Introduction to Marxist State Theory, Part 3: Gramsci's Turn — Hegemony, Civil Society, and the War of Position

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Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: 2026-04-20

Series Note: This article is the third installment in a five-part series on Marxist state theory.

- Part 1: [What is the State? — Marx and Engels' Class State Theory](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-01.md)

- Part 2: [Lenin's Deepening — State and Revolution and the Smashing of the Bourgeois State](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-02.md)

- Part 3: Gramsci's Turn — Hegemony, Civil Society, War of Position ← Current

- Part 4: Contemporary Debates — The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate

- Part 5: The Character of the South Korean State — Developmental State, Welfare State, Class State

Why Gramsci? — Theory Born from Defeat

Antonio Gramsci's (1891–1937) theory emerged from the experience of defeat. The 1920 Turin factory occupation struggle failed, and in 1922 Mussolini seized power. In 1926, Gramsci was arrested, and a fascist court sentenced him to "prevent his brain from functioning for twenty years." He died in 1937, having written some thirty notebooks (the Prison Notebooks) while incarcerated.

Gramsci's fundamental question was this: Why did the working classes of Italy and Germany fail to complete a revolution and instead succumb to fascism? Why did what worked in Russia not work in Western Europe?

In answering this question, Gramsci fundamentally expanded Marxist-Leninist state theory. His key contributions are twofold: first, redefining the state not simply as an apparatus of coercion but as a hegemonic apparatus; second, reconstructing socialist strategy from the perspective of the war of position.

1. Hegemony — Rule by Consent

Distinction between Domination and Hegemony

Gramsci saw bourgeois power as being exercised in two ways:

Domination: state coercive force — police, military, courts, prisons. It physically suppresses resistance.
Hegemony: the organization of consent — schools, churches, media, culture, political parties. It makes the dominated classes voluntarily accept the ruling order.

In mature capitalist states, the core of bourgeois power lies in the latter. If the ruling class rules only by bayonets, that is evidence of crisis. Stable rule is achieved when the dominated classes internalize the ruling class's worldview, values, and common sense as their own.

"The ruling class does not rule by force alone. It also directs — that is, organizes consent."

This is the essence of hegemony. As long as workers believe "the market is fair," "meritocracy works," and "the state stands above class," the ruling class can rule without bayonets. Hegemony operates through ideological common sense.

Hegemony is Reproduced Through Culture, Education, and Media

According to Gramsci, hegemony does not fall from the sky. It is continuously produced and reproduced through countless everyday institutions: school textbooks, religious rituals, media framing, popular culture narratives, vocational training content, and more.

This implies something crucial: Hegemony is an object of struggle. It is not only the ruling class that exercises hegemony. The working class also can — and must — build counter-hegemony.

2. Political Society + Civil Society = The Expanded State

Limits of Classical Marxism

Marxist-Engelsian state theory understood the state primarily as political society — law, police, military, bureaucracy. An instrument of class coercion standing on the economic base. Lenin in State and Revolution also sharpened this view.

But Gramsci saw that this alone could not explain the reality of Western Europe.

Civil Society — The Terrain of Hegemony

Gramsci expanded the concept of the state to include civil society:

"State = political society + civil society (that is, hegemony armored by coercion)."

Here, civil society refers to the totality of 'private' organizations — family, church, trade unions, schools, media, political parties, cultural associations. This should not be confused with Hegel's civil society (capitalist market relations). Gramsci's civil society is the ideological terrain where hegemony is produced.

In Western Europe, the bourgeois state is not a fragile shell like Russia's. It is a robust structure supported by a thick civil society. Churches, schools, newspapers, trade union bureaucracies — all of these are 'trenches' reinforcing bourgeois hegemony.

Hence Gramsci's conclusion: To seize power in Western Europe, one must first build hegemony in civil society.

3. Organic Intellectuals — Producers of Hegemony

Hegemony does not arise spontaneously. There are those who produce and disseminate it. Gramsci called them intellectuals — not only professors and writers, but in a much broader sense.

Traditional vs. Organic Intellectuals

Traditional intellectuals: Professors, priests, writers — those who conceal their class origins and claim to be 'neutral experts.' In fact, they reproduce the hegemony of the former ruling class.
Organic intellectuals: Those whom a specific class cultivates from within itself to organize and express its own interests. The capitalist class's organic intellectuals are economists, legal scholars, management consultants. The working class's organic intellectuals are labor activists, Marxist theorists, progressive journalists.

For Gramsci, the working class's political struggle is not merely a struggle for economic demands. It must also include a cultural and ideological struggle — nurturing organic intellectuals, building counter-hegemony, organizing a new worldview.

This is why Gramsci saw education and party organization as strategic cores.

4. Historical Bloc — Theory of Class Alliance

Gramsci explained the social foundation of rule through the concept of the historical bloc. A historical bloc is not simply the ruling class alone, but the structure of alliance, compromise, and integration that the ruling class forms with other social groups.

Bourgeois hegemony is not built by the bourgeoisie alone. It becomes stable only by integrating some interests of the middle classes, peasants, and petty bourgeoisie into its project and organizing their 'consent.'

Conversely, the working class's counter-hegemony cannot be completed by the working class alone. It requires the capacity to unite diverse subordinate groups — peasants, middle classes, ethnic minorities, women — into a single popular historical bloc.

This is why Gramsci emphasized the formation of a 'national-popular' will.

5. War of Position vs. War of Maneuver

The most influential concept in Gramsci's strategic theory is the contrast between the war of position and the war of maneuver.

War of Maneuver — The Russian Model

The war of maneuver (guerra di manovra) is a military metaphor for a frontal assault that breaks through the line. The 1917 Russian Revolution was a classic war of maneuver: the tsarist state was weak, and civil society was thin. Overthrow the immediate enemy, and power follows.

"In Russia the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed."

War of Position — The Western Strategy

The war of position (guerra di posizione) is a metaphor drawn from the trench warfare of World War I. When an immediate breakthrough is impossible, it is a long-term strategy of gradually infiltrating the enemy's defensive positions and building strength.

In Western Europe, working-class emancipation requires a war of position, not a war of maneuver. Because:

The bourgeois state is backed by a thick civil society.
Simply 'taking over' state power without capturing hegemony will quickly collapse.
Therefore, before seizing state power, the foundations of hegemony must be built in civil society.

Concrete content of the war of position: building counter-hegemony, training organic intellectuals, establishing working-class cultural and educational institutions, forming alliances with diverse subordinate classes and groups, changing the 'common sense' of the masses.

Beware Misunderstandings of the War of Position

Gramsci's war of position is often misread as 'parliamentarism' or 'gradual reform.' But Gramsci did not discard the war of maneuver. The war of position is the preparation and condition for the war of maneuver. Seizing state power without a hegemonic foundation is merely a weak foothold.

Rather, Gramsci's insight is this: Revolution is not a single day's explosion but a long-term process. In that process, ideological struggle, cultural struggle, and the cultivation of organic intellectuals are just as decisive as 'battle' in the military sense.

6. Caesarism — Product of Organic Crisis

Gramsci analyzed specific political situations through the concept of Caesarism. When the balance of forces between the ruling bloc and the dominated bloc threatens catastrophic collision, a third person or force emerges that weakens or mediates both blocs.

Caesarism can be progressive or reactionary. Progressive Caesarism liquidates the old order and opens the door for new forces to enter national life. Reactionary Caesarism suppresses the rise of new forces and reorganizes the old ruling bloc.

This concept provides a rich tool for analyzing contemporary politics — populism, the rise of authoritarian rulers. Whether Trump, Macron, or South Korea's Lee Jae-myung has a Caesarian character in a certain sense requires independent analysis.

7. After Gramsci — Critique and Reception

Two Lines of Critique

Leninist critique: Gramsci's war of position risks diluting revolutionary moments. Emphasizing 'hegemony building' can slide into parliamentarism and reformism. The history of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) shows this — its evolution into Eurocommunism.

Post-Marxist reception: Laclau and Mouffe developed Gramsci's hegemony theory into a pluralist democratic theory that breaks away from class reductionism. But this direction is criticized for effectively abandoning class analysis.

Gramsci's Enduring Validity

Despite critiques, Gramsci's contributions are irreplaceable. Under contemporary capitalism:

The state is not merely a coercive apparatus but also an apparatus for organizing consent.
The ruling class reproduces hegemony not only through economic power but through culture, media, and education.
The working class's liberation struggle must go beyond economic struggle to include ideological and cultural struggle.
Revolution is a long-term process, and the role of organic intellectuals is decisive in that process.

These insights apply more keenly today. Why does neoliberal hegemony persist despite economic crisis? Why do large sections of the dominated class accept their own exploitation as 'natural'? Why do alternative worldviews struggle to take root? Without Gramsci's tools, these questions are hard to answer.

Gramsci in Korea — Beyond Fragmented Application

In Korean progressive discourse, Gramsci is often cited piecemeal. 'Hegemony' is overused, and 'war of position' is used as a metaphor for electoral strategy. But to use Gramsci properly, the questions must be more concrete.

How is bourgeois hegemony reproduced in South Korea? The ideological function of Chosun Ilbo, JoongAng Ilbo, Dong-A Ilbo; the production of meritocratic common sense through the exam-and-school-ranking system; the persistent operation of anti-communism; the cultural hegemony of the chaebol success narrative. These are hegemonic apparatuses in the Gramscian sense.

Are South Korean progressive forces sufficiently producing organic intellectuals? Labor movement activists, progressive theory journals, alternative media — what are their capacities and limits?

What is the possibility of constructing a popular historical bloc in South Korea? How to unite the working class, youth, women, small farmers, and small business owners into a single hegemonic project?

These questions will be explored more deeply in Part 5 (The Character of the South Korean State).

Conclusion — Within the Map of Theory

Let us summarize the journey so far:

Part	Theorist	Core Thesis
1	Marx & Engels	The state = instrument of class rule
2	Lenin	Bourgeois state = object to be smashed. Commune = new state form
3	Gramsci	State = coercion + consent. Hegemony = object of struggle. War of position = long-term strategy
4	Poulantzas & Miliband	Relative autonomy of the state and its class character — structuralism vs. instrumentalism
5	Application to Korea	Developmental state, welfare state, class state — what is the South Korean state?

Gramsci complicated the dichotomous simplicity of Marxism-Leninism. That is his value and his danger. We must use his tools precisely, taking care that complexity does not dilute revolutionary urgency.

Next installment (Part 4): The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate — Is the State an Instrument of Capital or an Autonomous Structure?