Gramscian Concept of Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist famous for his theory of Hegemony. Gramsci was arrested for his opposition to Mussolini at the age of 35. He spent his later years in prison. While in jail, Gramsci wrote Prison Notebooks which contains his ideas on society, politics, and culture. 

In the Gramscian perspective, dominant groups in a society maintain their dominance by securing the consent of subordinate groups. Gramsci called this kind of domination as hegemony. The concept assumes plain consent given by the majority of a population. However, this consent is not always peaceful. It is a set of ideas by means of which dominant groups attempt to secure the consent of subordinate groups to their leadership.

In Gramsci’s conception, societies maintained their strength through a combination of “domination” or force, and “hegemony”, defined as consent to “intellectual and moral leadership”. Gramsci argued that the ruling intellectual and cultural forces of the era constitute a form of hegemony or domination by ideas and cultural forms that induce consent to the rule of the leading groups in a society.

Gramsci argued that the working class can develop its own hegemony as a strategy to control the State. If the working class is to achieve hegemony, it needs patiently to build up a network of alliances with social minorities. The way of challenging the dominant hegemony is political activity. Here Gramsci proposed two different kinds of political strategies. They are:

• War of Manoeuvre: It is the frontal attack. The main goal is to win quickly.
• War of Position: It is a long struggle. It is a passive revolution.

Gramsci argued that in his day the press was the dominant instrument of producing ideological hegemony. The institutions such as the church, schools, and different associations and groups also played a role.