5th Year ESS

Sociology

Assignment Antonio Gramsci

The following activity should be completed using your notes from class

1) Explain what Gramsci considers to be a political party. Provide an example.

For a party to exist, and to become historically necessary, three fundamental elements must
come together in it:
● A diffuse element, of common, average men, whose participation is offered by
discipline and fidelity, not by the creative and highly organizational spirit... they are a
force as long as there is someone who centralizes, organizes, disciplines them, but in
the absence of this cohesive force they would spread and annul each other in a
powerless dust.
● The main cohesive element... endowed with a highly cohesive, centralizing and
disciplining force and also, perhaps because of this, inventiveness... with this element
alone they would not form a party, however they would form it more than the first
element considered . There is talk of captains without an army, but it is actually easier
to raise an army than captains.
● A middle element, that articulates the first with the second element, that puts them in
contact, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.
2) How does Gramsci characterise the State?
The state in Gramsci is characterized by two analytically separate, but. historically and
mutually penetrating, spheres: civil society, on the one hand, and. the
bureaucratic/military/administrative apparatus, on the other. Liberals, whether classical or
contemporary, see the former as the sphere of private action.
He states that the state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which
the ruling class not only justifies and maintains the domination, but manages to win the active
consent of those over whom it rules.
Gramsci's theory of hegemony is linked to his conception of the capitalist state, which he
claims he controls through force and consent. The state should not be understood in the
narrow sense of government. Gramsci rather divides it between 'political society', which is
the arena of political institutions and constitutional legal control, and 'civil society', which is
commonly seen as a 'private' or 'non-state' sphere, and which includes the economy.
Gramsci notes, ‘the State must be conceived of as an “educator”, in as much as it tends
precisely to create a new type or level of civilisation’

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5th Year ESS
Sociology

Watch the following video and answer: Which concepts can you identify? How do they relate
to one another? In this video you can analyse the fact that journalists undermine the status of
the opposition to saying that they are the hegemonic media. This is completely tied to what
Gramsci says about hegemonic domination. Where journalists with their own interests against
the opposition tries to generate or create a new idea that goes against the opposition and that
society believes what they say. In turn, the media can function as conflict-creating political
parties.
They conceive the role of the hegemonic media as a constant “attack” duty, in order to, in this
case, to convince the population that Cristina Kirchner is guilty. No matter how and how
many times they say it, it stays in the minds of the readers. They (Duggan and García) also
state that the media IS the opposition. This also shows us the pure hegemony of the media, as
it transcends society.