Hegemony (Gramsci)
헤게모니 (그람시)
A concept developed by Antonio Gramsci: the supremacy of a social group rests not only on "domination" by force but also on "intellectual and moral leadership" over allied groups. Through the institutions of civil society, such as schools, churches, the press and trade unions, the ruling class makes its worldview the common sense of the whole society and wins consent. Gramsci used it to explain why revolution had not come in the West, and held that the working class must become a leading group before it takes power.
In depth
From Lenin to Gramsci
Russian Marxists, Lenin above all, used "hegemony" for the political leadership of the working class over the peasantry and others in a democratic revolution. In the notebooks he wrote in prison after 1926 Gramsci greatly widened the concept into a tool for analysing how the bourgeoisie establishes and maintains its rule.
Domination and leadership
In Notebook 19 §24 Gramsci set out a methodological criterion using the Risorgimento: the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as "domination" and as "intellectual and moral leadership". A group dominates the antagonistic groups it seeks to "liquidate" or subdue, even by armed force, and leads kindred and allied groups. It can and indeed must already be leading before it wins governmental power, and once in power, though dominant, it must continue to "lead" as well. The Moderates around Cavour attracted the intellectuals even before taking power and "indirectly" led even Mazzini's and Garibaldi's Action Party; the trasformismo after 1876, he argued, was the parliamentary expression of this hegemonic action.
State and civil society
Gramsci did not understand the state in the narrow sense of the government. He distinguished conceptually (stressing that the two overlap in reality) between "political society", which coerces directly (police, army, law), and "civil society", which organises consent (family, education, trade unions, churches); the modern capitalist state rules through force plus consent. In civil society the ruling class meets some demands of unions and mass parties, going beyond its immediate interests and changing the forms of its hegemony, which Gramsci called "passive revolution". The working class must therefore train its own "organic intellectuals" and build a counter-hegemony: this is the war of position, led by the revolutionary party as a "modern Prince" on Machiavelli's model.
Afterwards
The concept grounded the emphasis on consent in civil society in the strategy of the post-war Italian Communist Party and of 1970s Eurocommunism, and it is now widely used in cultural studies and international relations (neo-Gramscianism). In English it is also called "cultural hegemony". It should be distinguished from the general sense of hegemony as one state's dominance in international politics.