The Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci drafted his influential concept of hegemony within the walls of Mussolini’s fascist prisons. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci defined hegemonic power as the combination of force and consent within a “historic bloc” of classes and social groups that dominate economic, social, and cultural life. Key to hegemonic power is the formation of the “common sense” of the day: the embedded beliefs and assumptions that people accept as natural, like that tax cuts fuel economic growth, that gentrification is inevitable, that economic growth is healthy, or that locally produced food is more ethical. In contrast to Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, many leftists today explain the power of neoliberal governance with a conspiracy theory that goes something like this: workers support neoliberal governments because of their corrupt labour leaders, and government policy is dictated by big corporations who pull the strings of corrupt political parties with lavish campaign donations. Like most conspiracy theories, this is a tempting notion because it presents us with a simple image of a puppet master at the top, controlling the hapless masses. We like this idea because it forgives us our mass complicity in nets of injustice and simplifies the project of change. And, like most conspiracy theories, it also protects us from the uncomfortable truth: urban neoliberal politics have a vast social base.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:55:19 +0000
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