-
prises and the target dates for equitisation. Nevertheless, the pace continued
to be slower than the Bank would like. This is not surprising given, first,
the complexity of the process, which has stretched the administrative and
regulatory capacity of the government, and second, the sensitivity of the pro-
cess itself, in particular the ‘considerable labour retrenchment’ (World Bank
2004a, 37).21
In terms of the process of equitisation, the big issue is the valuation of
enterprises and, in particular, land valuation. Valuation originally required
an independent audit, yet to speed up the process, the Bank successfully
174 Susan Engel
pushed to have this requirement dropped. This was despite experience indi-
cating that companies were not appropriately valuing assets, in particular
land (an easy task given that the market for land is undeveloped to say the
least). Dropping the audit made it easier for managers to deliberately under-
value assets in order to gain control over enterprises (Evans 2004, 13). The
Bank’s continuing pressure on the government to equitise SOEs, despite its
own judgement that ‘insider privatization’ is taking place, is indicative of
its judgement regarding the importance of government and market failures
(Sam and Hai 2004, 3). PWC ‘lessons’ about market failure and pace and
sequencing of reform and the experience in Vietnam to date remain second

to the Washington Consensus agenda on privatisation.
As part of PRSC I, the Bank negotiated additional support for redundant
workers under a specially established fund for SOEs. The fund provides
more generous assistance than the Labor Code in the form of lump-sum
compensation plus a six-month vocational retraining voucher. Other than
the voucher, this is a passive labour market policy. 22 While the redundancy
package demonstrates a concern with the social costs of adjustment, its
form and implementation is indicative of a view of a limited role for the
state in social issues. This is the PWC with a weak version of the role of the
state, limited to promoting business and providing adjustment welfare not
redistributive justice.
The Energy Sector

The World Bank has, since its fi rst loan in the electricity sector in early
1995, had as its main goal a fully privatised electricity sector. It has pur-
sued this through six loans and one guarantee in the sector, as well as
numerous linked technical assistance grants and conditions in PRSCs.
There were two loans during 1993–1997 and three plus a guarantee in
2000–2004. The Bank’s program in Vietnam is similar to that followed
in other Asian countries—it started with the introduction of Independent
Power Producers (IPPs) on the generation side of the industry (Beder 2003,
86–100), the preconditions for which were introduced by the 1995 Power
Sector Rehabilitation and Expansion Project and an associated technical
assistance grants. These funds ‘assisted’ the power sector move toward a
more commercial structure and helped to unbundle the generation, trans-
mission, and distribution functions (World Bank 1995). Conditions on the
loan included implementation of the outcomes of Bank-funded studies on
industry structure, legislative requirements, fi nancial management, and
electricity tariffs.
The introduction of an IPP, called Phu My 2–2, at the Phu My power
generation complex outside Ho Chi Minh City was a condition of the 1996
power sector development loan. A Bank’s report hailed this development as
a ‘breakthrough in the introduction of private power in Viet Nam’ (World
Bank1995). The loan included funding to develop the technical, commer-
cial, and legal structure of the IPP. An associated technical assistance grant
aimed to create ‘a legal and regulatory framework for the power sector that
would be conducive to private sector participation’ (1995, 32–3).
The construction of Phu My 2–2 by foreign investors was assisted by
a USD $75 million guarantee from the Bank in 2002; much of the other
capital was sourced from the Asian Development Bank and Japan Bank for
International Cooperation. 23 The Bank guarantee to the private investors
is, in turn, guaranteed by the GoV. Further, the state owned electricity
company, EVN, was required to sign a twenty year power purchase agree-
ment for Phu My 2–2 outputs. So at the end of the day, Phu My 2–2 was
designed by the World Bank fund, it was built with their guarantee, and the
private investors assume virtually no risk—it is transferred to the GoV and
EVN, which must continue to purchase power at a set price even if techno-
logical or other breakthroughs result in a significant decline in the costs of
generation or if demand is not sufficient. This certainly begs the question of
why have private companies in the fi rst place. The Phu My 2–2 guarantee is
a powerful statement of the Bank’s views on the role of states and markets.
Given that the project was approved two years before the new National
Electricity Law was passed by the National Assembly, it also indicates that
the pace and sequencing of reform is secondary to privatisation.
Two of the Bank’s three loans during the 2000–2004 period were in
rural electrification (RE), these aimed to expand access to electricity in
rural areas via grid extensions and alternative energy sources. Expanding
rural household’s access to energy could have significant impacts on living
standards. There are, however, a couple of catches in the loans showing
the more coercive side to Bank hegemony. First, connection to the national
grid, the largest part of the program, is only provided to communes that
demonstrate adequate economic rates of return from the connection. 24 Pov-
erty reduction is thus second to economic growth. Second, the distribution
model is archetypal Washington Consensus. In rural areas, electricity distri-
bution is undertaken by a variety of commune and district level enterprises.
The RE projects formalises this system of well over a thousand communal
and provincial electricity distributors. A condition of the RE projects is the
commercialisation and subsequent equitisation of these distributors (and
the equitisation of EVN assets as well). 25 The documents contain very little
analysis of the technical and fi nancial viability of small operations across
different parts of the country, but this model certainly serves to keep rural
operations separate from urban ones, a core part of the Bank’s utilities
privatisation model (Amenga-Etego and Grusky 2005).
Two new ideas appear in the energy loans in the second period of study:
decentralisation and participation. Decentralisation is a key policy pre-
scription in all three loans in the second period. It is a policy that superfi-
cially responds to critics of the one-size-fits-all view of Bank programs and
is assumed to provide more local participation in decision-making (Hadiz
2004, 700–1). However, as in Vedi Hadiz’s analysis of decentralisation in
176 Susan Engel
Indonesia, decentralisation in the loan projects is a technical issue regard-
ing the most efficient level to manage and administer electricity enterprises.
Moreover, this form of decentralisation facilitates privatisation of profit-
able distributors. Participation has limited purposes too: communities in
RE projects are consulted to ‘determine the need for electrification,’ which
means to assist the assessment of the economic rates of return and confi rm
that 60 per cent of the local population are willing to pay for the service.
This supports Cammack’s argument that the Bank’s vision of civil society
participation is a deliberate strategy ‘to induce people to experience tightly
controlled and carefully delimited forms of market-supporting activity as

empowerment’ (2003, 12).
FROM WASHINGTON TO POST-WASHINGTON

CONSENSUS: A LIMITED IMPACT ON LENDING
This analysis of the Bank’s lending program in Vietnam suggests that the
impact of the PWC on lending is more limited than on Bank policy docu-
ments and research output. There are some notable influences, such as the
expansion of the structural adjustment agenda, concessions to potential
impact of activities on poverty, and the focus on public administration,
decentralisation, and corruption. However, when the two agendas con-
fl ict, the hegemonic principles underlying the Washington Consensus pre-
vail over PWC concerns with, for example, market failures, the pace and
sequencing of reform, and the role of the state. This is particularly the case
in the key Washington Consensus items of privatisation and liberalisation.
In these areas, too, it is clear that the Bank’s agenda is not driven by a
concern for economic efficiency and performance but rather by a political
agenda of systematically removing control from government in favour of
private interests.
The positive changes that have occurred, such as the increase (though
limited) in participation and the Bank’s support of a higher percentage of
the national budget going to education, can be traced to the Clinton admin-
istration, new institutional economics, and the NGO challenge. Returning
to the Gramsci framework, it is clear that the shift in development ideol-
ogy and practice represented by the PWC is not a systemic transformation,
rather it is a short-term conjunctural project to deepen and extend the hege-
monic control of a neoliberal pax Americana, achieved by reconfiguring the
Bank’s mission from one predominately focused on reshaping the economic
structure of recipient countries to a project of reshaping the historical bloc
to be compatible to US needs and more palatable to local social forces. The
Washington Consensus did not live up to pax Americana’s needs in pro-
moting countries not just sympathetic to it but able to support its existence
politically, socially, economically, and militarily. Its costs were too high
and its outcomes too limited. This revised mission required new tactics.
The Washington Consensus mission enabled the Bank to more or less rely
upon economic coercion during the 1980s. The post–Washington Consen-
sus focus on political and social relations requires increasing reliance on
more consensus-based strategies, in particular a leading role in moral and
intellectual leadership of development discourse and practice.
Not surprisingly, the Bank’s adoption of these tactics and roles has not
always been complete or successfully implemented. In the analysis of how
the PWC translates to lending practices, it is possible to see some of the
gaps, inconsistencies, and problems and to utilise these to challenge the
Bank’s activities. Equally, the case study approach indicates the way in
which domestic historical blocs interact with the Washington Consensus
and PWC agendas. In Vietnam, where the Bank has been confronted by
a strong, coherent but not necessarily liberal state, it has often adopted
consensus-based strategies, aimed at slowly modifying the moral and
intellectual terrain of debate. At the same time, it falls back on coercion,
particularly in defending the hegemonic principles of the Washington
Consensus. 26
NOTES
1. One of the key notes in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks on hegemony is enti-

tled ‘Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force,’ in A. Gramsci, Selections
from the Prison Notebooks, eds. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 175–209. This is also the position
of R. Howson, Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity (London: Routledge,
2006), 13.
2. E. Augelli and C. N. Murphy, ‘Gramsci and International Relations: A
General Perspective and Example from Recent US Policy Towards the
Third World,’ in ed. S. Gill, Gramsci, Historical Materialism and Inter-
national Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 128.
On the political/civil society relationship, see J. A. Buttigieg, ‘The Con-
temporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique,’ boundary
2(2005):32;1.
3. On the sometimes competing uses of the terms ‘state’ and ‘civil society’
in Gramsci, see Anderson, ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’ (1976),
10–13.
4. On Fordism see Gramsci (1971), 279–318. His analysis of the Catholic
Church is more scattered. See Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, especially the
Fifth Notebook, but also pages 76 and 116–7. For an analysis of the inter-
national nature of this analysis, see Augelli and Murphy (1993): 129–30
and 44.
5. Bieler, A. and A. D. Morton, ‘A Critical Theory Route to Hegemony, World
Order and Historical Change: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International
Relations,’ in Capital & Class 82(2004):89; R. W. Cox, ‘Social Forces,
States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,’ in Neo-
realism and Its Critics, ed. R. Keohane, (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986), 220–5.
6. A different but largely synergistic approach can be found in G. Arrighi, ‘The
Three Hegemonies of Historical Capitalism,’ in Gramsci, Historical Materi-
178 Susan Engel
alism and International Relations, ed. S. Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1986), 182.
7. See also M. Rupert, ‘(Re-)Engaging Gramsci: A Response to Germain and
Kenny,’ Review of International Studies 24, 3(1998): 427–34.
8. Three other bodies have been added to the group since 1961, but only the
IBRD and IDA provide development lending. The IBRD and IDA are what
the World Bank Group itself states is meant when using the term ‘World
Bank’ The World Bank Group Website; available from http://www.world-
bank.org (accessed March 2003).
9. On the Washington Consensus, see P. Cammack, ‘Attacking the Poor,’ New
Left Review 13(2002): 125–134; M. Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of
Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (London: Zed Books,
1997); W. Easterly, ‘The Lost Decades: Developing Countries’ Stagnation
in Spite of Policy Reform 1980–1998’ (Washington: The World Bank,
2001); S. George and F. Sabelli, Faith and Credit: The World Bank’s Secu-
lar Empire (London: Penguin Books, 1994); Mortgaging the Earth: The
World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Develop-
ment (Boston: Beacon Press); J. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents
(London: Penguin Books, 2002); E. Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life!
The Tyranny of Global Finance. R. Krishnan and V. Briault Manus, trans.
(London: Pluto Press, 1999); R. Wade, ‘Japan, the World Bank, and the
Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Per-
spective,’ New Left Review 217(1996): 3–36; V. Wodsak, ‘World Bank
Reform—a Critical Investigation: Change and Continuity in the World
Bank’s Approach to Development in the 1990s’ (2002), a thesis submitted
for the degree of Master of Arts. Queen’s University.
10. John Williamson labelled these commitments and policies ‘the Washing-
ton Consensus’ in 1990. See B. Fine, Social Capital Versus Social Theory:
Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium (Lon-
don: Routledge, 2001), 132.
11. M. T. Berger and M. Beeson, ‘Lineages of Liberalism and Miracles of
Modernisation: The World Bank, the East Asian Trajectory and the Inter-
national Development Debate,’ Third World Quarterly 19, 3(1998): 499.
See also Wodsak, World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation (2002),
71–74.
12. See for example Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative Net-
work; available from http://www.saprin.org/ (access date: July 2004).
13. The Bank’s Articles of Agreement explicitly prohibits it from political
activity (Article III, Section 5(b)).
14. See also B. Fine, ‘Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Con-
sensus: An Introduction.’ in Development Policy in the Twenty-First Cen-
tury: Beyond the Post-Washington Consensus, eds. B. Fine, C. Lapavitsas
and J. Pincus (London: Routledge); N. Hermes and R. Lensink, ‘Changing
the Conditions for Development Aid: A New Paradigm?’ Journal of Devel-
opment Studies 37, 6(2001): 1–16; D. Porter and D. Craig, ‘The Third Way
and the Third World: Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion in the Rise
of “Inclusive” Liberalism,’ Review of International Political Economy 11,
2(2004): 387–423; Wodsak, World Bank Reform—a Critical Investiga-
tion.
15. Figures are from OECD and World Bank sources. All figures are in USD.
16. Commentators from the left and right who suggest Doi Moi was like a
structural adjustment program include W. Turley, ‘Viet Nam: Ordeals
of Transition,’ in Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a
Financial Crisis, ed. K. D. Jackson (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
1999) and B. Van Arkadie and R. Mallon, Viet Nam: A Transition Tiger?
(Canberra: Asia Pacific Press at The Australian National University, 2003).
However, Stefan de Vylder amongst others makes a good case for being
cautious about such a characterisation, see S. de Vylder, ‘State and Market
in Vietnam: Some Issues for an Economy in Transition,’ in C. L. Gates
and V. C. Dam, Vietnam in a Changing World (Surrey: Curzon Press Ltd.,
1995)
17. For a review of the content of PRSPs in this regard see Panos Institute,
Reducing Poverty: Is the World Bank’s Strategy Working? (2002). http://
www.panos.org.uk. Accessed March 2005.
18. Note that despite the focus on poverty reduction in the PWC, overall levels
of lending for education, the environment and health across Bank lending
have remained fairly stable since 1996 at a level lower than the fi rst half
of the 1990s and that social ‘sector lending has only increased marginally
following the record low of 2.5 per cent of Bank lending in 1996.’ Wodsak,
World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation, 90.
19. World Bank, Program Document for a Proposed Credit to the Socialist
Republic of Vietnam for a Second Poverty Reduction Support Credit (P-
7584, May 30, 2003); World Bank, Program Document for a Proposed
Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Third Poverty Reduc-
tion Support Credit (28916-VN, May 25, 2004); World Bank, Report and
Recommendation on a Proposed Poverty Reduction Support Credit to the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (P-7446-VN, April 23, 2001). Note that in
late 2004, structural adjustment lending was renamed development policy
lending.
20. This can take place through one of four methods: maintaining the existing
state capital value and issuing shares to attract capital; selling part of the
existing state capital value of the enterprise; selling part of the enterprise;
and selling the entire state capital value of an enterprise and turning it into
a joint stock company, M. Evans, ‘Embedding Market Reform through
Statecraft—the Case of Equitization in Vietnam,’ Paper presented at the
Workshop on Equitisation in Vietnam, Institute of Social Science, Ho Chi
Minh City (October 2004, 6).
21. The World Bank’s own estimates are that from 2004–2006, 300,000 to
400,000 workers will be made redundant.
22. B. D. Hai, New Focus on Redundant Workers (Institute of Social Sciences,
2003); T. T. Sam and B. D. Hai, ‘An Overview of the Most Crucial Period
of Equitization in Vietnam,’ Paper presented at the Workshop on Equitisa-
tion in Vietnam, Institute of Social Sciences, Ho Chi Minh City (October
2004).
23. World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed International
Development Association Partial Risk Guarantee to Mekong Energy Com-
pany Ltd in the Social Republic of Vietnam. (24692, August 2002).
24. World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Rural Energy Project (20351-VN, May
1, 2000); World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit
to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Second Rural Energy Project
(29860-VN, October 21, 2004a).
25. The other project is outlined in World Bank. Project Appraisal Document
on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a System
Efficiency Improvement, Equitization and Renewables Project (24192-VN,
June 4, 2002a).
26. For a contrast with Indonesia see S. Engel, ‘Where to Neoliberalism? The
World Bank and the Washington Consensus in Indonesia and Vietnam,’
180 Susan Engel
in Asia Reconstructed: from Critiques of Development to Postcolonial
Studies. Sixteenth Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of
Australia (Australia: University of Wollongong, 2006). http://coombs.anu.
edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/proceedings.html.
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11 Hegemony, Globalisation,
and Neoliberalism
The Case of West Bengal, India
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase
and Timothy J. Scrase
INTRODUCTION
The intensification of globalisation has marked the ascendancy of neo-

liberal paradigms in development thinking. Its impact in the Asia-Pacific
region has brought about significant social and cultural change. Over the
last decade, developing countries such as India have pursued policies of
economic liberalisation. The unswerving faith in liberalization policies as
the solution to the overall improvement of the population’s standard of
living underpins the state’s rationale for forging ahead with the economic
reforms. The middle class is said to have expanded greatly and benefited
from the structural adjustment reforms to the economy and industry. Based
on fieldwork among lower middle class households in the Indian state of
West Bengal, this chapter examines the concrete experiences of those
affected by these policies. In particular, we examine the ways in which the
reforms have made inroads into the lives of people who were ardent sup-
porters of a different way of thinking.
According to a number of authors, neoliberal approaches have become
the new orthodoxy in development (Portes 1997; Gosovic 2000; Four-
cade-Gorinchas and Babb 2002). The resurrection and hegemony of
market-driven approaches identify state intervention as inefficient and
counterproductive and thereby call for developing countries to privatise
state owned enterprises, adopt a range of stabilisation measures to address
balance of payment crises, and limit public expenditure. The deleterious
effects of these policies on Asia’s poor (Scrase, Holden and Baum 2003) and
the positive consequences for the ‘new rich’ (Robison and Goodman 1996)
are amply evident. However, beyond these dichotomous analyses, the ways
in which local communities, classes, and specific cultural groups confront,
challenge, or acquiesce to the shifts in noninterventionist approaches of
governments in economic and social arenas remain relatively unexplored.
In the Indian context, the competing narratives of the supporters of the
reforms (Bhagavati 1993; Ahluwalia and Little 1998) and the critics (Cor-
bridge and Harriss 2000; Chandrashekhar and Ghosh 2002; Chakrabarti
and Cullenberg 2003) of the reforms overlook the experiences of those who
Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism 185
do not fit neatly into the extremes of the social spectrum. By contrast, our
research explores the complexities and contradictions of a segment within
the middle classes who remain both supporters of neoliberalism yet are
sceptical of the promised benefits. By presenting a critical analysis of the
underlying reasons for people to engage in certain neoliberal ideologies of
the workplace, such as elitism, privatisation, and efficiency, this chapter
draws attention to the ways in which hegemony is operationalised and sus-
tained.
GLOBAL EFFICIENCY AND THE DYNAMICS

OF A NEW WORKPLACE CULTURE
In Notebook 22, entitled Americanism and Fordism, Gramsci (1971, 279–

318) sought to explore the changes taking place in production across the
West. In effect, Gramsci was exploring the nature of ‘globalised’ capital-
ist production by comparatively analysing the changes and developments
to capitalism that were emerging in America to understand whether these
changes marked the beginning of a new historical situation or whether it was
a mere conjunction with no lasting significance. While Gramsci offered no
definitive answer, the nature of his analysis—that is, his linking features of
the superstructure with changes occurring in the socio-economic base and
projecting the trends into the future—is significant. First, Gramsci was able
to show that changes in production could not be achieved simply by alter-
ing the factory. In effect, production was intimately tied to the social and
cultural realms, so any required changes in the one demanded concomitant
changes in the other. Second, Gramsci highlighted the national specificity of
the basis of production; in other words, capitalism in America was devoid of
the ‘parasitic’ groups such as the aristocracy that plagued the development
of efficient production in Europe (Gramsci 1971, 281). The importance of
this difference suggests that capitalism works most effectively when it is able
to control socio-cultural tradition and override cumbersome economic prac-
tices. Central to this change was the nascent middle class. Finally, in the first
three decades of the twentieth century, as now, the revolutionary working
class, and the left more generally, was in decline, thus enabling a new ideol-
ogy to infiltrate the mass of workers and produce what Gramsci refers to as
a ‘passive revolution.’
Further, Gramsci sets out inter alia the beginnings of a new worker subjec-
tivity that incorporates elitism and consumption, which today is most clearly
aligned with neoliberal ideologies. This in turn, provides a useful backdrop
to understanding the responses of people in this study. So, for example, how
is it that some workers express ideologies of work efficiency, often, in the face
of, lifelong thinking and practice? Why are the notions of efficiency, priva-
tisation, and deregulation so rapidly gaining currency as the central motifs
of everyday language and practice? These are complex questions to be sure,
186 Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase
but while their answers are not immediate, it is clear that these socio-cul-
tural phenomena did not manifest automatically. Just as Gramsci (1971, 293)
pointed out that ‘Americanisation’ requires a particular environment so, too,
the global infiltration of neoliberalism into India requires a certain environ-
ment that is created by both governments and international inter-governmen-
tal bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
In this environment, the liberalism that provides the ground for new ideology
and practice does not require the promotion of free trade and political liberty
as much as ‘free initiative’ and ‘economic individualism’ operating at the
level of civil society so that through its historical development it gives rise to
a new workplace regime (Gramsci 1971, 293).
In much the same way as Gramsci articulated the American situation,
Harvey (2005) suggests that the promotion of the work ethic and the nobility
of efficiency and productivity in the contemporary moment has been made
possible through persuasive socialisation and coercive maintenance, or in
other words, through a hegemonic process. Here the state takes a proac-
tive role in the inculcation of the population with particular ideologies of
the workplace. The state works within a historical bloc formed between the
owners of capital, the political class, and the intellectuals, such as the media.
The fundamental motivation for the dissemination of capitalist logics, such
as the deployment of ideals that included ‘efficiency’ and ‘flexibility,’ is the
security and maintenance of the economic and political systems. However,
this was not merely a case of imposition of these ideologies, but the articu-
lation of a common value system or hegemony through the incorporation
of ideological elements from the broad socio-cultural sphere (Mouffe 1981,
230). Crucially though, within this hegemonic system operates ‘hegemonic
principles’ (Howson 2006, 23) that, while allowing the operation of interests
and needs from other subaltern groups, does not alter the emphasis on cer-
tain politico-economic interests as imperatives. It is through the protection
of these hegemonic principles that neoliberal hegemony operates as a ‘domi-
native hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 29) and is then able to legitimise certain
ideologies via the state as those of the mass.
This dominative hegemonic process resonates with Branislav Gosovic’s
(2000, 447, 448) notion of a ‘global intellectual hegemony’ (GIH) that is
central to neoliberal globalisation. This GIH is perpetuated through the
frequent use of particular terminology and clichés that legitimise its prin-
ciples and imbue it with positive qualities. So that in the language of GIH,
which echoes Gramsci’s (1971, 301–307) critical analysis of Taylorism in the
emerging American capitalist hegemony, neoliberal globalisation is packaged
as new, modern, scientific, results orientated, and inevitable. It is above all
rationalist and elitist and
[i]t is certain that they are not concerned with the ‘humanity’ or the
‘spirituality’ of the worker, which are immediately smashed. This
‘humanity and spirituality’ cannot be realised except in the world of
production and work and in productive ‘creation.’ They exist most in
the artisan, in the demiurge, when the worker’s personality was reflected
whole in the object created and when the link between art and labour
was still very strong (Gramsci 1971, 303).
Any questioning of this neoliberal paradigm is dismissed as old fashioned.

In this context, public institutions are represented negatively and as inef-
ficient in marked contrast to representations of private institutions (Gosovic
2000, 450, 453). Gosovic (2000, 452) goes on to claim that individuals, par-
ticularly those who are in the service of governments, may have their own
reasons for not speaking out against neoliberalism, including their desire to
keep their jobs and obtain promotions. Bourdieu (1998) discusses the inse-
curities that have become normative under the paradigm of globalisation as
playing a significant role in the institutionalisation, and thus the adoption of
particular market discourses into the language and actions of workers. The
growing unemployment and casualisation of the workforce has shaped the
actions and responses of many workers, breaking down any form of resis-
tance, and more often than not setting worker against worker. In light of
these market articulations, and indeed out of fear, workers strive to become
the most efficient, flexible, and productive workers in an organisation. These
forces affect everyone whether employed or not; ‘the awareness of it never
goes away: it is present at every moment in everyone’s mind’ (Bourdieu 1998,
82). People living under the effects of global neoliberalism constantly feel
that they are replaceable; as a result, there is a definite sense that people come
to regard work as a privilege, ‘a fragile threatened privilege’ (Bourdieu 1998,
82), and most certainly not a right. In this new neoliberal hegemony, ratio-
nality and elitism mark what Gramsci (1971, 303) referred to as the ‘human
complex of an enterprise’; it is this complex that must be maintained, just as
any other machine.
METHODOLOGY: TOWARDS AN
ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF ECONOMIC
REFORMS IN WEST BENGAL, INDIA
Based on the exploration of 120 households, our study is ethnographic and

qualitative in nature. Fieldwork was conducted over a seven-year period
(1999–2006) in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the capital of the state of West Ben-
gal and in the provincial town of Siliguri in North Bengal district. The narra-
tives of our informants are derived from participant observation and in-depth
interviews with low-ranking salaried workers and their families. People in our
study can be best described as belonging to lower–middle class households.
The lower middle classes in Bengal can be defined in terms of a particular
economic bracket and a cultural milieu. The average household incomes of
people in our study range between US $250–500 per month.1 In terms of cul-
ture, this group forms part of the Bengali bhadralok. The term is multivalent
but means most of all ‘respectable people.’ The bhadralok were distinguished
by their refined behaviour and cultivated taste, but not necessarily substantial
wealth and power. They emerged as a new social group in the late eighteenth
century in Bengal and were the first to gain entry into urban professional
occupations. Although originally linked to upper castes in contemporary
Bengali society, they are a distinct status group that is neither coterminous
with caste nor class (Mukherjee 1975). Changed from their original position
for two centuries as a reasonably well-off, educated, and highly cultured sta-
tus group, the bhadralok are now a heterogeneous group and often indigent.
They still seek education above all for their children and attempt to maintain
a veneer of their once high social status by engaging in writing, music, and the
arts, but the economic reality of the present has meant that the penchant for
cultural pursuit, the traditional status maintainer, is giving way (often to their
disadvantage) to conspicuous consumption (Scrase 1993).
Throughout the 1990s the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imple-
mented structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in India. In July 1991, the
New Economic Policy (NEP) was formulated. West Bengal developed its own
NEP in 1994. In a dramatic reversal of protecting domestic industrial capital,
the current economic reforms aim at liberalising the economy from various
bureaucratic regulations and controls that are said to have stifled growth.
Making the economy more efficient through increased market orientation is
the major goal of the reforms. The central strategy is to secure a greater share
of the global market in industry, trade, and services through increased pro-
ductivity. This is in marked contrast to the postindependence developmental
strategy of self-reliant economic growth and the rhetoric of ‘socialism.’ Under
the earlier five-year plans, the government played an interventionist role in
industrialisation through the public sector, which assumed the ‘command-
ing heights’ through licensing and regulatory mechanisms. The new market
oriented state ideology and economic reforms are confusing to many people.
This was particularly the case in West Bengal, which has been ruled by a
coalition of left political parties since 1977, dominated by the Communist
Party of India CPI (M). Initially opposed to market reforms in its rhetoric, the
Left Front government has now become vociferous in its attempt to attract
foreign transnational corporations into the state. The Left Front’s position is
central to our analytical concerns.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Fear of retrenchment was ever present for some of our respondents. However,
what struck us most was the growing prominence of a political rationality
that is geared towards producing a principle of personal responsibility. The
most salient feature of our respondents’ acquiescence was the technocratic
solutions that underpin market discourses. Technocratic solutions have a
degree of appeal among our respondents because of the latter’s familiar-
ity with the modernising discourses of rational planning characteristic of
developmentalism in postcolonial states, regardless of political ideology.
Therefore, the Left Front’s pragmatic embrace of market solutions, which
are now being reconfigured as ‘rational’ progress towards better develop-
mental outcomes, appears to our respondents as part of a continuum, not a
radical departure. More significantly, as Hann (2002) has demonstrated in
his ethnographic accounts of transitional economies, it is equally important
to recognise the meaning that socialist ideologies have in the aspirations of
ordinary people, as well as the significance of their emancipatory rhetoric

and practical benefits. Suffice to say that for many people in West Bengal,
the CPI (M) has been a symbol of some remarkable transformations and a
catalyst for others (Lieten 1996). These confl icting approaches to planned
development were reflected in the narratives of our informants.
An overwhelming majority of respondents disputed that privatisation
could bring many benefits to people in West Bengal. This view was directly
related to their attitudes to the nature of the private sector. For many lower
middle class people, ‘private’ is synonymous with small fi rms. Such compa-
nies offer low salaries, little or no job security, and lack any well-founded
labour protection laws. Insecurity and uncertainty in these organisations
formed the basis for respondents’ denials of the benefits of privatisation. The
majority of those employed in the unregulated sector were not aware of the
work practices of transnational corporations (TNCs) or even large private
companies like the TATA Corporation (India’s own multinational, which
provides numerous benefits to its workers). Many government employees
were similarly unaware of employee benefits offered in large corporations,
other than the high salaries offered to upper-level professionals. If these
employees lost their jobs, it was likely they would end up working in the
unprotected, small-scale private sector. Some were well aware that given
their level of education and training, it was unlikely they would gain entry
into positions in major companies or TNCs.
Our respondents repeatedly emphasised the safety nets offered by gov-
ernment employment. Not only was private enterprise characterised by inse-
curity, but it was also inherently driven by the profit motive. In contrast,
government organisations were seen as more humane. Respondents often
compared the callous attitude of the private sector with the compassionate
nature of the state. While the former was entirely driven by profit motives,
leaving workers to the vagaries of owners and managers, the latter was
typified by universal rules and was said to exist for the benefit of all. On
the one hand, our informants’ positive appraisals stand in marked contrast
to the arguments that characterise the developmental state as oppressive.
On the other, neoliberal conceptions, such as the idea of working for profit
or of government enterprises being ‘profitable,’ were anathema to many of
our informants, who regarded government service as a public duty. Their
identities were tied up with working in it. Parents continually reinforced
the importance of the public sector to their children. The objectivity and
open-minded nature of government bureaucrats were compared with the
personal whims of employers in private enterprise. From the perspective of
low-ranking clerical employees, personal vendettas of owners and manag-
ers in private enterprise were a key concern. The following comment exem-
plifies such sentiments:
If you make a mistake in a government organisation, the officers are
impartial. They will examine the situation and will judge accordingly.
They will not have a personal vendetta against you because you made a
mistake. Nor will they do you special favours because you happen to be
in their good books (male, thirty-one years old, clerk, state university).
Asserting that IMF clauses on adjustment are farcical, a number of key
informants argued that economic liberalisation is a policy choice engi-
neered entirely by powerful classes and that the government of the day
had implemented it in an undemocratic fashion. However, others coun-
tered the claims that citizens were being excluded from decision-making
processes by arguing that the reforms have not been implemented accord-
ing to the original plans. These confl icting perspectives were primarily
determined by the respondents’ locations in public and private sectors.
Optimistic about liberalisation, a number of formal3 private sector work-
ers felt that the ethos of hard work and effi ciency inherent in the private
sector should prevail among government employees. In short, the latter’s
current misery was attributed to their own failings. Such unforgiving
attitudes were partly the result of those expressing them never having
worked in a public institution and were further reinforced by relentless
media commentaries on state inefficiency (cf. McLean 2001). They were
also consistent with the growing call for workers’ ‘self-responsibility.’
This is a strategy of replacing old-fashioned regulatory techniques with
techniques of self-regulation (Lenke 2001). According to Beck (2001),
this is the ideal individual worker, who will take responsibility for his
or her part in the creation of an efficient and responsible enterprise. The
‘price’ of individuality means taking personal responsibility for any fail-
ure or misfortune. The benefit is that individuals can now feel a sense of
control—‘not passive refl ections of circumstances but active shapers of
their own lives, within varying degrees of limitation’ (Beck 2001, 167).
In recent years, positive appraisals of private enterprise for its dyna-
mism, initiative, and offer of incentives have captured the public imagi-
nation and come to dominate public opinion. Employees are extolled for
the virtues of punctuality, diligence, dedication, and enthusiasm. The
public sector is portrayed as its obverse: bureaucratic and unproduc-
tive, its workers lethargic. Among our respondents, advocates of private
sector efficiency included workers from large private corporations, pri-
vate school teachers, a small number of highly qualified civil servants,
and young people in general. The popularly held opinions concerning
government employees, particularly their tendencies to ‘skive off,’ were
universal among our respondents from the private sector. More often
than not, pre-existing disdainful attitudes towards public sector workers
underpinned their assumptions. Typically, they were from genteel social
backgrounds and had neither worked nor intended to work in the pub-
lic sector. Parallel standpoints could be identified among older workers
in the public sector and retired people, who pointed to the decline of
the work ethic. However, it was essentially moral discourse that framed
their critique. For example, a retired headmistress of a public school
was emphatic that ‘teachers nowadays are always slacking off’ and
remarked,
instead of being there for the students [in government schools] they’re
more interested in setting up private tuitions in their homes. Sure,
this has been a growing trend in the last two decades, only now it
has got worse. They have to buy all the consumer goods advertised
on TV somehow; it may as well be the students [paying for it] . . .
teachers as a group have been highly critical of liberalisation from
an ideological point, but many of their colleagues are practising the
worst kind of privatisation.
WORK PLACES AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATIONS
We found that experiences within given work settings have shaped the
outlook of employees. We explored the experiences of respondents who
had initially worked in the private sector and then joined government
service. They compared the two sectors and found that private sector
work was monotonous and offered no freedoms. Freedom was highly
valued by many people. The absence of autonomy and freedom in private
enterprise lie at the heart of their criticism. But theirs was also a moral
critique, directed at the profit motive that drives private enterprise, which
was always prone to rationalisation and staff cut backs.
Many of our respondents were keen to point out the qualitative differ-
ences between the two sectors. These were regarded as special conditions
that money could buy. Accordingly, they argue that privatisation would
not necessarily improve efficiency. Table 11.1 shows the distribution of
attitudes towards privatisation as a means to improving the efficiency of
an organisation.
Some departments, such as education and health care, exist for the
public good and should not be privatised. In general, their views were
characterised by a collectivist orientation: they believed not only that
privatisation is detrimental to the self, but also, more broadly, that oth-
ers will suffer from it. Many of these employees have long been politi-
cally active, though not always as CPI (M) cadres.
Table 11.1 Privatisation Improves Efficiency of Organisation (N=86)
Frequency Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid yes 14 16 16
no 41 48 64
don’t know 6 7 71
N/A 25 29 100
Total 86 100.00
The following comment from someone who had shifted from the private
sector to the public sector challenges the commonly held view that the public
sector lacks a culture of work:
There is a usual assumption that in the government sector there is no

work culture, but if you look around here, everyone is deeply involved
in their work. You won’t even find this kind of commitment within a
private firm. No, I’ll never want privatisation.
Another respondent currently working in a government job was previ-

ously employed in a private company. He denounced the private sector in the
following way:
Listen, I was in a scientific organisation before I came here. Things were

very different to this place. Everything was run for a commercial pur-
pose, for a profit . . . Certainly progress can be made, but you can’t
apply the same ethos in government. You just can’t engage in any risk-
taking activity. You have the fear that this belongs to the government
and you can’t do as you wish.
As public sector employees, they defended its continued existence. The

table above shows that only one in eight respondents felt that privatisation
would improve the efficiency of government organisations. Although some
respondents acknowledged the deficiencies of government departments, they
were dismissive of charges of inefficiency and lack of a work culture. Instead,
they argued that the shortcomings were trivial and we should not focus on
them. More significantly, they challenged the bogey of privatisation that is
often paraded as a punitive threat to discipline work forces. One informant
surmised ‘ . . . if this place is privatised, there is no guarantee that it would
be more efficient or that people would work more.’ To most low-ranking
government employees, poor management was responsible for inefficien-
cies, not workers. They argued that it is innovative management practices
rather than privatisation that enhance the efficiency of an organisation. The
onus on managers to enhance an organisation’s efficiency will be considered
in the final section of this chapter. In general, public service respondents
were emphatic that government departments should not be judged according
to private sector performance measures because some key institutions and
utilities cannot be privatised. Their main concern was that once privatised,
these economic assets will be sold off to transnational corporations at cheap
rates—a recognition that it is not beneficial to common people. Their fears
appear to be well-founded, as is demonstrated by the cases of privatisation of
utilities in other parts of the world (Beder 2003).
In West Bengal, intense public debates have continued on investment and
infrastructure. Our respondents remain unconvinced that TNCs will make

any investments that will benefit Indians. They remained suspicious of priva-
tisation and foreign capital. Many of our respondents’ views reflected antico-
lonial, nationalist value orientations, especially among the older generation.
In accordance with such perspective, they wanted foreign investment to be
favourable to Indians but also were highly sceptical that this was possible.
Yet, despite such deeply held beliefs and defence of the public sector, there
has been a considerable shift in the views that have come to dominate public
discourse, which in turn have crept into everyday life. There have been two
such remarkable shifts that reflect the schisms of the Left Front. The first is
the necessity of SAPs; the second is the view that reproduces the rhetoric of
efficiency, only this time in relation to the state. The argument that SAPs
will redress the balance of payments crisis is widely accepted. Many of our
respondents argued that, although inherently just and rational, bureaucratic
state procedures might be cumbersome compared with the speed of private
enterprise decision-making. Even those opposed to privatisation on ideologi-
cal grounds urged that government organisations should become efficient.
WORK EFFICIENCY
The ways in which workers internalised and reproduced the rhetoric of effi-
ciency became most apparent when we interviewed a number of workers
in a newly established training and research institute, set up with govern-
ment funding. Currently, it has an autonomous status, and it is envisaged
that ultimately it will become self-funding. We were particularly interested
in this organisation because it is a new endeavour and many of its clerical
and technical personnel were recruited from among experienced private
and public sector employees. While many of the public sector employees
were on secondment (‘deputation’) from other divisions, the private sector
employees had all resigned from their previous posts. The experience and
attitudes of such workers enabled us to gain an insight into the ways in
which workers have internalised and reproduce the rhetoric of efficiency.
Most of the clerical and technical workers expressed a generally positive
view of the organisation and their own career mobility within it. One of their
favourite preoccupations was the efficiency of government organisations in
order to be viable. This view was held by many workers who were at pains
to assert that ‘their’ organisation is the most efficient. This was a markedly
different view from those who said that the performance of government
departments should not be evaluated according to private sector criteria.
Respondents deployed the language of managerialism as important to
enhancing efficiency while rejecting privatisation. Frequently used terms
to describe the qualities that individuals and their coworkers possess
were ‘flexible’ and ‘embracing strategic changes.’ In general, they were
apprehensive about the negative social consequences of liberalisation
and feared that privatisation would result in large-scale retrenchment.

Yet they advocated the imposition on government employees of the kind
of strict work discipline that is common in private enterprise. A com-
monly expressed sentiment was, ‘No, I don’t want privatisation. But I
want people to work as if it was a private organisation.’ A project officer
remarked:
We are operating like a private company for all intents and purposes. We
earn for ourselves. You will find people working here till late at night, on
holidays. We do not clock on and off like some government servants.
The ideal was simultaneously to increase manpower and maintain

efficiency through the use of technology, although respondents were
divided about its impact on the workforce. While some believed that
unemployment would increase, others were optimistic about retraining
and employment generation. A postal clerk explained his vision:
I think instead of privatising it, we should use more of the latest

technology, so that we can provide best service to the public. For
instance, we could take up courier services. If we could provide such
services, the public would turn to us in a greater numbers. For this,
we have to boost our infrastructure.
Ultimately, most hoped that the state will develop appropriate policies to
stave off privatisation. Yet their main defence was that they have acquired
the necessary qualities of being strategic and efficient.
GENERATIONAL DIVIDE
There are generational differences in the embrace of neoliberalism; age-

based differences prevail in attitudes towards government services. Mores
associated with privatisation have permeated more broadly among youth.
Their positive attitudes to the privatisation of government enterprises
stemmed from the decade-long public debates about government inef-
ficiency, the concomitant declining support for the Left Front’s ideology
in urban areas, and the contradictory messages from elders within their
own families. During fieldwork, we found that despite older people’s
fierce defence of the public sector and suspicions of foreign capital and
privatisation, they remained highly critical of the laziness of workers in
government organisations. Many framed their critique in terms of an
erosion of the work ethic within their own generation and pointed to
the commitment of younger people to work hard, often drawing on the
experiences of their own children.
Young people routinely incorporated the language of efficiency and
the much-needed ‘work culture’ among public sector workers into their
everyday conversations. Oft repeated remarks included, ‘I think privati-
sation is good. You can work hard and you will be rewarded’; ‘Govern-
ment organisation is good too, but I have no problems with privatisation’;
‘You can genuinely work in private enterprise’; and ‘People committed
to hard work can get job satisfaction in private organisations—it does
not happen in government jobs.’ Some were quick to point out the casual
atmosphere in government offices compared to their previous experience
in the private sector: ‘In my previous job, I was fully immersed in my
work. Here, you get a lot more leisure.’ Others were eager to show that,
‘See, you are able to interview me here. This would not have been pos-
sible in a private organisation’!
In contrast to older workers’ anxieties about uncertainties and fear of
job losses, young people were not perturbed by the prospect of workplace
restructuring or closure. As a young receptionist confidently explained,
she could easily obtain employment elsewhere:
We were told six months prior to the closure of the East West airlines.
It was not a shock to me. We were told; we knew well ahead. Then a
lot of us tried to get jobs in other airlines. I got a job with the Royal
Jordanian airlines. But it had odd hours and I was already married.
So I didn’t take it up. Then I looked around and found this job.
Despite recognising the failure of the airline to pay her the three-
months’ salary owed to her when she was retrenched, she was not embit-
tered and felt optimistic that greater opportunities would appear in
future. Similar sentiments prevailed among the call centre workers who
have remained in their jobs. For example, Prithviraj, who had joined his
company two years ago and moved up to the position of team leader, felt
that the future held unlimited possibilities.
Arguably, it is among the youth that the Left Front’s own ambigui-
ties came sharply into focus. We found that while sharing the generally
optimistic attitudes of urban middle class youth to liberalisation, some
believed that a cautious and gradualist approach to privatisation is nec-
essary. Others ideologically opposed to privatisation also reproduced the
discourses of efficiency.
HEGEMONY AND STRATEGIC SELF-INTEREST
The dilemma for many respondents was that they value highly the free-
doms allowed in the public sector but were concerned about the abuses
of these very privileges. Many respondents feared that without the work
ethic, they would face closure. On the one hand, there was a realisation
these days that publicly owned enterprises should be profit-oriented and
operate like the private sector. On the other hand, people criticised this
new ethos of ‘market citizenship.’ As noted earlier, many were concerned
that elements of the public sector cannot be privatised.

The logic of respondents’ reproduction of the rhetoric of global effi -
ciency lies in the pervasive influences of the ideologies that associate ‘effi-
ciency’ with ‘privatisation.’ Their legitimacy arises from their articulation
with liberalisation policies, especially the valorisation of efficiency, which
incorporates ideological elements from various powerful groups. Here
Gosovic’s (2000, 450, 453) notion of global intellectual hegemony, and
its negative portrayal of public institutions as inefficient in contrast to
private institutions, has particular resonance. It is easy to see how peo-
ple have internalised the state ideology of global efficiency, particularly
the young, because of the terminology and clichés deployed in the public
domain to propagate it. Yet, as Kagarlitsky (1996) has shown, official
ideologies no longer really convince anyone. It is rather that alternatives
to the dominant ideologies are neutralised and dismantled by those in
power. Thus, any counter-ideologies fi lter through in such fragmented
ways that they do not propose a genuine alternative. Some of our respon-
dents and key informants expressed their disenchantment with liberalisa-
tion only in private.
However, it would be incorrect to assume that our informants espoused
government rhetoric because they were deceived by ideology. They used
themes of competition and deregulation in complex ways, whereby they
neither rejected nor accepted them. In other words, our respondents did
not subscribe to neoliberal ideologies in a uniform and coherent way.
Some had hoped to gain a few advantages from them, even though this
hope may have been illusory. Such strategic self-interest was combined
with a shift in political rationality, increasingly focused on the notion of
individual responsibility. Their acquiescence in self-regulation is partly
affected by the reconfiguration of earlier discourses of the self-sacrifice,
hard work, and rational planning necessary for nation-building.
ROLE OF MANAGEMENT AND EFFICIENCY
According to most of our informants, poor management was responsible

for ‘sick industries.’ Many attributed inefficiency to poor management
rather than the alleged absence of a work culture among employees,
arguing that privatisation itself would not solve the problem of public
enterprise inefficiencies.
Responses differed according to whether people generally held individu-
alist or collectivist views. Those who claimed to be efficient already tended
to reproduce neoliberal ideologies emphasising the importance of indi-
viduals being responsible for the success of their organisations. This was
markedly different from the collectivist perspectives, which rest a general
critique of liberalisation on a platform of antiprivatisation. While militant
employees’ critiques were consistent with their political orientation, the
responses of some highly unionised, unskilled employees revealed a curi-

ous sentiment: On the one hand, their identification of the ‘class enemy’
embodied in the capitalist class seemed only to apply to private enterprise.
On the other hand, they maintained a deferential attitude to public sector
managers. They considered that management in the public sector was in
possession of superior knowledge and higher education.
The differing assessments of managers in terms of their ‘superior knowl-
edge’ refers to techniques of management. Modern management techniques
include the ability to effect and maintain rationality through expert knowl-
edge and yet remain sympathetic to the needs of employees. This man-
agerial model is compatible with furthering the interest of capital while
simultaneously averting conflict between capital and labour. Although
the relationship between capital and labour is inherently antagonistic, it
occurs within a diversity of labour processes. Capital also needs worker
co-operation, creativity, and commitment. According to Thompson (1990),
this encouragement needs to be more than a material lure or ideological
coercion. It appears that in some of the publicly owned enterprises in West
Bengal, bureaucrats highly skilled in managerial techniques have been par-
ticularly effective in eliciting the consent and co-operation of employees by
obscuring the antagonistic relationship between management and work-
ers. This was evidenced by the acquiescence of both those subscribing the
ideologies of managerialism and some militant workers. The latter noted
most emphatically that the success or failure of an organisation is depen-
dent on talented managers who are able to negotiate good relations with
workers to bring about the best outcomes. They fi rmly believed that in all
organisations, staff and management were intimately bound together and
that a good manager has the capacity to ‘manage change’ by introducing
innovative practices to enhance efficiency.
At times, respondents expressed a highly respectful attitude to managers
and bureaucrats. This is in part due to bhadralok reverence of education
and knowledge. Many high-ranking officials in government departments
are drawn from the Indian Administrative Service, and such employment is
highly respected and valued among the Bengali middle class (as it is in most
of India). Therefore, the comparison that some respondents drew between
it and formal sector private enterprises was that although the latter may
offer better pay, managers there are whimsical and personality-driven,
whereas public sector officials are stable and rational and therefore worthy
of respect. Alongside their general contempt for private enterprise, they
noted the lack of talent and decision-making power among its managers.
Contrasting the rational actions of public sector managers with the profit
motives of private enterprise, they also challenged popular perceptions of
wastage in government. For example, a typical response was:
Those who are in charge in government [enterprises] have the knowledge

and the requisite qualities to run a complex organisation. This is lacking
in private enterprise. You just can’t wake up one morning and decide that
you are going to have a lockout or close a college because you are run-
ning a loss. In private enterprise you’re here today and gone tomorrow.
It must be noted here that because a significant proportion of our respon-

dents were unaware of the management practices in large private corpora-
tions, their appraisal of private sector managers is distorted. Contrary to the
popular perceptions of our respondents, managers in large private fi rms are
no less qualified and are drawn from similar social backgrounds as the pub-
lic sector managers who were held in high esteem by our respondents. State
bureaucrats and CEOs of large private corporations are likely to have done
their training in the same prestigious educational institutions. Indeed, man-
agement firms such as TATA Consulting Services have been at the forefront
of providing the necessary expertise to corporations, especially transnational
firms, since liberalisation. Yet it is worth noting that respondents in large pri-
vate corporations did not praise their management, even though they spoke
at length about the advantages and benevolence of corporations that provide
medical benefits, transport, child care, schooling, and the like.
CONCLUSION
In this chapter we have examined the ways in which people give meaning
to notions of efficiency and how they struggle with the contradictions that
emerge as they navigate the terrain between the state’s rhetoric of global
neoliberal efficiency and the reality of their own lives. A number of people
in this study have internalised the government rhetoric as it has moved along
a continuum from earlier state discourses of modernisation and scientific
rationality. A major reason for talented managers being able to solve their
problems is their firm belief in the modernising discourses of techniques and
rationality. For some, the transition from scientific socialism to scientific
managerialism was made possible by the processes of modern education and
political socialisation.
Ultimately, our study shows that there exists an essential and ongoing
tension between the state and labour in West Bengal, especially in the urban
areas. The uncompleted struggle is one whereby the Left Front government
must ideologically convince segments of the urban middle classes of the
benefits of neoliberalism, its hegemonic principles, and the state’s renewed
vigour for liberalisation. However, neoliberal reforms presuppose an indi-
vidualistic, entrepreneurial spirit, which, in comparison to other states in
India, has not been strong in West Bengal. Moreover, many Bengalis see
the benefits of collective action and unionisation, a view strongly and com-
monly held despite political allegiances. In the final analysis, the Left Front
government’s attempts to implement workplace change are regarded suspi-
ciously, as a means by which to undermine workers’ rights and remove their
state protection, a protection fought for and won over several decades.
On one level, the particular commonsense and lived experiences of the
lower middle class show an antipathy toward hegemony of neoliberalism
and yet, on another, they express a desire for India, and Indians, to move
forward and compete in an increasingly globalised, cosmopolitan world.
Economic liberalisation is by no means accepted dogma. There is much
and various evidence of deep dissatisfaction, frustration, and mistrust of
the process.
NOTES
1. The specific group we studied was largely white-collar, salaried persons. Our
respondents consisted of clerks, lower professionals and administrators, and
sales and service personnel. However, sociological attempts to operationalise
class derived from occupational categories and income only partially explain
the position of our informants. Nevertheless, as we note above, historical
evolution of classes in colonial and postcolonial Bengal provides the socio-
economic backgrounds of our informants. At the time we started our field-
work, the average household income was Rs10,000, which has subsequently
doubled. The approximate exchange rate was Indian Rupees (Rs) 40.00 =
US$1.00.
2. For a detailed discussion see Social Dimension of Structural Adjustment in
India, 1991.
3. We use this term in light of the debates on the formal and informal sectors
of the labour market. In the Indian context, the unregulated sector is often
misleadingly equated with the ‘informal sector’ where the vast majority of
workers are concentrated. As Breman (1976) has shown, there are structural
linkages between the formal and the so-called informal sector. Therefore, we
have used the term ‘unregulated sector’ instead. However, there is still a need
to identify formal sector as comprising both public and private enterprises.
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12 Hegemony and the Neoliberal
Historical Bloc
The Australian Experience
Damien Cahill
Antonio Gramsci’s prison writings have proved a popular and important

theoretical lens through which to analyse the phenomenon of neoliberal-
ism.1 This chapter builds upon such work through an analysis of neoliberal
hegemony in the context of contemporary Australia.
Defi nitions of neoliberalism vary. It is generally defi ned as constituted
by particular forms and combinations of either ideology, state economic
management, or processes of capital accumulation. As an ideology, neo-
liberalism is generally identified as emerging from the work of intellectuals
such as Hayek and Friedman, who advocate the withdrawal of the state
from regulation of economic activity. As a regime of state economic man-
agement, neoliberalism is generally viewed as an application of the retreat
of the state. As a process of capital accumulation, neoliberalism is gener-
ally defi ned as the reconfiguration of class relations and the rise to power
of capital’s fi nancial fraction since the 1970s. Consider also Bob Jessop’s
defi nitional approach to neoliberalism as a variety of liberalism that, like
its parent, is simultaneously
a polyvalent conceptual ensemble in economic, political and ideologi-

cal discourse; a strongly contested strategic concept for restructuring
market-state relations with many disputes over its scope, applica-
tion, and limitations; and a recurrent yet historically variable pattern
of economic, political and social organization in modern societies
(2002, 453).
Defi nitions of neoliberalism are further complicated by the paradox that

exists between the policy prescriptions and rhetoric of its proselytisers and
the regulatory logics of neoliberal regimes. While neoliberal theorists advo-
cate the retreat of the state, the reality of neoliberalism is often a reorienta-
tion, rather than a diminution in state regulation of economic and social
processes. This situation is encapsulated by Brenner and Theodore’s term
‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (2002a, 351–357), which distinguishes
neoliberal systems of regulation from the abstractions of neoliberal polemi-
cists. However, mere recognition of a disparity between neoliberal theory
202 Damien Cahill
and practice does not address the issue of how such disparate phenomena
can be grouped under the single heading of ‘neoliberalism.’ Further, Har-
vey notes that neoliberalism is also characterised by ‘uneven geographi-
cal development’ (2005, 87–119). In other words, neoliberalism develops
uniquely in different temporal but, also, geographical contexts, for exam-
ple, from Thatcherite Britain (Hall 1988) to the shock therapy of the for-
mer Eastern European communist states to the integrationist strategies put
in place by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and oth-
ers throughout the Asia-Pacific. Furthermore, neoliberalism evolves histori-
cally and is never a static phenomenon, nor was it born fully formed. We
are better advised to adopt a ‘processual defi nition’ (Peck and Tickell 2002,
383) and to speak of the process of ‘neoliberalization’ (Brenner and Theo-
dore 2002a, 353). Thus, to follow Brenner and Theodore further, neolib-
eralism can begin to be described as a ‘multifaceted, multiscalar dynamic’
that is increasingly reconfiguring and redefi ning the ‘global capitalist sys-
tem’ through ‘the loosening or dismantling of the various institutional
constraints upon marketisation, commodification, the hyperexploitation of
workers, and the discretionary power of private capital’ (2002, 342).
To apprehend this dynamic or process of neoliberalisation, Grams-
ci’s concept of the ‘historical bloc’ is deployed in this chapter because it
offers a framework for identifying the myriad moments constitutive of
neoliberalism. Further, it is able to begin the exposure of the contradic-
tory dynamics that operate within and through neoliberalism and how
they intersect with the national/popular collective will. Notwithstanding
the spatial and historical similarities and unevenness, Australia, because
of its embrace of a neoliberal worldview, represents an important case
study of neoliberalism and its evolution and entrenchment. This will be
the object of study in the following chapter.
GRAMSCI AND NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY
This chapter builds upon the growing literature2 in which Gramsci and
the theory of hegemony have been used to understand the globalisa-
tion of neoliberalism. This chapter offers an analysis of neoliberalism
as hegemonic in contemporary Australia. Unlike earlier analyses, how-
ever, it is undertaken from the vantage of a triumphant neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism in Australia has ‘rolled back’ older institutional arrange-
ments that underpinned the postwar order and has itself been ‘rolled
out’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, 384) in the form of new economic, political,
and social institutions and practices. This has been carried out in the
absence of any significant politico-social challenge. Moreover, the pro-
cess of neoliberalisation in Australia has delivered on at least some of its
promises; these include economic growth, low infl ation, and relatively
low official unemployment rates, as well as a perception of freedom of
Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc 203
choice accompanied by social cohesion and improvement. The process of
neoliberalisation has resulted in high levels of political, social, and eco-
nomic stability. To acknowledge the strengths of neoliberalism, however,
is not to discount its inherently divisive and exploitative nature. Indeed,
the utility of drawing upon Gramsci’s conception of hegemony is that
we are able to better understand the inherent instability and to identify
its obfuscatory processes. In this context, the contemporary Australian
experience of neoliberalism is an important case study of the dynamic
nature of the relations of force within neoliberalism because it offers a
window into the global experience.
HEGEMONY AND THE HISTORICAL BLOC
The Gramscian notion of the ‘historical bloc’ is central to the following

analysis because it enables the mapping and evaluation of neoliberal-
ism as hegemonic in contemporary Australia. However, any analysis of
Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks must be undertaken carefully. As Joseph
Buttigieg, the English language translator of the full text of Gramsci’s
Notebooks, argues:
The text of the prison notebooks does not have a single distinctive
starting point but a multiplicity of points of departure, it does not
progress along the lines of an overarching thesis but opens up sev-
eral avenues of inquiry, it does not arrive at nor does it seem headed
toward a fi nal synthesis but remains inconclusive and open-ended
(1994, 128).
He stresses that Gramsci highlighted the ‘provisional character of his

notes and . . . the possibility that they may contain errors’ (Buttigieg
1992, 33). However, this should be viewed in the context of the ‘prefa-
tory’ nature of certain notes that, in turn, was due as much to the fact
that they were a reflection of his processes of discovery and attention to
the particular as they were to the prison conditions under which he wrote
(Buttigieg 1994, 62). Therefore, the task is to read the Prison Notebooks
through Gramsci’s own method of ‘philology,’ which requires ‘attention
to detail’ in order ‘to ascertain the specificity of the particular’ (Buttigieg
1994, 63) within a broader synthetic whole.
Gramsci’s method of investigation offers a way to apprehend his
Prison Notebooks and its theory of hegemony because it emphasises that
the entirety of an author’s writings be studied in detail in order to ‘search
for its Leitmotiv, for the rhythm of the thought as it develops’ (Gramsci
1971, 383). This can also be read as a way of interpreting Gramsci’s own
work. Thus, ‘a Gramscian way of thinking’ (Morton 2005, 450) and
a Gramscian method moves us to focus on the particular and thereby
204 Damien Cahill
enables us to view phenomena not as static but as historic, which in
the end, will lead beyond dogmatic interpretations. From here, a use-
ful starting point for understanding the concept of the ‘historical bloc’
is Gramsci’s critique of Croce. While Gramsci views Croce’s work as
valuable, he rejects Croce’s idealist interpretation of the dialectic pro-
cess because it emphasises the ‘dialectic of distincts’ (Hoare and Nowell
Smith 1971, xiii). In contradistinction, the historical bloc for Gramsci
represents not distinct moments or levels but ‘[the] unity between nature
and spirit (structure and superstructure), unity of opposites and dis-
tincts’ (Gramsci 1971, 137).

What are we to make of this concept? Boothman equates ‘historical
bloc’ with ‘totality’ (Boothman 2000). He notes that Gramsci distinguishes
between an alliance of distinct forces (blocco sociale) and the ‘historical bloc’
(blocco storico) as a social totality formed through a complex process of
synthesis that represents, amongst other things, the interplay and conflict
between various levels of the structure and superstructure and distincts and
opposites. So, Gramsci’s conception of the historical bloc suggests the dialec-
tical relationship between the various moments or spheres–—that is, social,
economic, and political—are not formed and operationalised as a loose alli-
ance but, rather, as a synthesis where one sphere can only be understood
in the context of operations of the other spheres. This complex synthesis is
expressed in the following passage from the Prison Notebooks:
Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and sub-
jective elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which
the individual is in an active relationship. To transform the external world,
the general system of relations, is to potentiate oneself and to develop oneself
(Gramsci 1971, 360).
Humanity, then, can be conceived of as an ‘historical bloc’ or the product
of the totality of relations of force that embodies a distinction between ontol-
ogy and epistemology. This distinction and relationship between ontology
and epistemology is particularly evident in Gramsci’s writings on the State.
As Adam David Morton (2005, 447) notes, Gramsci comprehends the state
‘as a social relation or ensemble of socially embedded institutions and class
forces’; it is an ‘enlarged concept of the modern State’ (Buttigieg 2005, 43).
For Gramsci, reigning bourgeois conceptions of the state ‘are based on a
distinction between political society and civil society, which is made into
and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological’
(Gramsci 1971, 159–160). The State is always the synthesis of civil and polit-
ical society—that is, an ontological fact—whereas its separation into discrete
spheres serves only as an epistemological tool and, as Buttigieg argues, only
for methodological or heuristic purposes (Buttigieg 2005, 43). This is rein-
forced by Gramsci:
The analysis of these propositions tends, I think, to reinforce the

conception of the historical bloc in which precisely material forces
are the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction
between form and content has purely didactic value, since the mate-
rial forces would be inconceivable historically without form and the
ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces
(1971, 377).
Viewing the historical bloc through Gramsci’s broader prison writings,

then, the various spheres must be understood as separable only for ana-
lytical purposes, and they always maintain an organic unity, synthesis,
or totality in practice. For example, Gramsci writes:
The claim, presented as an essential postulate of historical material-

ism, that every fluctuation in politics and ideology can be presented
and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be
contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in prac-
tice with the authentic testimony of Marx (1971, 407).
He rejects the vulgar determinism inherent in much of the Marxism of

his time and, in particular, the idea that the economic structure alone
determines the superstructure in unilinear and unilateral fashion. Such
views constitute ‘primitive infantilism.’ Further, they are simplistic ren-
derings of the ‘philosophy of praxis’ and not reflective of the work of
Marx or real social processes. This is precisely the point of departure
for conceptualising the historical bloc from an antireductionist and
antideterminist position that exposes a clearer sense of Marxism’s in-
ternal dynamics:
Structures and superstructures form an ‘historical bloc.’ That is to

say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the su-
perstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations
of production (Gramsci 1971, 366).
His use of the term ‘reflection’ may be an attempt to move beyond reduc-
tionist and determinist notions operating in a mechanical fashion within
the social relations of production. He goes on to write that there is a
‘reciprocity between the structure and superstructure’ (1971, 366) that
expresses a rejection of unilinearity and unilaterality of history. The ‘his-
torical bloc’ moves the theory of hegemony towards recognition of the
multiplicity of often antagonistic and contradictory relations of force
that occur simultaneously and produce outcomes that are not given by
any one particular relation or force. This also emphasises that the his-
torical bloc, as Boothman (2000) clarifies, is not a static ensemble but
always historical. For example, in Gramsci’s critique of Bukharin’s The-
ory of Historical Materialism, he charges Bukharin with ‘mechanical
materialism’—that is, Bukharin’s treatise was not historically based but
206 Damien Cahill
a static, ahistorical ‘sociology’ and an attempt to derive the laws of his-
torical development through abstract deductive principles. In contrast,
Gramsci argues emphatically:
The experience on which the philosophy of praxis is based cannot

be schematised; it is history in all its infi nite variety and multiplicity,
whose study can give rise to ‘philology’ as a method of scholarship for
ascertaining particular facts and to philosophy understood as a general
methodology of history (1971, 428).
In opposition to Bukharin’s mechanical ‘sociological’ approach to his-

tory, Gramsci offers ‘philology.’ By this he means ‘the methodological
expression of the importance of ascertaining and precising particular fact-
in their unique and unrepeatable individuality’ (1971, 428). The implica-
tion here is that close attention must be paid to historical contingency to
identify the specific historical relationships within the social, economic,
and political historical bloc.
That these relationships are historically contingent implies that histori-
cal blocs are subject to change. For Gramsci, the vehicle for such change is
the contradictions and antagonisms within an historical bloc. This is not
reducible to the struggle between ‘objective’ class forces:
In reality one can ‘scientifically’ foresee only the struggle, but not the
concrete moments of the struggle, which cannot but be the results of
opposing forces in continuous movement, which are never reducible
to fi xed quantities since within them quantity is continually becoming
quality (1971, 438).
Human history is not the unfolding of a universal logic. Any histori-

ography that is based on this premise Gramsci terms ‘vulgar evolution-
ism’ (1971, 426). Instead, it is the contingent and unforeseeable outcome
of confl ict and contradiction between the various forces, institutions, and
structures within the historical bloc. Human history is therefore a process
of change, destruction, and recomposition within and of historical blocs
(Boothman 2000).
It is now useful to return to the issue of hegemony and identify its rela-
tionship with the historical bloc. For Gramsci, hegemony is the process
whereby one class exercises control over the social, economic, and politi-
cal or historical bloc. However, Gramsci distinguishes hegemony from its
usage as pure ‘domination’ and instead associates hegemony with a balance
between consent and coercion (1971, 57). While elements of both consent
and coercion are likely to be utilised by a social group exercising control,
Gramsci argues that without ‘leadership’—that is, the attainment of con-
sent—hegemony cannot exist. As Fontana argues, ‘A socio-political order
. . . is characterized by a hegemonic equilibrium based on a combination of
force and consent, which is balanced in varying proportions, without force
prevailing too greatly over consent’ (1993, 141). However, where domina-
tion does occur, coercion is seen to be exercised to protect the hegemonic
principles of the controlling social group, and the consequence of these
actions is the emergence of a ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 26–
30). Here the dominant social group secures hegemonic power by captur-
ing State apparatuses and deploying coercive techniques against opponents.
Thus, hegemony entails the use of the State and other spheres within the
historical bloc to construct a set of social, political, and economic circum-
stances that support the dominant interests.

Gramsci shows that hegemony can never be successfully constructed
and maintained unless certain beliefs and interests that make up a ‘con-
ception of the world’ can be ‘uncritically absorbed by the various social
and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average
man is developed’ (1971, 419). In other words, hegemony must be con-
structed across the historical bloc where both are not fi xed and immutable
but always subject to transformation. Hegemony therefore emerges out of
the historical bloc so that a hegemonic situation reflects a particular con-
figuration of relations of force which are never static and characterised by
absolute dominance in every sphere. The contradictory relationships within
the multiform historical bloc ensure that any hegemony is only ever likely
to be an ‘unstable equilibrium’ (see Introduction to this volume) at best. As
Boothman notes, the historical bloc ‘includes the elements of dynamism
provided by the direction impressed upon society by dominance and hege-
mony’ (2000)—that is, struggles for hegemony constitute the engine for
transformations within the historical bloc.
NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY IN AUSTRALIA
The economic sphere (processes of capital accumulation)

The following analysis of neoliberal hegemony in Australia is organised
around the three major foci or social arenas that constitute the contempo-
rary historical bloc in Australia: the economic (processes of capital accu-
mulation); the political (state regulatory regimes and alliances of social
forces); and the socio-cultural (civil society, including discourse and com-
mon sense). The relationships between these foci are plotted to identify the
foundations of neoliberal hegemony. The analytical separation of these foci
is, following Gramsci, ‘methodological’—that is, to enable greater clarity
in presentation while always cognisant to not impose hard, ossified bound-
aries between the social, economic, and political blocs. In other words,
always recognising the complex synthesis that is the historical bloc.
The process of neoliberalisation in Australia entails significant trans-
formation since the 1970s within processes of capital accumulation (the
economic sphere), some of which wrought significant social dislocation and
208 Damien Cahill
economic hardship. In order to evaluate the extent to which a hegemonic
neoliberal historical bloc has emerged from these processes, Australians’
experiences of these processes must be analysed.
The employment and output share of manufacturing and primary
industries in Australia has declined, while those of the services sector
increased dramatically. Production methods within fi rms have been reor-
ganised, including both work intensification and the deployment of new
technologies. From the late 1970s until the late 1990s, unemployment
was between 6 and 11 per cent. Concurrently, precarious employment
(casualisation and job insecurity) and underemployment increased sub-

stantially (Watson 2003, 46–61). Under the rubric of labour market ‘flex-
ibility,’ working time has also been restructured, with the erosion of the
standardised working day and week.
These transformations have been felt particularly acutely in rural
areas, urbanised regional centres (Tonts 2000, 52–72), and working class
suburbs within Australia’s major cities. The anxiety generated through
this process helps to explain the backlash against privatisation and free
trade evident in many of these communities. In these areas, the processes
of neoliberal economic restructuring have not secured a strong social sup-
port base, and therefore undermine the prospects of an ethico-political
hegemony.
Outside of these specific locales, however, the recent outcome of the
process of neoliberalisation is one of significant material reward for many.
After persistent nationwide unemployment during the economic ‘shake-
out’ of the 1980s and early to mid 1990s, the last decade was one of low
official unemployment and, more recently, rising real wages. The sectoral
reorganisation of production in Australia is also reflected in the rise of
cheap imported consumer goods (reflecting the rise of low-wage manufac-
turing capital in countries such as China at the expense of domestically
located manufacturing industries) as well as the rise of cheap consumer
credit and debt-fi nanced consumption (reflecting the rise of fi nance capi-
tal). Thus, the pain and dislocation resulting from the processes of neolib-
eralisation are temporally and spatially specific, with many now enjoying
relatively buoyant economic circumstances that have the potential to pro-
vide a material foundation out of which an ethico-political neoliberal
hegemony could emerge.
However, the changing patterns of working life brought about by the
processes of neoliberalisation also generate new tensions that undermine
the prospects for neoliberal hegemony. Recent studies suggest that the
impermanence, intensification, and lengthening of work characteristic of
neoliberalism create insecurity and put pressure upon family life (Pocock
2003). So, while neoliberalism returns material benefits to many, it simul-
taneously erodes key institutions and relationships within civil society,
thus undermining the prospects for such material benefits to be converted
into an ethico-political hegemony.
The Political Sphere (Transformations in State Regulations,

Political Alliances and Balances of Social Forces)
The process of neoliberalisation in Australia is driven and facilitated by
action within the ‘political sphere’ by three inter-related factors: the cre-
ation of alliances of social forces; the shifting balance of social forces;
and the transformation of state regulations.
Political alliances among both employer and employee groups have
been crucial to the process of neoliberalisation and to attempts to forge a
neoliberal hegemony in Australia. Among employers, a political mobili-
sation from the early 1980s by fi nance, resources, pastoral capital and
large, export-oriented and mobile transnational capital sought to weaken
the power of organised labour and remove restrictions upon the flexibility
of corporations in the labour market. While the economic and social cri-
sis that beset the advanced capitalist nation-states in the 1970s provided
the context and initial impetus for the rise of neoliberalism, it was the
political mobilisation of this ‘neoliberal coalition’ (Bell 1997, 81, 116–7)
that converted such structural constraints into political pressure.
Australia’s most extensive implementation of neoliberalism occurred
under successive social democratic governments from 1983–1996. It did
so with the active support of the trade union leadership. The 1983 Prices
and Incomes Accord (the Accord) was a formal alliance between the
Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Hawke and Keat-
ing Labor governments whereby the unions undertook to moderate their
wage demands and industrial militancy and the government promised
an increased social wage. For Labor, it was a way of managing the neo-
liberal transformation of state and economy by tying the fortunes of the
unions to the maintenance of a Labor government (Bramble and Kuhn
1999). The Accord helped ensure that the social unrest that characterised
the implementation of neoliberalism in Britain under Thatcher did not
emerge in Australia.
These alliances of social forces are both symptomatic and constitutive
of a shifting political balance that significantly buttresses neoliberalism
within the political sphere in the contemporary historical bloc in Austra-
lia. Organised labour in Australia emerged from thirteen years of social
democracy considerably weaker than under the previous conservative
administration, with union membership declining significantly during this
period, unemployment remaining high, and the difficult-to-organise casu-
alised workforce growing. Therefore, through the vehicle of the Accord,
the trade union leadership in effect oversaw an ‘historical victory of capi-
tal over labour’ (Berger 1999, 453). Furthermore, organised opposition to
neoliberalism has been largely unsuccessful. This is partly due to the trade
union movement, whence one might expect opposition to neoliberalism
to emanate, tying itself to a party committed to extending the neoliberal
project. However, it also attests to the failure of neoliberalism’s opponents
210 Damien Cahill
to establish hegemony within civil society—to mount what Gramsci termed
an effective ‘war of position.’ Rather, oppositional forces have been frag-
mentary and generally short-lived. In contrast, the neoliberal state project
is both coherent and well organised, with most major, organised centres of
power committed to the extension of neoliberalism.
The other crucial aspect of the process of neoliberalisation within
the political sphere in Australia is the transformation of state regulatory
regimes, particularly since the 1980s. These transformations facilitated
the reconfiguration to processes of capital accumulation in Australia.
Tariff reductions, the floating of the Australian dollar, and the deregu-
lation of the fi nancial sector exposed Australia more fully to the grow-
ing disciplines of international economic processes (Bryan and Rafferty
1999). The scope and sphere of accumulation has been expanded through
the opening of formerly state-monopoly activities to profit-making enter-
prises: the government-owned bank, telecommunications company, and
airline have been privatised; markets have been created for public ser-
vices such as education, welfare, health care, and health insurance; and
many public sector jobs have been contracted to private providers. Suc-
cessive governments also dismantled many of the regulations and insti-
tutions governing labour in Australia, thereby facilitating the neoliberal
transformations in labour markets and labour processes.
Not only do such regulations facilitate transformations in processes
of capital accumulation, they also establish qualitatively new neoliberal
regulatory regimes. The most important of these is the transformation of
labour market regulation. This process entails removing existing restric-
tions placed upon capital in the labour market and codifying new regula-
tions designed to restrict the ability of workers to organise collectively.
New punitive regulatory regimes for the unemployed, such as ‘work for
the dole,’ make social security dependency a much harsher form of exis-
tence. These are coercive forms of ‘re-regulation’ rather than ‘deregula-
tions,’ and they highlight the active role of the state in the prosecution
of neoliberalisation (Anderson 1999). Not only does neoliberalism con-
stitute a new form of state regulation of labour, it also facilitates new
forms of market regulation of civil society. For example, Australia’s cur-
rent relatively low official unemployment statistics hide a reserve army of
precariously and underemployed labour, existing alongside the officially
unemployed, and thereby exerting a disciplinary pressure upon full-time
workers.
State facilitation of accumulation is also evident in various indus-
try subsidies provided by the federal government. Some of these have
disciplinary effects. For example, as noted, debt-fi nanced consumption
is central to the sustained economic growth Australia has experienced
over the last fourteen years (Wilson and Turnbull 2000). Various homer-
buyers grants from both state and federal governments help stimulate
demand for home loans. This puts many people in a precarious fi nancial
212 Damien Cahill
The Socio-Cultural Sphere (Civil Society,

Discourse, and Common Sense)
Civil society is a key site of struggles for hegemony within any historical
bloc. Here people form their basic understandings of the world and here
‘commonsense’ is constituted. In Australia, discursive strategies have been
deployed from within the political sphere aimed at buttressing and winning
consent for processes of neoliberalisation. Concurrently, changes to state
regulations (also from within the political sphere) and the reconfiguration of
processes of capital accumulation (from within the economic sphere) reshape
the material conditions that structure people’s everyday lives. To evaluate

the extent and type of hegemony achieved by neoliberalism in Australia, the
relationship between these discursive strategies and the transformations of
everyday life are now mapped.
Indicative of the new subjectivities of working life offered by neoliberal-
ism’s proselytisers are recent statements by Australia’s former Prime Minister
John Howard regarding the government’s intention to foster a ‘culture of
enterprise,’ characterized by the ‘rise of the enterprise worker’ within Aus-
tralian workplaces (Howard 2005). According to Howard, ‘enterprise work-
ers’ have a commonality of interest with their employer and shun workplace
conflict that is generated by exogenous ‘third parties,’ in the form of trade
unions. It is an attempt to forge an identification between worker and firm
and to break the solidaristic identification of workers with each other.
Another example is the federal government’s description of the ‘entrepre-
neurial culture’ it argues will be created through its new WorkChoices legis-
lation.3 Embedded within this term is the marketisation of the self—that all
workers are individual labour units who develop their marketable attributes
and compete with one another and who are rewarded commensurate with
their entrepreneurial talent and productivity.
The process of neoliberalisation certainly creates some conditions
favourable to such subjectivities. One is declining union membership as a
proportion of the workforce, particularly in the private sector of the econ-
omy, where union membership currently stands at just 17 per cent. Another
is the rise of nonemploying fi rms (the owner/worker), which now make up
more than half of small businesses in Australia.4 Other data and events,
however, caution against such a conclusion. Notwithstanding Australia’s
current low level of unionisation, there appears to be significant support
for principles of collective workplace representation and social protections
designed to mediate between the interests of employers and employees. The
deep roots enjoyed by trade unions within the community were apparent
in the popular mobilisations in defence of the Maritime Union of Aus-
tralia during the ‘waterfront dispute’ of 1998. Furthermore, support for
collective workplace representative structures extends beyond those likely
to participate in direct action, as is evident, for example, in the recent fi nd-
ing that around 50 per cent of workers would like to be members of a
trade union (Bearfield 2003). Numerous recent opinion polls also confi rm
widespread community opposition to the federal government’s industrial
relations legislation, which dismantles many of the structures and regula-
tions mediating the relationship between fi rms and workers. This suggests
widespread support for social protections and implies that many do not
accept the prime minister’s characterisation of the employment relationship
as embodying a harmony of interests between employer and employee.
Beyond the workplace, however, other profound transformations have
the potential to create a basis for neoliberal subjectivities. The process
of neoliberalisation entails an increased marketisation of social life—an

extension of the range of activities for which market processes are com-
pulsory. For neoliberalism to be hegemonic, such commodifying pro-
cesses must be matched by complimentary reorganisations of common
sense, especially with regard to the nature of the public sphere.
There are several issues to consider. The fi rst is that increasingly it is
to ‘customers’ that public goods are provided, with citizens increasingly
charged for the use of public services. So, market discourses and market
structures pervade peoples’ everyday encounters with government. The
second is the creation of markets for public services through the establish-
ment of direct competition between public and private providers. In the
areas of health care and education, this entails government subsidisation
of private providers, such as private schools and the private health-insur-
ance industry.
How far these discursive practices are transforming individual subjec-
tivities is difficult to determine. Indicative evidence, however, suggests
that neoliberal hegemony is far from guaranteed. Data from the Austra-
lian Survey of Social Attitudes suggests high-levels of support for govern-
ment as the main provider of social services in the areas of health care and
education (Wilson, Meagher and Breusch 2005, 115–118). This is despite
the strong flow of people out of the public system to private providers.
The increasing marketisation of social services has progressed through
a combination of coercion and consent. For many of those able to pur-
chase a choice, marketisation likely poses few dilemmas, and the logic of
purchasing ‘public’ services can be readily grafted onto common sense
notions of what is reasonable. For others, however, the coercive nature
of marketisation—the fear that a denuded public system drives middle
income earners to enter the market for public goods—likely means that it
is a logic that is entered into grudgingly. As Pusey and Turnbull argue:
Australians live with the contradictions of the market economy—they see
benefits in free markets and trade, but also are aware of their drawbacks,
and so continue to believe in an active role for government (2005, 179).
Finally, to understand the hegemony of neoliberalism, we need to go
beyond features inherent to the process of neoliberalisation and consider
its relationship with other discourses. Like other nation-states, the process
of neoliberalisation has proceeded alongside the nationalistic discourses
214 Damien Cahill
deployed by state-elites. The Keating Labor government, for example,
pursued a process of integrating Australia much more extensively into
global economic processes, concurrently with the elevation of martial
symbols from Australia’s past (Frankel 2004). The integrity of the Aus-
tralian national unit was asserted by state elites at the same time as its
coherence was increasingly undermined by state-facilitated processes
of global economic integration. A notable feature of the Howard gov-
ernment is its mobilisation of prejudice against refugees, Muslims, and
Aboriginal people, and its elevation of the notion of ‘Australian values’
concurrently with the internationalisation of the Australian economy. As

Johnson argues, an important effect of this is to ‘reassure in times of
great change’ (2000, 60). The reassertion of national myths provides con-
venient explanations of the profound social transformations wrought by
the process of neoliberalisation. For the federal Coalition government,
harnessing the anxieties generated by neoliberalism has been used to cre-
ate a solid electoral support base.
However, these national-popular discourses generate their own con-
tradictions. While on the one hand providing the basis for social stability
by reconciling processes of profound social transformation into a pre-
existing nationalistic conceptual framework, the othering of particular
ethnic groups inherent in such discourses also encourages social confl ict,
as was evident, for example, in the rise of One Nation and the more recent
example at Cronulla in late 2005, when a large demonstration by Anglo-
Celtic youths engaged in a violent mobilisation against people identified
as Muslims.
NEOLIBERALISM: WHAT KIND OF HEGEMONY?
The preceding discussion is necessarily limited in scope. It merely sketches

the broad parameters of neoliberal hegemony in Australia through Grams-
ci’s frame of the historical bloc. More extensive studies are required to
explore these issues in greater detail. Nonetheless, it can be concluded that,
while there is an organic unity between the economic and political spheres
within the neoliberal historical bloc in Australia, the sphere of civil society
has proved much more resistant to colonization by the process of neoliber-
alisation. Although transformations of accumulation and state regulations
individuate people, subject them much more to market disciplines, and
ensure that social services must increasingly be sourced through market
processes, there is only limited evidence of the internalisation of market
values in relation to labour markets and public goods. Indeed, evidence
considered here suggests the existence of widespread unease with many
of the key neoliberal transformations of work and the pubic sphere. The
extent of neoliberalism as an ethico-political hegemony is therefore quite
limited. Its hegemony comes not from deep roots within civil society. Nor
has it reoriented common sense such that neoliberalism is accepted as the
new social truth.
Nonetheless, neoliberalism is the dominant force within the economic
and political spheres of the contemporary historical bloc in Australia. Neo-
liberalism dominates primarily through a combination of economic and
extra-economic coercion, and material rewards in the form of rising wages
and easy access to fi nance. It benefits from the failure of alternative pro-
grams to secure hegemony within the socio-cultural distinct. Therefore,
while neoliberalism is not hegemonic in an ethico-political sense, it cer-
tainly is in a dominative sense. However, the process of neoliberalisation

also creates its own contradictions. The social transformations of everyday
life wrought by neoliberalism generate tensions and insecurity that could
provide the basis for a ‘war of position’ against neoliberalism itself.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has argued that neoliberalism in Australia is a useful object

of analysis because it offers a window into the potentialities of neoliberal-
ism as a viable political project. It suggests that, even when neoliberalism is
able to deliver significant material benefits and experiences little organised
political dissent, it is still unable to create a widespread social support base.
These conclusions are derived by explicating and deploying Gramsci’s con-
cept of hegemony and of the historical bloc. Such conceptual tools enable
the myriad and contradictory relationships within a social formation to
be identified, and their historically contingent and evolving nature appre-
hended. They enable the identification of the potential for, and limitations
of, the expanded reproduction of the social circumstances that facilitate the
dominance of a particular social group. The deployment of such concep-
tual tools to analyse early twenty-fi rst century Australia also demonstrates
the continuing utility of Gramsci’s prison writings.
NOTES
1. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as D. Cahill, ‘The

Contours of Neo-Liberal Hegemony in Australia,’ Rethinking Marxism,
19:2(2007):21–233. Taylor & Francis Ltd. http://www.informaworld.com.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
2. See, for example, A. Gamble, The free economy and the strong state: The
politics of Thatcherism, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1994); S. Hall, ‘The
toad in the garden: Thatcherism among the theorists,’ in eds. C. Nelson and
L. Grossberg, Marxism and the interpretation of culture (London: Macmil-
lan Education, 1988), 35–57; B. Jessop, K. Bonnett, S. Bromley and T. Ling,
Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); H.
Overbeek, ed., Restructuring hegemony in the global political economy: The
rise of transnational neoliberalism in the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1993);
216 Damien Cahill
B. Birchfield, ‘Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci’s “good
sense” and Polanyi’s “double movement”,’ Review of International Political
Economy 6, Spring(1999):27–54.
3. Australian Government, ‘Workchoices—A Simpler, National Workplace
Relations System for Australia,’ http://www.workchoices.gov.au/ourplan/
overview/Aneworkplacerelationssystem.html. Accessed 8/5/2006.
4. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Recent growth on small business sector.
Media Release 16th October 2002.
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13 Hegemony, Japan, and the
Victor’s Memory of War
Yoko Harada
Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York
City, the use of the terms ‘Ground Zero’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’
have come to be synonymous with the idea of America as a victim of terror,
and they have thus served to facilitate, and give legitimacy to, the prosecution
of the ‘war on terror.’ This rhetoric has also facilitated the shifting of alli-
ances and the realignment of national and international interests with those
of the United States. In this chapter, it will be argued that in the case of Japan,
this has been achieved through a ‘passive revolution,’ where a dominative
US hegemony is facilitated by the traditional intellectuals of Japanese media,
who have legitimised change in Japanese politics that serves to reproduce and
restore existing hegemonic principles, rather than developing a national poli-
tics around new principles, and that this process relies on the forgetting, and
retelling, of Japanese national history.
Every year, on the sixth and the ninth of August, Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
respectively, hold memorial services to commemorate the victims of atomic
bombs dropped by the United States in World War II. Peace declarations by
mayors of both cities and events related to the ceremonies do not gain much
attention from foreign media nor raise much discussion in the international
arena. The bombings of Japan in 1945 were the first occasion in which ‘weap-
ons of mass destruction’ were used on human beings. The resultant blast zone
became known as ‘ground zero,’ yet after 9/11, these words became linked to
the bombing of the World Trade Centre and the subsequent war against Iraq,
their origins in an action of the United States forgotten or transformed.
The United States and its allied forces bombed Iraq on 20 March 2003 and
launched a military operation in the country as a part of its ‘war on terror.’
They conducted the operation without United Nations’ consent by insisting
on the danger posed by the Iraqi regime through the presumed existence of
‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the means to deliver them, which threat-
ened the whole world. Two months later, President George W. Bush declared
the end of major combat operations. Saddam Hussein’s ‘evil’ regime was over-
thrown, and at the very end of that year, the dictator was finally captured.
Despite this, Iraq is far from a stable and secure country. Moreover, the exis-
tence of ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ which gave legitimacy to the invasion,
Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War 219
was completely denied. Nevertheless, countries like Japan and Australia still
firmly support the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq. Why is that so?
This chapter attempts to answer that question by critically analysing the
use of a particular rhetoric based on a ‘victor’s memory’ of the war in the
Pacific, which has enabled the establishment of a ‘dominative’ US hegemony
that has been largely uncontested by the Japanese state or the Japanese media.
The chapter argues that the use of this rhetoric has enabled the establishment
of this US hegemony in the Pacific, with which the Japanese state is now
complicit, and that the traditional intellectuals of the Japanese media have
ensured this process.
HEGEMONY AND PASSIVE REVOLUTION
This section starts with a discussion of the notion of hegemony in a Grams-

cian sense and its connection to the notion of passive revolution. This is then
related to the existing literature in international relations, which is usually
used to explore the workings of US hegemony, but shows how this literature,
because it does not engage with the concept of passive revolution, can not
account for the complexities of state reactions to US policy shifts and presents
hegemony merely as a form of static domination, which is inadequate for our
understanding of the current and developing situation in Japan.
As the Introduction to this volume has outlined, the notion of hegemony
has too often been used to explain a social or political relation that is merely
domination. For Gramsci, hegemony was more complex than this. It is not
even that a hegemonic situation is one where the forces of consent and coer-
cion are balanced, but rather that consent is the driving force in social and
political relations. As Fontana explains, hegemony the word, as Gramsci uses
it, relates closest to the Greek word for leadership (Fontana 2000). In this
sense then, hegemony is won before power; it is won through a war of position
that slowly and patiently cultivates consent at the level of belief rather than of
action through self-interest, bringing about ethico-political hegemony within
an integral state. Gramsci used many other concepts to differentiate this kind
of hegemony from social and political situations that relied on outright force
or apparent consent through coercion. Richard Howson has developed these
distinctions into ‘types’ of hegemony, which he designates as detached, domi-
native, and aspirational (Howson 2006, 27). The first two types of hegemony
are regressive in that they seek to serve the interests of the few over the many
and to either conserve the status quo or bring about change that is not con-
nected to the consent of the mass (Howson 2006, 27–32).
The concept of detached hegemony is particularly useful here, as it will
be seen to be particularly relevant to the current socio-political situation in
Japan. Howson explains that a detached hegemony emerges out of period
of crisis in which authority may be challenged but is restored, rather than
220 Yoko Harada
transformed anew, so that ‘an ever-more-powerful political regime . . . has,
and continues to, subsume and negate all progressive elements so that the
resultant hegemony emerges as a product of a revolution without revolution,
or a passive revolution’ (Howson 2006, 28).
The notion of passive revolution is particularly significant here. Gramsci
explains it in reference to the Italian Risorgimento, where he notes that a sec-
tion of the ruling class ‘did not wish to ‘lead’ anybody, i.e., they did not wish
to concord their interests and aspirations with the interests and aspirations of
other groups. They wished to ‘dominate,’ and not to ‘lead.’ Furthermore, they
wanted their interests to dominate, rather than their persons; in other words
they wanted a new force, independent of every compromise and condition,
to become the arbiter of the Nation’ (Gramsci 1971, 104–105). This is not a
hegemonic situation because it does not even attempt to cultivate consent, but
achieves a ‘de facto acquiescence’ (Showstack Sassoon 2001, 5–17), in which
the majority of the population is disconnected from politics and the tradi-
tional ‘hegemony’ is restored or reinforced, particularly through civil society.
Showstack Sassoon suggests that in relation to globalisation, a passive revolu-
tion is occurring because it is ‘a strategy for managing change in which the
advantages of the already advantaged are preserved alongside real gains for
wide sections of the population, but the full potential of progressive aspects
of such profound historical change for the socially excluded is undermined’
(Showstack Sassoon 2001, 8).
In this scenario, the role of traditional intellectuals through civil society
is paramount. In a detached hegemony that has been bought about by a pas-
sive revolution, there has been no outward or overt transformation of soci-
ety, but rather the reinforcement of particular principles and the absorption
of challenges because ‘civil society in this situation is controlled by an ever-
more-extensive, elitist and distant political ruling class located under a single
ideological rubric that is able to effectively subsume and control the commu-
nity and impose their corporativistic interests unilaterally’ (Howson 2006,
28–29).
In the post 9/11 world, this is the scenario in both domestic Japanese poli-
tics and in Japanese/US relations, yet because of its focus on the economic
realm of globalisation, and the absence of the concept of passive revolution,
current international relations literature is inadequate.
MECHANISM OF US HEGEMONY AT THE

DAWN OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Labelling the United States’ dominating power in the international arena

as hegemony is not a new phenomenon. Robert W. Cox, in his well-known
essay that tried to explain the applicability of the concept of hegemony
in a Gramscian sense to international relations, described: ‘ . . . following
World War II (1945–65), the United States founded a new hegemonic world
order similar in basic structure to that dominated by Britain in middle
of the nineteenth century but with institutions and doctrine adjusted to a
more complex world economy and to national societies more sensitive to
the political repercussions of economic crises’ (Cox 1996, 136).
Although Cox saw ‘this US-based world order was no longer working
well’ in the early 1970s (136) and books like Beyond American Hegemony:
The Future of the Western Alliance by David P. Calleo or The Rise and
Fall of the Great Powers: Economic change and military conflict from
1500–2000 by Paul Kennedy, which referred to the decline of US hege-
mony, appeared in the late 1980s (Wade 1988), the term is seeing a signifi-
cant revival in this new century. ‘US hegemony’ or ‘American hegemony’
is often used in popular discourse to describe the United States’ unilateral
behaviour or the advent of an apparently US-led corporate globalisation in
the present international arena.
The term is also used by people or media who oppose this unilateral
manner, especially in regards to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In early Feb-
ruary 2003, addressing a message to ‘all countries with weapons of mass
destruction,’ the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in South Africa stated,
‘The PAC reiterates that the world should no longer tolerate US hegemony.
There is no room in the world for US supremacy and exceptionalism’ (BBC
2003). Both Xinhua News Agency of China and the New Straits Times of
Malaysia described the worldwide protest movement against the Iraq war
as an opposition to the US hegemony (Xinhua 2003, New Straits Times
2003). The then Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir was quoted as
saying: ‘If international affairs were to be conducted with a blatant disre-
gard for international law and UN authority, and subject to the unilateral
doctrine of ‘regime change’ in the name of democracy, human rights and
freedom as defi ned by an imperial power like the United States then . . . no
nation is safe’ (New Straits Times 2003).
Not surprisingly, Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz, the former deputy
prime minister of Iraq, were participating in this discourse. About a month
before his country was invaded by the United States and its allied forces,
Hussein said, ‘As for greed, evil, and the desire to expand at the expense of
others, you can fi nd these in the United States,’ and he condemned this US
hegemony (BBC 2003b). Talking to the Italian media, Aziz ‘urged Europe
to stand by Iraq as it would be the next victim of US hegemony’ (BBC
2003a). As a summary of the year 2003, on 31 December, the Australian
newspaper the Age wrote, ‘If there was a unifying theme in global affairs
over the past year, sadly it was confl ict’ (31 December 2003, 10). Referring
to the war, the paper says: ‘The Iraq war was about more than just the
removal of Saddam Hussein. It was about the assertion of US power in a
way that left the remainder of the international community in little doubt
about how the US—at least the US under President George Bush—sees
its place in the world. The measure of global discomfort with the new US
hegemony has so far been expressed mainly in the annoyed reactions of the
222 Yoko Harada
leaders of countries such as France and Russia, but the full consequences of
that discomfort may not be evident for many years to come’ (31 December
2003, 10).
This discomfort is evident in the growing discourse that appears to ques-
tion the legitimacy of US authority in a post-9/11 world. Michael Mann,
who described the war in Iraq as ‘an Anglo-Saxon invasion,’ points out in
his work Incoherent Empire, ‘American political powers are schizophrenic
. . . in international politics they are large but oscillating unsteadily between
multilateralism and unilateralism; and when trying to interfere inside indi-
vidual nation states they are small. Faced with a world of nation states, the
US does not have imperial political power. The Age of Empire has gone’
(Mann 2003, 97).
This ‘schizophrenic’ character of American power is considered apparent
in the United States’ relationship with the United Nations, which is widely
believed to have been damaged by American neoconservative forces. It is well-
known that in taking a unilateral approach, the United States has walked out
of the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and some other
international agreements, let alone shown complete disregard for the United
Nations’ consensus concerning the invasion of Iraq (Broinowski and Wilkin-
son 2005, 218). Despite this fact, the United States needs the United Nations,
especially in dealing with the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan (Broinowski
and Wilkinson 2005, 221). George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open
Society Institute and the Soros Foundation Network (a neoliberal think tank
promoting market principles within a human rights framework), sees the
United States’ ‘hegemonic’ project as failing. He states that ‘the Bush admin-
istration believes that international relations are relations of power’ and
asserts ‘no empire could ever be held together by military power alone’ and
that, compared to contemporary finance, the ‘Bush’s pursuit of American
hegemony is similar to a boom-and-bust stock market’ (Soros 2003).
Despite the use of the word hegemony, then, there is ample evidence to
suggest a growing level of ‘discomfort’ with the position of the United States
on the world stage, suggesting that internationally, US hegemony is of a more
dominative type. In the tripartite model of hegemony (Howson 2006, 27),
dominative hegemony is much more active than the detached and relies on
a more forceful type of coercion, which may or may not be ‘military.’ When
there is a crisis in authority, or a questioning of the legitimacy of the tra-
ditional hegemony, then ‘the traditional ruling class, which has numerous
trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than
is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping
from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncer-
tain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the
time being, and uses it to crush its adversary . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 210–211).
Joseph A. Buttigieg has argued that Gramsci emphasised that the prac-
tice of power appears in two ways. One is ‘leadership . . . which is achieved
through persuasion and the manufacturing of consent’ and the other is
‘domination . . . which is imposed by the threat or the actual use of coer-
cive force’ (Buttigieg 2005). Quoting from Gramsci, Buttigieg points out
that in modern liberal democratic politics, ‘ . . . the “normal” exercise
of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is
characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each
other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent’
(Gramsci 1971, n80).
Buttigieg argues that there are three methods by which the US could
establish a global ‘hegemony’:
(a) through the exercise of moral and intellectual leadership . . . that

would generate a broad consensus for its policies among other peoples
and nations; (b) through outright domination, imposing its will on
other nations by threatening or actually using force not only against
those nations that openly defy it but also against those that harbour as-
pirations to challenge its absolute military superiority; and (c) by main-
taining an effective balance between its leadership role and its capacity
for coercion and thus affi rming its status as a hegemonic power in the
Gramscian sense (Buttigieg 2005, 53–54).
According to Buttigieg, the tragedy on 11 September 2001 may in fact

have presented the United States with an opportunity to reaffi rm its hege-
monic power based on leadership because after the tragedy the United
States was successful in gaining the world’s sympathy (Buttigieg 2005, 54).
However, the United States, under the influence of neoconservative forces,
took a course that served to discourage sympathy because it was based on
the exercise of coercive domination over other countries (Buttigieg 2005,
54–55). The present administration thinks it is better to be feared by other
nation states than to be admired, concludes Buttigieg (2005, 59). Mann
echoes this point, ‘The new imperialism turned into simple militarism’
(Mann 2003, 252). Given this, it can be argued that United States’ power is
based on a type of hegemony that is dominative, rather than being a form
of ethico-political leadership.
As we have seen, both a dominative and detached hegemony appear to
produce a level of consensus, either because the avenues of dissent are shut
down, or because it is simply easier to comply. Thus, it seems as though the
majority of the world is conceding to the overwhelming pressure from the
sole superpower. This is not just simply because of the United States’ mili-
tarism. The governments of Japan and Australia are indeed tightly linked
to the United States regarding security issues, but they are not threatened
by the superpower at gunpoint to follow it, nor are their citizens, who give
legitimacy to these governments. But these are citizenries who are them-
selves living within domestic dominative or detached hegemonies, where
passive revolutions have bought about what looks like consensus. This
is a consensus manufactured through civil society. Gramsci pointed out:
224 Yoko Harada
‘Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be
based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of
public opinion—newspapers and associations—which, therefore, in certain
situations, are artificially multiplied’ (Gramsci 1971, n80).
This remark was made decades before the arrival of the age of informa-
tion or Internet. Now we are living in an era in which people around the
world were able to watch the fall of the twin towers in New York live.
The effect of ‘the so-called organs of public opinion’ is almost immeasur-
able. It is impossible to separate the effects of economic or military changes
out from the discourse surrounding them, and this discourse is inseparable
from the social sphere within which politics occurs. In a situation of pas-
sive revolution, where changes in state policy are made covertly, the role of
the media is paramount.
TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS, THE

MEDIA AND NATIONAL MEMORY
In an attempt to understand how the Japanese state has linked itself so

strongly to the US in a post 9/11 world, despite the need to manipulate,
even forget, parts of its own national history, and to ignore internal dissent
in order to do so, the following part of this chapter explores the role of the
Japanese media and argues that it has acted as a traditional intellectual,
facilitating a passive revolution in Japanese society.
The now ongoing global war—‘war on terror’—led by the United States
of America is said to have started on 11 September 2001. Since that day,
up until the US presidential election in 2004, the Bush Administration has
heavily promoted a campaign on the war to legitimise and justify its mil-
itary operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The strategy was simple. The
United States tried to divide the world into two sides—good and evil—and
to place itself in the ‘absolute good’ and ‘absolute right’ position.
One day before the strike on Afghanistan, President Bust made a radio
address and stated: ‘The United States is presenting a clear choice to every
nation: Stand with the civilized world, or stand with the terrorists. And
for those nations that stand with the terrorists, there will be a heavy price’
(Bush 2001a).
The next day, 7 October 2001, he asserted, ‘Every nation has a choice to
make. In this confl ict, there is no neutral ground’ (Bush 2001b). Since then,
statements delivered by the Bush Administration were fi rmly based on rhet-
oric aimed at dividing the world into good and evil. In order to imprint the
image on peoples’ minds, some specific terms were chosen and statements
were studded with those terms. On the one hand, positive terms such as
‘peace,’ ‘free,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘just,’ ‘stability,’ ‘prosperity,’ ‘civilised’
and ‘democracy’ were attached to the ‘good’ half of the world. On the
other hand, ‘terror,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘violence,’ ‘enemy,’ ‘intimidate,’ ‘threat,’
‘fear,’ ‘dictator,’ ‘tyranny,’ ‘oppressed,’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction,’
terms with negative connotations, were used to describe the ‘evil’ side of the
world. These terms were used repeatedly in different speeches and repeat-
edly within speeches, much like an incantation. During the presidential
address to the nation on 7 October 2001, Bush said:
I’m speaking to you today from the Treaty Room of the White House, a
place where American presidents have worked for peace. We’re a peace-
ful nation. Yet, as we have learned, so suddenly and so tragically, there
can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today’s new

threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten
it. We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfil it. The name of
today’s military operation is Enduring Freedom. We defend not only
our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to
live and raise their children free from fear (2001b) (emphases added).
This use of terms has persisted since then in messages delivered from the
Bush Administration. The use of such rhetoric shows the power of emo-
tional language to inculcate fear and facilitate ‘a defacto acquiescence,’
resistance to which is easily dismissed or demonised.
Along with this trend, the United States’ government started to justify
and secure legitimacy for present actions through a particular ‘remember-
ing’ of past actions in international affairs. Secretary of State Colin Powell,
who appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 26 January 2003,
about a month before the Iraq invasion, boldly addressed an audience of
business leaders from around the world in a speech laced with the rheto-
ric of ‘US benevolence.’ He started the speech by referring to America’s
‘responsibilities in the world’ and listing its past ‘good deeds.’
Afghanistan’s leaders and Afghanistan’s people know that they can

trust America to do just this, to do the right thing. The people of Bos-
nia, the people of Kosovo, of Macedonia—they too know that they can
trust us to do our jobs and then leave. We seek nothing for ourselves
other than to help bring about security for people that have already
suffered too much (Powell 2003a).
Powell’s ‘good deeds list of America’ continued: Kuwait, Africa, and

Latin America were on the list, and Europe, which was helped by the United
States ‘to rescue’ itself ‘from the tyranny of fascism,’ was also listed. Later,
in the question time, the secretary proudly answered ‘ . . . I don’t think
I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what
America has done for the world’ (2003b).
Two days later in Washington, President Bush delivered the State of the
Union Address to the US Congress. After pointing out that ‘the gravest
danger’ the world is facing is the possibility for terrorists to possess ‘weapons
226 Yoko Harada
of mass destruction’ and use them, he echoed Powell’s aggressive line:
‘This threat is new; America’s duty is familiar. Throughout the twentieth
century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies
and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world.
In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each
case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated
by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the
might of the United States of America’ (Bush 2003a). Before concluding his
speech the President asserted: ‘Americans are a resolute people who have
risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our
country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and
honourable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest,
and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers’ (2003a).
As Christian Reus-Smit points out, ‘Political elites invoke select moments
in the past to license their preferred policies and strategies’ (2004, 71).
‘Political elites’ in Washington have shown their absolute confidence in
their record in the past, and this rhetoric still continues. This is functioning
to forge the heroic image of the United States domestically and interna-
tionally, and the question ‘Has the US really always done the right thing?’
hardly comes into a mainstream discourse because the traditional intellec-
tuals of the conservative forces in American political and social life claim
knowledge and ownership of this past, presenting it as fait accompli and
demonising those who would speak against it.
THE VICTOR’S MEMORY OF THE PACIFIC

WAR AND THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’
In order to strengthen the Bush Administration’s simple but overwhelming

rhetoric on the ‘war on terror,’ terms and phrases that remind people of the
Pacific War, when the United States was on the victor’s side, are repeatedly
used by the Administration. The media was quick to pick up on the use of
such language as the Bush Administration took advantage of its victor’s
heroic image from World War II and tried to reflect this image onto itself
facing a ‘new war.’
Observing the media reports in the United States right after the Sep-
tember 11 attacks, John Dower pointed out ‘the immediate reaction to the
terror of the September 11 in America was to recall the surprise attack
at Pearl Harbour by the Japanese on 7 December 1941’ (Dower 2001, 8)
The terms ‘Pearl Harbour’ and ‘a day of infamy,’ a term used by Franklin
D. Roosevelt in his speech on the next day of the Pearl Harbour attack to
describe the day (1941), reappeared in the media immediately after 9/11.
On September 12, 2001, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal had as
its title ‘A Terrorist Pearl Harbour’ and asserted, ‘The world is a differ-
ent place after the massive terrorist attacks on the United States yesterday,
much as it was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago . . .
’ Tom Shales of the Washington Post reported, ‘It may have left the nation
feeling more vulnerable and victimized than any single day since the attack
on Pearl Harbor in 1941’ (2001).
The use of Pearl Harbour as a symbol for 9/11 immediately spread into
the public. A person who was interviewed on the street by CBS News told
the reporter ‘It’s another Pearl Harbour for this country’ (The Osgood
File 2001). The media outside the United States also followed this trend.
In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote ‘The US was at war, as
every official noted, just as it was when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on
December 7, 1941’ (Alcorn 2001), and the Australian recorded, ‘Like the
Japanese strike at Pearl Harbour, this will irrevocably change the national
psyche, and the consequences for America’s world view cannot be known’
(Eccleston 2001). A CNN correspondent in London reported, ‘Here in
England talking to taxi drivers, people on the streets, people are using the
analogy to Pearl Harbour’ (Live at Daybreak 2001).
Then, in the State of Union Address for 2002, Bush used the term ‘axis’
of evil, which served to recall the ‘evil’ side of the former world war (Chom-
sky 2003, 128). Late in that year came the ‘implementing democracy in
Iraq in the postwar Japan’s style’ rhetoric. Initially used to describe the
strategy of occupation in Iraq after the military operation, it then became
the most favoured parable of the White House. The New York Times
revealed a story of senior administration officials of the Bush Administra-
tion on 11 October saying, ‘The White House is developing a detailed plan,
modelled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led
military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein
. . . ’ (Sanger and Schmitt 2002, 1).
Immediately after this report, several critiques of the plan appeared in
the media. In the Los Angeles Times, Chalmers Johnson wrote, ‘This plan
won’t work for the simple reason that Iraq is not Japan’ (Johnson 2002,
19B). John Dower wrote, ‘Does America’s successful occupation of Japan
after World War II provide a model for a constructive American role in a
post-Saddam Hussein Iraq? The short answer is no’ (Dower, 2002). Ian
Buruma in the Guardian asserted, ‘It has been suggested that General
Tommy Franks would govern Iraq, just as Macarthur had once governed
Japan. The merits or demerits of “regime change” aside, this strikes me as
an absurd comparison’ (2002, 8). The Boston Herald was kind enough to
suggest to the Administration, ‘Instead of the archives of Gen. Douglas
Macarthur’s Tokyo headquarters, U.S. planners should be consulting with
experts on Iraq, the Arab world and the Middle East’ (2002). All crit-
ics equally pointed out unlike Iraq, democracy pre-existed in Japan, the
head of the nation, Emperor Hirohito, was supporting MacArthur, and
there was no severe ethnic and religious confl ict in Japan. Nevertheless, in
many ways the damage was already done, the connection between a noble,
heroic, and victorious America in the Pacific and the America that would
228 Yoko Harada
bring freedom to Iraq made clear, while the real cost (and motives?) of both
campaigns remained unspoken.
The idea that the United States’ occupation resulted in Japan being
democratised and becoming a ‘good’ friendly nation became a favourite
parable for Bush, specifically during his presidential campaign in 2004. In
his remarks at the Victory 2004 Rally, President Bush repeatedly presented
this parable:
I believe in the power of liberty because I have worked closely with

Prime Minister Koizumi, who I also will be working with today. Think
about this for a minute. When you hear the sceptics and doubters talk
about our policies, think about the fact that I sit down with the prime
minister of Japan as a friend. And it wasn’t all that long ago that my
dad and your dads and grandfathers were fighting the Japanese as a
sworn enemy. And after that war was over, fortunately, Harry Tru-
man, and other American citizens believed that liberty could transform
an enemy into an ally and worked with Japan to develop a Japanese
style democracy. And as a result of that faith in the power of liberty, to-
day I sit down with Prime Minister Koizumi—tomorrow I actually sit
down with him—and talk about keeping the peace, talking about the
peace that we all yearn for. Liberty is powerful. Someday an American
president is going to be sitting down with the duly elected leader of Iraq
talking about the peace (Bush 2004).
It is doubtful whether Koizumi became more famous in the United States

because of this parable or whether any detail of this story was remembered
by US citizens. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to imagine that the parable
had the effect of creating for a public with a limited memory of the Pacific
War the idea that the United States had done something good in the past
somewhere in the ‘savage’ Orient by implementing democracy as a result of
the war it had won. This would have further enhanced the country’s image
of ‘always doing the right thing.’
Despite this persistent linkage between the present and former war, the
fact that the terms ‘ground zero’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ which
were originally connected to the Pacific War, appeared in the media and in
the Bush Administration’s messages through the campaign, the connection
was hardly mentioned. In the victor’s memory of the war, the bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the now-noble and heroic US were invisible.
Immediately after 9/11, the term ‘ground zero’ became capital lettered into
‘Ground Zero’ without notice and became a term particularly referring
to the site of the World Trade Center. The shocking scene of the towers’
destruction was watched worldwide on live television. It was shown repeat-
edly for some time afterwards (and the sentiments of the people around
the world integrated into that very site). Reports from the site flooded the
media. The term ‘Ground Zero’ was imprinted on people’s minds. In the
shadow of this creation of memory, the fact that the term ‘ground zero’
initially meant Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other nuclear explosion sites was
almost forgotten (Chikusi 2004, 74). Noam Chomsky commented: ‘The
interesting thing is that here, almost nobody thinks of it [that ground zero
meant Hiroshima and Nagasaki]. Check around. I mean, I’ve never seen a
comment in the press or the massive commentary on this that points that
out. It’s just not in peoples’ consciousness’ (inside brackets added) (Chom-
sky 2003).
Thus, ‘ground zero’ was disconnected from the original sites. Another
disconnection is evident in the failure to link Hiroshima and Nagasaki

with the now famous term ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Voted ‘2002
word of the year’ in the United States by the American Dialect Society
(Associated Press 2003), the term was widely used in the political field, in
the international arena, in the media, and in everyday discourse because
the Bush Administration had insisted that it was their existence in Iraq,
and their ease of access for terrorist groups, which gave legitimacy to the
war there. In the famous ‘axis of evil’ speech, President Bush insisted ‘by
seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and grow-
ing danger’ (2002). He added ‘The United States of America will not per-
mit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s
most destructive weapons.’ One year later, the intensity of the message
from the president was enhanced. His address was focused clearly on Iraq,
Saddam the dictator, and disarmament of the evil regime (Bush 2003a).
About a week later, the most crucial remark concerning ‘weapons of mass
destruction’ from the United States was made by Colin Powell at the United
Nations Security Council when he said, ‘Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behav-
iour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts
to produce more weapons of mass destruction’ (2003b).
Today, even the White House has admitted the absence of ‘weapons of
mass destruction’ in Iraq. In many arenas, the real absence of weapons of
mass destruction has been used to question the legitimacy of the actions
of the US and its allies in the Middle East, perhaps enough to have moti-
vated recent policy shifts, but oppositional critique remains largely mar-
ginalised.
When the United States refers to the need for the disarmament of ‘rogue
states,’ it is necessary for the international community to recall the United
States was the fi rst state to use ‘weapons of mass destruction’ on human
beings. Moreover, it is the major state still holding and producing nuclear
weapons (Akiba 2004; Chikushi 2004a; Itoh 2004). How is it possible,
then, that a country with such a record has the legitimacy to discipline
other ‘rogue states’?
In many ways, this is a legitimacy born of forgetting. The actions of
the US against Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly sixty years ago have been
ignored in the victor’s memory of the Pacific War. The United States has
always been reluctant to inform its public about the devastated grounds
230 Yoko Harada
zeros it created in Japan. This became obvious in the controversy surround-
ing the exhibition of Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic
bomb on Hiroshima, at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smith-
sonian Institute. The fully reassembled Enola Gay was put on exhibition
in 2003. The display was met with anger from atomic bomb survivors,
because it neither mentioned the number of casualties nor showed pictures
of ground zero (ABC 2003; Asahi 2003; BBC 2003). For the museum,
this was the second time it was involved in a controversial circumstance
regarding the display of the Enola Gay. In 1995, a part of the bomber was
displayed, and it was planned to coincide with an exhibition concerning

atomic bombs. However, because of the harsh response from the US vet-
erans, the plan was put aside and the then-director of the museum had to
resign (Asahi 2003).
The incidents in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are interpreted as
‘act(s) (which) hastened the war’s end and saved thousands of lives,’ whereas
some people say they are in fact some ‘of the world’s worst war crimes’
(BBC 2003). Despite these pockets of oppositional memory, the legitimacy
of the use of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ nearly sixty years ago is unde-
cided; yet for those who live with a victor’s memory of the war, the debate
has never existed. As Chomsky remarks, ‘Defeated countries are forced to
pay some attention to what they did. Victors never are’ (2004).
REACTION FROM THE DEFEATED SIDE
Japan, the country in the strongest position from which to raise questions
about the legitimacy of the rhetoric surrounding ‘weapons of mass destruc-
tion,’ appears to be very ambiguous in this matter. Very little discussion
has occurred within Japan concerning the United States’ use of victor’s
memory of the Pacific War. This silence gives the impression that Japan is
passively accepting the rhetoric and perhaps even supporting it. Its behav-
iour in relation to the rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war, ground zero, and
weapons of mass destruction shows the workings of a passive revolution in
process and the impact this has on a national and international level.
We return to the rhetoric surrounding the relationship between Presi-
dent Bush and the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi. A few Japanese
newspapers reported that the president had been referring to Prime Min-
ister Koizumi frequently during his presidential campaign in the context
of democratising the Middle East (Asahi 2004; Moriyasu 2004; Sankei
2004). However, none of these reports questioned the legitimacy of the
analogy between Japan sixty years ago and Iraq in this new century.
Rather, articles sounded quite excited that their prime minister’s name
was mentioned by the president of the United States—the only superpower
in the world—and seemed delighted to achieve recognition in the United
States and maybe in the international arena. The prime minister himself,
in the meantime, seemed to be delighted by this incident. He was asked
by Bush at the summit meeting in September if it was all right for the
president to keep mentioning Koizumi’s name during his campaign and
Koizumi consented willingly (Sankei 2004).
This behaviour only makes sense if we consider the close and peculiar
relationship between the US and Japan that has developed since World
War II—and it is not simply a situation where one is dominated by the
other. In a situation of passive revolution, which gives rise to a detached
hegemony, there is an elite group in a society whose interests are furthered
by the reinforcement of the continuance of particular hegemonic princi-

ples (Howson 2006, 23, 49). This group may not seize power overtly, but
creates a situation where little or no alternative is made possible. This is
further complicated, as Showstack Sassoon argues, if real material ben-
efits flow to the majority of the population (Showstack Sassoon 2001,
8–10). We do not have room here to explore to what extent all elements
of Japanese society have benefited from postwar relations with the US
but there is little doubt that Japan has ‘flourished’ in perhaps unexpected
ways since the war. This has not been without extensive US influence.
If ‘democracy’ is a non-negotiable principle of US hegemony, then it
is true, as President Bush kept insisting in his campaign, that under the
United States’ supervision Japan has adopted a new democratic constitu-
tion. However, what the US has left in Japan is not simply a democratic
constitution and parliament. The legacy of the United States still lingers
on in various aspects of Japanese society. The most significant area is
national defence and security. President Bush proudly said ‘after defeating
enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies’ (2003b). But this is
not true. In Japan, the occupation by the General Headquarters lasted for
six years, and it was not until 1972 that Okinawa was restored to Japan.
Moreover, even today, in the twenty-fi rst century, US military forces are
stationed in the country. Also, the course of Japan’s rearmament in 1950s
took place at the will of the United States, which was then operating
within the conditions of the Cold War (Furukawa 2003). This is highly
ironic considering the fact that Japan was forcibly disarmed by the United
States right after the war. As the rhetoric around the ‘war on terror’ advo-
cated by the United States rises, Japan’s Self Defence Force’s capability is
increased, and now Japan is facing a very controversial moment as the
decision whether to amend its pacifist constitution must be made—and
the United States is now supporting this movement (Furukawa 2003;
McCormack 2004).
Indeed, in this structure, under the ‘nuclear umbrella,’ Japan was
protected during the Cold War. This perception of protection—which it
could be argued resembles an immature relationship of paternalism from
whose dependence Japan is unable to secede—has enabled an almost pro-
American rhetoric to deeply penetrate into Japanese society, so that even
a voice from ground zero is now seen as controversial. In the summer of
232 Yoko Harada
2004, the Peace Declaration released by the mayor of Hiroshima city,
Tadatoshi Akiba, was criticised in editorials of two major newspapers
in Japan. A Sankei Shimbun editorial said that the mayor should have
stressed the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program more
strongly, rather than damning the United States’ unilateral behaviour
or its production of smaller nuclear weapons (Sankei 2004a). It also
mentioned that Japan should cooperate with the United States and put more
pressure on North Korea to dismantle its program. Another newspaper,
Yomiuri Shimbun, more intensely attacked the mayor, who expressed
his preference for protecting the pacifist constitution and asked that the
present Japanese government not amend it. The newspaper demanded,
‘Do not involve politics in antinuclear appeal’ (Yomiuri 2004). Instead,
this paper argued for the amendment of the pacifist constitution and for
an increase in the Japanese defence force, ideas that synchronise with the
will of the United States. Both editorials, in nationalistic and conservative
newspapers, are heavily steeped in the rhetoric of the United States. Yet
this is not the conservatism of a traditional (imperial, prewar) Japan;
rather, it is the conservatism of traditional intellectuals who emerge from
elite power groups to further particular, corporativistic interests that are
disconnected from mass politics and that serve to reinforce the prevailing
hegemonic principles. That these are the principles of a globalising US-led
capitalism seems without doubt.
At the same time, there is another very controversial issue for Japan
concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Asian countries, mainly China
and both Koreas, which suffered severely under Japanese colonisation
and occupation in World War II, are criticising Japan in order to protest
against the United States. They also refer to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but
in a different way. The China Post wrote: ‘But WMD is not necessarily
a dirty word. For example, it was the atomic bomb that brought an end
to World War II. Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945, the war could have dragged much longer and more lives
would have been lost’ (China Post 2003).
China understands the incident as ‘the Allies’ nuclear retaliation’
(South China Morning Post 2003). Japan deserved the devastation, and
it freed China from Japan’s invasion, according to the paper. This total
lack of sympathy from neighbouring countries towards atrocities that
happened in Japan has facilitated the growth in a postwar relationship
between Japan and the US. Dower describes: ‘One of the most pernicious
aspects of the occupation was that the Asian peoples who had suffered
most from imperial Japan’s depredation—the Chinese, Koreans, Indone-
sians, and Filipinos—had no serious role, no influential presence at all in
the defeated land. They became invisible. Asian contributions of defeat-
ing the emperor’s soldiers and sailors were displayed by an all-consuming
focus on the American victory in the “Pacific War.” By this same process
of vaporization, the crimes that had been committed against Asian peo-
ples through colonization as well as war were all the more easily put out
of mind’ (Dower 1999, 27). In this sense then, the United States interferes
with relations between countries in the Pacific to serve its own ends and
to create a sense of isolation from its neighbours for Japan, so that it will
more readily accept US doctrine and come to be a material ally for the US
in the Pacific.
Reus-Smit remarks, ‘Legitimacy is a social phenomenon; an actor or
action is not legitimate unless other members of society deem it so’ (2004,
5). In a situation of passive revolution, with a resultant detached hege-
mony, there is no room for organic critique in Japanese society. Japan’s

behaviour since the defeat in 1945 has served to give legitimacy to the
past actions of its ‘conqueror’ and thus also to present actions in the
Middle East. Japan has relied on the victor’s rhetoric for its own national-
popular mythology and has forgotten its own history in doing so. ‘Much
that lies at the heart of contemporary Japanese society . . . derives from
the complexity of the interplay between the victors and the vanquished’
(Dower 1999, 28). In failing to link rhetoric surrounding weapons of
mass destruction, ground zero, and Iraq with the history of Hiroshima,
Nagasaki, and the past actions of United States of America, Japan has
failed to contest the legitimacy of the Bush Administration.
CONCLUSION
In the era when Gramsci was elaborating the idea of hegemony, the world,
specifically Europe, was observing the outbreak of world war, the after-
math of it, and the rise of socialist movements, revolution, and fascism
(Tokyo Gramsci Kai 2005). The emergence of Americanism and the Great
Depression also were key issues around which Gramsci formed his ideas
(Ohara 2006, 76). The era was followed by another world war and then
the Cold War. Now the Cold War is over, except on the Korean Penin-
sula, and the sole superpower is creating hegemony by waging a ‘war on
terror.’ What would Gramsci have said if he were to witness the present
picture of the world?
The situation in Iraq shows no sign of getting better. Without doubt,
it is important for the international community to examine the present
situation and consider how to deal with the country’s future. Neverthe-
less, it should not forget to question why this atrocity started and why it
is continuing—that is, to look to the past. Even though the rhetoric deliv-
ered by the United States’ government seems overwhelming, and counter-
arguments are drowned out by it, the legitimacy of this war should be
contested consistently by recalling a memory of the defeated side of the
Pacific War. Restoration of elements lacking in the United States’ rhetoric
in the mainstream discourse is essential. By doing so, the containment of
‘US hegemony’ in the twenty-fi rst century could be a reality.
234 Yoko Harada
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Contributors
Derek Boothman (1944), of Lancashire working-class origins, holds a

physics doctorate and is presently professor of English translation at the
University of Bologna’s faculty for interpreters and translators (SSLMIT)
and a participant in Rome’s regular Seminario gramsciano. His Further
Selections from the Prison Notebooks, alongside the Hoare/Nowell Smith
Selections and the Cultural Writings, is an integral part of the three-vol-
ume selected anthology of Gramsci’s Notebooks. An English-language edi-
tion of his study of Gramsci’s politico-cultural concept of translatability
between languages and paradigms is underway, while his translation of
Gramsci’s preprison letters is due out in late 2008.
Damien Cahill lectures in political economy at the University of Sydney,

Australia. His current research interests include: processes of prison priva-
tisation; the electoral support base of the Australian Greens; and the social
foundations of Australia’s contemporary economic boom.
Alastair Davidson, born 1939, is adjunct professor at Latrobe University,

Australia. He has been professor of citizenship studies at Swinburne Univer-
sity of Technology, Australia; Raoul Wallenberg professor of human rights
at Rutgers University and is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton. He has published ten books and more than one hundred articles,
in many languages, on globalization, citizenship, and human rights. He is,
together with John Cammett, one of the “fathers” of Gramsci studies in the
English-speaking world.
Susan Engel recently completed a PhD at the University of Wollongong,

Australia, on the World Bank and the post-Washington Consensus. Prior
to that, she had a diverse working career in government, business, and
community-based organisations and in managing development assistance
projects. For the past five years, she has been on the management commit-
tee of Indigo Foundation, a small nongovernmental organisation that funds
development projects in marginalised communities.
238 Contributors
Benedetto Fontana is a professor in political science at Baruch College,
New York City. His research interests include ancient, medieval, and mod-
ern political theory, as well as contemporary political and social theory. He
is the author of Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci
and Machiavelli (University of Minnesota Press, 1993), and the coeditor of
Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy
(Penn State University Press, 2004). He has published in various journals,
such as boundary 2, History of Political Thought, Journal of Classical Soci-
ology, Journal of the History of Ideas, and The Philosophical Forum. Cur-
rently, he is working on Antonio Gramsci and his notions of politics and

the state, on Machiavelli and his Romans, and on rhetoric and democracy.
Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase lectures in sociology at the University of Wollon-

gong, Australia, and is a researcher at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), also located at the University of
Wollongong. She obtained her PhD in anthropology from the University of
Melbourne and is the author of Global Issues/Local Contexts: The Rabi
Das of West Bengal (Orient Longman, New Delhi/Sangam Books, Lon-
don, 2001). Her research interests include comparative sociology, globali-
sation, gender relations in Asia, and ethnographic method. She is currently
engaged in a cross-national study of the garment industry and its impact on
labour relations in the Asia-Pacific.
Yoko Harada is a PhD candidate in the School of History and Politics at

the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses on the posi-
tion of Japan and Australia in the Asia-Pacific and in the present world.
National identity, nationalism, migration, and multiculturalism are some
of her research interests. She is affi liated to the Centre of Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies, UOW, and also is a Friend member of the Centre
for Dialogue, La Trobe University, Australia. Her essay “The Occident in
the Orient or the Orient in the Occident? Reception of Said’s Orientalism
in Japan” is published online.
Charles Hawksley lectures in politics and international relations in the

School of History and politics in the faculty of arts at the University of
Wollongong, Australia. His research interests include peacekeeping and
intervention, colonialism and imperialism, development politics in the
Pacific and Asia, war and state development. He has published in on vari-
ous aspects of PNG-Australia relations in the journals Rethinking Marx-
ism, Third World Quarterly, and Social Alternatives.
Richard Howson is currently convenor of sociology at the University of

Wollongong, Australia, and lectures in social and political theory, gender,
social policy, and civil society. He is a founding member of the Gramsci
Society Asia-Pacific and coordinator of the Hegemony Research Group. He
Contributors 239
is the author of Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity and is currently work-
ing on the forthcoming monograph, Sociology of Postmarxism.
Hiroshi Matsuda was born 1942 in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan and gradu-
ated from Waseda University. He studied abroad at Perugia University for
foreigners and at the Institute Gramsci in Rome, and he was a guest scholar
at the University of Florence (1986 to 1987). He is a professor emeritus at
Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and a member of the IGS Coordinating
Committee and is the author of New Development of Gramsci Studies: For
the Innovation of a Gramscian Figure (2003) and coauthor and cotranslator

of many others books and essays on Gramsci.
Koichi Ohara was born in 1941 in Tokyo and graduated from Keio Uni-
versity. He was a correspondent for the Japanese communist party’s Daily
Akahata in Prague (1970–74) and in Rome (1976–81). He is a member of the
IGS Coordinating Committee and is coauthor of the book How Is Gramsci
Read in the World? and other writings and cotranslator of The Educational
Principle in Gramsci by M. A. Manacorda (1996), Essays on Gramsci by N.
Bobbio (2003), and many others.
Timothy J. Scrase is a leading scholar on the impact of global social and cul-
tural change in Asia. He is the deputy director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social
Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong, Austra-
lia. He has been a visiting research fellow at the International Institute for
Asian Studies (IIAS), University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on
development and social change in a range of leading academic journals and
edited collections, and he has previously published four books. His fifth and
most recent book is Globalization and the Middle Classes in India (Rout-
ledge, 2008; coauthored with R. Ganguly-Scrase).
Kylie Smith completed her PhD in 2008 at the University of Wollongong,

Australia, on the processes of subaltern subjectivity in Australian history. She
has published in the areas of Australian history, critical theory, and Grams-
cian theory and is a founding member of the Hegemony Research Group and
the Gramsci Society Asia-Pacific.
Andrew Wells is a professor of comparative history and the dean of the Fac-
ulty of Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the author of
Constructing Capitalism (1988), and an editor of Industrial Relations in
Australia and Japan (1994), Australian Communism: a Guide to Sources
(1996), The Maritime Strikes of the 1890s (1992), A History of Wollongong
(1997), and Australian Labour and Regional Change (1998). He has also
written various chapters and articles on Australian economic, labour, and
intellectual history. Current research interests are on Australian communism
and comparative studies of Australian and South East Asian labour history.
Index
A consciousness, 38, 112–113, 151–152

America (Americanism), 53, 66, 73, 233 middle-class in India, 184–189, 190,
and Fordism, 65, 71–72, 109, 114, 195, 197–199
185 ruling/dominant class, 26, 57, 91,
see United States of 95, 103, 126–127, 139, 142,
antagonism, 1, 3, 10, 206 220–222
Asia-Pacific, 1, 2, 10, 12, 14, 15, 63–77, subaltern, 96–97, 125–126
159, 184, 202 working-class, 27–28, 69, 84,
Australia, 1, 2, 14, 73, 76, 77, 112–122, 112–115, 137–138, 208, 237
143–155, 201–215, 219, 223, coercion, 1–15, 31, 41, 52, 55, 55–58,
227 108–110, 118, 125, 137, 139,
142, 149, 159, 160, 177, 206,
C 207, 211, 213, 223
capitalism, 12, 26–29, 54, 63–66, and consensus, 1, 63, 73, 125
74, 107–110, 116, 121, 122, and consent, 15, 41, 160, 213
125–128, 138, 144, 154, 185, colonialism, 13, 125, 130, 133–139
211, 232 commonsense, 68–75, 96, 100, 144–
global, 64, 126 145, 148, 152–5
industrial/hegemony of , 108–109, folklore, 66–71, 112
120–121 popular wisdom, 63, 67, 70, 71
capitalist consensus, 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, 31, 64, 73,
mode of production, 166, 128, 142, 86, 94, 96
151 and coercion, 13, 31
society, 12, 20, 80, 118 corporativism, 4, 7, 10, 25, 27–29
hegemony, 65–66, 68, 70–72, 75, consciousness, 4, 30–31, 52–53, 66, 72,
126–128, 144, 150, 186 75, 99–100, 112
China, 1, 2, 12, 64, 69, 73–77, 208, See also class
221, 232 crisis of authority, 6, 126
civil society, 3–6, 9, 10, 41, 52, 55–60, Croce, Benedetto, 7–9, 29, 30, 41–42,
66, 86, 88–97, 101, 142–143, 48, 86, 128
150, 160, 162, 176, 186, 204,
207–208, 211–212, 214, 215 D
and dialectic, 55 dialectic, 53, 55, 94, 163, 204
subaltern and, 108, 114 concept of, 7–10, 40–41, 83
and the state, 101 croce and, 7, 204
class, 5, 28, 33, 35–46, 51–55, 69, Gramsci and, 7, 59
71–77, 80, 83, 201, 204, 206, Hegel and, 40
222 hegemony and, 7–9, 111
alliance, 36, 40, 54 Historical bloc, 3, 55, 142, 204
242 Index
method, 7–9, 10, 53, 59, 94 complexity, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11–13, 15,
disunity, 3, 4, 6, 7 26, 51
domination, 1–7, 10, 12, 15, 25, 27, counter, 100
28, 38, 40, 51, 58, 80–90, dominative, 6, 10, 27, 108, 125, 186,
100–101, 108, 125, 128, 149, 207, 218, 219, 222, 223
160, 206, 219, 223 ethico-political, 9, 10, 12, 52, 208,
219
E highest synthesis, 10, 14
education, 5, 13, 23, 25, 26, 29–31, language and, 42–45, 68–70, 99, 149,
44, 63, 71, 80, 89, 93–95, 186–187
110, 137, 139, 145–155, 167, neoliberal, 159, 165, 186, 187, 201,
171–172, 188, 189, 191, 197, 207–209, 213, 214

198, 210, 211, 213 operation of, 1–2, 10, 64
ethico-political, 3, 7–9, 40, 41, 52, 90, politico-economic, 5, 36, 186
92, 153, 208, 211, 214, 215, power and, 5–6, 8–10, 27, 51–52, 55,
219, 223 86, 87–89, 97, 100–101, 108,
121, 126–127, 142, 207, 223
F structure/superstructure, 9, 10, 11,
Freud, Sigmund, 110–111, 116, 33, 34, 56, 99, 107, 108, 160,
120–121 185, 204, 205
theory of, 2, 5, 6–7, 10, 11, 12, 14,
G 24, 35, 51, 56, 59–60, 63–65,
good sense, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 58, 59, 67, 107–108, 128, 203, 205
66–71, 73, 76, 77, 112, 138, hegemony of the proletariat, 4, 25, 26,
152, 155 30, 38, 39, 46, 84
Gramsci, Antonio, historical bloc, 3, 7, 9, 14–15, 29,
Americanism and Fordism, 65, 71, 33, 43, 55–56, 58, 60, 108,
109, 114, 185 110, 127, 142–143, 155, 159,
pre-prison, 4, 16, 24, 31, 33, 45, 55, 161–163, 170, 176–177, 186,
99 202–209, 211–215
prison, 16–17, 22, 26–27, 29, 38, history
40, 53–54, 57, 60, 65, 85–86, methodology, 7–9, 29, 40–41,
201, 203, 205 113–114, 128, 205–206
Prison Notebooks, 4, 24, 25, 33, 37,
53, 57–59, 63, 65–66, 77, 90, I
177 ideology, 14, 20, 26, 52, 56, 71, 99,
Southern Question, 4, 13, 16, 23–24, 110, 128, 139, 160, 161, 162,
26, 28, 29, 32, 139 186, 188, 194, 196, 205
Guha, Ranajit, 13, 77, 78, 79, 125, imperialism, 13, 27, 125, 130, 223
139 India, 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 64, 69, 73–77,
subaltern studies, 13, 54, 125 125, 129–136, 139, 184–199
intellectuals, 25, 29, 30, 43, 51, 53, 59,
H 64–65, 70, 71, 73–74, 75, 86,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7, 40, 95, 97–98, 160, 186
91, 103, 126 organic, 5–6, 10, 12, 74, 144, 160,
Hegelianism, 7, 18, 89, 92 161
hegemonic principles, 6, 10, 15, 27, 28, traditional, 5–6, 15, 67, 74, 77, 218,
53, 65, 108, 112, 121, 127, 128, 219, 220, 224–226, 232
163, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, International relations, 13, 161, 219,
186, 231 220, 222
hegemony Cox, Robert, 162–163, 220–221
aspirational, 10, 219 Italy, 12, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30,
capitalist, 65–66, 68, 70–72, 75, 34, 35, 38, 41, 44, 45, 46, 54,
126–128, 144, 150, 186 64–66, 69, 75–76, 81, 117, 126
Index 243
J political society, 5–6, 10, 55, 57–59,
Japan, 1, 2, 15, 72–74, 77, 175, 86, 90–91
218–233 civil society and, 3, 9–10, 55, 57, 60,
88–90, 92, 160, 162
L state government, 57, 86, 93, 97
language, 42, 43–45, 64, 95, 99, 108, politico-economic, 5, 36, 166, 186
114, 146–148, 186–187 power, 5–6, 8–10, 27, 51–52, 55, 86,
and folklore, 67 87–89, 97, 100–101, 114, 108,
and common sense, 68 121, 126–127, 142, 207, 223
dialect, 69–70, 74–75 legitimacy and, 51, 108
national, 69–70 political, 3, 25, 31, 85, 222
local/common, 146–149 relations, 35, 82, 130, 152

larrikins, 12, 107, 113–121 psychoanalysis, 109, 111
leadership, 3, 7, 9–11, 25,27, 29–31, psychoanalytic theory, 12, 107,
33, 35–42, 52, 54–55, 57–58, 120–121
81–83, 85–89, 92, 94, 96, 100, repression, 51, 72, 108, 110–111,
108, 121, 142, 160, 177, 206, 116, 120
209, 219, 222–223 sublimation, 108, 111
legitimate, 6, 8, 82, 94, 108
Lenin, Vladimir Illich, 19, 25–27, S
35–37, 40, 46, 53, 54, 61, 62, self, 13, 28, 64, 75, 107, 108, 110, 112,
83, 84, 89, 91, 117–117, 120–121, 191, 212
Leninist, 27, 54, 84, 94 consciousness, 52, 61, 97, 112
liberalism, 9, 18, 89, 186, 201 critical, 52, 61, 97, 98, 112, 152
determination, 144
M discipline, 90, 99, 101, 109, 110,
Malaya, 13, 130, 136 117, 120, 190
Malaysia, 1, 2, 221 emancipation, 29
Marx, Karl, 11, 27, 28, 33, 40, 46, 55, governing, 55, 101, 131, 138, 143,
58, 61, 89, 128 145, 147, 152
Marxism, 7, 11, 30, 37, 51, 53, 74, 98, interest, 81, 82, 196, 219
128 knowledge, 5, 28, 29, 59
national-popular, 12, 53, 202, 214, 233 referential, 55–56
neoliberal, 88, 92, 165, 166, 184–186, transformation, 153
187, 189, 199–200, 213 state, 5–6, 8–9, 21, 24, 26, 35, 41, 42,
Australian politics, 199–202, 51–52, 54, 55, 77, 86, 89–90,
207–211, 214 93, 101, 111, 161, 204
case of West Bengal, 188–196, 197, government, 8, 93, 114, 116, 198,
198, 199 210
globalisation, 143, 155, 176, 186 integral, 3–4, 9–10, 55–56, 57–58,
World Bank, 159, 163, 169–170, 172 90–92, 207
subaltern, 2, 3–4, 5–6, 10, 30, 35,
P 42, 44–45, 46, 51, 52–54, 58,
Papua New Guinea, 1, 2, 142–155 59–60, 84, 96, 97–98, 109–113,
passive revolution, 41, 65, 69, 70, 75, 114, 117, 126, 127, 139, 145,
76, 77, 161, 185, 218, 219–220 148, 149, 150, 152, 161, 186
Japan and, 220, 224, 230–231, 232 subaltern studies, 13, 54, 77, 125
Papua New Guinea and, 143–144, subject, 42, 98, 100, 112, 137
148, 151, 155 subjectivity, 99, 107–113, 114, 185
philosophy of praxis, 7, 9, 40–41,
59–60, 153, 205, 206 U
political economy, 5, 10, 14, 133 United States of America, 226, 229,
international, 159–163 233
244 Index
(as America), 64, 71–3, 115, 185, W
218, 224, 225–227 war of movement, 6, 91, 121, 148
unstable equilibria, 3, 6, 7, 10 war of position, 5–6, 55, 57, 65–67, 91,
93, 96, 108, 114, 210, 215, 219
V Washington Consensus, 14, 163,
Vietnam, 1, 2, 14, 130–132, 136, 165–172, 174, 176–177
139–141, 159, 161, 163, 165, post-, 165, 167
168–177 World Bank, 14, 159–177

Hegemony and Coercion

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17. Goffman and Social Organization 27. Living with Markets

Studies in a Sociological Legacy Jeremy Shearmur

20. The Nature of Capital 30. The Intellectual as Stranger

21. The Age of Chance 31. Hermeneutic Dialogue and

37. Ignorance and Liberty 48. Pareto and Political Theory

38. Deleuze, Marx and Politics 49. German Political Philosophy

New York London

Simultaneously published in the UK

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2008 Taylor & Francis

Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade-

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

ISBN 0-203-92718-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-95544-0 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-95544-7 (hbk)

1 Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion 1

2 Hegemony in the Preprison Context 16

3 Hegemony: Political and Linguistic Sources for Gramsci’s

4 Hegemony and the Elaboration of the Process of Subalternity 51

5 Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 63

6 Hegemony and Power in Gramsci 80

7 Hegemony, Subalternity, and Subjectivity in Early

8 Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour 125

10 The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam 159

11 Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism:

The Case of West Bengal, India. 184

12 Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc:

13 Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War 218

The concept of hegemony is ubiquitous in critical accounts of the impact

Lenore Lyons, PhD

HEGEMONY AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC

This volume responds to the recent explosion of interest and research on

KEY CONCEPTS IN THE THEORY OF HEGEMONY

SUBALTERNITY COMMON SENSE

lack good sense

Coercion historical bloc

Figure 1.1. A conceptual frame.

and cannot constitute an ‘intellectual order’ because it cannot produce a

By emphasising crisis, Gramsci shows that at the centre of hegemony is

doing, it becomes both ‘fundamental to the notion of hegemony and . . . . the

tively unintelligible outside of an ethico-political history.

Gramsci seeks to maintain the historical nature of ethico-political but

leading group seeks to develop a balance where consensus is emphasised

HEGEMONIC OPERATIONS IN THE ASIA-

influence, and complicate, his thinking about the possibilities of revolu-

is on developing the Gramscian conception of common sense by exploring

policy and international relations are suggestive and occasionally explicit

1. This concept will be elaborated on p. 10.

On the evening of November 8, 1926, under Mussolini’s Exceptional

THE STRUGGLE TO MAKE AN IMPACT

politics (Davidson 1977, 70).

THE DEMISE OF THE FACTORY COUNCILS

In the aftermath of World War I, social, economic, and political tensions

However, the success of the Factory Council ideology raised an impor-

the rapid development of the Factory Councils despite the opposition of

In 1919–20, we made some extremely serious mistakes which ulti-

But these continual delays imposed through the factional struggles of

and profound, enables the simultaneous opening up and linking together

FROM DICTATORSHIP TO HEGEMONY

and profound, enables the simultaneous opening up and linking together

FROM DICTATORSHIP TO HEGEMONY