Hegemony as Power

Gramsci, also a neo-Marxian theorist, gave importance to the superstructure, politics, state, ideology and cultural and educational institutions. He advocated the relative autonomous view of the state and suggests that politics has autonomy of its own and should be ‘distinguished form the realms of economics, morality and religion.’⁷⁹ Gramsci suggests that the domination of the capitalist system is maintained not only by force and coercion but more by hegemony. Hegemony is ideological domination created by various social, religious, educational and civil society institutions. Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, has stated that ideas of ruling class are ruling ideas. They discussed about ‘bourgeois ideology’ that disguises and mystifies the class divisions and contradictions in the capitalist system. Gramsci discusses about hegemony that is generated in a subtle way and by using ruling class ideas.

He distinguishes between two levels of the superstructure: (i) society or the civil society, and (ii) state or the political society. The state or the political society represents state power and uses force for exercising domination—structures of coercion. On the other hand, society or civil society uses a more subtle way of domination. This is achieved by the use of various means including educational, religious, intellectual and moral agencies—structures of legitimation. Thus, according to Gramsci, the superstructure consists of two levels—civil society corresponding to which are structures of legitimation and political society corresponding to which are structures of coercion. For Gramsci, civil society is different from what Marx understood. It does not refer to economic relationship as in Marx, but to superstructure. It includes the organizations and means by which hegemony is diffused in all domains of culture and thought. These means and organizations include educational, intellectual, moral, religious and political and not merely economic. Thus, coercion and consent are two elements of domination, which prevail in the superstructure and determine the base. As such, for Gramsci the state is not instrument being determined by the base. The state is relatively autonomous and is a key area of struggle.

Civil society provides the means of legitimation and what Gramsci calls, hegemony. Civil society represented in organizations and institutions like family, schools, church etc., provides the basic rules of behaviour, respect and moral deference to authority. By the help of educative, religious, familial, cultural means, hegemony is achieved. Hegemony stands for ‘intellectual, moral and political leadership and not merely economic domination’.⁸⁰

Hegemony is not only economic domination or coercive domination, but is based on consent generated in a subtle manner. Gramsci uses hegemony to define ‘the ability of a dominant class to exercise power by winning the consent of those it subjugates as an alternative to the use of coercion’.⁸¹

Through his concept of hegemony, Gramsci showed the crucial role that ideas and ideology play in helping the economic domination of the dominant class. A hegemonic leadership controls coercion + economic power + consent. Gramsci showed how hegemonic power leads to emergence of what he called ‘common sense’. Common sense is explained as the philosophy of the masses, that accepts the morality, customs and institutionalized behaviour of the society in which they live as if they are real.

Gramsci’s idea of hegemony is helpful in analysing how the capitalist system maintains its legitimacy and despite various changes, keeps it stability. Louis Althusser upheld that there can be economic, political, ideological and theoretical or scientific spheres in society, each of which has certain autonomy and capacity to influence the other.

However, there are others, who have also dealt with the issues relating to mystification and distortion of reality in capitalist society. Ralph Miliband in Capitalist Democracy in Britain argues that liberal democracy in a capitalist society is capitalist democracy because it has biases for private property and stability of capitalism. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent discussed how mass media distorts information to generate acceptance based on propaganda.

However, there are other neo-Marxian thinkers, such as Jurgen Habermas, The Legitimation Crisis, who has discussed about crisis tendencies in a capitalist system. He finds ‘tensions between a private-enterprise or capitalist economy … and a democratic political system …’⁸²

This he calls legitimation crisis. Habermas suggested that the liberal democracy could not satisfy popular demands for social security and welfare rights and requirement of market based on private interests. Habermas’s idea sounds as if the liberal democracy would have a demand overload. This aspect has been used by many writers to analyse the political process in many countries, including India. The concept of the legitimation crisis and overload has been used by Atul Kohli to analyse what he calls India’s ‘crisis of governability’.

Power is an important factor in understanding the dynamics of decision-making as Dahl and Rose showed. Power is an important variable for many theorists to understand distribution and location of power. Power, however, is required to present itself as legitimate for acceptability. Hegemony is a subtle way to maintain overall dominance by a class by permeating its ideas and attitudes and behaviour in a society as if it is normal. In the framework of the political system and structural–functional analysis, we have political socialization as a concept of political recruitment. Political socialization helps individuals acquire, retain or change attitudes and behaviours which are politically relevant. These are important for maintaining continuity of the political system and recruitment for political offices. Political socialization takes place in the family, in schools, in the market, in the football ground, in offices, in rallies, etc. It is a means of recruitment in the political system. Cultural reproduction refers to imposition of culture of the dominant class on society as legitimate. Pierre Bourdieu, French sociologist, introduced the concept of cultural reproduction to analyse how the dominant class imposes its cultural values as general values. Legitimacy, hegemony, political socialization and cultural reproduction becomes the means of non-coercive elements in any system of domination. They help in maintaining and sustaining a system. Power can be as subtle as hegemony of the ‘common sense’ and even more, power of non-decision-making.