Page 32 - summer 22

Antonio Gramsci 1891-1937: “cultural hegemony”
Marx had based his theory on dialectical materialism. Put simply, this meant that all
societies had a material or economic foundation, on which rested a superstructure of
laws, government and culture. The point was the economic foundation determined
the legal, political and cultural superstructure. This is called economic determinism:
economics determines everything. But Gramsci had been an activist, trying to rouse

and organise workers in the factories of Turin during the tumultuous period before
Mussolini rose to power. He saw the importance of propaganda and persuasion.
Things didn’t just happen automatically. They had to be made to happen.

This practical experience of activism gave Gramsci his epiphany. The capitalist class
dominated society. Gramsci scrutinised this. How did they do it? He turned to a little-
used concept: hegemony. This was from an ancient Greek word “hegemonia”,

“dominance over”, originally used about relations between the rival Greek city states.
Gramsci now used it in a different way, to describe how the ruling classes operated.

Under capitalism, hegemony was exercised by the capitalist or bourgeois class both
through coercion - their control of the law, the police, the courts – and also through
their control of the culture. Gramsci was the first to emphasise the importance of the
cultural dimension to the hegemony of the ruling class. Through it, the bourgeoisie