InMarxist philosophy,cultural hegemony is thedominance of a culturally diverse society by theruling class who shape the culture of that society—thebeliefs andexplanations,perceptions,values, andmores—so that theworldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted culturalnorm.[1] As the universaldominant ideology, the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economicstatus quo as natural and inevitable, and that it perpetuates social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificialsocial constructs that benefit only the ruling class.[2][full citation needed][3]When thesocial control is carried out by another society, it is known ascultural imperialism.
In philosophy and in sociology, the denotations and the connotations of termcultural hegemony derive from the Ancient Greek wordhegemonia (ἡγεμονία), which indicates theleadership and therégime of the hegemon.[4] In political science,hegemony is thegeopolitical dominance exercised by an empire, thehegemon (leader state) that rules the subordinate states of the empire by the threat of intervention, an implied means ofpower, rather than by threat of direct rule—militaryinvasion,occupation, and territorialannexation.[5][6]
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In 1848,Karl Marx proposed that theeconomic recessions and practical contradictions of a capitalist economy would provoke the working class toproletarian revolution, deposecapitalism, restructure social institutions (economic, political, social) per the rational models ofsocialism, and thus begin the transition to acommunist society. Therefore, thedialectical changes to the functioning of the economy of a society determine its socialsuperstructures (culture and politics).
Russian revolutionary,Leon Trotsky, argued in his bookProblems of Everyday Life, that capitalism was long established inWestern Europe, the proletariat of those societies were much moreculturally acculturated with bourgeois habits and reformist traditions and hence more attached to the existing system. Consequently, this in turn made the revolutionary process in those respective countries more difficult. Nevertheless, Trotsky argued that due to the cultural and economic advantages thatWestern Europe had accumulated over centuries that this in turn would make the potentiality of socialist construction more achievable.[7][8]
To that end,Antonio Gramsci proposed astrategic distinction between the politics for awar of position and for awar of manœuvre. The war of position is an intellectual and cultural struggle wherein theanti-capitalist revolutionary creates aproletarian culture whose native value system counters the cultural hegemony of thebourgeoisie. The proletarian culture will increaseclass consciousness, teach revolutionary theory and historical analysis, and thus further develop revolutionary organisation among the social classes.[9] After winning the war of position, socialist leaders would then have the necessary political power and popular support to realise the war of manœuvre, the political praxis ofrevolutionary socialism.
AsMarxist philosophy, cultural hegemony analyses the functions of economic class within thebase and superstructure, from which Gramsci developed the functions of social class within the social structures created for and by cultural domination. In the practise of imperialism, cultural hegemony occurs when the working and the peasant classes believe and accept that the prevailing cultural norms of a society (thedominant ideology imposed by the ruling class) realistically describes the natural order of things in society.
In the war for position, the working-classintelligentsia politically educate the working classes to perceive that theprevailing cultural norms are not natural and inevitable social conditions, and to recognize that thesocial constructs of bourgeois culture function as instruments of socio-economic domination, e.g. the institutions (state, church, and social strata), theconventions (custom and tradition), andbeliefs (religions and ideologies), etc. That to realise their ownworking-class culture the workers and the peasants, by way of their own intellectuals, must perform the necessary analyses of their culture and national history in order for theproletariat to transcend the old ways of thinking about the order of things in a society under the cultural hegemony of an imperial power.
Gramsci said that cultural and historical analyses of the "natural order of things in society" established by the dominant ideology, would allowcommon-sense men and women to intellectually perceive the social structures of bourgeois cultural hegemony. In each sphere of life (private and public) common sense is theintellectualism with which people cope with and explain their daily life within their social stratum within the greatersocial order; yet the limits of common sense inhibit a person's intellectual perception of theexploitation of labour made possible with cultural hegemony. Given the difficulty in perceiving thestatus quo hierarchy of bourgeois culture (social and economic classes), most people concern themselves with private matters, and so do not question the fundamental sources of their socio-economicoppression, individual and collective.[10]
To perceive and combat ruling-class cultural hegemony, the working class and the peasant class depend upon the moral and political leadership of their nativeintelligentsia, scholars, academics, and teachers, scientists, philosophers, administratorset al. from their specific social classes; thus Gramsci's political distinction between the intellectuals of thebourgeoisie and the intellectuals of the working class, respectively, the men and women who are the proponents and the opponents of the culturalstatus quo:
Since these various categories of traditional intellectuals experience through anesprit de corps their uninterrupted historical continuity, and their special qualifications, they thus put themselves forward as autonomous and independent of thedominant social group. This self-assessment is not without consequences in the ideological and political fields; consequences of wide-ranging import. The whole ofidealist philosophy can easily be connected with this position, assumed by the social complex of intellectuals, and can be defined as the expression of that social utopia, by which the intellectuals think of themselves as "independent" [and] autonomous, [and] endowed with a character of their own, etc.
— Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1971), pp. 7–8.[11]
The traditional and vulgarized type of the intellectual is given by the Man of Letters, the philosopher, and the artist. Therefore, journalists, who claim to be men of letters, philosophers, artists, also regard themselves as the "true" intellectuals. In the modern world,technical education, closely bound to industrial labour, even at the most primitive and unqualified level, must form the basis of the new type of intellectual. . . . The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist of eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor [and] organizer, as "permanent persuader", not just simple orator.
— Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (1971), pp. 9–10.[12]
In 1967, regarding the politics and society of West Germany, the leader of theGerman Student Movement,Rudi Dutschke, applied Gramsci's analyses of cultural hegemony using the phrase the "Long March through the Institutions" to describe the ideological work necessary to realise the war of position. The allusion to theLong March (1934–35) of the ChinesePeople's Liberation Army indicates the great work required of the working-classintelligentsia to produce the working-class popular culture with which to replace thedominant ideology imposed by the cultural hegemony of thebourgeoisie.[14][13]
InIdeology and Ideological State Apparatuses (1970),Louis Althusser describes the complex of social relationships among the different organs of the State that transmit and disseminate the dominant ideology to the populations of a society.[15] The ideological state apparatuses (ISA) are the sites of ideological conflict among the social classes of a society; and, unlike the military and police forces, the repressive state apparatuses (RSA), the ISA exist as a plurality throughout society.
Despite the ruling-class control of the RSA, the ideological apparatuses of the state are both the sites and the stakes (the objects) ofclass struggle, because the ISA are not monolithic social entities, and exist amongst society. As the public and the private sites of continual class struggle, the ideological apparatuses of the state (ISA) areoverdetermined zones of society that are composed of elements of the dominant ideologies of previousmodes of production, hence the continual political activity in:
The parliamentary structures of the State, by which elected politicians exercisethe will of the people also are an ideological apparatus of the State, given the State's control of which populations are allowed to participate as political parties. In itself, the political system is an ideological apparatus, because citizens' participation involves intellectually accepting the ideological "fiction, corresponding to a 'certain' reality, that the component parts of the [political] system, as well as the principle of its functioning, are based on the ideology of the 'freedom' and 'equality' of the individual voters and the 'free choice' of the people's representatives, by the individuals that 'make up' the people".[17]
Typically . . . the making of hegemony involves the assertion of control over various modes of symbolic production: over such things as educational and ritual processes, patterns of socialization, political and legal procedures, canons of style and self-representation, public communication, health and bodily discipline, and so on.
The more a hegemonic empire relies on power (the perception that one can enforce one's desired goals) rather than force (direct physical action to compel one's goals), the more efficient it is, because the subordinates police themselves.
Long March Through the Institutions21
