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was able to impose not merely its will, but also its thoughts, opinions and

assumptions on the workers. Hegemony allowed them to impose their definitions of
right and wrong and of “common sense”. Thus, the workers became the willing
slaves of capitalism. Physical coercion was relatively rarely necessary. Hegemony
operated mainly through the mind.

Gramsci had made a critical intellectual breakthrough. Maybe economics didn’t
shape everything; maybe culture did. And the way to challenge hegemony was not
just on the factory floor of in the streets, but through cultural resistance. The battle

would be a war of ideas as much as of strikes and marches. Modernism had re-
th
written the rules of 20 century art. Now Gramsci had begun to re-write its politics.

Adorno, Modernism and Popular Culture
Although Gramsci’s notebooks were not published in full until 1971, they were
smuggled out of prison in the 1930’s and extracts were published in 1947. As a
political prisoner he had no direct contact with the Frankfurt School, but they were

thinking along similar lines, and their writings extended Gramsci’s thinking about
what came to be called cultural hegemony. Theodore Adorno believed that a key role
was played in this by what he called “the culture industry”. Hollywood, for example,
had to churn out movies like a factory production-line in order to pay the costs of
setting up and maintaining the studios and movie theatres But this meant that
movies had to sell; profit was more important than artistic quality. Indeed, what did
“artistic quality” mean in a movie?