Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion

Hegemony Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought 17. Goffman and Social Organization Studies in a Sociolog...

Author: Richard Howson | Kylie Smith

95 downloads 1799 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Hegemony

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

17. Goffman and Social Organization Studies in a Sociological Legacy Edited by Greg Smith 18. Situating Hayek Phenomenology and the Neo-liberal Project Mark J. Smith

27. Living with Markets Jeremy Shearmur 28. Durkheim’s Suicide A Century of Research and Debate Edited by W.S.F. Pickering and Geoffrey Walford

19. The Reading of Theoretical Texts Peter Ekegren

29. Post-Marxism An Intellectual History Stuart Sim

20. The Nature of Capital Marx after Foucault Richard Marsden

30. The Intellectual as Stranger Studies in Spokespersonship Dick Pels

21. The Age of Chance Gambling in Western Culture Gerda Reith

31. Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science A Critique of Gadamer and Habermas Austin Harrington

22. Reflexive Historical Sociology Arpad Szakolczai 23. Durkheim and Representations Edited by W. S. F. Pickering 24. The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky Alison Edgley 25. Hayek’s Liberalism and Its Origins His Idea of Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment Christina Petsoulas 26. Metaphor and the Dynamics of Knowledge Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart

32. Methodological Individualism Background, History and Meaning Lars Udehn 33. John Stuart Mill and Freedom of Expression The Genesis of a Theory K.C. O’Rourke 34. The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation From Terror to Trauma Michael Humphrey

35. Marx and Wittgenstein Knowledge, Morality, Politics Edited by Gavin Kitching and Nigel Pleasants

46. Habermas Rescuing the Public Sphere Pauline Johnson

36. The Genesis of Modernity Arpad Szakolczai

47. The Politics and Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott Stuart Isaacs

37. Ignorance and Liberty Lorenzo Infantino

48. Pareto and Political Theory Joseph Femia

38. Deleuze, Marx and Politics Nicholas Thoburn

49. German Political Philosophy The Metaphysics of Law Chris Thornhill

39. The Structure of Social Theory Anthony King 40. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society Deborah Cook 41. Tocqueville’s Moral and Political Thought New Liberalism M.R.R. Ossewaarde 42. Adam Smith’s Political Philosophy The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order Craig Smith 43. Social and Political Ideas of Mahatma Gandi Bidyut Chakrabarty 44. Counter-Enlightenments From the Eighteenth Century to the Present Graeme Garrard 45. The Social and Political Thought of George Orwell A Reassessment Stephen Ingle

50. The Sociology of Elites Michael Hartmann 51. Deconstructing Habermas Lasse Thomassen 52. Young Citizens and New Media Learning for Democractic Participation Edited by Peter Dahlgren 53. Gambling, Freedom and Democracy Peter Adams 54. The Quest for Jewish Assimilation in Modern Social Science Amos Morris-Reich 55. Frankfurt School Perspectives on Globalization, Democracy, and the Law William E. Scheuerman 56. Hegemony Studies in Consensus and Coercion Edited by Richard Howson and Kylie Smith

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Hegemony Studies in Consensus and Coercion

Edited by Richard Howson and Kylie Smith

New York London

First published 2008 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2008 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hegemony : studies in consensus and coercion / edited by Richard Howson and Kylie Smith. p. cm.—(Routledge studies in social and political thought ; 56) Includes index. ISBN 978-0-415-95544-7 1. Hegemony 2. Hegemony—Pacific Area. I. Howson, Richard. II. Smith, Kylie. JZ1312.H44 2008 327.101—dc22 2007046794 ISBN 0-203-92718-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-95544-0 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-92718-4 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-95544-7 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-92718-2 (ebk)

Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments 1

Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion

ix xi 1

RICHARD HOWSON AND KYLIE SMITH

2

Hegemony in the Preprison Context

16

RICHARD HOWSON

3

Hegemony: Political and Linguistic Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony

33

DEREK BOOTHMAN

4

Hegemony and the Elaboration of the Process of Subalternity

51

HIROSHI MATSUDA AND KOICHI OHARA

5

Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific

63

ALASTAIR DAVIDSON

6

Hegemony and Power in Gramsci

80

BENEDETTO FONTANA

7

Hegemony, Subalternity, and Subjectivity in Early Industrial Sydney

107

KYLIE SMITH

8

Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour ANDREW WELLS

125

viii 9

Contents Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua New Guinea

142

CHARLES HAWKSLEY

10 The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam

159

SUSAN ENGEL

11 Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism: The Case of West Bengal, India.

184

RUCHIRA GANGULY-SCRASE AND TIMOTHY J. SCRASE

12 Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc: The Australian Experience

201

DAMIEN CAHILL

13 Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War

218

YOKO HARADA

Contributors Index

237 241

Foreword

The concept of hegemony is ubiquitous in critical accounts of the impact of neoliberalism and globalisation on the Asia-Pacific region. In popular usage, it is a catch-all term that describes the self-evident domination by the West and/or the United States of economic, social, cultural, and political life within the region. While many scholars have been drawn to the analytic potential of the concept of hegemony in their analyses of social and political transformation processes throughout Asia and the Pacific, few have situated their work within a critical understanding of the term’s theoretical origins. As a consequence, the term hegemony simply becomes shorthand for ‘domination,’ and the important insights that it offers to the study of power are lost. This volume breaks from that approach and re-engages with the theoretical potential of Antonio Gramsci’s intellectual legacy. Taking the concept of subalternity as its point of departure, the authors demonstrate the complex interplay between coercion and consensus in the operation of power. Attention to these processes reveals that hegemony is both a process that occurs before power is institutionalized as well as an outcome of that process of institutionalization. It is only by recognizing this complexity that the nexus between power and legitimacy in the production of authority can be properly understood. Each of the chapters in this volume engages directly with this complex process, either through theoretical studies of a range of concepts and ideas in Gramsci’s writings, or through detailed empirical case studies that apply these concepts to examples from the Asia-Pacific. The chapters assembled here emerged out of two workshops organised by the very successful Hegemony Research Group at the University of Wollongong in Australia. The fi rst workshop, titled “Hegemony: Explorations into Consensus, Coercion and Culture,” was held from 14–15 February 2005 and included international invited keynote speakers Joseph Buttigieg, Derek Boothman, and Koichi Ohara. The second workshop, titled “Class: History, Formations and Conceptualisations,” was held from 3–4 March 2006 and included international invited keynote speaker Leslie Sklair. These workshops were supported by the faculty of arts at the University of Wollongong and the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS),

x

Foreword

an Australian Research Council Key Centre for Teaching and Research based at the Universities of Wollongong and Newcastle in Australia. CAPSTRANS is a research centre devoted to the study of Asia-Pacific social transformation processes triggered by national and international development policies and their effects at local, regional, and transnational levels. The Hegemony Research Group’s interest in exploring the ways in which the processes of hegemony are manifest in the Asia-Pacific emerged out of long-standing collaborations with CAPSTRANS, and many of the authors included in this collection are staff or postgraduate student affiliates of our Centre. Australia is fast developing an international reputation as a key site for a resurgent interest in the work of Antonio Gramsci. The Hegemony Research Group was established in 2005 to explore the life and work of Gramsci by giving particular emphasis to his theory of hegemony. In 2007, members of the group formally sponsored the formation of the Gramsci Society (Asia-Pacific), which is part of the International Gramsci Society and is based at the University of Wollongong. As the chapters in this volume clearly attest, the contemporary study of Gramsci’s writings offers a rich and creative field of scholarly enterprise. Significantly, young scholars are at the forefront of this endeavour. Their work is both innovative and compelling and provides us with sorely needed analytical tools to understand the processes of social, economic, and political change taking place in Asia and the Pacific today. Lenore Lyons, PhD Director, CAPSTRANS University of Wollongong October 2007

Acknowledgments

Much of the research and writing for this volume was carried out as part of the inaugural Hegemony Research Group Workshop held at the University of Wollongong in February 2005. We would like to warmly thank all contributors for their enthusiasm, energy, and knowledge. In addition, we would like to thank Andrew Wells for his continuing support and knowledge of all things Gramscian; Alastair Davidson for his encouragement and always insightful comments; and Benedetto Fontana and Derek Boothman for their knowledge and generous collegiality when answers to complex questions were required. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the work and memory of Antonio Gramsci.

1

Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion Richard Howson and Kylie Smith

HEGEMONY AND THE ASIA-PACIFIC This volume responds to the recent explosion of interest and research on hegemony in the social, economic, and political sciences. However, its approach to hegemony differs from that which is evident in much of the literature. First, it is an approach that recognises the ‘complex’ nature of hegemony at both the theoretical and empirical levels. Second, it applies this complexity to the Asia-Pacific region because it, more than any other region in the world, has and continues to experience momentous changes at the social, economic, and political levels. However, while the operation of hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region has attracted investigation and discussion, most of this work presents a picture of regional economic, social, and political operations as becoming ossified to Occidental or, more specifically, US domination within a zero-sum game. This obfuscates the many sociohistorical antagonisms within the hegemonic process. This volume will present theory illustrated by empirical case studies that highlight these antagonisms to show that hegemony is never simply domination but a far more complex operation of coercion and consensus. Today, the Asia-Pacific represents the most significant region in terms of future global social, economic, and political development. As Scalapino (2005, 231–240) argues, the twenty-fi rst century will be one of momentous change, both within the nations of the Asia-Pacific and in their international relations. This is exemplified in the significant economic successes of some nations juxtaposed with the abject failure of others. In addition, the region continues to be drastically altered by the combined forces of social, economic, and political instability, as well as terrorism and dictatorships. These factors are important in themselves but become even more so when operating in a region that contains world powerhouses of people such as China and India that contain no less than one-third of the world’s population—as well as powerhouses of social, economic, and political relations of force such as Japan, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Malaysia. The region is also home to some of the poorest and most oppressed nations, including Papua New Guinea, India, and Vietnam. Thus, the Asia-Pacific region

2

Richard Howson and Kylie Smith

becomes one of great significance for those concerned with exploring the space between domination and aspiration, regression and progression or, in other words, the development and complex operation of hegemony. However, there is often great confusion about what constitutes the AsiaPacific region (Connors, Davison and Dorsch 2004) and even some debate about whether the Asia-Pacific constitutes a region at all, given its diffuse geography, ethnicities, and cultures, as well as its social, economic, and political inequities. While this debate has some merit, it is this fluidity and dynamism that is precisely the characteristic or thematic that binds the AsiaPacific into a region for the purposes of this volume and, more importantly, makes the Asia-Pacific an important focus for the study of hegemony. As the chapters that follow will show, the nations of India, China, and then Japan to the northeast; the ASEAN nations of Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia; and Papua New Guinea and Australia all represent sociohistorically important case studies that shed new light on the Asia-Pacific as well as on the constantly evolving global ‘puzzle.’

KEY CONCEPTS IN THE THEORY OF HEGEMONY The following section briefly presents and describes the set and subsets of key concepts that will be drawn from the theory of hegemony that, in turn, will form the basis for the analyses in the later theoretical and empirical chapters. In the fi rst instance, a set of four key concepts is abstracted, including: subalternity, common sense, power and ethico-political. There is no deliberate intent to project the set of framing concepts and the subsets of concepts as existing and operating autonomously, either within the theory of hegemony or, indeed, in this volume. Rather, Figure 1.1 presents a conceptual map showing some of the key concepts and their interconnections—that is, the lines of relationships that connect them within the theory of hegemony. Presentation of these concepts as distinct serves purely analytical purposes. However, it is only by abstracting each concept from the theory of hegemony that we are able to develop a framework that: (a) shows the nature and operation of each concept, (b) shows the relationship these concepts have with each other as well as the other related concepts, and most importantly, (c) enables their application to empirical analysis and, through this, the explication of the complexity of hegemony. Using Figure 1.1, the point of departure for our study of hegemony is not the concepts of power and domination but, rather, the concept of subalternity, which for Gramsci represented a way of expressing a ‘lack’ of ‘political autonomy’ (1975, Q25§4). In other words, subaltern social groups, which may represent slaves, peasants, religious groups, women, different races, and the proletariat (Gramsci 1975, Q25§1, 4, 5 and 6), are already subordinate because their experience is the negation, redefi nition,

Hegemony and the Operation of Consensus and Coercion Disunity

intellectuals

SUBALTERNITY

COMMON SENSE

lack

good sense

3

integral State Coercion

historical bloc consensus

POWER domination/leadership

ETHICO-POLITICAL unstable equilibria

Figure 1.1. A conceptual frame.

and then incorporation of their needs and desires into the activities and interests promoted by the elites. Thus, hegemony is not an immediately engaging set of practices and beliefs. It is never imposed aprioristically but is always developed within the social, economic, and political relations of a particular situation. Therefore, its study cannot begin with, and then focus only on, power but rather with the relationship between powerlessness and power. So to really grasp the theoretical and empirical importance of subalternity to hegemony, requires analytic engagement with the concept of Integral State. As a broad structure, the Integral State is the dialectical synthesis of both political society and civil society and represents hegemony as never simply the independent operations of political power. So, if in fact subalternity expresses a lack of political autonomy—that is, the ability to use politics to promote one’s own interests—then the primary sphere of existence and operation for subaltern groups is civil society (Gramsci 1971, 52). Within civil society there is no single subaltern group into which all subaltern groups are naturally subsumed, even though there is a common equivalence about what constitutes subalternity that is, precisely, a disconnection from or lack of political autonomy. This ‘lack,’ as Gramsci (1975, Q25§4) refers to it, ensures that subalternity is locked to civil society and, more importantly, that civil society is marked by antagonisms and disunity, whether they are organized around ‘party, trade union [or some other] cultural association’ (Gramsci 1975, Q25§4). Further, subalternity will remain a disunited antagonism attached to these various forms of organization

4


until they become unified, and this unification cannot occur and become power until they become a ‘State’ (Gramsci 1975, Q25§5). Within the process of constructing hegemony, there is an immediate and important nexus between subalternity and common sense. This nexus is central to explaining how lack of political autonomy remains a reality for subaltern groups, but more importantly, how this lack is based on the disunity that prevails in civil society that, in turn, enables a group or set of interests to dominate the Integral State. Gramsci (1971, 199, 326) makes clear that common sense is ‘the traditional popular conception of the world’ and cannot constitute an ‘intellectual order’ because it cannot produce a ‘unity within an individual consciousness, let alone collective consciousness.’ In other words, common sense is what defi nes and describes the everyday life and beliefs of a particular subaltern social group. Common sense demands ‘conformism’ to the group’s particular traditional practices and beliefs (Gramsci 1971, 324), which in turn leads to a fragmentation of civil society along the various and often competing lines of common sense ascribed to by subaltern groups. Common sense is antithetical to ‘critical elaboration’ because only critique enables coherency and, ultimately, unity (Gramsci 1971, 324). The moment of critique emerges from consciousness of oneself. But rather than focusing this consciousness on one’s own or group’s immediate interests, understood as ‘corporativism’ (Gramsci 1971, 255–256), critique must bring about consciousness that is knowledge of the broad subaltern experience in both its social and historical context; that is, critique uses the past to inform the future but is always mediated by the present. While Gramsci was critical of common sense because on its own it was incapable of producing collective action, he did not completely dismiss its efficacy. In fact, throughout his preprison writings, which culminated in the unfi nished 1971 essay ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question,’ there is the development of a strategy for hegemony that gives recognition to common sense but that also takes seriously its reconfiguration and elaboration through practical ideas such as ‘hegemony of the proletariat,’ which at the time were striking and radical (Gramsci 1971, 339–343). This emphasis was not lost in the Prison Notebooks either, and here Gramsci gave a new complexity to hegemony. In other words, hegemony as the highest synthesis1 was marked by an Integral State that was itself based on a unified civil society and where political lack was minimised. To achieve this required an understanding of how subaltern social groups, in all their diversity, think and act through their own common sense. Through this knowledge, Gramsci argued that a subaltern group can become a leading group by developing its own practices and interests in such a way as to incorporate the various other expressions of common sense to produce a new ‘good sense.’ In other words, subalternity as an identity and practice has inherently the potential to critical elaboration and, therefore, the progression from common sense to good sense, from disunity to unity, and


5

from hegemony marked in the fi nal analysis by dogma and coercion to hegemony marked in the fi nal analysis by openness and consensus. The key mediator in this process is the ‘organic intellectual’ (Gramsci 1971, 6), whose task it is to produce progressive self-knowledge through education (Gramsci 1971, 238–239). Organic intellectuals in this sense are differentiated from ‘traditional intellectuals’ in that ‘organic’ signifies the mass-intellectual nexus, so that the ‘ideological’ function of traditional intellectuals is exposed. Organic intellectuals are informed by, and informing of, the mass, whereas traditional intellectuals serve to disarticulate the mass from power, from hegemony (Gramsci 1971, 12–14). The movement from common sense to good sense, or the development of a new hegemony, involves the organic intellectual in the reconfiguration of power so that it organically can only develop through a ‘war of position’ (Gramsci 1971, 229–239). However, explicating the operation of power through the theory of hegemony and applying it to social, economic, and political reality is not so easy. In fact, it is one of the most difficult concepts to explain because it is precisely power that must be reconfigured through a war of position to produce hegemony—but the reconfiguration does not always happen in the same way or with the same outcomes. Nevertheless, it is still referred to as hegemony. 2 In much of the secondary literature that employs or analyses the concept of hegemony, power is conceptualized and presented as an asymmetrical politico-economic operation that leads ineluctably to domination. Further, the State is confi ned to political society and its task is to impose the interests of the capitalist class over civil society, often silently and with stealth. The crucial consequence of this view of power is that the resultant critique emphasises the coercive nature of the State, usually through close and critical analysis of the political economy inherent in a particular situation. In other words, economics is seen to give form to political society so that the nature of the critique of power is constrained to a ‘politico-economic’ operation (Gramsci 1971, 16). However, to assume that this analysis of power yields a complete picture of hegemony is wrong. Crucially, it fails to recognise the vast resources that must be mobilised in civil society—such as the media, education, the family, religion, law, communities, and markets—to ensure that the political economy can be and is maintained. Thus, to engage in a complex understanding of power operationalised in hegemony, there must also be a focus on resistance, and to see how this operates we must elaborate the nexus of subalternity and common sense to now include power. In the theory of hegemony, when Gramsci speaks of the State acting as domination, the State has incorporated certain corporatist interests and exercises its power to maintain these interests by keeping the subaltern social groups fragmented and passive within civil society. This represents a situation in which the defi nition and expansion of hegemony is enabled by the State’s ability to fragment the operations of civil society and therefore

6


its influence on political society. In the chapters that follow, it will be shown that this disconnection operates around certain ‘hegemonic principles’ (Howson 2006, 23) that are central to the defi nition and expansion of the hegemony. 3 Further, when hegemony dogmatically upholds and protects its hegemonic principles, it is at this moment that the hegemony closes down and becomes ossified. It is also at this moment that it must resort to coercion rather than consensus. The consequence is that hegemony must now manage a diminishing legitimacy about its hegemonic principles that has become a ‘crisis of authority’ (Gramsci 1971, 210). By emphasising crisis, Gramsci shows that at the centre of hegemony is power operating with legitimacy and that, in fact, this authority is ‘dying’ (Gramsci 1971, 276). In other words, the authority of the State to negate, redefi ne, and then incorporate the needs and desires of subaltern groups into the activities and interests of the leading social group is no longer based on progressive but regressive forces. As a consequence, hegemony is marked by a State that is unable to lead through moral and intellectually based strategies of consensus but can only dominate and therefore ‘exercise coercive force alone’ (Gramsci 1971, 276). This gives rise to a ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006); that is, when authority has lost legitimacy and can only operate as power, hegemony becomes regressive because the State must engage a strategy of coercion to restore its legitimacy and, thereby, its authority. This begins with the mobilization of the traditional intellectuals (Gramsci 1971, 6). The immediate task is to reinstate the disunity of civil society by undermining the authority of the organic intellectuals and the development of a comprehensive social and historical critique of authority—in other words, to undermine the development of a ‘war of position’ into various ineffective ‘war of movements.’ The interpretations of hegemony as domination tend to equate State power with authority and ignore the importance of legitimacy. In functional terms, power is presented as disconnected from civil society and the operation of legitimacy. If hegemony was to be left within this framework, all following analyses would lack the complexity needed to recognize the struggles over legitimacy in which the progressive and empowering moments and efforts are always a central part. In effect, hegemony would emphasise power but de-emphasise legitimacy. The consequence is that analyses lose sight of hegemony as ‘unstable equilibria’ (Gramsci 1971, 182); that is, they lose sight of the historical and social nature of hegemony. To begin to recognise the complexity of the theory of hegemony is to begin to recognise inter alia the hegemonic nexus between power and legitimacy in the production of authority. This exposes the reality that authority expressed as domination can never exist as legitimate—that is, with full consensus. Subalternity is evidence of this impossibility. In fact, hegemonic authority exercised as domination must impose coercion at some level of intensity and focus so as to ensure the dominant interests are protected. Gramsci (1971) argues that hegemony always exists between


7

the politico-economic level of reality—that is, where corporativism creates disunity of interests, enabling domination to act as the unifying force— and the ethico-political, that is, where the plurality of interests operate through moral and intellectual hegemonic logic as a unstable equilibria and leadership acts as the unifying force. The concept of ethico-political is central to Gramsci’s project to give the philosophy of praxis, or Marxism, a ‘real’ philosophy, and the central philosopher in this project is Benedetto Croce. In fact, ethico-political represents a Crocean concept that Gramsci brings to the theory of hegemony and, in so doing, it becomes both ‘fundamental to the notion of hegemony and . . . . the historical bloc’ (Boothman 1995, 328) but also its organic and progressive objective (Finocchiarro 1988, 23). However, a crucial feature of ethico-political as a hegemonic expression is that its achievement is always grounded in a dialectical methodology. For Gramsci, the dialectic method follows prima facie Georg Hegel’s thesis/antithesis/synthesis model, but more importantly, underlying Gramsci’s Hegelianism is a complex engagement with Croce’s own dialectic method. Gramsci’s engagement with Croce is complex because it is as much a critique of Croce as an endorsement in so far as it critiques Croce’s interpretation of Marxism as lacking any real philosophy and simply representing the expression of socio-political action while accepting the absolute historicist nature of Croce’s (1951, 18–19) philosophy (Finnochiaro 1988, 18–19). But Gramsci questions the historicist dialectical methodology Croce puts forward because as a process it involves the historical evolution of four essentially distinct forms of practice and beliefs that are described by Finnochiarro (1988, 16) as: expressive cognitive acts (identified with art), ratiocinative cognitive acts (identified with philosophy), general volitional acts (identified with economic practice), and moral volitional acts (identified with moral action). To better grasp Gramsci’s critique of Croce’s dialectic in the context of its application to the theory of hegemony it is useful to examine Croce’s (1946) text Politics and Morals in which he draws a distinction between ‘moralistic history’ and ‘moral history,’ where the latter is referred to as ‘ethico-political history.’ For Croce, ‘[t]he moralist, actually, is a practical corrector or censor who aims at maintaining a strong and inflexible moral ideal, and judges human matters from the exclusive point of the perfectio, examining the correctness of single actions and the greater or lesser goodness of individuals.’ Moralistic history, on the other hand, operates as the ‘negative’ expression of liberty because actions are always judged on the basis of nonadherence to, or infringement of, rules. The moralist always views the epistemological and ontological aspects of history through the prism of the priority of ‘legality’. Moralistic history ineluctably must exclude what falls outside of legality. On the other hand, moral or ethico-political history presents the investigation of the past in all its relations. ‘[It] pays less attention to the perfectio . . . . than [it] does to the quality of the actions performed and to the meaning which they acquire in historical development’ (Croce 1946, 69). Croce

8


goes on to argue that ethico-political history must take as its ‘object’ not just the ‘State, the government of the State and the expansion of the State,’ but also all that which is external to the State regardless of its relation to the State. So to engage in an ethico-political history one must always include ‘religious institutions and revolutionary sects, sentiments, customs, fancies and myths that are practical in tendency and content’ (Croce 1946,73). In this context, the ethico-political history of State life is always a field of particular histories that ‘taken by themselves . . . . follow their own laws.’ However, regardless of their differential ‘particularisation,’ they are effectively unintelligible outside of an ethico-political history. It is in this sense that ethico-political history assumes a dialectic or ‘integral’ nature by subsuming into it all the particular or distinct histories. In other words, ‘The activities described by them are presuppositions of ethico-political history, instruments which it uses for its own purpose and subject matter which it forms and reforms’ (Croce 1946, 74). In setting out the basis of ethico-political history, Croce revises the liberalist notion of liberty in a way that presents a more philosophically modest while historically concrete appreciation (Bellamy 2000, 845–861). Further, in Croce’s revisionism, there is a defi nite intention to remove the authoritarianism inherent in the liberalist notion of liberty through the recognition of distinct histories, but this is only partial because, ultimately, they converge within ethico-political history. However, it may be argued that with the attempt to remove authoritarianism, Croce replaced it with a ‘cumbersome’ elitism. Cumbersome because, while there is a defi nite attempt to recognise, for example, the legitimacy of the panoply of institutions as imperative to ethico-political history and the ‘reciprocal’ nature of ‘force,’ it is always moral history understood to operate over and above the particular (histories) that controls and determines their legitimate nature. Even more problematic in Croce’s ethico-political history is the failure to explain how the ethico-political develops. Croce simply posits it is both universal and particular or social and individual. In other words, he lacks a theory of power and hegemony. It should not come as a surprise that Croce would write ‘power’ out of his discussion of ethico-political history. This is particularly so if we analyse his approach to the operation of ‘force.’ In Politics and Morals, Croce (1946, 14–15) argues that ‘force’ cannot be conceived of as distributed in such a way as to enable only a few to possess it and, as a result, dominate others. This is because ‘force’ is not quantitative but qualitative. In other words, ‘force’ is the expression of a variety of ‘tendencies, abilities and virtues’ operating through people in a reciprocal fashion. It is such that each person is able to exert pressure on others to ensure their own interests and, in so doing, produce a ‘reciprocal accord.’ Further, in this way, ‘force’ is always the basis of consent, whether in the most liberal of States or the most tyrannical. More importantly, regardless of the nature of ‘State life’ it is always forced, conditioned, and changeable.


9

Gramsci (1995, 376–377), as one would expect, is critical of Croce’s liberalism regardless of its revisionist logic. But importantly, Gramsci does not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Instead, Gramsci engages the Crocean ethico-political within a specific and substantive focus on the ‘philosophy of praxis’ and, in so doing, brings a new concrete and political complexity to the ethico-political that challenges Croce’s (1921, 35–60: 1946, 27–35) revisionist and, ultimately, speculative articulation of ‘particularisation’ within ethico-political history. Gramsci (1985, 106) States that: One can say that not only does the philosophy of praxis not exclude ethico-political history but that, indeed, in its most recent stage of development, it consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony as essential to its conception of the State and to the ‘accrediting’ of the cultural fact, of cultural activity, of a cultural front as necessary alongside the merely economic and political ones. Croce commits the serious error of not applying to his criticism of the philosophy of praxis the methodological criteria that he applies to his study of much less important and significant philosophical currents . . . . The opposition between Crocism and the philosophy of praxis is to be sought in the speculative character of Crocism. Gramsci seeks to maintain the historical nature of ethico-political but elaborate its operation through a dialectic method that leads to a more concrete understanding of life as hegemony. This concreteness is given expression because it is where the conjunctural gives way to the organic, where coercion is balanced by consensus, structure by superstructure, and idealism by materialism. So it is fundamentally dialectic, and in this methodology, we can begin to see inter alia how the organisation of power—that is, politics—operates ethico-politically and produces a synthesis of moral and intellectual leadership with ‘force,’ expressed as the integration of political society and civil society into a new form of integral State-life containing the inter-relations of social, political, and economic forms of life—that is, the historical bloc. This articulation goes beyond Croce’s notion of the particularisation of history and the reciprocal nature of force. Rather, the ethico-political as hegemony must develop and operationalise a ‘comprehensive awareness’ through systematic analysis of the socio-historical situation (Finochiarro 1988). From this we can see that for Gramsci the real problem of liberal reformism—particularly in relation to the dialectic nature of ethico-politics and social life—is that it fragments legitimacy. That is, it disarticulates the antithesis of the liberal thesis into elements, and through this fragmented mass, it ensures the inability of legitimacy to develop all its critical possibilities. In effect, in this reformist model only the thesis that is, legality can become true to itself.

10


In the theory of hegemony, Gramsci employs Croce’s notion of ethicopolitical but conceptually reconfigures it to become the moment of the Integral State and of hegemony as the highest synthesis—that is, the working together of political society with civil society; of consensus with coercion; of freedom with constraint; of superstructure with structure—always under a new moral and intellectual leadership. The operation of hegemony as ethico-political can be expressed as ‘aspirational hegemony’ (Howson 2006); that is, hegemony that has its basis in moral and intellectual leadership as opposed to domination through power. In an aspirational hegemony, the leading group seeks to develop a balance where consensus is emphasised over coercion and where the hegemony is not defi ned by certain hegemonic principles that demand the hegemony be closed down or ossified as a way of protecting them. Aspirational hegemony expresses an open system in which social justice emerges through the work of organic intellectuals who in turn emerge out of civil society and the subaltern groups but relies on the leadership of one group to transcend its own economic-corporativism to create new hegemonic principles and alliance with other groups and interests. This produces unstable equilibria that express the constant dynamism of the dialectic process, where the distinctiveness of civil society and political society, of political economy, and the social of power and legitimacy, have only analytical reality. Further, investigating only one without the other cannot reveal hegemony. Hegemony then, is as much a process of socio-historical change as it is an outcome. It is as much a process that occurs before power is institutionalised as it is a process of maintaining the institutionalisation of power. In hegemony, things do not always remain in a State of constant confl ict and unresolved antagonism; rather, it is a process whereby the goal is to achieve the highest synthesis. Where this process fails and falls into crisis we can understand this situation as a dominative hegemony, and where this synthesis is achieved we can recognise features of an aspirational hegemony.

HEGEMONIC OPERATIONS IN THE ASIAPACIFIC: THEORY AND PRACTICE Each chapter in this volume works directly and creatively with the body of concepts drawn from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. They draw out, explore, and apply them to particular historical and social situations within the Asia-Pacific region. The significance of using Gramscian theory as the point of departure for each chapter is not confi ned to just the setting out and development of the original meaning of key concepts but also to show their extension into and/or elaboration within more contemporary social, economic, and political theory. This allows a broad and complex understanding of hegemony to develop within each chapter, thereby bringing to life the specific empirical illustrations by enabling a more complex


11

reading of the convergence between progressive and regressive hegemonic potentials. The volume begins with a set of chapters that set out the theory of hegemony from different positions by addressing a range of concepts and ideas relevant to the case studies that follow. Howson sets the scene by exploring the personal, intellectual, and social context of Gramsci’s early writings, which began to deal with the difficulty of reconciling socialist ideas with the practical realities of life as Gramsci experienced it. His intense connection to his southern origins are seen to influence, and complicate, his thinking about the possibilities of revolutionary or socially transformative behaviour, and his writing shows the centrality of the importance of language, common sense, and culture in the project of social transformation. In this vein, we see the deep humanism embedded in Gramsci’s thinking and his continual insistence that social transformation is not possible without a deep understanding of the complex factors that go into making a person, as well as the collective. His own political outlook, then, is revealed as one that is neither dogmatic nor unquestioningly accepting of the categories of the past, reminding us that in his emphasis on history and philosophy, Gramsci was neither an idealist nor a determinist. This complexity of thinking is developed with specific relation to the concept of hegemony in Boothman’s chapter, which sets out the specific intellectual history of the concept as Gramsci inherited it and as he sought to develop it, specifically in the Prison Notebooks. Boothman’s chapter reminds us that Gramsci was no simple Marxist—that his project for social transformation was not based merely on the replacement of one group’s dictatorship with that of another, but that in the theory of hegemony he sought to go beyond both the accepted politics and economism of a more vulgar Marxism. In this sense, his concept of hegemony stemmed from his own intellectual endeavours, with their emphasis on language and dialect. Given this focus, Boothman shows the way in which Gramsci developed the concept within the Prison Notebooks to take account of the importance of leadership, as well as the role of consensus in building intellectual and political leadership. It is this dynamic approach to hegemony that moves beyond Marx’s structure/superstructure paradigm and into Gramsci’s innovative conception of the historical bloc. This expansion or elaboration of the concept of hegemony is the subject of Matsuda and Ohara’s chapter, which stresses the complexity of the concept of hegemony and the necessity for contemporary research to apply the theory in such a way as to do more than merely reinforce the coercive aspects of politico-social situations. It is in this sense that the concept of subalternity becomes important. As the authors suggest, through an analysis of the complex interplay of social relations that brings about subalternity, we can come to a better understanding of the nature of hegemony and the ways in which it can be reconfigured. Following Green’s analysis of the

12


concept, Matsuda and Ohara argue that to fully elaborate the theory of hegemony it must be understood in relation to the creation and recreation of subaltern social groups, for it is here that the prospects for alternative hegemony lie. If there is a leit motif, or ‘red thread’ in Gramsci’s work, it can be argued that it is his concern with the overcoming of subalternity and the creation of an ethico-political hegemony. Central to this project is the notion of the national-popular collective will and the conception of common sense. In Davidson’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom,’ the focus is on developing the Gramscian conception of common sense by exploring the linkages between hegemony and language. Common sense, while crucial for Gramsci, has a strong connection to his conception of subalternity and, in particular, the nexus between subaltern groups and the organic intellectuals. In particular, the chapter considers Gramsci’s theory of the mechanisms for translating common into good sense with a focus on his writings on China and India. These are related to his more specific Italiancentric work on Cuoco and Italy’s periphery, the Mezzogiorno, to see if, and how far, Gramsci views these mechanisms as operating differently in non-European cultures. The chapter considers to what extent, then, we can consider changes in the Asia-Pacific region as the process of ‘Americanisation’ or the workings of a more complex hegemony. Fontana’s chapter ‘Hegemony and Power’ provides an examination of the nature of power in hegemony. It explores Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and its relation to his social and political thought. In particular, it clarifies and explicates the complex or multilayered nature of hegemony by exploring why Gramsci employed hegemony as a way of analysing and discussing bourgeois capitalist society. Further, it shows how hegemony differs from terms such as power, domination, subjection, and dictatorship and, thus, how it adds intellectual and theoretical substance to the discourse on power. In the fi rst of the ‘applied’ chapters, ‘‘Hegemony, subjectivity and subalternity,’ Smith explores the complexity of the theory of hegemony by analysing the creation of subalternity in a particular socio-historical context, the city of Sydney in the late nineteenth century. Here, she argues that the way in which a particular group of young people, known as larrikins, were dealt with by the press and the State demonstrates the creation and re-creation of hegemony through subalternity. Smith demonstrates that this subalternity, centered on a type of subjectivity, represented a form of resistance against a nascent industrial capitalism and its increasing psychological impositions. Larrikins directly challenged the rhetoric and practices of respectability and discipline and, as a result, the new type of worker and human being demanded by capitalism. The chapter innovatively uses psychoanalytic theory to suggest that the imperative for this new type of human being required a particular form of sublimation of normative behaviour, which in turn is linked to Gramsci’s notions of hegemony and


13

the subaltern. Thus, the larrikin is shown to be an active reclaiming of the self and a significant resistance to the intervention of the new capitalist regime in culture and being. In Wells’s chapter, ‘Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour,’ Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony and subalternity are extended into the colonial setting around the same historical frame as the previous chapter. There is not a great deal of explicit discussion by Gramsci about colonialism in the Prison Notebooks but it is safe to say that much of his commentary on the ‘Southern Question’ and his briefer notes on Italian foreign policy and international relations are suggestive and occasionally explicit about colonial matters. The writings of the Subaltern Studies School represent one attempt to apply Gramsci to the Indian colonial context; the most extended work in this idiom is Ranajit Guha’s Dominance Without Hegemony. However, Guha’s political and ‘culturalist’ approach takes us some distance from Gramsci and ignores the complexity of the issue by presupposing a rather ahistorical and one-dimensional concept of hegemony. Using examples drawn from British colonialism in India and Malaya, as well as French colonialism in Indo-China between 1860–1940, a critique of Guha’s work is presented that concludes with an extension of a far more complex reading of hegemony. Moving the discussion into the contemporary moment, Hawksley’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua New Guinea’ addresses the twin issues of subalternity and education with specific reference to the process of social development. The argument begins by claiming that even imperialism had its beneficial aspects if conducted in an appropriate manner because it brought skills and understanding to subaltern peoples. Australian administration in colonial Papua New Guinea was faced precisely with this task of taking people from the Stone Age to a modern social, cultural, and national environment. In many parts of the country, the Australian administration tried to achieve this transformation in less than five decades. Much of the transformative work by the administration was undertaken with the assistance of church missions and later the operation of specialist agricultural officers who offered a model of a new society based on the rule of law, property relations, and production for the market. A whole new national-popular regime was developed, which quickly became seen not just as ‘common sense’ but ‘good sense.’ Education of the subaltern groups was critical to this transformative process and incorporated both the new technical as well as moral and intellectual reality. This chapter explores the complexities of the relationship between education and subalternity from a Gramscian perspective and shows that the New Guinean development was in fact a complex synthesis of consensus and coercion. This nascent neoliberalism, while attempting to raise the well-being of all, exposes its problematic nature through the failure to address the issue of subalternity. Gramsci emphasises throughout the Prison Notebooks that

14


for hegemony to develop as the highest synthesis, it is crucial to bring the subaltern into alliance with the broad mass. There is a tendency in recent international political economy literature, which uses the concept of hegemony, to overlook these connections at the historical level. Beginning with a critique of this literature, Engel’s chapter, ‘The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam’, moves into a socio-economic focus through an assessment of World Bank policy as a central platform of the Washington Consensus (1980–1996) and its neoliberal reform package. It extends this analysis to the new situation marked by the post-Washington Consensus (1997–current), showing that the shift was more a shift in style than substance. Further, through Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this shift can be understood as a restorative moment or, in other words, part of a short-term and regressive, rather than progressive or long-term and structural, development of ideology and practice. Effectively, both moments of the consensus about World Bank policy represent different levels of the imposition of Western hegemony upon a particular ASEAN nation but with resonances for all similar regional State. In Scrase and Ganguly-Scrase’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalisation: The Case of West Bengal, India’, neoliberalism wrapped up as globalisation is shown to coerce nations such as India to pursue policies of economic liberalization. The unswerving faith in liberalization policies expressed by the State is posited as the solution to the overall improvement of the social and, in particular, the standard of living of the broad population. The middle class, whose consensus is crucial, has expanded greatly and benefited from the structural adjustment reforms imposed on the economic and industrial sectors. Based on fieldwork among lower middle class households in the Indian State of West Bengal, this chapter examines the concrete experiences of those affected by these policies and, in particular, examines the ways in which the reforms have made inroads into the lives of people who were ardent supporters of a different way of thinking. In much of the literature on the neoliberalist push, the emphasis is on the methods of controlling the economic sphere. However, in Cahill’s chapter, the extent to which neoliberalism is hegemonic in Australia today is set out by describing the main contours of neoliberal hegemony and then exploring the importance of controlling the historical bloc and through it the national-popular collective will. Its approach is particularly innovative because, while beginning with class, it argues that the extent to which neoliberalism exists is based on the organization of consent that is intellectually constructed around specific ‘hegemonic principles.’ The chapter shows that these principles are operationalised through the interconnectedness of the spheres of the historical bloc and that this has brought about a hegemonic neoliberalism in Australian society. The volume concludes with a return to the international workings of neoliberal hegemony in Harada’s chapter ‘Hegemony, Japan and the Victor’s Memory of War,’ which demonstrates that hegemony in the Asia-Pacific


15

is not simply synonymous with US domination but involves a much more complex interplay between coercion and consent. The theoretical concepts of ‘passive revolution’ and ‘historical bloc’ are employed to demonstrate the way in which traditional intellectuals in both the US and Japan has reconfigured the language and symbols of war to justify and legitimise current global confl icts and the realignment of strategic interests. The chapter strikingly demonstrates that these new relationships rely on an active forgetting of history and have significant implications for the future, especially in the dynamic and explosive Asia-Pacific region.

NOTES 1. This concept will be elaborated on p. 10. 2. It is this difficulty that makes this brief description of power inadequate, but taken with a reading of the following section on the complexity of hegemony allows the nature and operation of power to be developed and explicated. 3. For example, Howson (2006) showed that an example of hegemonic principles can be seen in masculinities theory and the attendant concept of hegemonic masculinity in which heterosexuality, breadwinning, and aggression act as hegemonic principles of masculinity that must be protected to safeguard the hegemony of men.

REFERENCES Bellamy, R. 2000. ‘A modern interpreter: Benedetto Croce and the politics of Italian Culture’. The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms 5(6): 845–61. Boothman, D. ‘Introduction’ in Gramsci, A. 1995. Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Connors, M. K., R. Davison and J. Dorsch. 2004. The New Global Politics of the Asia-Pacific. London: Routledge. Croce, B. 1946. Politics and Morals. George Allen and Unwin, London. ———. 1951. My Philosophy: And Other Essays on the Moral and political Problems of Our Time. George Allen and Unwin, London. Finocchiaro, M. A. 1988. Gramsci and the History of Dialectic Thought. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. NowellSmith, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Turin: Einaudi. Howson, R. 2006 Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. Routledge, London. Scalapino, R. A. 2005. The Un-Folding Revolution in the Asia-Pacific Region. American Foreign Policy Interests 27:231–240.

2

Hegemony in the Preprison Context Richard Howson

On the evening of November 8, 1926, under Mussolini’s Exceptional Decrees, the Italian fascists arrested Antonio Gramsci, who was at that time a member of the Italian Parliament and leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Gramsci was imprisoned for what was effectively the remainder of his life. However, as Adamson (1980, 1) points out, it is ironic that without fascism’s victory in Italy and his imprisonment, it may never have passed that Gramsci would have had the opportunity to sustain a period of such profound theoretical reflection on social, political, economic, and historical issues, all of which were foundational planks to the theory of hegemony that emerged from his prison writings. The notebooks that contained these thoughts and writings have become the contemporary benchmark on hegemony and any debate on this concept and its application is inexorably drawn to Gramsci’s work. In effect, he remains the ‘theoretician of hegemony’ (Salvadori 1979, 237). Notwithstanding the importance of Gramsci’s prison-based writings, to effectively understand the forces that shaped many of the arguments and ideas contained within them, it is imperative to analyse closely the social, economic, and political moments that Gramsci passed through prior to his incarceration. In particular, those in which he made critical decisions or shifted points of view, for example, his sympathy with the Sardinian cause, the moment of his commitment to the Socialist Party, the bienno rosso and the fate of the Factory Councils, the emergence of the Italian Communist Party, and the new philosophy that underpinned the unfi nished essay on the Southern Question. In line with Adamson (1980), to develop an understanding of Gramsci’s mature (i.e., prison-based) writings it is imperative to not approach this body of work in isolation from the experiences and writings of this preprison period.

THE STRUGGLE TO MAKE AN IMPACT The history of the Sardinian people, at least for the last eleven hundred years since the Carthaginians, was one dominated by foreign rule, oppression,


17

and rebellion (Davidson 1977, 2). It was in this environment that Gramsci was born on the 22 January 1891. He was the fourth of seven children born to Francesco and Peppina in the small village of Ales in Sardinia (Henderson 1988, vii). Francesco Gramsci came to Sardinia searching for work and eventually found a job as a registrar in the small Sardinian town of Ghilarza, where he also happened to meet his wife Peppina (Marcias), the daughter of a local tax inspector. Whatever aspirations the couple might have had for their children and their own futures were crushed when Francesco was suspended from his position, without pay, on suspicion of peculation. The following year he was placed under arrest, and in 1900 he was sentenced to nearly six years’ imprisonment. To what extent Francesco was guilty of this crime in an area where bureaucratic corruption was endemic is unknown. However, his opposition to the local political party, in all probability, played a significant role in his imprisonment (Gramsci 1971, xviii). Francesco’s incarceration left the family in severe poverty, with Peppina effectively raising the seven children on her meagre income as a seamstress and whatever the children could earn. A further persistent complication for the Gramsci family was young Antonio’s struggle with various health problems, which were the outcome of an accident that severely damaged his spine and caused various internal disorders. Gramsci (1988, 160) would later recall from prison how these disorders had brought him perilously close to death as a child. In addition to his internal problems, the accident had left him severely hunchbacked, which for a young village boy only encouraged ridicule and produced a solemn and melancholy child (Davidson 1977, 22–23). However, even at an early age Gramsci recognised that his experiences were only an instance of the social cruelty that existed everywhere in Sardinia: It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes (in Davidson 1977, 34–35). Gramsci’s school life began in 1898 at Ghilarza but was often interrupted by periods where he was forced to work to help support the family. Nevertheless, in 1908 he was able to pass all the required examinations that allowed him entry into the senior liceo in Cagliari. While there, he stayed with his brother Gennaro, who had recently returned from military service in Turin and was now a white-collar worker. Gennaro’s experiences on the mainland had turned him towards socialism, and it was he who introduced the young Antonio to the politics and writings associated with the movement. However, an equally significant influence upon Gramsci’s nascent political interest was the protest sweeping through Sardinia in that year over the continuing oppression of the Sardinian people by the mainland (or northern) Italian authorities. In particular, the brutality of the military

18 Richard Howson and legal forces in crushing southern dissent gave Sardinian nationalism a revitalised impetus and was for the young Gramsci an issue he connected with quickly (Gramsci 1971, xix). In 1911 Gramsci passed all the prerequisite liceo examinations, and with his future student friend and fellow communist activist Palmiro Togliatti, he won a scholarship to the University of Turin. At university, Gramsci maintained a lonely and grinding study routine. Apart from the professors, who quickly recognised the young man’s academic talents, particularly in linguistics, his only other real acquaintance in these early years was Angelo Tasca, an arts student who already had some years’ standing as a socialist. It was also during these fi rst few years at Turin that Gramsci was introduced to the radical intellectual world of his time, which profoundly influenced him intellectually and spiritually (Marks 1957, 11). In particular, the works of idealist philosophers such as Francesco De Sanctis and Benedetto Croce would remain influential through his life (Joll 1977, 22). However, the deficiencies in the Italian political and cultural environment at this time became manifest in a weak and incoherent form of liberalism. This created a certain vogue for socialist ideas of action, even among the Italian bourgeois and academic groups. Gramsci made various significant contacts, particularly within academia, including the literary historian Umberto Cosmo and Annibale Pastore, whose lectures on Marxism he attended. Through these contacts he was introduced to, among other things, a particular brand of Hegelianism that he would remain ambiguously connected to until the end of his working life (Gramsci 1971, xxi). Gramsci’s conversion and commitment to socialism took place during his time at university, but it was neither immediate nor inevitable. His friend Tasca, who was actively courting Gramsci’s interest in socialist politics at this time (around 1912), failed to convince the young student. This was partly because of Gramsci’s reluctance to commit to Tasca’s Turinese (northern) socialism while still holding a deep connection with the south and, specifically, Sardinian nationalism (Adamson 1980, 28). Further, Gramsci was wary of Tasca, who he saw as basically avaricious and lacking any real scholarly integrity. However, by July 1913 this reluctance had passed, and Gramsci decided to make the intellectual commitment and applied for membership of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) on Tasca’s recommendation. He was accepted at the end of 1913 (Davidson 1977, 62). At the same time, Gramsci’s scholarship grant was proving to be miserably inadequate, and the inevitable cold and malnutrition was having disastrous effects on his already precarious health (Gramsci 1971, xxi). Continual illness, amongst other things, led to his repeated failure to sit for required examinations, which led to threats that his scholarship would be revoked (Davidson 1977, 64), but notwithstanding these issues, Gramsci’s thoughts and efforts were increasingly turning towards political activity. Gramsci sat for only one examination in November 1914, and as a result, his scholarship was suspended, leading to an even deeper cycle of poverty


19

and another bout of nervous disorder, which made surviving the following year extremely difficult. Nevertheless, he went back to study Marx and sat for his last university exam in April 1915. During this time, he was beginning to gain some standing in the Socialist Party through his participation in antinationalist activities on campus. This included writing articles for the socialist newspaper Il Grido del Popolo and giving lectures to the Socialist’s Youth Federation and other similar organisations. By 1916, he was writing a regular column for the socialist newspaper Avanti, and with this, he left university to begin a career in revolutionary journalism and politics (Davidson 1977, 70). Immediately following his withdrawal from university, Gramsci took formal work with Il Grido del Popolo and Avanti. Although his physical deformity and concomitant health and emotional problems made sure he would never become an energetic and charismatic orator or leader, he was every bit the fiery and intransigent socialist revolutionary. At a personal level, it was a time for remaking himself by disengaging from the contemplative life of study and engaging with the practical world of action, where his experience and knowledge of politics and socialism would develop and he could impose his own will on the world (Davidson 1977, 72). This new will to engage change was never more manifest than during the bienno rosso of 1919 to 1920. This was a period of turbulence, mass strikes, violence, and destruction, but it was also a period of great intellectual and practical value to Gramsci’s political and intellectual development.

THE DEMISE OF THE FACTORY COUNCILS AND THE RISE OF THE PCI In the aftermath of World War I, social, economic, and political tensions reached a fever pitch, with even Antonio Salandra, the authoritative leader of Italian conservatism, calling for the youth of Italy to assert itself. It was a time when all of Europe seemed inexorably drawn to revolution (Cammett 1967, 65). The situation for the revolutionary left throughout Western Europe was more complex, particularly with the success of Lenin’s proletarian revolution in Russia, which created much optimism and anticipation for change but also much insecurity. Gramsci profoundly believed that these events had produced an environment within Italy that would enable its working people to bring about revolutionary change to their own oppressive capitalist and liberal State. During WWI and the years immediately following, Gramsci’s involvement in the PSI was not as a politician in the strict sense. He was far more interested in educating the working class and elaborating the cultural and social basis for a new Italian society than in the factional fights within the PSI. This interest (which remained a defi ning feature of Gramsci’s later work) led to Gramsci’s involvement in reassembling the old student group

20

Richard Howson

of the Young Socialists to found a collectively managed journal of Marxist theory and culture. The fi rst issue of L’Ordine Nuovo appeared on the 1st May 1919. Its existence represents an important moment in the history of the Italian revolutionary movement because although its founders would become the crucial nucleus of the Italian Communist Party (Cammett 1967, 71), it also became the vehicle through which Gramsci would embark on a campaign to turn the Internal Commissions into Factory Councils and bring about a revolutionary movement (Clark 1977, 46). At the twenty-sixth Congress of the PSI, held in Bologna between the fi fth and eighth of October 1919, the party agreed with an overwhelming majority to take part in the elections to the bourgeois parliament. This commitment heightened already simmering tensions between the maximalists and the reformists, and as a result, Factory Council ideas rapidly spread throughout Turin (Clark 1977, 79). The Factory Council is the model of the proletarian State. All the problems inherent in the organisation of the proletarian State are inherent in the organisation of the Council. In the one as in the other, the concept of citizen gives way to the concept of comrade. Collaboration in effective and useful production develops solidarity and multiplies bonds of affection and fraternity. Everyone is indispensable, everyone is at his post, and everyone has a function and a post. Even the most backward workers, even the most vain and ‘civil’ of engineers, will eventually convince himself of this truth in the experience of factory organisation. The Council is the most effective organ for mutual education and for developing the new social spirit that the proletariat has successfully engendered from the rich and living experience of the community of labour (Gramsci 1977, 100). However, the success of the Factory Council ideology raised an important problem for its broader concrete expansion: how to deal with the relationship between the unions and the party. Gramsci (1977, 98–102) argued that both unions and party emerged from the historical moment dominated by capitalism, and therefore the whole ‘proletarian movement’ organised within the framework set-up by unions and party made it not ‘autonomous’ but constrained within the laws of historical development as laid down by the ‘property-owning class.’ Therefore, they functioned not through ‘inner necessity’ but through ‘external influences.’ The role of the party was inexorably hindered to operate as a revolutionary organ by its origin in a capitalist society, and the task of the unions was fundamentally opposed in principle to that of the Councils. The conclusion for Gramsci (1977, 102) was that primacy should be given to allowing the concrete expansion of the Factory Councils, because even though he recognised that there was not a lucid and precise awareness of the means for revolution, the postwar period had produced a conviction and enthusiasm in the Western


21

European proletariat to bring about what was already part of a precise and lucid awareness of the end. The bienno rosso was a disastrous period for the Italian revolutionary movement, and no single moment had a more devastating impact on its project than the great Piedmont General Strike of April 1920. However, as Cammett (1967, 98) summarises, there were a number of contributing factors that produced the context for the strike, such as the uncertain socialist advance, the strengthening of the repressive carabinieri and Royal Guards, economic chaos, the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie, and the rapid development of the Factory Councils despite the opposition of the PSI. Thus, on 29th March, with what seemed like a rather innocuous dispute over daylight saving time and the unauthorised setting back of the clock hands at the Industrie Metallurgiche (a subsidiary Fiat plant), which resulted in the sacking of one worker, the latent revolutionary consciousness began to manifest. The reaction to the sacking developed at pace and quickly involved the local Factory Council, who called a sit-down strike. The recalcitrance of the industrialists, who were organised and prepared for a clash with the workers, set in motion general strikes, lockouts, and factory occupations. However, by the following April the struggle had ended with the defeat of the revolutionary movement and a victory for the reformists, who had negotiated what would be an unattainable settlement for the workers with the industrialists (Clark 1977, 193). Although many reasons may be offered for the failure of the General Strike and thus the revolutionary Factory Council movement—such as the inability to extend the struggle into a national struggle, the preparedness of the industrialists, and the false neutrality of the State (Cammett 1967, 121)—the root cause was the fragmentation of the PSI. In effect, the PSI could not project itself as a unified party in control of the Factory Councils, which were seen as the vanguard for the whole national movement. The disarticulated nature of the party ensured that the goal remained unclear. As Gramsci wrote in a letter to A. Leonetti in 1924: In 1919–20, we made some extremely serious mistakes which ultimately we are paying for today. For fear of being called upstarts and careerists, we did not form a faction and organise this throughout Italy. We were not ready to give the Factory Councils an autonomous directive centre, which could have exercised an immense influence throughout the country, for fear of a split in the unions and of being expelled prematurely from the Socialist Party (Gramsci 1978, 189). But these continual delays imposed through the factional struggles of the party were, as Buci-Glucksman (1980, 172) argues, only ‘token’ to the overall insufficient degree of maturity of the whole worker’s movement at this time. The anger and disillusionment that had been felt by many left-wing

22

Richard Howson

militants against the trade unions, reformists, and even the maximalists for their failure to seize power in the previous September during the occupation of the factories stimulated the split of the PSI at the Livorno Congress in January 1921. From this split emerged the Italian Communist Party (PCI) (Joll 1977, 44–45). But all the anger and disillusionment that surfaced prior to the bienno rosso had dissipated with defeat of the Factory Councils the following April. So much so that in the general election (held on 15th May ) the new PCI could secure only 12,509 votes (Clark 1977, 195), confi rming for Gramsci that it was not yet a party of or for the masses and that socialist reformism continued to hold ideological sway with the workers. It also confi rmed the demise of the Factory Council movement and the containment of Gramsci’s own political activity to a small party with no real mass support (Clark 1977, 196). Thus, the period 1921 to 1926 was for Gramsci a time for rethinking and rebuilding a shattered Italian revolutionary movement and an equally shattered conception of party. Although at this time the pragmatics of the party—that is, its organisation and administration—captured much of Gramsci’s attention and energy, it was also a time of intense reflection upon the previous failures of the party as vanguard and the effectiveness of spontaneous uprising as a successful means for the removal of the capitalist system and its replacement with a new hegemony. The two years (1921–1922) following the bienno rosso were extremely difficult for Gramsci. The nascent fascist movement was gaining social, economic, and political momentum through violent and intimidating strategies, the relationship between the Socialist Party and the traditional parties was of concern, and Bordiga’s ideology, particularly in relation to the Comintern’s ‘united front policy,’ which initiated the Rome Theses, clashed with Gramsci’s, thus severely straining the relationship (Cammett 1967, 160–161). On a more personal level, one of Gramsci’s sisters died, and one of his brothers became a fascist. His health had completely deteriorated from the strain of the Factory Council campaign and the disillusionment of defeat in the previous two years, yet he would keep working (Joll 1977, 47). In May 1922, Gramsci left for Moscow as the PCI’s delegate to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), a position some have argued was handed to him by Bordiga, even though he was extremely ill, so as to remove a persistent critic (Joll 1977, 47). By the end of June, he had retired to a rest home after suffering a complete breakdown and remained there for the next six months. It was here that he met Giulia Schucht, whom he would marry and have two children with, Delio and Giuliano. In January 1925, this relationship would bring Gramsci into contact with Tatiana, now his sister-in-law, who would be of crucial importance to him and his work in his prison years. The years following Bordiga’s February 1923 arrest saw Gramsci leave Moscow for Vienna, where he undertook a period of intense planning to publish a new theoretical journal, Critica Proletaria. Although it never


23

materialised, the work on it enabled him to develop a new flexible conception of the party that started to become evident in a letter he wrote from Vienna in February 1924 to Togliatti, Terracini, and others: I consider that the moment has come to give the Party a different orientation from the one it has had up until now. A new phase is beginning in the history not just of our Party but of our country too. It is, therefore, necessary that we should enter a phase of greater clarity in relations within the Party, and in relations between the party and the International (Gramsci 1978, 196). While working in Vienna, Gramsci was elected to Parliament in April 1924 with the backing of the constituency of the Veneto region. With the cocomitant Parliamentary immunity, the decision for his return to Italy was made a little easier. In May he took up residence with the Passarge family in Rome, and soon after, in August, he accepted the position of general secretary of the PCI. For the next two years, Gramsci would be involved predominantly in party-based operations, such as transforming the organisational structure of the party, successfully increasing the membership of the PCI, and overseeing the movement of Serrati and other PSI members into the PCI (Buttigieg 1992, 82). In addition, Gramsci put a strong emphasis on the education of the party’s organizers, which was achieved primarily through his journalism. Thus, much of the party’s energies went into the production of journals such as L’Unita, Lo Stato Operaio, and Ordine Nuovo, which in 1924 had a circulation in excess of 70,000. In the existing political climate, this was an extraordinary achievement (Clark 1977, 224). Nevertheless, the persistent ideological problem for Gramsci in relation to the party was the dichotomy between discipline and liberty, an issue that had not dissipated in importance since the clash with Bordiga over the united front issue. Nevertheless, as the following analysis and discussion of the Southern Question essay will show, for Gramsci, there was no room for dogmatism within the operations of the party. In other words, discipline and liberty cannot be mechanically enforced. Rather, the management of the full range of groups and interests must be based on loyalty and conviction.

THE SOUTHERN QUESTION In the months leading up to his arrest on November 8th, 1926, Gramsci had started work on a lengthy essay entitled ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question.’ It began as a critical response to what Gramsci saw as ‘the superficial dilettantism of the young editors of Quarto Stato’ (Gramsci 1978, 441) in their presentation of an article written by ‘Ulenspiegel’ on the Southern Question. In this presentation, the editors of Quarto Stato,

24 Richard Howson while proclaiming knowledge of the general issues that drove the Southern Question, criticised the Turin Communists, the group to which Gramsci belonged, for their inaction in putting in place their ‘magical formula’ that would initiate the breakdown of the bourgeois dictatorship in the predominantly peasant South and allow the division of their estates among the ‘rural proletariat.’ These editors were unaware of the importance and passion the Southern Question had for Gramsci as a Sardinian. In many ways it remained a part of his personal history and, as such, remained central to his philosophy and politics. Thus, their claim of a ‘magical formula,’ which effectively trivialised and made simplistic the solution to a ‘real’ problem that went to the core of a strategy for producing a progressive workers’ movement, drew the ire of Gramsci, who saw it as ‘complete invention’ and in response argued, inter alia, that: The important thing to note here is that the fundamental concept of the Turin communists was not the ‘magical formula’ of dividing the big estates, but rather the political alliance between the Northern workers and Southern peasants, to oust the bourgeoisie from State power (Gramsci 1978, 442). The fallacy of projecting ‘magical formulas’ and performing ‘miraculist illusions’ as a way of overcoming the exploitation and oppression of the workers and the peasants by the State and the owners of industry and agriculture was never more obvious then in the whole period leading up to Gramsci’s arrest and which was crystallized in the failure of the Factory Councils during the bienno rosso that left shattered and directionless the progressive revolutionary movement in Italy. By 1925, continuing political violence and persecution orchestrated by an increasingly powerful fascist regime had reduced the political left, and in particular the PCI, to a virtually clandestine organisation. Gramsci, who had been elected to Parliament in April 1924 (Buttigieg 1992, 81), was wholly unimpressed with the opposition to Mussolini and his Fascist party that existed within what was left of the democratic system (Cammett 1967, 176). So what was important for him was to understand the social, economic, and political conditions in Italy that could produce such authoritarianism and devastation. But even more pressing was the need to develop a strategy that could shape the PCI into an organised and effective oppositional force. As the following analysis will show, the essay ‘Some Aspects of the Southern Question,’ particularly given its historical location, goes beyond a simple critical response to the Quarto Stato editorial and begins to address precisely these issues. The historical location of this essay—that is, in the last moment of his preprison life—is particularly significant because it effectively brings together, albeit in embryonic form, many of the most crucial foundational ideas of the theory of hegemony that would fi nd voice in the Prison Notebooks. For example, Gramsci introduces and discusses the importance of


25

alliances in a radically new way, the role of intellectuals and education in manufacturing consent over corporativism, and the significance of ideology in constructing social, economic, and political power, as well as its reconfiguration into domination. In other words, Gramsci sought to move from the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to introduce the ‘hegemony of the proletariat.’ This transformation brings into play the importance of moral and intellectual leadership over authoritarianism. At this moment, these initial ideas and insights lacked the weight and power of a major theoretical breakthrough, but the sheer sweep of the essay, which in itself is impressive and profound, enables the simultaneous opening up and linking together of issues of considerable importance that outline the general contours of Gramsci’s views on the intricate networks of relations that bind social, economic, and political power with legitimacy to produce a new moral and intellectual authority. As such, it represents what Buttigieg (1992, 21–22) aptly calls a ‘prolegomenon to the prison notebooks.’

FROM DICTATORSHIP TO HEGEMONY OF THE PROLETARIAT The meaning given to hegemony that can be drawn out of Gramsci’s political and intellectual writings prior to 1926 reflects the notion of ‘domination’ explicitly developed in line with Lenin’s (1967, 14) revolutionary slogan: the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ In other words, hegemony may be understood as the exercise of command whose objective is to lead the allies and undertake actions (violent if necessary) to overcome hostile groups (Salvadori 1979, 237). However, the hegemony/dictatorship nexus, which was central for Lenin and the revolutionary movement at that time, as well as having the objective of being fundamentally progressive, was for Gramsci a continuing and complex problem to overcome (see also Boothman and Fontana in this volume). In effect, the transition from dictatorship to hegemony was not as yet clear, and the distinction between the potential for either progressive or regressive outcomes difficult to predict. For example, in a letter to Togliatti, Terracini, and others, dated 9th February 1924, Gramsci (1978, 165) makes reference to the ‘hegemonic position [Russia] holds today’ over a prerevolutionary Western Europe, suggesting a dominant (that is, commanding) yet progressive position. In contrast, an article published during October 1923 includes a statement in which Gramsci (1978, 164) refers to the ‘hegemonic positions of the reformists.’ These ‘hegemonic positions’ relate to extensions of organised unionism that ‘as a matter of principle’ the Turin Communists opposed as reformist and regressive. Earlier, in October 1920, Gramsci referred to the ‘hegemonic forces’ of the First World War that exploited Italy for their own advantage (Gramsci 1977, 357), suggesting an oppressive domination. This movement of Gramsci’s conception of hegemony would remain unchanged through

26

Richard Howson

his prison-based work. More importantly though, it is a crucial fi rst step to recognising and understanding the complexity of hegemony as it would develop. In the Southern Question, Gramsci (1978) maintained this progressive/ regressive complexity by outlining the importance of hegemony within a strategy for a progressive proletarian movement, but he also recognised the reality of the regressive hegemonic alliance between syndicalists and the bourgeoisie that had developed in the South to dominate its peasants. However, it was in explicating the strategic direction for progressive action that Gramsci introduced some radical and innovative conceptual twists to the concept of hegemony, which positioned it in contradistinction to how it was understood in the broad European revolutionary social democratic context. For example, he argued that: The Turin Communists posed to themselves concretely the question of the “hegemony of the proletariat”, in other words, of the social basis of the proletarian dictatorship and the Worker’s State. The proletariat can become the leading and ruling class to the extent to which it succeeds in creating a system of class alliances which enables it to mobilise the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois state (Gramsci 1978, 443). The need for worker unity, which meant alliance between southern peasants and the northern industrial proletariat, was for Gramsci and the Turin Communists key to developing a real and effective progressive worker’s movement throughout Italy. But what is evident here is that Gramsci no longer saw the battlefield upon which this unity would be won in terms of political and economic imperatives. The fi rst problem to resolve, for the Turin Communists, was how to modify the political stance and general ideology of the proletariat itself, as a national element which exists within the ensemble of State life and is unconsciously subjected to the influence of bourgeois education, the bourgeois press and bourgeois traditions [my emphasis] (Gramsci 1978, 444). Instead, he recognised the need to extend and elaborate orthodox Marxist dogma. The struggle should now involve superstructural phenomena, such as education, the media, art, literature and drama, law, gender, and the family because they were all under the control of the bourgeoisie. Further, they were all being used to sustain bourgeois ideology and, through this, capitalist liberal hegemony. In extending Marxist orthodoxy, Gramsci’s point of departure remained with the centrality of the party. The party for Lenin was effectively an elite, centralised, and authoritarian vanguard. It existed external to the proletariat


27

mass, and from this transcendent position, it commanded the people, developed strategy, and put in place action for political and economic emancipation. As I have already shown (above and also see Cammett 1967, 173), Gramsci at this time was concerned about the ‘nature’ of the party, and it remained a difficult theoretical and practical problem throughout his prisonbased work. The initial approach to a solution lay in ensuring that the proletariat was guaranteed a ruling function in the party. In other words, the party had to lead, but not as an external authoritarian imposition either before or after the conquest of power. Instead the party had to be and act as an organic mechanism to be hegemonic. In this sense, hegemony stressed a proletarian ‘leadership’ that grew out of and was always inclusive of the mass. But further, the emphasis for the leadership would be on rethinking the basis of progressive action so as to recognise the importance of social imperatives as well as economic and political imperatives in the development of a collective will. In these significant, yet tentative steps to rethink the party, Gramsci began to develop a new framework for leadership, one that extends power beyond the orthodox Leninist-Marxist sense into a new organic and historical hegemony. This is not to suggest that Lenin, or for that matter Marx, did not recognise the importance of superstructure in leadership. Lenin (1967, 14–15) states in What Is to Be Done? that, in the interests of ideological development, such things as ‘freedom of criticism’ for example, should be allowed. However, it should be allowed only so far as that criticism does not run counter to class and party interests. So in the final analysis, leadership is dominative, elitist, and authoritarian, and the alliance would always involve the ultimate and inevitable subordination of all other group interests, whether allied or antagonistic, firstly to the party’s hegemonic principles and then to the proletariat’s hegemonic principles (Howson 2006, 23).

CULTURE AND THE PROBLEMATIC OF CORPORATIVISM Even before his prison writings, Gramsci could be seen to be extending the critique and struggle beyond the economic and political spheres so as to create a new strategy based on a hegemony/leadership nexus and thus set aside the potential for elitism, closure, and ultimately, domination inherent to Lenin’s dictatorship project. Further, this would open up an unorthodox and radical passage to a moment where not even proletarian interests are sacrosanct within alliance. In the Lyons Theses, and in particular Theses 27 and 29, Gramsci asserted that the party must be part of the working class, but more the Communist Party cannot just be a worker’s party: The working class cannot do without the intellectuals, nor can it ignore the problem of gathering around itself all those elements driven in one way or another to revolt against capitalism (Cammett 1967, 173).

28

Richard Howson

This position is revisited in the Southern Question: The proletariat, in order to become capable as a class of governing, must strip itself of every residue of corporatism, every syndicalist prejudice and incrustation. What does this mean? That, in addition to the need to overcome the distinctions which exist between one trade and another, it is necessary—in order to win the trust and consent of the peasants and of some semi-proletarian urban categories—to overcome certain prejudices and conquer certain forms of egoism which can and do subsist within the working class as such, even when craft particularism has disappeared (Gramsci 1978, 448). These arguments represent what is referred to here as the ‘problematic of corporativism,’ or the rejection of a situation where one group’s interests become hegemonic principles that must be dogmatically protected and upheld, thereby ensuring their domination over all others. The importance of this radical openness in Gramsci’s thought had its beginnings in his earlier idealist and humanist writings, particularly those on culture. In an article entitled ‘Socialism and Culture,’ published in Il Grido del Popolo in January 1916, Gramsci began to develop a conception of culture by analyzing an argument that begins by introducing Giambattista Vico’s political interpretation of Solon’s famous saying, ‘Know thyself,’ where it is suggested that both plebians and nobles are equally a part of humanity, and secondly, by introducing a quotation from the German romantic writer Novalis: The supreme problem of culture is that of gaining possession of one’s transcendental self, of being at one and the same time the self of oneself. Thus it should not surprise us that there is an absence of feeling or complete understanding of others. Lacking a perfect comprehension of ourselves, we can never really hope to know others (Gramsci 1977, 8). What Gramsci is alluding to through these arguments is that culture is always more than the mere acquisition of esoteric information or the cramming of encyclopedic knowledge, because neither could produce real self-knowledge. In effect, culture is the ‘organisation, discipline of one’s inner self, a coming to terms with one’s own personality.’ In effect, it is the attainment of a higher awareness achieved not through spontaneous evolution and physiological necessity but rather the incremental movements of history resulting from intelligent reflection (Gramsci 1977, 10–11). This was applied to Marxism in his essay ‘Our Marx,’ published in May 1918, where he spoke of ‘will’ as ‘consciousness of the ends’ that comes from being able to ‘know one’s own power and being able to express this in action,’ and thus Marx becomes ‘the master of spiritual and moral life’ (Gramsci 1975, 11).


29

In these early writings, the influence of Croce’s philosophy also emerges as a significant influence. For example, Gramsci (1975, 10) begins to understand that history is an intellectual system—‘the domain of ideas, of spirit’—that dominates and embraces all other intellectual systems, such as morals, politics, and art, and moves them as a ‘bloc’ through ‘pure practical (economic and moral) activity.’ In this way, the importance of relating the past to the present, from which we can understand the future, is recognised by Gramsci and, particularly, in terms of developing selfemancipation as truth. In other words, history gives truth a generative and often unstable quality. A point Gramsci stresses in his 1918 article entitled ‘Free Thought and Liberated Thought’: It follows from this that truth must never be presented in an absolute, dogmatic form, as if already ripe and perfect. In order to be disseminated, truth must be adapted to the historical (or cultural) conditions of the social groups in which one wants it to be disseminated (Gramsci 1975, 55). This antidogmatism would remain a key tenet of his philosophical and political platform throughout his later reflections from prison, for example, in his critique of Bukharin’s economism and in his elaborations of consciousness through the historical bloc. However, it is one thing to challenge corporativism and dogmatism and stress the importance of self-knowledge for self-emancipation, and quite another to produce at a concrete level an organic progressive alliance. In the last section of the Southern Question, Gramsci began to explore this issue in the discussion of intellectuals and in particular the nature of the southern intellectuals, of which Croce and Gentile were important examples. Of significance in this discussion is the recognition that what is important in terms of hegemony is to understand intellectuals in terms of their function as organisers and educators.

THE TASK OF EDUCATION Gramsci held to the Marxist thesis that the liberation of the individual could only come about with the emancipation of the proletariat, and with it the whole of humanity, through the destruction of capitalism and the creation of a communist society. Therefore, he maintained that revolution would be achieved only by the containment of corporativistic rebelliousness and a coming together of interests through alliance in a way that promoted a collective will under a moral and intellectual leadership. To achieve this progressive mass movement, discipline was the necessary compliment to freedom and education its foundation. Education was always a key aspect of Gramsci’s political philosophy, and as early as 1916 he wrote that:

30

Richard Howson Culture is a privilege. Education is a privilege. And we do not want it so. What the proletariat needs is an education system that is open to all. A system in which the child is allowed to develop and mature and acquire those general features that serve to develop character (Gramsci 1977, 26).

The whole education project was never an easy task, but when focused on educating the mass of workers and peasants it became particularly difficult. This was never more evident than during the biennio rosso when the lack of organisation and unity within the party led to a disconnection between the intellectuals and the masses and ultimately a failure to prepare the masses adequately for revolution (Clark 1977, 133). Notwithstanding these failures, the connecting idea that remained present throughout every stage of Gramsci’s thought, particularly in relation to hegemony, is the supreme importance of constant contact between the masses and the intellectuals in such a way that the leading group’s interests become synthetically developed with the interests of the subaltern groups (Cammett 1967, 174, 205). However, the inability of the PCI to bring progressive education to the south of Italy in such a way that would alter the consciousness of its peasants and give it homogeneity with that of the proletariat remained an obstacle to organic action. In effect, the south existed under a bourgeois system that stifled the expansion of the Italian education system and effectively excluded peasant children. In addition, the political context in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw Marxism as riddled with economism and materialism, producing a climate that left no room for subaltern issues to be taken seriously (Cammett 1967, 205). Almost in opposition to the ongoing social, economic, and political fragmentation, Gramsci argued that for an effective hegemony of the proletariat, the mass of southern intellectuals and not simply individuals, such as Croce or Gentile, would play a crucial role because it was this broad group who would be needed to organize and educate the mass of peasants. Historically, the peasants had looked towards secular bourgeois intellectuals, such as doctors, lawyers, and pharmacists, as well as the omnipotent church for social, economic, and political leadership (Joll 1977, 70). However, these intellectuals had always exercised vested interests to ensure the ‘traditional’ principles upon which social structures and practices were grounded remained unchanged. Hence, Gramsci noted: Intellectuals develop slowly, far more slowly than any other social group, by their very nature and historical function. They represent the entire cultural tradition of a people, seeking to resume and synthesise all of its history. This can be said especially of the old type of intellectual: the intellectual born on the peasant terrain. To think it possible that such intellectuals, en masse, can break with the entire past and


31

situate themselves totally upon the terrain of a new ideology, is absurd (Gramsci 1978, 462). But if the proletariat is to break the hold of these traditional centres of influence over the peasantry, two things must happen. The proletariat must organise the revolutionary elements among the peasants themselves so as to establish progressive cells in the rural context, and they must also provide intellectual and moral leadership capable of replacing what has historically been provided through the secular bourgeoisie and clerical forces. To do this Gramsci argued that: The alliance between proletariat and peasant masses requires this formation. It is all the more required by the alliance between proletariat and peasant masses in the South. But its greater or lesser success in this necessary task will also depend upon its ability to break up the intellectual bloc that is the flexible, but extremely resistant, armour of the agrarian bloc (Gramsci 1978, 462). However, at this time the Italian liberal regime was experiencing a profound decline that was due primarily to the lack of a robust entrepreneurial market system, a lack of commitment to individual rights, and the corruption of the parliamentary system (Martin 1997, 44). After the failure of strike action by the political left in 1920, which was organised around the Factory Councils, political power shifted to the right and the new fascist movement. Gramsci saw this new situation as the result of a failure by the left to provide an adequate, consistent, and coherent social, economic, and political model as an alternative to the failed liberal state (Martin 1997, 46). This failure grew off the back of an inadequate system of education, unable to extend beyond the confines of small select groups and therefore incapable of providing unity of purpose and consciousness. This lack of consciousness would be a contributing factor in the production of a situation that Gramsci (1971, 219) would later refer to as a ‘Caesarist’ reaction. In other words, a situation where the two forces in confl ict—in this case proletariat and bourgeoisie—have balanced each other out with the catastrophic consequence that a third force, fascism, is able to effectively dominate the whole national-collective. In such a social and political environment, any notion of a progressive revolutionary strategy would require a significant rethinking of the left’s orthodox revolutionary dogma. This chapter has explicated the preprison period of Gramsci’s life and shown why it is important to understand it in the context of the development of hegemony. In particular, the importance Gramsci placed on coming to terms both theoretically and practically with hegemony as both consensus and coercion. This coming to terms focused Gramsci’s attention on foundational concepts such as leadership, party, culture, knowledge, education, and intellectuals and led almost inexorably to the essay ‘Some Aspects of

32

Richard Howson

the Southern Question’ and the important developments it introduced that now can be seen to represent a window into the theory of hegemony that would follow in the Prison Notebooks.

REFERENCES Adamson, W. L. 1980. Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley: University Press. Buci-Glucksman, C. 1980. Gramsci and the State. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Buttigieg, J. 1992. Chronology. In A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks: Volume One. New York: Columbia University Press. Cammett, J. M. 1967. Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism. Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press. Clark, M. 1977. Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Davidson, A. 1977. Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ———. 1975. History, Philosophy and Culture in the Young Gramsci. Saint Louis: Telos Press Ltd. ———. 1977. Selections from Political Writings 1910–1920. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1978. Selections from Political Writings 1921–1926. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 1988. Prison Letters. London: Pluto Press. Henderson, H. 1988 Prison Letters. London: Pluto Press. Hoare, Q., and G. Nowell Smith. 1971. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Lawrence and Wishart. London. Howson, R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Maculinity. London: Routledge. Joll, J. 1977. Gramsci. London: Fontana. Lenin, V. I. 1967. What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Marks, L. 1957. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings. New York: International Publishers. Martin, J. 1997. Hegemony and the Crisis of Legitimacy in Gramsci. In History of the Human Sciences 10(1):37–56. Salvadori, M. 1979. Gramsci and the PCI: Two Conceptions of Hegemony. In Gramsci and Marxist Theory, ed. Mouffe. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd.

3

Hegemony Political and Linguistic Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony Derek Boothman

INTRODUCTION In this chapter we attempt to identify the principal origins of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, as he then subsequently developed it, from its fi rst appearance in the Prison Notebooks, where ‘leadership’ and ‘political hegemony’ are used synonymously.1 There are about half a dozen of these sources, some stemming from Gramsci’s university training in linguistics, not always explicitly stated as origins in the Notebooks, but traceable by assessing both Gramsci’s comments there and his preprison experience. Shedding light on this subject helps contrast often unilateral or debatable interpretations of the concept, either by friendly commentators, who sometimes overlook or deny economic and class factors, or by hostile ones, who neglect consensual aspects. Both sides all too frequently also ignore hegemony’s essential role as the component that transforms Marx’s somewhat static structure/superstructure metaphor into Gramsci’s more dynamic one of the historical bloc.

THE STARTING POINT FOR THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY Gramsci states that his notion of hegemony rests on a fundamental text of Marx’s, the 1859 preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, which he translated in a part of Notebook 7 (Gramsci 1975, 2358–60). 2 A literal English translation of the main lines of interest reads: With the change in the economic base the immense superstructure is overturned more or less rapidly. In observing such upheavals one must always draw a distinction between a material overthrow of the conditions of economic production, which is to be faithfully ascertained by the methods of the natural sciences, and the juridical, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical forms: in a word, the ideological forms, on whose terrain men become aware of this confl ict and resolve it.

34

Derek Boothman

The kernel idea of the fight among confl icting forces on the ideological terrain is what indeed is developed throughout the Notebooks, and feeds into the concept of hegemony; just how the ‘superstructures’ are related to the structure itself is ‘the crucial problem of historical materialism’ (fi rst draft) and is a problem that has to be ‘accurately posed and resolved if the forces which are active in the history of a particular period are to be correctly analysed’ (second draft) (Gramsci 1975, Q4§38, Q13§17; 1996, 171; 1971, 177), which then implies the question of the relations between such forces, i.e., the whole question of hegemony.

LEFT CONCEPTS OF ‘HEGEMONY’ BEFORE THE PRISON NOTEBOOKS In order to trace Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and thereby highlight its innovative character, a fi rst question of importance to be asked regards the use of the word and concept ‘hegemony’ in socialist and then in communist circles in the years before his imprisonment.

The background to Italian socialist usage— hegemony among nations First of all, it may be observed that, in the decade Gramsci spent in Turin, the word was in current use among Italian socialists. At this time, control of the northern and eastern Adriatic was highly sensitive from an Italian nationalist perspective. For most of the sixty-odd years from the collapse in 1797 of the Doges’ Republic to the foundation of the kingdom of Italy, Venice was under Austrian control, but before this it had for centuries controlled much of Dalmatia (the coastal zone of today’s Slovenia and Croatia), and a Venetian ‘pan-Italian’ functioned as a Mediterranean lingua franca. 3 The breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire then saw the largely Italian-speaking Istrian peninsula of the northeastern Adriatic come under Italian rule, passing later on into Tito’s Yugoslavia in the post–World War II settlement, so it is no surprise that there were polemics about who was ‘entitled’ to what. It is sufficient to leaf through the 1916–17 numbers of Critica Sociale, then the major theoretical organ of the Italian socialists, to see articles on ‘wars of hegemony,’ ‘Italo-Serb relationships for hegemony in the Adriatic,’ and so on. Echoes of this are then to be found in Q2§89, with its references to ‘irredentism’ and the ‘special form assumed by the national question in Trieste and in Dalmatia (for the Italians)’ (Gramsci 1992, 331–2). National and ethnic civilization problems stretching back in time, mainly for the Balkans but also elsewhere, were dealt with in Gramsci’s university course on comparative linguistics. Indeed, in his transcription of the course we read ‘it is said that, because of its lesser degree of

Hegemony

35

civilization, Rome did not succeed in “Romanizing” Greece. But was Rome perhaps more civilized than Etruria? And yet in Italy, [Rome] destroyed the ancient nationalities and the ancient languages and imposed its own hegemony on all the activities of the spirit.’4 Analogous positions to this are then developed in the Notebooks when Gramsci deals with empires (Roman and modern ones) and the forces external to them and, of course, with capitalism and the social forces challenging it. The concept, stemming from ancient Greece, of hegemony as the system of power relations between competing—or between dominant and vassal—city-states and nations is found in the Notebooks in sections on, for example, how United States power was created (Gramsci 1975, Q2§16; 1992, 260–5), and on the history of subaltern States explained by that of hegemonic ones (Gramsci 1975, Q15§5; 1995, 222–3).

Hegemony—Lenin However, it was another sector of the left that provided a greater input for Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. For him, the principal contemporary architect of the modern theory of hegemony was Lenin, who, as a theoretician, had on ‘the terrain of political organization and struggle, and with political terminology . . . . reappraised the front of cultural struggle and constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the State-as-force and as a contemporary form of the 1848 doctrine of “permanent revolution”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10I§12; 1995, 357). In other words, the leadership of the proletarian forces had to be developed independently on all fronts ‘in opposition to the various tendencies of “economism”,’ as Gramsci writes in the same paragraph in commenting Lenin’s position. 5 Especially in the light of an internationally influential, but sometimes flawed, article of Norberto Bobbio’s on Gramsci, where ‘hegemony’ is claimed to be more characteristic of Stalin (Stalin 1934, 361–2) than of Lenin, whose ‘habitual language’ is said not to include gegemoniya (Bobbio 1969, 75–100, in English 1988, 73–99), it is doubly worthwhile examining the input from Lenin. Some of the main policies advocated by Lenin for leadership over both allied and oppositional classes are outlined in this subsection. The concept and practice of ‘hegemony,’ but not necessarily the word, is present under various guises in his work from long before the Bolshevik revolution. The word gegemoniya makes an early appearance in the classic 1902 pamphlet What Is to Be Done?, although the standard English translation contains not ‘hegemony’ but a gloss. Advocating strategies mirrored in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, Lenin says the Bolsheviks had a ‘bounden duty’ in the struggle to overthrow the autocracy to guide the activities not only of the urban proletariat but also of other ‘opposition strata’ (Lenin 1967, 84). The concept also comes into Lenin’s writings in the same decade on the Paris Commune, where he notes that the ‘socialist proletariat’ could achieve ‘democratic tasks to which the bourgeoisie could

36 Derek Boothman only pay lip service,’ a task similar to the one he later faced regarding agrarian reform. This leadership role is also shown in his observation on Engels, who ‘in calling the Commune a dictatorship of the proletariat had in view . . . . the ideological leading participation of the representatives of the proletariat in the revolutionary government’ (Lenin’s emphasis, from Lenin 1931, 18 and 59 respectively).6 The innovative elements to note are, in the first case, the role of one class (the proletariat) that, by carrying out tasks classically assigned to other classes, potentially was able to weld together a class alliance; in the second case, other classes spontaneously recognize the proletariat’s ideologically superior positions, judged by Gramsci as essential to hegemony. Later on, in the first period of the Bolshevik government, one main problem was the modus vivendi between the Russian proletariat and their former masters, and in May 1918 we find Lenin defending the need to use the former capitalists to run State industry, because they were the only ones with the necessary expertise (Lenin 1968, 21–22): the hegemonic aspect emerges here in the exercise of power by the proletariat over an antagonistic class. Subsequently, his article ‘The III International and its Place in History,’ written just a month after the International’s foundation, does in fact contain the word ‘egemonia’ three times in the Italian translation that Gramsci published (Lenin 1919, 245–6): in the international movement, hegemony, i.e., a recognized leading position, passed to the German socialists after 1870, while Kautsky in 1908 said it could pass to the Slavs, as it actually did (to the Russians) after 1917.7 Other Marxists seem to have used the word in the official documents of the First Congress of the Comintern, notably Bukharin and Eberlein in their ‘Platform’ of the International and also, possibly, the Russian drafter Obolensky (Ovinsky) of the theses on the international situation and the Entente (Theses . . . . of the Third International, 42 and 54); in the latter case, the English translation has ‘leading position’ where the Italian has ‘egemonia.’ A particular concept of hegemony, as well as the word itself, was then, as Anderson describes in a widely quoted essay (1976, 15–18), in use by Marxists including Lenin, in the whole period up to the foundation of the Comintern. Just after Lenin raised the question of relations between antagonistic classes in post-revolutionary Russia, a rather different aspect of hegemony was posed by another politico-economic issue, namely the nature of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, especially in the transition from ‘war communism’ to the New Economic Policy (NEP). In order to rule, the urban proletariat had to come to terms with a backward agricultural system based on the various strata of the peasantry and reach an understanding with the majority of these latter (Lenin at the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P, quoted in Carr 1966, 277). Carr goes on to note that small producers and cultivators, the great majority of the Russian population, were present in almost all countries and, according to the Bolsheviks and the International, ‘the chief question of the revolution’ consisted in the struggle against them. They could not be expropriated like the capitalists,

Hegemony

37

but at least in Russia the NEP fulfi lled the purpose of maintaining ‘the alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, in order that the proletariat may keep the role of leadership and state power’ (Lenin, speech at the Third Congress of the International, quoted in Carr 1966, 278). The peasantry was therefore simultaneously both the object of struggle and an essential ally; the two aspects, dominance and leadership, involving force and consent respectively, that for Gramsci were to characterize hegemony are thus present. Lenin’s innovative policy towards the peasantry is well known and requires no further comment, but his theses on the agrarian question at the Second Congress of the International are equally original and shot through with the notions of hegemony while the word itself is not actually used (Theses . . . . of the International, 113–23). It matters little if the term gegemoniya was, as Bobbio claims, used little by Lenin. Nowhere in the Prison Notebooks does Gramsci ascribe the actual use of the word to Lenin but, as seen, it is in the original Russian of What Is to Be Done, and it is present in other writings (Two Tactics, The Electoral Struggle in St Petersburg and the Mensheviks, and even, as regards the banks, in his Imperialism), as well as in the Italian translation of the Third International article. More importantly, what Gramsci would develop as ‘hegemony’ is, as indicated, ever-present in Lenin’s political practice. Taking account of such aspects of Lenin, one may appreciate Gramsci’s comment that it is probable that he ‘[effectively] advanced philosophy as philosophy in so far as he advanced political doctrine and practice’; indeed, the ‘philosophical fact’ represented by the ‘reform of consciousness and of the methods of knowledge’ was brought about by the creation of a hegemonic apparatus (Gramsci 1975, Q10–II§12; 1971, 365–6; ‘probable’ is included here to render a conditional verb not entirely taken account of in the Selections from the Prison Notebooks translation; ‘effectively’ is a later addition by Gramsci to his original comment).

Uses by the Bolsheviks and other communists The above is consistent with what Anderson (1976) writes about the prerevolutionary currency of the word hegemony, but his statement that ‘in the aftermath of October, the term ceased to have much actuality in the USSR’ needs qualification. In his lectures on Lenin’s contribution to the revolution, Bukharin, for one, begins by observing that Lenin was ‘the most outstanding agrarian theoretician existing among Marxists.’ Precisely on the working class/peasant alliance, he goes on to say that in the dual struggle against ‘liberal Marxism’ and the Narodniki, ‘the radical Narodniki always placed the peasantry fi rst. The liberal Narodniki stood for an alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, which was to have hegemony over the peasantry’; thus ‘it was the problem of an ally of the working class that was being solved . . . . this problem was connected with yet another deep-rooted problem which had to be acknowledged both theoretically

38

Derek Boothman

and practically—this was the problem of the hegemony of the proletariat’ (emphases in the original). Attention should be paid to what Bukharin says shortly afterwards: it is ‘superfluous to speak here about the hegemony of the proletariat and the role of the working class as leader, because this is a theoretical point about which we are already acquainted and which does not need any commentary’ (Bukharin 1925, 44–49). In other words, the term gegemoniya was well-enough known not to require any further explanation; were the word used the normal one for leadership (rukovodstvo), there would of course be no need for his comment. In the whole of this part of the lectures, hegemony is present as a word, and the concept, prefiguring one Gramscian sense of it, is ever-present in his reasoning. This general currency of the term among the Bolsheviks is also demonstrated by reference to Trotsky. In the 1904–6 period, when the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, or even, as he says, of the ‘proletariat, peasantry, and intelligentsia,’ was still something of the future, he asked, ‘Who is to wield the hegemony on the government itself, and through it in the country? And when we speak of a workers’ government, by this we reply that hegemony should belong to the working class’ (Trotsky 1986, 72 and 109). Some twenty years later, in a speech at a meeting on literature organized by the Central Committee of the RCP (May 1924), now in some editions of Trotsky’s anthology Literature and Revolution, he notes that ‘the task of the proletariat is to bring the peasants over to socialism, maintaining a complete hegemony over them’ (Trotsky 1973, 503). In the Introduction in the same year to his First Five Years of the Communist International, he discusses ‘the question of the hegemony of the Communist Party in the workers’ movement’ and, in his Military Writings, in relation to inter-state relations, he observes that US hegemony had supplanted that of Britain on the seas (Trotsky 1981). Somewhat confusingly, ‘hegemony’ is used in English translations of Lukács, referring in the essay ‘Class Consciousness’ to the rule of a class in power (but readers should be warned that the original German is Herrschaft, not Hegemonie, rendered dominance and domination in Kostas Axelos’s French translation. Lukács 1971, 52–3 and 65–6; Lukács 1970, 129 and 148) and in his ‘Blum Theses,’ written in the late 1920s for the illegal Hungarian Party, to the ‘hegemony of large-scale capital’ (Lukács 1972, 248). Furthermore, the ‘Class Consciousness’ essay contrasts, in a near-Gramscian way, the ruling classes’ Herrschaft with the ‘subordinate role’ (Passivität in the original) of the ruled. The predominant sense of hegemony as the political leadership of an actual (or potential) ruling class seems, on the whole, not to have changed until Gramsci’s prison writings began to appear in Italy in the late 1940s.8 Summing up, after taking into account linguistic and translation difficulties, it is clear that the germ of the idea that was to become ‘hegemony’ in Gramsci’s prison reflections was current among communists in the turbulent atmosphere of the 1920s.

Hegemony

39

Hegemony—the working class in the metropolis and the colonies After the Russian Revolution, including the period Gramsci spent in Russia, other important subjects were discussed and decisions taken within the International connected with the relationship between proletarian and peasant forces. These included the problems at a world level of burgeoning nationalism and the growth of anti-imperialist movements; in determining where alliances were advisable and where lines of distinction and demarcation were to be drawn, important issues regarding what constitutes the hegemony of the proletariat were posed. In this context, the word seems to have gained some international currency so that in a public meeting (apparently with Ruth Fischer on the platform) on his return from the V Comintern Congress, the Scottish communist Bob Stewart9 could assert the need to ‘establish the complete hegemony of the working class by linking the workers of the colonies with the workers of this country . . . . ’ (Murphy, 9). He apparently felt no need to simplify his language by using a gloss for ‘hegemony,’ presumably meaning ‘political leadership,’ thus providing a hint that the word was comprehensible to his politicized audience, albeit maybe not in everyday use even among party leaders. The successful resolution of relations between workers in the metropolitan and in the colonial countries runs through the Comintern debates throughout the 1920s, including those at the 1928 VI Congress. While Gramsci was at that time already imprisoned, some comments on the positions adopted up to and including the Congress (naturally from a fascist viewpoint), and even direct quotes from some Congress resolutions, were included in articles that attracted his attention (Gramsci 1975, Q5§89; 1995, 118; 1996, 343–4, citing Gabrielli 1929, 375–84). Inklings thus trickled through to him of the substance of the Congress debate, whose concluding resolution on the colonies declared that in bourgeois-democratic revolutions, the ‘basic strategical aim of the Communist movement’ was ‘the hegemony of the proletariat’ (emphasis in the original), and that without this ‘an organic part of which is the leading role of the Communist Party, the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be carried through to an end, not to speak of the socialist revolution’ (The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies 1929, 26 and 21). ‘Hegemony’ as used in the resolution involved allying with bourgeois forces and even ‘patriarchal and feudal chiefs and rulers’ who opposed foreign oppressors, while not excluding struggle by the working-class against them as the situation demanded, a confl ictual relation not far from Gramsci’s concept.

Hegemony—the first decade after the October Revolution What emerges from the handful of publications cited is that the term ‘hegemony,’ in its several guises, was current in the theoretical and policy elaborations of Communist leaders in the 1920s. From the instances quoted here,

40

Derek Boothman

‘hegemony’ often seems used to indicate a leading role of the proletariat in class alliances involving consent, as contrasted with the ‘domination of the capitalist system’ defi ned in the documents of the VI Congress of the International. The emergence of an independent working-class force in the colonies ‘directly opposing itself to the national bourgeoisie’ led to a struggle with this latter ‘for hegemony in the national revolution as a whole’ (The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies 1929, 8, 20 and 30). Why a minority can dominate ideologically did not seem widely discussed, except in the work of individuals like Lukács; the fall-back position, not further developed, seems Marx’s dictum that the dominant ideas of an epoch are those of the ruling class. Just how this may be challenged is a key area of Gramsci’s prison reflections. The documents of the various Bolsheviks cited here suggest, schematically as may be, the following break down to be plausible. For Stalin, ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ is ‘proletarian leadership of the masses’ (Stalin, loc. cit., on successive lines). Trotsky uses the term across various contexts, including its original ancient Greek one of military leadership, and, like Gramsci, recognizes the necessary role in the exercise of hegemony of what he calls the intelligentsia, here at times exaggerating somewhat. In his appreciation of Lenin, Bukharin uses the term ‘hegemony’ very widely in the context of building alliances and, indeed, his biographer claims—probably relying on positions such as those of Bukharin’s 1925 booklet—going beyond the political, he ‘hoped for Bolshevik “hegemony” in economic, cultural and ideological life’ (Cohen 1971, 208). However, there is no clear indication that anyone, apart from Lenin himself, gives the term a meaning extending beyond a synonym for ‘political leadership.’ In all this, from summer 1922 to autumn 1923, Gramsci was in Russia and, as member of the Comintern Executive and delegate at its IV Congress, abreast, health permitting, of writings, debates, and developments there. And it is only shortly afterwards, indeed, that a near flowering of the word ‘hegemony’ begins to appear in his letters.

THE CROCEAN INPUT As well as Marxist and other left sources, an important and quite different type of input consisted in the idealist philosophy of Benedetto Croce, who functioned for Gramsci rather like Hegel did for Marx. Just as Marx had to turn Hegel’s dialectic inside out to extract its rational kernel, Gramsci had to radically reinterpret certain aspects of Croce’s discourse in order to translate Croce’s concepts into his own paradigmatic scheme. And it is one element in particular of Croce’s speculative philosophy—his concept of ‘ethico-political history’—that Gramsci reinterpreted and translated for use within his philosophy of praxis as a basis for the notion of the expansion of hegemony, especially after a successful revolution. Gramsci draws specifically on two of Croce’s essays from the first half of the 1920s

Hegemony

41

that introduce ‘ethico-political history’ viewed as the history of ‘moral or civil life’—the history of the complex of moral institutions in the broadest sense—as opposed to histories that consider ‘economic life as the substantive reality and moral life as an appearance’ or ‘merely military and diplomatic’ ones (Croce 1946, 67–77, especially 67 and 71–2, and 125–30). For Gramsci, Croce’s ‘ethico-political history’ represented merely ‘an arbitrary and mechanical hypostasis of the moment of hegemony, of political leadership, of consent in the life and development of the State and civil society.’ This side of history was not, however, excluded by the philosophy of praxis, which ‘in its most recent stage of development consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony as essential to the concept of the State and in attaching “full weight” to the cultural factor, to cultural activity, to the necessity for a cultural front alongside the merely economic and political ones’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10§7; 1995, 343 and 345). Where Gramsci differs from Croce is in his refusal to reduce history just to ‘ethico-political history’; this is amplified a few pages later in the observation that Croce completely neglects the moment of force in history, essential in the formation of a State. Is it possible, Gramsci asks rhetorically, to conceive of nineteenth-century European history without ‘an organic treatment of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars’ or ‘without dealing with the struggles of the Risorgimento’ in Italy? By leaving out the moment when one system of social relations disintegrates and another is established, Crocean history becomes ‘nothing more than a fragment of history,’ which in the European case was, in a phrase that Gramsci borrows from Vincenzo Cuoco, the ‘“passive” aspect of the great revolution which began in France in 1789,’ making its effects felt right up to 1871 by ‘a ‘reformist’ corrosion.’10 In Italy, he adds that the hegemonic system was maintained ‘and the forces of military and civil coercion kept at the disposal of the traditional ruling classes’ (Gramsci 1995, Q10§9, 348–50). His well-known generalization of this is that hegemony is consent backed up by coercion, i.e., in a classical parliamentary regime ‘the “normal” exercise of hegemony . . . . is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent’ (Gramsci 1971, Q13§37, 80, note 49). Gramsci takes one term of Croce’s discourse but radically alters it to render it compatible with his own paradigm, i.e., he translates it, analogously to the operation he carries out on Cuoco’s ‘passive revolution’ factor.11 MACHIAVELLI

Machiavelli’s ‘centaur’ The combination of coercion and consent within hegemony can also quite evidently be traced to Machiavelli, whose centaur—‘semi-animal, semiman’—indicates ‘that a prince must know how to use both natures, and that one without the other is not durable’ (Machiavelli 1950, 64). This dual

42

Derek Boothman

nature represents for Gramsci ‘the levels of force and consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilization, of the individual moment and the universal moment (“Church” and “State”), of agitation and propaganda, of tactics and strategy etc’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§14; 1971, 170, whose fi rst draft, Q8§86, explicitly refers to Croce’s ‘Church and State’ essay; Croce 1946, 125–30). This description comes very close to his metaphorical one of Jacobins ‘imposing themselves’ on adversaries (Gramsci 1975, Q1§44 and Q19§24; 1992, 147; 1971, 77) at the same time they built consent by stimulating the ‘active intervention of the great popular masses as a factor of social progress’ (Gramsci 1995, 341), and indeed Gramsci portrays Machiavelli as a Jacobin avant la lettre (1975, Q8§35).

Machiavelli: negotiation and language Benedetto Fontana has taken the argument regarding the Machiavellian source of hegemony one step forward by noting that, for a stable State, Machiavelli required that the ‘prince’ and the people should negotiate and share common goals. The precondition for this is that individuals should be converted from a ‘multitude’ (multitudine sciolta, in Machiavelli’s phrase), in which each member looks to his/her private interests or bene particulare, into a collective subject, or a ‘people’ (populo) with a public interest or bene comune, i.e., the people are created as a potentially hegemonic force in a ‘public space’ where the moment of force is transcended through dialogue and agreement is reached between prince and people, leaders and led (Fontana 1993, 130–31). In contemporary terms, this means the sides come together as equals with, for Gramsci, an interchange of personnel between the ‘prince-as-party’ and the people so that, tendentially, substantial differences become erased, and fusion is obtained. Gramsci explains that ‘in the hegemonic system there exists democracy between the leading groups and the led to the extent to which the development of the economy and hence legislation . . . . favours the molecular passage from the led groups to the leading [sc. “governing”—DB] ones’ (1975, Q8§191), i.e., the promotion of individuals of the subaltern classes into the ruling class, analogous, as he says, to Roman citizenship being possible for conquered peoples. Making the link back to Machiavelli, without the ‘public space’ that allows dialogue and, as seen here for Gramsci, the formation of a collective leadership, the alternative for a nondemocratic leadership based purely on force is, according to Machiavelli’s Discourses, to ‘build fortresses’ and ‘keep a good army always ready to take the field,’ or to ‘scatter, disorganize, and destroy’ the people as a collectivity and reduce them to individuals; however, he concludes ‘to hold one’s own country, fortresses are injurious’ (Machiavelli 1950, 363 and 368). Machiavelli’s transformation of multitudine into populo, by way of a ‘public space’ for arriving at a common position, fi nds its equivalent in Gramsci’s striking metaphor of an orchestra whose single instruments

Hegemony

43

produce a cacophony in tuning up, ‘yet these warm-ups are the necessary condition for the orchestra to come to life as a single “instrument”’; again, unless people are bound by a sense of responsibility (Machiavelli’s populo), they can act like a crowd (the multitudine) forced to take shelter ‘under a roof during a downpour,’ a situation in which ‘individualism not only is not overcome but is driven to an extreme through the certainty of impunity and irresponsibility’ (Gramsci 1975, Q15§13 and Q7 §12; 1995, 16 and 275). In this transformation, leaders cannot resort to old-style rhetoric and fl ights of oratory but must instead convince through reason (Gramsci 1975, Q11§41 and Q10§I41ii; 1995, 297–8 and 406 respectively; 1975, Q11§25; 1971, 429). Further, while ‘the popular element “feels” but does not always know or understand, the intellectual element “knows” but does not always understand and in particular does not always “feel”.’ Gramsci instead looks forward to the situation in which the relations between ‘intellectuals and people-nation, between the leaders and the led, between the rulers and the ruled’ become cohesive to the extent that ‘feeling-passion becomes understanding and thence knowledge’ (1975, Q11§67; 1971, 418, cited in Fontana 2000, 305). Only then, as Gramsci continues, can the relationship be ‘one of representation’ with the ‘exchange of individual elements,’ thus one ‘brings into being the shared life [ . . . . ] one creates the “historical bloc”.’ The language input in this aspect of hegemony is not to be underestimated; one of Machiavelli’s models was the Greek philosopher Isocrates, whose dictum logos hegemon panton, or ‘speech and language are the ruler and guide of all things’ (Fontana 1993, 126), is found in Machiavelli’s insistence on language as the medium for reaching agreement (pace Wittgenstein). This approach assumes even greater importance in Gramsci, for whom speech and language are the principal means for realizing a culture.

THE UNIVERSITY LINGUISTIC INPUT In various ways, then, language informs Gramsci’s reflections on and development of the concept of hegemony. But the role of language in hegemony does not stop there. Gramsci not only knew his own dialect of the Sard language but, when appropriate, used it through his adult life,12 always however remaining conscious of its limitations. In general, dialects and even minority languages reflect the relatively narrow world of their speakers, who have ‘an intuition of the world which is more or less limited and provincial, which is fossilized and anachronistic in relation to the major currents of thought which dominate world history’ (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12; 1971, 325) and hence do not participate in or reflect the world’s great cultural movements, a position fully consonant with those outlined in Bartoli’s university course.

44

Derek Boothman

In a path-breaking book, the Italian linguist Franco Lo Piparo examined this question of the dialect-national language nexus in depth, both as it transpires in the Notebooks and how linguists studied by Gramsci at university had considered it, in order to show how it feeds into the subaltern-hegemonic relationship. Indeed, the notion of ‘linguistic hegemony’ or ‘cultural hegemony,’ with hegemony often replaced by near-synonyms such as ‘prestige’ or ‘primacy,’ and even ‘dictatorship’ (sic), was fairly widespread among these linguists (Lo Piparo 1979, 106–8). One of them in particular, Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, had taken issue with Alessandro Manzoni, Italy’s foremost nineteenth-century novelist and president of the Parliamentary National Language Commission, which concluded that this language should be created by teaching, on a national scale, the standard Florentine dialect. Ascoli, on the other hand, ‘more historicist’ than Manzoni, did ‘not believe in cultural hegemonies by decree, i.e., not supported by a deeper and more necessary national function’ (Gramsci 1975, Q23§40; 1985, 173); or, according to the fi rst draft, he did ‘not believe in linguistic hegemonies enacted by legal decree, without a supporting economic-cultural structure’ (1975, Q1§73; 1992, 179). For Gramsci, after the decay of medieval Florence, Florentine as a national language had become ‘the language of an exclusive caste which has no contact with a historical spoken language’ (loc. cit.) and, indeed, on unification, Italy—divided linguistically into scores of dialects—numbered less than 3 percent of speakers of the Florentine that solely among the ‘educated classes’ functioned as a national language. In other words, Manzoni’s purely rationalistic approach to language reform represented linguistic ‘force’ rather than ‘consent’ in using state means to impose from above a linguistic ‘Florentine hegemony,’ regardless both of the absence of trained personnel to teach the language and even of local variations around Florence, sometimes closer to dialect forms found elsewhere. Here one may detect in Gramsci the influence of Francesco De Sanctis, Italy’s greatest literary historian and critic and Minister of Education in the (bourgeois) left government subsequent to that of the ‘historic right’ of Manzoni’s reforms: dialects were linguistically positive factors for pupils, if due attention were paid to the elements of similarity between them and the budding national language (Dardano 1984, 143). Here Gramsci is dealing with what, in terminology borrowed from Ascoli, may be called ‘substrata’ of the population and their use of language, a position that foreshadows sociolinguistic ideas of class language, developed only decades later. Gramsci’s fully fledged position sees language as the mode of expression of the culture characteristic of a class or other group of the population (cf. Ives 2004, especially 33–6), different linguistic codes thus being one aspect of the confl ictual relationships between subaltern and hegemonic cultures. In his position as a speaker of the Sard language,13 but also through his contacts with the cultures and dialects from all over Italy present among Turin’s automobile workers, Gramsci had to confront

Hegemony

45

the question of dialect and minority language versus national language. For him, language and culture, including the culture on which a politics is based, are more than just closely linked: in one way, as Dante Germino remarks, ‘in a vital sense language is politics, for it affects the way people think about power’ (Germino 1990, 27) and, in other ways, as Gramsci observes, language is to be ‘understood as an element of culture,’ each language constituting ‘an integral conception of the world’ (1975, Q3§76 and Q5§123; 1996, 74 and 366 respectively). The whole question is summed up in Gramsci’s very last notebook where, yet again, he brings together language, culture, and politics, concluding that ‘every time the question of language surfaces,’ other questions, most notably that of the reorganization of ‘cultural hegemony,’ are being posed (1975, Q29§3; 1985, 183–4). Lo Piparo is right, then, to maintain that an important input to the subaltern-hegemonic relationship comes from the dialect/national language dyad. Dialect is generally limited to a narrow cross-section, usually but not always the subaltern classes and strata, Ascoli’s linguistic ‘substrata’ here showing their influence. For Gramsci, dialect cannot deal with the grand themes of world culture, for which a national language with all its flexibility, depth, historical development, and capacity of expression is needed. The overall conclusion to be drawn on language’s input to hegemony is that Gramsci is influenced partly by the linguists he studied at university but, as Fontana has shown, also by Machiavelli’s insistence, through Isocrates, on consent, characteristic of the human part of the centaur, through language as ‘ruler and guide of all things.’

SOME PREPRISON USES OF HEGEMONY BY GRAMSCI For the sake of completeness, it is useful to recall here the uses of the word ‘hegemony’ in the period just before Gramsci’s arrest, found especially in his preprison letters.14 All the references in the letters date from his period in Vienna, after his stay in Russia and before the election in April 1924 that allowed him to re-enter Italy under parliamentary immunity. In early January 1924, we fi nd him speaking of ‘an extreme weakening of bourgeois parliamentary hegemony’ in the context of a still inconclusive ‘triumph of the fascist reactionary petite bourgeoisie.’ The next month, in explaining to Italian comrades the various currents in the Russian party, he comments, ‘The statute of the International assigns de facto hegemony to the Russian party for world-wide organization.’ At the start of March, this time he observes that the Fiat paper, La Stampa, wanted ‘to maintain Piedmontese-northern hegemony over Italy and, in order to reach its aim, is not even averse to allowing the working-class into its hegemonic system.’ Finally, a few days before his election to Parliament, in an important letter on Yugoslavia, he writes of the peasant leader Stjepan Radič, later admitted to the Red Peasant International (the

46

Derek Boothman

Krestintern), who at the time of Gramsci’s letter was tending ‘to put himself forward as the champion of all the Yugoslav nations crushed by the military and administrative hegemony of the Serbs,’ then going on to say that this ‘hegemony of the Serbs’ was felt strongly in the army through a ‘secret organization [ . . . . ] which is the strongest instrument of the monarchy and of centralism.’ This period in Gramsci’s development is best considered as one of transition as regards the development of the notion of hegemony. In the light of the present reconstruction, the reiteration of the term in these letters, at a time when the debates in Russia were still fresh in his mind, is probably not without its significance as a stage in the concept’s development. Further to this, in the essay on the Southern Question that he was working on when arrested, we fi nd the ‘hegemony of the proletariat’ appearing as the ‘social base of the proletarian dictatorship and the workers’ State’ (Gramsci 1978, 443); the essay in its entirety is of course a masterpiece in its description of the practical workings of hegemony in the Italy of that era. To a different and lesser extent, his report on the Third Congress of the Italian Party, held in the French city of Lyon (Gramsci 1978, 379–99), and the Theses for the majority centre group of the party, written jointly with Togliatti, also sketch out basic hegemonic relationships then obtaining in Italy, without the word ‘hegemony’ itself being used. All these uses indicate an already fairly wide-ranging notion of hegemony developing before Gramsci’s imprisonment and reflecting uses such as those outlined here.

THE MAIN SOURCES OF HEGEMONY There can be no defi nitive word on the Gramscian concept and use of hegemony since, as with other concepts of his, fi rst, it was in continual evolution and, secondly, it assumes different contours according to the situation. What may be done when considering its principal uses in the Notebooks is to bear in mind the multiple origins of the concept, comparing when necessary the early uses with those found later on (i.e., in and after the central monographic Notebooks 10–13 on philosophy, on the intellectuals and on Machiavelli), where the notion becomes more fleshed out. The present reconstruction suggests that the inputs to the concept include: Marx, the Italian socialists, the early international communist movement, Croce, Machiavelli, and his linguistics studies including, in his words, the language question, bound up as it is with the culture of societal groups and classes, and as such always posing the subaltern-hegemonic relationship. Last, but by no means least, comes his own reading of history and social reality, a key factor here being Jacobinism, which is extended metaphorically by Gramsci from the French revolutionary movement to other experiences. The examples here quoted from Lenin’s practice illustrate the fact that hegemony’s range goes wider than the

Hegemony

47

merely political field. One of Gramsci’s central achievements is to have developed and woven together all these various strands of hegemony for its innovative application on the civil, social, national, and international political, cultural and economic planes.

NOTES 1. A version of this chapter appeared as D. Boothman, “The Sources for Gramsci’s Concept of Hegemony” in Rethinking Marxism 20 (April 2008). (Taylor and Francis Ltd). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. His translation includes the crucial central part of the preface. In quoting the critical edition of the Notebooks (Gramsci 1975) we shall give the number of the notebook, denoted by Q, and the note number denoted by the symbol §, as per the standard adopted in this book in line with the now accepted international standard of referencing promoted by the International Gramsci Society. This particular reference, however, forms part of an appendix to the notebooks and does not have a specific notebook or note number, so page numbers are given instead. 3. Cf., for example, the sixteenth-century letters in Dubrovnik’s ethnological museum authorizing Dalmatian sea captains to seek food elsewhere in the Mediterranean during bad harvests, written not in Croat but in a recognizable and easily readable Venetian Italian, a striking example of linguistic hegemony. Not the popular dialect as such, but the Venetian language, based on a Latin model (Gramsci 1975, Q3§76; 1996, 75), was the language of government in Adriatic territories under Venice’s sway. 4. From the glottology course held at Turin University, 1912–13 (Part II, p.47, footnote) by Giulio Matteo Bartoli, the professor with whom Gramsci should have written his degree dissertation and who, when Gramsci had passed the exam on the course with top marks, encharged him with transcribing the entire course. The quotation from Gramsci’s handwritten manuscript (not as yet published) is reproduced here by kind permission of the Fondazione Istituto Gramsci of Rome. 5. The emergence of the concept in Russian Marxism before Lenin is due to Plekhanov who, however, ‘never left a clearly worked-out defi nition of hegemony in his writings’; see Lester (2000, 17–18, 37, and 40 for the words quoted). 6. Also on p. 59, Lenin notes the leading position both of members of the First International (IWMA), and of ‘some of the avowed enemies of the International,’ collaborating within the Commune, thus recognizing the compromises necessary in a hegemonic relationship; the original articles date to 1908 and 1905 respectively. 7. In these three uses of ‘egemonia,’ the English translation (Lenin 1972) has ‘leadership.’ 8. A rider has to be added here. Maurice Dobb uses the word in a volume fi rst published in 1946 but whose gestation dates back to the mid-1920s (Dobb 1967, 13, 106, 144, 155, 156, 385). The reference on p. 13 to challenges to hegemony has a particularly Gramscian ring (cf. section two of this chapter), and an indirect influence due to Piero Sraffa cannot be excluded, since Sraffa, with whom Dobb collaborated on the former’s edition of Ricardo, received in Cambridge copies of all Gramsci’s letters to his sister-in-law

48

Derek Boothman

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

directly from her, including those of spring 1932 on Croce that use “egemonia” explicitly. Stewart was important especially in fi rst two decades of the British Party, being British CP representative in Moscow in 1923–24, then acting party general secretary in 1925 when twelve top leaders were jailed on trumped-up charges; he himself was arrested three days into the general strike of May 1926. This ‘“passive” aspect’ is taken by Gramsci from Cuoco, the Neapolitan patriot and leading member of the short-lived Parthenopean Republic (1799) and, as modified, used fundamentally to mean a ruling class’s tactic of conceding just enough from above to head off demands for radical measures. This brief subsection of the present article summarizes without attempting to argue fully the positions developed in Boothman 2002, 102–19, esp. 107–11, and, in a slightly revised form, in Boothman 2004, 111–36. Cf. Fiori (1970, 80) who narrates that, when earning a little money in the summer vacations by coaching a student of Latin and Greek, Gramsci used dialect to make himself understood unambiguously. Even later on, he used dialect when, after his election to Parliament, he spoke at a regional party congress in Sardinia and, in one of his health crises in jail, even delivered long tirades in Sard during a period of feverish delirium (Fiori, 183 and 276). As such, he aided Bartoli’s comparative research on Latin-based languages. Discussion of the influence on Gramsci of Bartoli’s glottology course will appear in a contribution in the proceedings of the International Gramsci Society’s 2007 conference in Sardinia. An English translation of these is now nearing conclusion.

REFERENCES Anderson, P. 1976. The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. New Left Review (I) 100:5–78. Bobbio, N. 1969. Gramsci e la concezione della società civile. In Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, ed. P. Rossi. Rome: Riuniti/IGS. Bobbio, N. 1988. Gramsci and the Concept of Civil Society. In Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives, ed. J. Keane and trans. C. Mortera. London & New York: Verso. Boothman, D. 2002. Translatability Between Paradigms: Gramsci’s Translation of Crocean Concepts. In Crosscultural Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies II. Historical and Ideological Issues, ed. T. Hermans. Manchester and Northampton, Massachusetts: St Jerome. Boothman, D. 2004. Traducibilità e processi traduttivi. Un caso: A. Gramsci linguista. Perugia: Guerra Edizioni. Bukharin, N. I. 1925. Lenin as a Marxist. London: Communist Party of Great Britain. Carr, E. H. 1966. The Bolshevik Revolution 1917–1923 Vol. 2. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cohen, S. F. 1971. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution. London: Wildwood House. Communist International. 1929. [The] Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies. London: Modern Books. ———. 1980. Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International. Holt A. and B. Holland, trans. London: Pluto Press..

Hegemony

49

Croce, B. 1946. Economico-political and Ethico-political History and The Unending Struggle between Church and State. In Politics and Morals, trans. S. Castiglione. London: Allen & Unwin. Dardano, M. 1984. G.I. Ascoli e la questione della lingua. Rome: Istituto Della Enciclopedia Italiana. Dobb, M. 1967. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fiori, G. 1970. Antonio Gramsci. Life of a Revolutionary. T. Nairn, trans. London: New Left Books. Fontana, B. 1993. Hegemony and Power. On the Relation between Gramsci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. — — —. 2000. Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas 61(2):305–26. Gabbrielli, G. 1929. India Ribelle. Nuova Antologia, LXV, no. 1377. Germino, D. L. 1990 Antonio Gramsci: Architect of a New Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith. eds. and trans. New York: Lawrence and Wishart/London and International Publishers. — — —. 1975. Quaderni del carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Torino: Einaudi. — — —. 1978. Selections from Political Writings. 1921–1926. Q. Hoare, ed. and trans. London: Lawrence and Wishart. — — —. 1985. Selections from Cultural Writings. W. Q. Boelhower, trans., and D. Forgacs and G. Nowell Smith, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. — — —. 1992. Prison Notebooks Vol. I. J. A. Buttigieg, ed. and trans. New York: Columbia University Press. — — —. 1995. Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. D. Boothman, ed. and trans. London: Lawrence and Wishart. — — —. 1996. Prison Notebooks Vol. II. J. A. Buttigieg, ed. and trans. New York: Columbia University Press. Ives, P. 2004. Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lenin, N. 1976. La Terza Internazionale in L’Ordine Nuovo (reprint) Teti. Milano: 27 December 1919. Lenin, V. I. 1931. The Paris Commune. London: Martin Lawrence. — — —1967. What Is to Be Done? J. Fineberg and G. Hanna, trans. London: Lawrence and Wishart. — — —. 1968. Left-wing Childishness and the Petty-bourgeois Mentality. Moscow: Progress Publishers. — — —. 1972. Collected Works Vol. 29. G. Hanna, trans. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Lester, J. 2000. The Dialogue of Negation: Debates on Hegemony in Russia and the West. London and Sterling, Virginia: Pluto Press. Lo Piparo, F. 1979. Lingua Intellettuali Egemonia in Gramsci. Bari: Laterza. Lukács, G. 1970. Geschichte und Klassenbewußtsein. Neuwied and Berlin: Luchterhand. — — —. 1971. History and Class Consciousness. R. Livingstone, trans. London: Merlin Press. — — —. 1972. Political Writings 1919–29. R. Livingstone, ed., and M. McColgan, trans. London: New Left Books. Machiavelli, N. 1950. The Prince. L. Ricci, trans. Revised by E.R.P. Vincent in The Prince and the Discourses. New York: The Modern Library.

50

Derek Boothman

Murphy J.T., et al. 1924. Is It A LABOUR Government? Report of the Open Session of the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain. London: CPGB. Stalin, J. V.1934. Leninism Vol. 1. J. Fineberg, ed. Moscow-Leningrad: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R. Trotsky, L. D. 1945. First Five Years of the Communist International. John G. Wright, trans. New York: Pioneer Publishers. http:www.marxists.org/ archive/trotsky/works/1924/ffyci-1/intro.htm. — — —. 1973. Literature and Communist Party policy in Letteratura e Rivoluzione, 491–511. Torino: Einaudi. — — —. 1981. How the Revolution Armed: Military Writings and Speeches, Vol. V (1921–23). B. Pearce, trans. London: New Park Publications. http: www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1922-mil/ch15.htm. — — —. 1986. The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects. B. Pearce, trans. New York: Pathfi nder Press.

4

Hegemony and the Elaboration of the Process of Subalternity Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara

INTRODUCTION It has often been said that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has a certain similarity to Max Weber’s notion of legitimate power, as well as Michel Foucault’s concept of power. Power for Foucault shows one important characteristic—that is, it is not necessarily a negative instance that has nothing more than the function of repression but can also be positive operating as a productive network spread over the whole of the social body.1 Needless to say, Foucault’s approach would also be critical of interpretations of power that simplify it to a mechanism of class domination in advanced capitalist countries, such as is found in traditional Marxist theory. Specifically, this form of Marxism lacks any internal analysis of the complex mechanisms of power. Edward Said, too, gives significant attention to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, as well as Foucault’s notion of power. Said does not consider power in authority only as something negative or oppressive, but he recognizes that the central reality of power in authority is the presence of the State. So he emphasizes that culture, cultural formations, and intellectuals exist and are made possible by virtue of a very interesting network of relationships with the authority of State. In this context, Said recognises the importance of Gramsci’s use of the term ‘elaboration’ in evaluating the importance of hegemony (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). Gramsci’s insight is to have recognized that subordination, fracturing, diffusing, and reproducing, as much as producing, creating, forcing, and guiding, are all necessary aspects of the elaboration of hegemony (Said 1979, 21–23). The aim of this chapter is to analyze the significance of elaboration as an innovative and expansive concept in the theory of hegemony as articulated in the Prison Notebooks. In particular, to explain how the elaboration of hegemony relates to the complex analysis of power in relation to such things as State formation, the State, civil society, the economy, intellectuals and subaltern social groups in an attempt to uncover the complexity of the Gramscian concept of hegemony.

52

Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara

ELABORATING THE CONCEPT OF HEGEMONY Firstly, for Gramsci, the State is ‘hegemony protected by the armour of coercion’ (1975, Q6§88), and at the same time, the State is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules (Gramsci 1975, Q15§10). In addition, civil society represents a complex network of so-called private apparatuses in which one exercises ethico-political leadership or hegemony and through which is produced active consent. It is clear that Gramsci intended to be critical of, and then supersede, the old theory of States in which the State is defi ned as a simple instrument or apparatus of domination and oppression. Secondly, Gramsci did not only intend to innovate and expand his concept of hegemony by articulating two opposing moments, that is, the dichotomy between dominance and coercion and leadership and consent inherent to the operation of power in authority. He also gave attention to the process of transforming in the consciousness of subaltern groups these two moments into hegemony through their interiorisation and capillary penetration. This effectively represents the process of elaboration, as Said noted it. In the fi rst paragraph of Notebook 13 (the notebook on Machiavelli), Gramsci analyzes the function of the ‘Modern Prince,’ which represents a historical example of a political ideology expressed through the creation of concrete fantasy that acts on a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organize its collective will. The Modern Prince, as it develops, revolutionizes the whole system of moral and intellectual relations so much so that in men’s consciences ‘the Prince takes the place of the divinity or the categorical imperative’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§1). What precisely is the process in which a dispersed and shattered people wake up and organize a collective will? Critical understanding of self takes place . . . through a struggle of political ‘hegemonies’ and of opposing directions, fi rst in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality. Consciousness of being part of a particular hegemonic force (that is to say, political consciousness) is the fi rst stage toward a further progressive self-consciousness in which theory and practice will fi nally be one (Q11 §12). 2 In Orientalism (1978, 25), Said draws on these ideas—and also from Notebook 11§12—to develop the connections between hegemony, consciousness, theory, and practice. In §12, Gramsci argues: The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and ‘knowing thyself’ is a product of the historical process


53

to date which has deposited in you an infi nity of traces, without leaving an inventory. The fi rst thing to do is to make such an inventory. Thirdly, the organic intellectual will be involved in every phase of a long and complex historical process of moral and intellectual reformation. Thus, a dialectic intellectual/mass relationship3 is born and represents a complex process in which both the intellectuals and mass of people (subaltern groups in particular) become actually autonomous. In other words, through the dialectic process, a real and organic collaboration and alliance occurs. For the intellectuals as well as for the mass-subaltern, the dialectic signifies a process based on the people developing an autonomous historical consciousness that would lead to challenge and struggle to be free from hegemonic principles imposed but not accepted (Gramsci 1975, Q16§12). This process could not be separated from the broader Gramscian project of social change or transformation, that is, development of a ‘national-popular collective will’ and of the ‘moral and intellectual reformation’ that, in turn, leads to the construction of the società regolata, or regulated society. Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has important significance for the interpretation of the integral relationship that is developing in various fields of the present world, such as politics, the economy, social life, culture, custom, and the media. Gramsci’s linguistic study of the conception of hegemony occupied an important position in his theoretical edifice in his Prison Notebooks. In the course of his long and critical reflections from prison he addressed two main currents of thought. The fi rst was represented by mechanistic materialism and its tendency towards economic determinism and a class-reductionist standpoint (the so-called MarxismLeninism as a doctrine officially recognized by the Communist International). The second was the positivism and antipositivism (Georges Sorel and Benedetto Croce), which had remarkably influenced the former. It is important, therefore, to bring to light the complex process of Gramsci’s elaboration of the concept of hegemony through the main study topics he attempted to take up within his prison writings. These topics represented, respectively, the fi rst, second, and third periods of his incarceration and writing in prison. Even after the publication of the critical edition of the Prison Notebooks (1975), the understanding of hegemony has been drawn primarily from the Turi Special Notebooks of the second period, in particular Notebook 13 (Brief Notes on Machiavelli’s Politics) and, as a result, the complex reflections in the Formia Special Notebooks of the third period (notebooks 16–29) have so far been marginalised. For example, the conception of ‘Americanism’ as a type of hegemony (see Notebook 22) and the concept of hegemony organized around the critical elaboration of subaltern groups (see Notebook 25) have had a far lesser influence on understanding hegemony. Nevertheless, the concept of ‘Americanism’ was taken up and put forward in the early 1980s by the regulationist scholars as a Fordist type

54 Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara of hegemony, and the concept of subaltern social groups was taken in the 1980s by various subaltern studies groups with regard to the question of hegemony and its relationship to marginalized social groups. These study groups, as well as many Gramscian scholars, have made significant contributions to the question of hegemony, giving momentum to the research and the further elaboration of the Gramscian concept. Before his incarceration, Gramsci utilized the concept of hegemony in relation to the task of forming the political leadership of the working class, capable of creating the ‘system of class alliance’ (see Chapter 2 in this volume). He pointed out that the proletariat can become the leading (dirigente) and the dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in creating a system of class alliances that allows it to mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois State. At that time, Gramsci identified hegemony with the level of leadership achieved by the proletariat. Such a way of seizing hegemony was related to the bitter experiences Gramsci had in the bienno rosso with the collapse of the revolutionary Factory Councils, the rise of fascist forces, and the establishment of a fascist regime in Italy. In other words, Gramsci’s concept of hegemony was based on Leninist ideas and mediated by the polemic on the policy of ‘united front’ that took place within the Communist International after the death of Lenin. This strategy was focused on the construction of united revolutionary subjects across Europe and that included Italy. The conception of hegemony, however, begins to show a remarkable level of transformation from the very fi rst notebook in prison. In Notebook 1 Gramsci begins a process of elaborating the concept of the hegemony that was characterized by a shift from hegemony as a class-based strategic concept to a more universal ‘concept of historical analysis.’ Gramsci analyses the process of historical formation of hegemony after the French Revolution and in the process of forming a unifi ed Italy as a nation-state in the Risorgimento. He investigates the problems of hegemony related to these processes, and he develops his analysis in order to dynamically grasp the relationship between the State, political forces, and social groups, without falling into schematic, determinist, or class reductionist arguments. For Gramsci, moral and intellectual leadership implied the crucial moment of hegemony. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate,’ or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it fi rmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well (1975, Q19§24).


55

And Gramsci emphasizes the importance and the prevalence of the moment of leadership and consent: ‘There can, and indeed must, be hegemonic activity even before the rise to power, and that one should not count only on the material force which power gives in order to exercise an effective leadership’ (1975, Q19§24). The elaboration of hegemony Gramsci intended to undertake was deeply connected with his original and creative interpretation of Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx.4 For Gramsci, the passage from a social order, which can be read as ‘historical bloc’ in Gramscian terminology, to another social order does not mean a coercive rupture by ‘force,’ nor a lightning process, but a continuity and qualitative reorganization of the precedent society. 5 It is nothing but a process of the sustainable social transformation characterized by the process of a ‘war of position.’ This process also means a process of continuous dialectic between political society (the State) and civil society that leads to the long-term process of forming società regolata. In Gramsci’s elaboration of hegemony, much importance is attached to the private organizations of civil society, or what might be referred to as associations. It is this associational life that becomes the ‘terrain’ for creating war of position. In Gramsci’s preprison thought, he already suggested that a future society should be based on ‘minimum coercion and maximum freedom.’ Later this gives rise to elaboration of a new theoretical horizon where there is the possibility of ‘reabsorption’ and the realization of a società regolata. This represents the development in an original way of what Marx intended to explain in his argument within the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. During the second postwar period, the so-called vulgar Marxists insisted on some kind of utopian or class determinist illusion such as ‘extinction of State’ or ‘society without class.’ They never succeeded in theoretically developing original Marxian ideas. In contrast, seventy years ago, Antonio Gramsci, by interpreting and further developing Marxian ideas in his own way, had reached a level of originality in articulating the relationship between the transformation of the social order and what he called hegemony. In the contemporary theoretical context, many social movements, such as trade unions and cooperative movements, associated movements such as nonprofit organisations, nongovernment organisations, and other new social movements, as well as other community movements, have been playing an increasing role challenging hegemony in the contemporary world. It becomes necessary and indispensable, therefore, not merely to foster and continuously develop their political voice but also their self-governing capacity. In this way the Gramscian elaboration of hegemony is a self-referential and self-reflective conception par excellence. Today these groups can be viewed as associations born in civil society with components of political society. In particular, the present situation requires them to be conscious of the self-referential and self-reflective moment of hegemony, in

56


order that they are able to exercise the function of the organic intellectual and access the hegemonic mechanisms in both of the domains of political and civil society. The dramatic breakdown of East European socialist states in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 have clearly shown that any regime, socialist or not, based on the principle of the ‘minimum freedom, the maximum coercion’ acts contrary to the Gramscian elaboration of hegemony and is condemned to become a State through which civil society is oppressed. This oppression is, in turn, due to a lack of any self-referential moment of hegemony. Gramsci’s conception of hegemony has also been elaborated through his critical analysis of the concept of ‘permanent revolution,’ which is closely related to his criticism of ‘economism’ (or economic determinism). Economic determinism in the theory of hegemony constitutes an unscientific precondition for many sorts of erroneous views, such as the simple and gross view of the linear deepening of capitalist crisis (or ‘general crisis’), the auto-collapse of capitalism, the catastrophic outlook, and so on. Such economistic and deterministic approaches prevent the recognition of the necessary and vital nexus that exists between the structure and superstructure and that leads to understanding the social order as a historical bloc (Gramsci 1975, Q10§41xii). So, in effect, economism fails to seize the complex dynamism of political processes and associational life, as well as the significance of the superstructure and in particular the active function of ideology in politics. Further, it overlooks the proper signifi cance of the State as ‘hegemony protected by the armour of coercion.’ Thus Gramsci was severely critical of the negative influence of economism by arguing that to maintain it would lead to the loss of a great part of the intellectual and cultural capacity effective in Marxian ideas due to a lack of the theoretical moment and the reality of ideology (Q13§18). It is therefore necessary to combat economism not only in the theory of historiography, but also and especially in the theory and practice of politics, and the struggle can and must be carried on by developing the concept of hegemony (Ibid). In this sense, the elaboration of the concept of hegemony as a corollary to the criticism of ‘economic determinism’ should be organically linked with the elaboration of the State. In addition, Gramsci’s criticism of the concept of ‘permanent revolution,’ which was theoretically based upon ‘economism,’ was among other things indispensable for the innovation and amplification of the concept of hegemony. The formula belongs to an historical period in which the great mass political parties and the great economic trade unions did not yet exist, and society was still, so to speak, in a state of fluidity from many points of view (Gramsci 1975, Q13§7). The social and historical elements of ‘permanent revolution’ included a greater backwardness of the countryside, an almost complete monopoly of authority by a few


57

main cities (like Paris in the case of France), a relatively rudimentary State apparatus and greater autonomy of civil society from State activity, a specific system of military forces and of national armed services, and greater autonomy of the national economies from the economic relations of the world market. But in the period after 1870, all these elements changed. The internal and international organizational relations of the State become more complex and massive, and the Forty-Eightist formula of the ‘permanent revolution’ is expanded and transcended in political science by the formula of ‘civil hegemony’ (Ibid). The massive structures of the modern democracies now included both State organizations and the complex of associations in civil society that constituted the trenches and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position (Ibid). In this context, Gramsci recognised the concept of the State needed to be elaborated, and in a letter from prison, Gramsci wrote that the State is usually understood as a political society (or dictatorship) or coercive apparatus meant to mold the popular mass in accordance with the type of production and economy at a given moment. It was not as a balance between the political society and the civil society (or hegemony of a social group over the entire national society, exercised through the socalled private organizations, such as the church, the unions, the schools, etc.) (Gramsci 1994, 67). The content of this letter corresponds with the idea articulated in the Prison Notebooks that the general notion of State includes elements that need to be referred back to the notion of civil society in the sense that state equals political society plus civil society, or in other words, hegemony protected by the armour of coercion (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88). In this paragraph, Gramsci intends to ‘innovate and expand the concept of State’ in a dual sense. Firstly, by recognizing that the State should not be reduced to its coercive and dominative apparatus but that it is possible to extend this position to develop the State as the whole complex of the political, moral, and intellectual leadership of a social group. This understanding dynamically seizes the double moments of the Integral State—that is, political society is simply the government in a narrow sense that implies coercive dominative aspects while civil society expands the State because here leadership and consent or persuasion is sourced and developed. This idea is clearly expressed by Gramsci when he posits that ‘the State is the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules’ (1975, Q15§10). Secondly, it will make theoretically and then practically possible the ‘reabsorption of political society with civil society.’ This leads to the idea that the coercive element of the State will wither away by degrees, enabling the elements of regulated society or ethico-politics and civil society to become more apparent (Ibid, Q6§88). This approach to the State was indispensable to the elaboration of hegemony.

58


Through it Gramsci intended not only to restore the intellectual originality of Marx (Gramsci 1975, Q7§33) but, equally, to criticize the liberal outlook of the State that has the potential to produce fascism and, also, to supersede the sterile conception of State advocated by the Third Communist International. In other words, it is a theoretical articulation of the question of reabsorption and that of the formation of the regulated society that constituted the State as a new horizon in the Prison Notebooks. This is why Gramsci conceives of the State as coercion capable of withering away and of becoming incorporated into regulated society (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88). It is now clear that the elaboration of hegemony was connected with Gramsci’s innovative interpretation of the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy where particular significance and attention was given to the ideas around the social order and its link to the historical bloc but also the subaltern and their relation to challenge and struggle in hegemony. It is important in this elaboration of hegemony to develop the notion of ‘civil society’. ‘Civil society’ is the terrain upon which associations such as church, schools, and unions are located and operate. It is not only a place where the struggle for hegemony—that is, between domination and leadership and subordination and consent—takes place, but also a place for creating forces to be engaged in the reabsorption of political society. At the same time, it is a place where the elements for a future regulated society—that is, a society where ‘political equality based upon economic equality’—can be born and maintained. In this hegemonic civil society, the individual can govern himself without entering into confl ict with political society. Rather, each individual and group becomes the normal continuation of hegemony and its organic complement (Gramsci 1975, Q8§130). In Gramsci, the innovation of the notions of hegemony and State simultaneously involve a renewed outlook of civil society. The arguments set out above express Gramsci’s acute reflections on the interruption and defeat of the revolutionary process in Western Europe. In the East, Gramsci recognised that ‘the State was everything’ while ‘civil society was primordial and gelatinous.’ In the West, however, there was a proper relation between State and civil society, so much so that ‘when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed.’ Further, the State was only ‘an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks’ (Gramsci 1975, Q7§16). It is not correct, therefore, to simplify the notion of State and reduce it to only an apparatus of coercive domination. In this context, it is important to understand that the elaboration of hegemony is internally connected with the elaboration of the State that, in turn, incorporates research on various topics such as intellectuals, the party, mass media, popular culture, and common and good sense. In the research that draws from Gramsci’s elaboration, hegemony is enriched because of its selfreferential and self-innovative character, as well as the emphasis of the


59

dialectical within the theory of hegemony. A key plank in the theory of hegemony and its focus on self-knowledge and dialectic is Gramsci’s conception of subaltern. The following section of this chapter will offer an examination of subalternity through analysis focusing on Notebook 25.

HEGEMONY AND SUBALTERNITY The analysis of the relation between hegemony and subalternity begins with a report on subalternity presented by Joseph A. Buttigieg to the International Gramsci Society as conference held at Naples in 1997. This essay was a reply to the increased interest in the study of subalternity. This report strongly impressed on Gramscian scholars from around the world the discrepancy between the development of research on Gramscian ideas such as hegemony and the State and the lack of study focusing on subalternity and, in particular, Notebook 25. For a long time, the concept of subalternity has been marginalized. After Buttigieg’s presentation an article by Marcus Green entitled ‘Gramsci Cannot Speak’ appeared in Rethinking Marxism (2002). This article reinforced the importance and necessity of subalternity in understanding hegemony (see also Chapter 1 in this volume). A key question emerges from the idea of subalternity in the theory of hegemony: how can a subaltern group form an autonomous and independent relation within hegemony and, in so doing, move beyond and renovate existing hegemonic relations? In order to answer this question it is imperative to study a series of problems, such as the creation of an organic relationship between the subaltern and intellectuals—that is, movement from development of common sense to good sense; the operation of the subaltern in civil society; the movement of the subaltern into political society; the integration of the subaltern in the formation of the nation-state; the relation between the philosophy of praxis; and the subaltern in a progressive sense. Following Green’s argument, Gramsci was always conscious of the importance surrounding subalternity, and it was identified as one of the first main topics he planned to address in his notebooks as listed on the first page of Notebook 1, and also in Notebook 3 §90 Gramsci set out his ‘Methodical Criteria’ for the historical research of the subaltern. The creation of Notebook 25 clearly indicates Gramsci’s further research and expansion of the concept (Green 2002, 3). Therefore, ‘One should attempt to understand Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern within the totality of the Prison Notebooks and general trajectory of his thought’ (Green 2002, 3). However, we would like to emphasize the importance of studying Notebook 25 in relation to the other notebooks of the Formia period. Such research, we would argue, has the potential to expand and deepen the concept of hegemony and link the concept of the subaltern more closely with other concepts. The marginalization of the research into subalternity is a serious flaw in developing a more complex understanding of the theory of hegemony. For example, it is difficult if not impossible to speak about civil society without

60


reference to the subaltern. Nor is it possible to speak about the subaltern developing an ‘organic relation’ without reference to civil society. Certainly Buttigieg in his 1997 IGS presentation tried to clarify the nature and operation of this organic relation. This is also successfully explored in Smith’s chapter in this volume, but otherwise discussions and research that seek to bring into play subalternity with civil society remain very rare and diluted as a whole. In the last part of his article, Green addresses the crucial issue in Gramsci’s revolutionary project, that is, subaltern liberation. The elaboration and clarification of subalternity is the important point of departure for further deepening the understanding of revolutionary transformation that began in the historical conditions created by the dramatic collapse of the Soviet-type model of socialism. It is noteworthy that Green draws attention to this development. In conclusion, Green argues that Gramsci’s conceptualization of the subaltern does not only create a new terrain of struggle but also introduces the methodological criteria that underpin the formulation of such a struggle. This methodology is based upon the integral analysis of the social, economic, and political roots of everyday life (Green 2002, 22). The elaboration of hegemony and its outcome—that is, the problem of the dialectical reabsorption of political society into civil society to produce a new synthesis, or the constitution of a regulated society (società regolata)—always depends on the degree to which the subaltern express autonomy. It is quite important to elucidate this part of the theory of hegemony because it is deeply related to the necessary analysis of Gramsci’s fundamental and theoretical position of criticizing Stalinism and Comintern doctrine. Both have played a negative role in the development of the concept of revolutionary change and practice after the Russian revolution. Therefore, it is an important task for all Gramscian scholars to understand and investigate these conceptual inter-relationships. In this regard, we draw attention to the fact that simply studying political change in one country and only at the level of the State is not enough to ensure a complete and comprehensive understanding of developing a project for hegemonic change that effectively engages the philosophy of praxis. In order to conceptualise and then transform into practice a project of hegemonic change—that is, one that engages the historical bloc—Gramsci’s work from prison attempted to theoretically synthesize the two projects of political and civic change. We know that Gramsci developed and deepened his criticism of the Third Communist International’s concept of change from various viewpoints. He was consistent in this critique and fundamentally challenged any tendency to separate from the broader project of change and then emphasise more mechanistic and deterministic approaches. For Gramsci, the philosophy of praxis is central to his conception of hegemony, and this enables a focus on subaltern groups who want to educate themselves in the art of government (Gramsci 1975, Q10§41xii). In conclusion, it is this focus that is crucial if we are to seize the significance of Gramsci’s elaboration of hegemony and, even more importantly, its attainment.


61

NOTES 1. See Intervista a Michel Foucault, in A. Fontana and P. Pasquino, eds. 1977. Entretien avec Michel Foucault. Microfisica del potere: interventi politici. Einaudi. Turin. Foucault, M. 1994. Dits et Ectrits III 1976–1979. Gallimard. Paris: 148–149. ‘Or il me semble que la notion de répression est tout à fait inadéquate pour rendre compte de ce qu’il y a justement de producteur dans le pouvoir. Quand on défi nit les effets de pouvoir par la répression, on se donne une conception purement juridique de ce même pouvoir; on identifie le puovoir à une loi qui dit non; il aurait surtout la puissance de l’interdit. Or je crois que c’est là une conception toute négative, étroite, squelettique du pouvoir qui a été curieusement partagée. Si le pouvoir n’était jamais que répressif, s’il ne faisait jamais rien d’autre que de dire non, est-ce que vous croyez vraiment qu’on arriverait à lui obeir? Ce qui fait que le puovoir tient, qu’on l’accepte, mais tout simplement qu’il ne pèse pas seulement comme une puissance qui dit non, mais qu’en fait il traverse, il produit les choses, il induit du plaisir, il forme du savoir, il produit du discours; il faut le considérer comme un réseau productif qui passe à travers tout le corps social beaucoup plus que comme une instance négative qui a pour fonction de réprimer.’ 2. Q11§12. In this case it should be noted that for Gramsci an organic unity between theory and practice means an ideological unity between the ‘simple’ and the intellectual. 3. Q11§12. ‘Critical self-consciousness means, historically and politically, the creation of an elite of intellectuals. A human mass does not “distinguish” itself, does not become independent in its own right without, in the widest sense, organizing itself; and there is no organization without intellectuals, that is without organizers and leaders, in other words, without the theoretical aspect of the theory-practice nexus being distinguished concretely by the existence of a group of people “specialized” in conceptual and philosophical elaboration of ideas. But the process of creating intellectuals is long, difficult, full of contradictions, advances and retreats, dispersals and regroupings, in which the loyalty of the masses is often sorely tried. (And one must not forget that at this early stage loyalty and discipline are the ways in which the masses participate and collaborate in the development of the cultural movement as a whole.) The process of development is tied to a dialectic between the intellectuals and the mass. The intellectual stratum develops both quantitatively and qualitatively, but every leap forward towards a new breadth and complexity of the intellectual stratum is tied to an analogous movement on the part of the mass of the “simple,” who raise themselves to higher levels of culture and at the same time extend their circle of influence towards the stratum of specialized intellectuals, producing outstanding individuals and groups of greater or less importance. In the process, however, there continually recur moments in which a gap develops between the mass and the intellectuals (at any rate between some of them, or a group of them), a loss of contact, and thus the impression that theory is an “accessory,” a “complement” and something subordinate.’ 4. Gramsci twice translated into Italian an extract from the Preface to a contribution to a critique to Political Economy (1859) of Karl Marx. During his stay in Moscow in 1923, he translated it from the Russian text of the extract Lenin had quoted from original German text for his essay ‘Karl Marx’ (1914), and his translation was entitled ‘Marx and His Doctrine’ and published in the L’Ordine Nuovo. When he translated it into Italian, he omitted two passages, as Lenin did in his article. But when he tried to translate the

62

Hiroshi Matsuda and Koichi Ohara same extract into Italian during his incarceration, he recovered the passages he omitted at his precedent translation. We know that Gramsci proceeded in interpreting and analyzing the two passages in his original way so as to develop his interpretation and elaboration as very important propositions for the construction of his project of social change and his concept of historical bloc. Following are the passages of the Preface Lenin omitted and Gramsci later restored: ‘No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed, and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.’ 5. With regard to the expression ‘historical bloc,’ Derek Boothman provides an instructive explanation: ‘The expression deals prevalently with a bloc between structure and superstructure or with a social totality. Such a bloc is not merely static as in a “snapshot-like depiction,” but is rendered dynamic through the introduction of the aspect of hegemony and thus the inclusion of the direction in which a society is moving. Seen in this light the historical bloc represents Gramsci’s attempt to transcend the limitations inherent in Marx’s description of a complex reality by a means of a two-dimensional base/superstructure metaphor’ (Boothman 1995).

REFERENCES Boothman, D. 1995. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. and ed. D. Boothman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Foucault, M. 1977. Intervista a Michel Foucault. In Entretien avec Michel Foucault, eds. A. Fontana and P. e Pasquino. Microfisica del potere: interventi politici. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1994. Dits et Ectrits III (1976–1979). Paris: Gallimard. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. NowellSmith, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Turin: Einaudi. Green, M. 2000. Gramcsi Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern. Rethinking Marxism 14;3:1–24. Said, E. W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul. ———. 1979. Reflections on Recent American ‘Left’ Literary Criticism. boundary 2 8(1). The Problems of Reading in Contemporary American Criticism: A Symposium.

5

Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific Alastair Davidson

INTRODUCTION Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks develop a theory of hegemony that incorporates ideas about language and popular wisdom (buon senso), which in turn, are linked to profound analyses of the relations and inter-relations between Europe and North America. However, these Prison Notebooks say little about how the theory of hegemony relates to the Asia-Pacific. To make fruitful use of his work in relation to the Asia-Pacific, we cannot restrict ourselves to mining it for direct comments but must recognise, as Giorgio Baratta has reminded us, that Gramsci’s concern was with the exploration of ‘frontiers’ between the given and the ‘yet to be’ and ‘beyond’ (Baratta 1997). In this context, it is more than appropriate to view Gramsci’s theory of hegemony (written für ewig) as applicable not just to the European and American frontiers but also to the Asia-Pacific region. This chapter begins to develop the application of hegemony, language, and popular wisdom to the Asia-Pacific.

HEGEMONY, LANGUAGE, AND POPULAR WISDOM: THEORY Without doubt, the ‘red thread’ running through Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is his theory of hegemony. Much attention has already been given to his development of this concept (see Introduction), but for our purposes it suffices to recall that it is his term for the way rule is maintained in advanced capitalism. Gramsci argues that rule in advanced capitalism is maintained by a combination of coercion and consensus. In other words, hegemony is never assured by coercive practices alone but must always involve ‘educating’ the people to accept the economic, social, and political order from which is built consensus. This education takes myriad forms, mostly unconscious, and occurs mainly through the order of society or social life that places each individual in a particular situation or site, whence that person can only comprehend the world in a certain limited way, although he and

64

Alastair Davidson

she can aspire to other possible worlds, or new orders. So their solutions to life’s problems are limited to particular ways of comprehending their everyday world that, in turn, is linked to particular ‘languages’. Gramsci states that the educators are the people who have the ‘function’ of organising economic, political, and social activities through which knowledge is dispersed and without whom a social order is impossible. So from a factory foreman who provides the workers with organisational knowledge and solutions to a great philosopher who provides an explanation for the purpose of society as a whole, these educators or ‘intellectuals’ are key to the development and maintenance of consensus and, thus, hegemony (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12; Gramsci 1975, Q12§1). Gramsci goes on to argue that intellectuals emerge organically within a particular mode of production, and without intellectuals no social group conscious of its ‘self’ can exist. This suggests that for Gramsci, hegemony, in the last analysis, is never a conscious plot by an elite whose machinations can be unmasked, but rather it is always the outcome of defi nite orders of production linked to the organisation of knowledge around that production and an engagement by the intellectuals with the various parts of this process. Most importantly, the theory of hegemony emphasises that intellectuals, certainly in the context of capitalism, emerge from the factory, rather than vice-versa. While the interpretation of the theory of hegemony produces myriad nuances that still engender much debate, it is now possible to extend earlier views that Gramsci privileged national developments. Gramsci’s starting assumption was the existence of a world capitalist system, and as a result, in his theory of hegemony the whole world was tendentially moving towards hegemonic rule if it was not there already. As Vacca has shown, hegemony is a general theory of gnoseological implication, and thus is applicable anywhere and at anytime (Vacca 1991, 11–12). However, on a historical level, he saw that hegemonic rule was typical of capitalism rather than earlier modes of production. Gramsci focused on the expression of hegemony at the nation-state level, fi rst in Italy and then in Europe and America. Because capitalism developed unevenly, there existed contemporaneously with the advanced hegemony of Europe and America areas where the state still ruled by oppression rather than by consensus. It is in this context that we should understand his famous claim that in the East rule was still more by naked force of the state than in the West, where it was already hegemonic. There is some evidence that he thought rule by force applied in China and India, as well as in Russia. But in all cases, at all times, and in all places under global capitalism, all rule combined both force and consensus, or hegemony, whatever the practical mix of force and consensus. Within this logic, the operation of hegemony at the level of nation-states follows different and overdetermined histories. We must also recognise that he wrote at the beginning of the process we know as globalisation and thought of all his regional, national, and local concerns within the global perspective of the 1930s.1

Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 65 Within the context of globalising capital (Baratta 1997), Gramsci thought systematically and critically about the question of ‘frontiers’, for example, between areas of the world; between discourses and disciplines; between forms of language and communication; between knowledge and action; between culture and politics; and between intellectuals and the masses. This breadth of thought and criticality enabled Gramsci to courageously and without reticence question the defeat of socialism, particularly in Italy, and explain the concomitant emergence of fascism in a way that was different from classical formulations of the left and right. This was a miraculous project given the time and location of its undertaking—that is, at the height of fascism in Italy and from a gaol cell—but also because it continued to recognise the particular within the universal and philology within ideology. This enabled Gramsci’s critique to uncover the changes in society that were often obfuscated behind a taken-for-granted consensus, such as the ‘passive revolution’ that was all about him with the emergence of Americanism and Fordism. Gramsci was struck by the frontier between the ‘mathematical intoxication’ that characterised his contemporary economic, political, and social world and the ‘metaphysical intoxication’ of the preceding century that it left behind. This revolution produced a century of ‘big numbers’ and ‘cynical’, ‘brutal’ modernisation. It emphasised the eternal return of the ‘ever-the-same’. But most importantly, it was a century that gave rise to the great democratic and liberating potential of science—technology that in turn enabled (even if so distant) a ‘mass intellectual progression’ (Baratta 1997). What becomes evident from our discussion so far is that the main question or the main frontier that Gramsci addressed in the Prison Notebooks was that between capitalist hegemony and the defeated socialist revolution. But as Baratta suggests, the aspect of this frontier that really interested Gramsci was the development of the mass popular creative mind and what in that mind eluded the capitalist hegemony and, therefore, could never be controlled completely because of the contradictions of capitalism (Baratta 1997). The development of a theory of hegemony set out the conceptual mechanisms through which the establishment of capitalist hegemony could be seen as achieved on the basis of a passive revolution—that is, where the popular creative mind was not grounded in an interactive process but, rather, was directed in top-down fashion to accept the legitimacy and maintenance of the capitalist hegemonic principles (Howson 2005, 23, 74–76). So for Gramsci, it was this rethinking of the popular creative mind in a way that brought back the people as active and determining in the socialist revolution that would unify his project in prison.2 Further, the establishment of a socialist war of position and a new hegemony would only be possible through an active revolution where the mass consent was directed towards changing the system. The processes, or languages, particular to a capitalist hegemony actively obfuscate and disarticulate the revolutionary language of a socialist war of position (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). So effectively:

66

Alastair Davidson The active mass man works practically, but does not have a clear theoretical awareness of this work of his that is, however, a way of knowing the world in so far as he transforms it. His theoretical consciousness can even be historically in contrast with his action. We could say that he has two theoretical consciousnesses (or a contradictory consciousness), one that is explicit in his actions and that really unites him with all his collaborators in the practical transformation of reality and another that is superficially explicit or verbal that he has inherited from the past or has accepted uncritically. However, this ‘verbal’ conception is not without consequences: it ties him to a determinate social group, influences his moral conduct, the direction of his will, in a greater or lesser way, that can reach the point where the contradictory nature of his consciousness does not allow any action, any decision, any choice and produces a state of moral and political passivity. A critical understanding of oneself therefore comes through a struggle of political ‘hegemonies,’ of contrasting directions, to reach a higher development of your own conception of reality fi rst in the ethical field and then in the political field (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12).

Gramsci argued that a socialist-inspired war of position would need to be constructed from within civil society but operate as a political challenge to the principles of capitalist hegemony. However, any such war of position must address traditional forms of maintaining consent, and in the Prison Notebooks, Catholicism was presented as particularly significant in the maintenance of consent, certainly in Italy, because of its ability to organise popular world-views. In effect, the object of Catholicism was not to raise the people’s understanding but to lower it, to render them not more critical but less critical. Catholicism, in this setting, helped to bring people into conformity with the worldviews that were functional for the existing capitalist mode of production and thus ensured that people remained unconscious of the full implications of their conformity to certain mass ideas. So the task for a war of position is never to just replicate in reverse the conditions of capitalist hegemony but rather to produce the conditions that render humans active rather than passive. This activity cannot simply be a rational response to the impulses of capitalism but a progressive action grounded in the ‘good sense’ that develops from the experiences of all the social groups who live under the oppression of capitalism fused with the highest philosophy available (for him, Marxism). This will create a new and richer human world whose full nature was yet to be known but produces from a chosen rather than imposed set of ideas the conditions for society. The starting point for a scholarly investigation (which was all Gramsci could do in prison) of a possible politics that could produce a war of position against the capitalist hegemony exemplified in the nascent Americanism had to begin with the ‘study’ or, more specifically, critical historico-social analysis of popular ‘folklore’, which in turn, could be ‘worked-up’ into a


67

‘philosophical’ explanation (Gramsci 1975, Q1§89; Gramsci 1975, Q11§12; Davidson 1999, 57–68). This approach is reflected in Baratta’s argument that what is important here is not what exists in concrete form now but what exists over the frontier and is now immaterial and in-existent. It is recognising the possibilities across the frontier that enable war of position to act as the springboard for understanding that, as yet, irrational space. What exists now, though, for the masses is understood in the theory of hegemony as popular wisdom, or folklore, which can be reconstructed in the following points: 1. Folklore is an ‘unofficial’ worldview that is held to by a certain social group. 2. Folklore is the expression of ‘political autonomy’. 3. Folklore is the ‘reflex’ of the conditions of life of the group and exists in bizarre combinations of those very conditions. 4. Folklore that comprises popular songs, legends, sayings, religion, language, or in other words, a whole collective memory, is the expression of common sense (senso comune) that hides and contradicts the popular ‘wisdom’ (buon senso) of the people. 5. Folklore must be studied seriously as popular philosophy that contains creative and progressive innovations as well as reactionary and conservative positions; ‘you cannot but start from “common sense” in the first place, secondly from religion, and only in a third moment, from the philosophical systems developed by traditional intellectuals’ (Gramsci 1975, Q11§13). 6. The ‘popular wisdom’ or ‘good sense’ lies not only in the details of popular knowledge but in the way the popular mind thinks, in its capacity to combine wisdoms learnt from below, and in ‘ . . . their imperativeness when they produce norms of conduct’. 7. The popular man is not aware of the popular wisdom as a form of philosophy because it seems never to exist except as spontaneous and disaggregated thought. 8. This lack of awareness will remain such while the simple people are deprived of the language necessary to render it coherent, internally, and with social reality (Davidson 1999, 60–61).

68

Alastair Davidson

What does a study of the popular mass mind, of folklore, require? What is a Gramscian theory of reading? How does someone extract or fi nd the good sense in the commonsense of the populace? Here we need to emphasise that just as there are, at least, two different hegemonies each with their own processes or languages, so there are different languages or readings of matters like the popular mind in 1) its capitalist or commonsense mode and 2) its socialist or good sense mode. We start with how Gramsci makes sense of what exists or the commonsense within which good sense is hidden, that is, with capitalist hegemony. Certainly, as Pasolini (1975) acknowledges, it is impossible to see Gramsci as a romantic believer in the already ‘hegemonised’ people or some intrinsic value in its way of life, or any Bakhtinian belief in their essential creativity. 3 He takes a critical approach to the content of the ‘average’ person’s views. There is no wisdom to be learnt uncritically from street wisdom or emanating from popular ways of getting by under capitalism. His position, learnt in the bitter experience of his own treatment by the peasants while a child, was deeply critical of such populism. This did not mean, however, that he lacked compassion for these men and women of ‘flesh and blood’ and their suffering (Gramsci 1921b). We can illustrate his attitude after 1927 from a now celebrated account, where he recounts the ‘theatre’ of knife fighting: Occasional entertainments are organised in my honour [in prison AD]. Pugliesi, Calabresi, and Siciliani organise a school of knife-fighting according to the rules of the four ‘states’ of the Southern underworld. The victim . . . an old Pugliese, 65 years old, much revered, but without ‘state’ rank, beats all the champions from the other ‘states.’ Then to cap it, skirmishes with another Pugliese, young, a beautiful body and surprising agility, a high dignitary whom all the others obey, and for half an hour, they perform all the normal techniques of all known knife fighting. A truly grandiose and unforgettable scene for all, actors and spectators, a whole subterranean world of great complexity, with its own life and feelings, points of view, points of honour, with formidable and iron hierarchies, was revealed to me. So I pass my time thinking about those things, analysing them in capillary fashion. I don’t want to become monomaniacal and in that a certain ironic and humanistic spirit that I always have, helps me . . . (Gramsci 1965, 73). He was horrified to discover how they hated one another. ‘I would never have believed that such feelings existed among the people [sentimenti popolari]’ and he wrote that he ‘would need to read a lot of history books about the last centuries’ to fi nd the origin of such feelings (Gramsci 1965, 73–74). For a Marxist, such immediate popular feelings had meaning only as a result or an effect of history. He detested a picturesque interest in folklore,


69

although, like his fi rst mentor, Grazia Deledda, he was an avid collector of folklore as he defi ned it4. Even if he could understand why such cultures emerged, he could not believe that they were good and expressed firm opposition to the notion that mafia and camorra validly expressed popular culture. We should not forget in this connection his cutting view of the way of life of the Neapolitan lazzari: ‘Goethe was right to demolish the legend of the organic “lazzaronismo” of the Neapolitans and to emphasise instead that they are very active and industrious. But the question is seeing what the effective result of such industriousness is: it is not productive, and it is not directed to satisfying the needs and demands of the productive classes. Naples is the city in which the majority of landed owners of the South (nobles or not) spend their agrarian rents. Around a few thousand such people . . . is organised the practical life of an important part of the city with its artisan industries, its ambulant jobs, with an unheard-of fragmentation of goods and services offered for sale to passers by. “When a horse shits a hundred sparrows eat”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q22§2). Gramsci believed that this life characterised the ‘hundred cities’ of Italy where there had developed a huge urban petty bourgeoisie who lived off saving and rents or as state employees and their dependants—living on the backs of the peasants. Their object was otium cum dignitate. They, together with their popular clienteles, constituted a semiparasitic subclass that in another context he called ‘the monkey people.’ He also believed that it was a world characteristic of ‘old Europe,’ ‘and in even worse form in India and China’ (Gramsci 1975, Q22§2). As this suggests, he distinguished between the ‘people’—an amorphous disaggregated mass—and an organised working class, and he regarded the former objectively as tendentially ‘gentilian’ or fascist in their views (Gramsci 1975, Q22§5). In places like the South, hegemony did not start from the factory but from such cross-class populism and from its organisers and the processes or languages for which they were responsible. One dimension of this organisation was the survival of a popular dialect or language, aped or spoken by all classes from top to bottom, and which apparently came from below. 5 Gramsci was totally condemnatory of such street language and of the notion that it was in any way the source of valuable understandings or good sense (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). Gramsci makes no reference to writers from the bourgeoisie who wrote in dialect except to note that dialectical literature was in decline where it had once been strong. This is significant, as the writers of major appeal to the popular mass, like Trilussa, were at the height of their fame when he was in prison. When he used literature to discover the folk view of Sicilians, he read Pirandello, who wrote in the national language. But he thought that where there were such local languages, their gap with higher national or international languages had to be bridged or no alternative hegemony would be possible. This was a lesson taught by his major source for his theory of passive revolution: Vincenzo Cuoco. Cuoco’s

70 Alastair Davidson main thesis explaining the failure of the Neapolitan revolution of 1799 was: ‘Our revolution was a passive revolution in which the only way to succeed was to win over popular opinion. But the view of the patriots6 and of the people were not the same, they had different ideas, different costumes, and even different languages.’ (Cuoco 1998, 325–6, 350–1). Nevertheless, it was in such languages—the everyday life of the mass— that its commonsense was expressed, and Gramsci made clear that from it good sense or popular wisdom had to be extracted. They had to be ‘learnt’ by revolutionary intellectuals. It is quite clear that from 1919 onwards he believed this extraction could only come in a practical politics or mass action and struggle that united the theory from on high with the knowledge of the everyday contradictions from below. He restated this belief and the categories on which it was based in his Notes, above all through the distinction between those who know and those who feel, and how they must complement each other to reach a higher understanding. But in a period of defeat, such politics were not possible, and only the intellectual labour of extracting from commonsense a starting point, nothing more, for popular wisdom or good sense could be undertaken. His methodology was to study both authors and audience to complete a circuit of meaning. Meaning is never in any one place, but ‘in between’ and shifting (Davidson 1977, 55–71). The commonsense of the average, simple man and woman could certainly be deciphered, say, in their preferred literature; their folklore and their media favourites, both theatre and cinema. But these should be approached with the clinical detachment he had shown from his earliest days as a theatre critic.7 Already in 1916 Gramsci was writing: ‘I observe. The stage contains nothing of interest . . . but the public seems interested . . . it laughs without really getting involved. And an impartial spectator, who observes, is immediately aware that this blessed public from the suburbs is much more intelligent than the chic one in the armchairs . . . because it does not give . . . more than is merited . . . the same laugh comes to the lips of a passer by who has seen an enraged concierge sound off. The same smile, without malice or evil, comes onto the face of busy people who, at the street corner, are surprised by the senseless words of a drunk whose tongue is loosened and who sways uncontrollably . . . the same banal observations that we hear ‘whoever’ make about the banal daily news. . .’ (Gramsci 1921a). So Gramsci studies folklore—in the mode of the expression of capitalist hegemony—in a detached fashion. But he also notes in the same passage: ‘Two shows. One takes place on the stage—the other among the public. And the second is no less interesting. And the dialect puts both shows more rapidly in contact, makes them collaborate, creates immediate impressions, because dialect is still the language of the majority that is most their own, while the literary language requires an internal translation that reduces the spontaneity of the reaction of fantasy, the freshness of understanding’ (Gramsci 1921a; Gramsci 1965, 58–60).


71

So even his early reading of folklore as commonsense was prestructuralist and reminiscent of Brecht. Making sense of folklore and religion in the sense of popular ideology was not decided from on high by the playwright or the actors, but involved a circuit of sense-making. The meaning of a play is completed by an audience that must be studied. Gramsci thus shows himself to be not only a precursor of theories of globalisation but also a precursor of contemporary theories of reading in the very methodology he suggested for deciphering the popular mind as the commonsense of everyday life. This casts doubt on a unilateral lexical or textual approach to Gramsci. He is, to use contemporary jargon, interested in making silences speak. It is important to make this point because in Europe an inadequate view of Gramsci’s approach to folklore that goes back to Alberto Cirese8 is being resuscitated. Cirese argued that Gramsci thought that folklore and commonsense should be purified of its error in an enlightened and scientific process. Hence followed an elitist role for intellectuals. They extracted good sense from commonsense, a purification or cleansing of commonsense. This so confl icted with Gramsci’s own understanding of a maieutic educational process in which intellectuals learnt from the people and vice versa that Cirese stopped his projected research. I will not again run through my own criticism of his views that started in the late 1970s,9 but it is important for this chapter to note that if Gramsci is read, as he advised, for what is there and what is not (the ‘absences’), as well as through his explicit statement that it is the structure of popular belief that contains popular wisdom rather than the items in it (remember his celebrated reference to Vico in this sense), then he cannot privilege enlightenment or the social sciences to sieve out commonsense. Indeed, science for him is no more than the generally accepted state of certain knowledge and had no timeless sacrosanct status—or it would never have developed. What Gramsci suggests that we seek in folklore is the formal structure and solidity of popular beliefs that make it a guide to mass action as much as the good content in its combination of ideas. He makes this quite clear.10 We now turn to the applications of his ideas to Europe and America, a vastly variegated region.

EUROPE AND AMERICA Gramsci’s theory was elaborated in a constant reference to European history and, then, in prison, to an increasing focus on Americanism and Fordism, his terms for the mode of production in the USA and its consequent class formations and their implication for capitalist hegemony. The key class difference was the absence of parasitic traditional classes and their intellectuals in New World countries, while they had survived and were a key to understanding power in the Old World. In a striking passage he

72

Alastair Davidson

wrote: ‘America does not have great “historical and cultural traditions” but neither is it weighed down by that lead ball and this is one of the principal reasons—certainly more important than its so-called natural richness—for its formidable accumulation of capital, despite the superior lifestyle among the popular classes than in Europe. The nonexistence of those viscous parasitic sedimentations left behind from past stages of history, has allowed the existence of a base that is healthy for industry and especially for trade . . . Since these preliminary conditions existed, already rationalised by historical development, it has been relatively easy to rationalise production and work, cleverly combining force (the destruction of worker unions based on territory) with persuasion (high salaries, significant social benefits, ideological propaganda, and very clever politics) and succeeding in focussing the whole country on production. Hegemony starts from the factory and only needs to be exercised through a minimal number of intermediate political and ideological professionals.’(Gramsci 1975, Q22§2). Gramsci noted that American capitalist hegemony had produced a new type of mass consciousness, that of the ‘trained gorilla’ (Gramsci 1975, Q 22§12). At the time he wrote, he thought no real alternative hegemony could emerge from these groups, however, he intimated that the consumer citizen created in that hegemonic process was, despite the high wages, so much poorer than the megarich that two different lifestyles already separated them. The corporate owners’ sybaritic worlds clashed with the virtues of economy, family, and work preached to the workers (Gramsci 1975, Q22§13). Also, the mindless toil demanded by modern capitalist production on Taylorist lines could not prevent workers reflecting, even as they worked, on what they had been reduced to: mere machines whose good working conditions were not satisfactory without something more (Gramsci 1975, Q22§12). Gramsci certainly believed that Americanism represented the wave of the future for world capitalism—always remembering that he never believed in a universal, even development—and somewhat mixedly seemed to think it might provide a model for a transition to socialism, provided the worker/ producers managed the process themselves. But he also recognised that in Europe, Taylorist production had not got very far and only in bastardised form. There the parasitic classes of the past, organised by their intellectuals, were putting up a battle against Taylorist inroads that would see their own disappearance. By the 1930s, this resistance had taken on the political form of fascism, an attempt to modernise economically without changing entrenched class relations. The common rationalisation for a refusal to go along the American road was a defence of quality against mass production or quantity—a notion he ridiculed. However, if the US represented modernity against nostalgia for the past, it was not possible to Americanise without the high wages, as Japan was doing. There, feudal governmental structures remained and repression replaced the incorporation of the workforce in a national project of productivism like that of the United States.

Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 73 This could only bode ill, as he believed further that, necessary to the whole process, was a liberal, individualistic consumerist society with a democratic form of government (Gramsci 1975, Q22§6). The characteristic of ‘training gorillas’ was both coercion and consensus (including high salaries) and necessarily included an extension of hegemonic intervention to regulate the spare time of the workers and their relations with their families, down to a regulation of their sexuality. It could not come about without that extension of the state to direct as well as dominate a free market. This brings us to the Asia-Pacific and his few comments on that region, which is now a highly variegated area, containing societies as diverse as China and Australia, along with massive parasitic classes and feudal regimes existing alongside very Americanised modes of production, as they had done at the time of Gramsci’s writing.

THE ASIA-PACIFIC Gramsci had indicated that he was aware of the potential of the Asia-Pacific region and its capacity to replace the USA as the driving force of the world economy. In Notebook 2 he wondered about ‘the role of the Atlantic in modern culture and economics. Will this axis move to the Pacific? The largest masses of population in the world are in the Pacific: if China and India were to become modern nations with massive industrial production, their break from European dependence would really rupture the present balance—a transformation of the American continent, shifting the axis of American life from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, etc. Examine all these questions in economic and political terms (trade, etc.)’ (Gramsci 1975, Q2§78). Given the perspicacity of the observation and the current displacement of the USA in the region, this examination remained unfortunately incomplete. Only China, India, and Japan receive more than passing attention and, of these, only China becomes the subject of theoretical reflection beyond the initial note-taking stage. Nevertheless, given that these three nations combined are currently more economically significant than the USA, and have the potential separately to overtake it, what little Gramsci did say is important, especially in relation to commonsense and good sense, as these are the springboards for the application of Gramscian theory to the Asia-Pacific. In his notes about Asia, Gramsci showed particular interest in the role of traditional Chinese intellectuals, as intellectuals were the key to his theory of organizing any hegemonic project. He believed that a detailed examination of these intellectuals would throw light on hegemony in other countries; that is, that Chinese history has some lessons for contemporary Europe. The role and place of intellectuals in China was determined by the ideographic nature of the script, which was universal. But since it did not emerge from lived life ‘in Asia there cannot exist a widespread popular culture—the spoken word and conversation will remain the most popular

74

Alastair Davidson

form of spreading culture’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). Like medieval Latin, its universality was ‘esperantistic’ and only its replacement by a Western script ‘would allow “real popular languages” and “new groups of intellectuals” to emerge. Until that happened the Chinese would remain xenophobic and nationalistic’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). He believed, then, that in China, the intellectuals were completely separated from the people and that this meant an extreme difference in the religion or worldview of the people. Gramsci also felt that, despite national resistance, sooner or later Western ‘civilisation’ would ‘win’ and that local culture would become ‘folkloric,’ in the sense of ‘superstition’ (Gramsci 1975, Q7§62, Q7§50). But he wondered whether Western intervention might not speed up the break between the people and the traditional intellectuals and the emergence of organic intellectuals inspired by Marxism (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). In relation to India, Gramsci made a similar observation about the function of the script and the two ‘religions’ in separating people and intellectuals, as well as noting the resistance to white culture. Given that he wrote about India at the time of the national liberation struggle, his thoughts centred on the effectiveness of that struggle as a form of resistance. He noted that Gandhism was like primitive Christianity in its encouragement of passivity, and that in its being a ‘mattress against a bullet,’ it was a diluted form of resistance. Given this, he speculated that the British might encourage a premature revolt against it (Gramsci 1975, Q1§134). In comparison, Gramsci considered Japan to be in a completely different category to India and China because it had modernized and was adopting a US economic model, yet remained semifeudal politically (Gramsci 1975, Q1§482). The level of modernization in Japan meant that religious harmony could only be a myth, without true hegemonic force, and that this would continue to weaken the hold of the emperor over the mass. Thinking of it as nation poised at a ‘frontier,’ Gramsci speculated that in Japan ‘after enlarging the suffrage, (when and in what form?) every election with its shift in strength of the political parties and the changes that such results can bring about in government, will function to dissolve actively the absolutist, theocratic mental forms of the Japanese popular mass. The conviction that authority and sovereignty does not lie in the Emperor, but in the people, will lead to a real proper intellectual and moral reform corresponding with what took place in Europe through the Enlightenment and Marxism [classical German philosophy], raising the Japanese people up to the level of modern economic structures and detaching it from the political and ideological influence of the barons and feudal bureaucracy’ (Gramsci 1975, Q8§87). These notes may amount only to miscellanea, and they may be limited by the epoch in which they were written, in which Gramsci was watching the development of the capitalism he wrote about, but they show a great deal of foresight. As with much of Gramsci’s work, they are particularly useful in a methodological sense, in the same way that he drew parallels


75

between these countries and conditions in Italy’s south and with earlier epochs in European history. There are several key examples of this. Gramsci appears to have considered that both China and India were stuck within a hegemonic commonsense particular to the 1930s, a stage of commonsense that made a passive revolution the only foreseeable possibility. A repudiation of a backward, stagnant system would require the introduction of American modes of production, plus some democratization of local politics along with a new, shared language. In Italy’s south (‘a European China of unbelievable backwardness’ in the words of commentators on the southern problem), new sorts of liberal intellectuals like Piero Gobetti were needed to get out of the vicious cycle of a commonsense that reproduced the system and move instead towards developing ‘goodsense’ out of that commonsense in which it is buried. As had been demonstrated by the example of the democratic leftists of Gobetti’s Rivoluzione liberale, a new class of Asian democratic progressive intellectuals would be required. Only then could a new capitalist hegemony be fostered. But when Gramsci considered the indigenous philosophical sources for such intellectuals, he was not encouraged. Bearing in mind that no ‘ideology’ has force unless it is organically part of and the source of mass action, and therefore cannot simply be imposed from outside, or be ‘universal’—that is, abstracted from the history that is the context of the ideology—Gramsci sought to fi nd rooted sources for philosophy. He was not convinced by claims that Confucianism could somehow be allied with progress or a popular ‘communism.’ Lao-Tse (a southerner), the most practical philosopher, counselled people to distance themselves from public affairs, as no human intervention could ever change the course of things. Gramsci noted that scholars maintained that in Confucius, Taosim, and Buddhism, real philosophy was suffocated by religious thought and that for these Chinese ‘philosophies,’ logic was nonscientific and ‘intuitive’ (Gramsci 1975, Q5§23). But becoming autonomous did not mean making a fetish of Western science or Enlightenment thinking, because for Gramsci, history showed that science was never more than a contemporary paradigm that would be superseded historically. Science could also become a religion, especially when applied to the social. Enlightenment itself leads to a misguided focus on the self. We note the typification of Chinese thought as ‘intuitive,’ not logical, and turn to a reflection on Italy that helps expand this idea. This conceptualization corresponds grosso modo with the irrational, unreflective mode of thinking that Gramsci suggests is typical of ‘commonsense’ in an Italian village. He asks then, ‘Is it preferable to think without being critically aware of it, in an occasional and disaggregated fashion, that is, to participate in a view of the world that is imposed mechanically by the external surroundings, that is, by one of the many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the moment he enters the world of consciousness . . . or is it preferable to develop one’s world view critically and with awareness and thus, in connection with such work by one’s own brain, to choose

76

Alastair Davidson

one’s own sphere of activity, to participate actively in the production of the history of the world, to be guided by oneself and not to accept passively and supinely—from outside—the imprint of ones own personality?’ (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). All human beings always belong to particular mass groups or collectivities and conform accordingly. The question to ask is what is the nature of this conformity? ‘When a conception of the world is not critical and coherent but occasional and disaggregated, a person belongs simultaneously to a multiplicity of mass men, and his personality is made up in a bizarre fashion. In it are found elements of the cave man and the principles of the most up-to-date and advanced science; prejudices coming from all crudely localistic past stages of history and intimations of a philosophy-tocome that will be that of all human beings globally united’ (Gramsci 1975, Q11§12). To become autonomous, then, requires an involvement in a mass movement directed to changing the conditions of one’s own being. In sum, when Gramsci draws parallels with Italy and the peasants of Europe, we can assume that they amplify his short comments on the AsiaPacific while making allowances for obvious differences in time. New comparisons come to mind. Does his work on the popular bases for fascism throw light on the nature of rule in the Asia-Pacific? Can more mileage be gained by studying Australia under the rubric of Americanism than from under the rubric of his comments on old Europe.11

CONCLUSION Today China, India, and Japan have all moved towards an Americanist phase of industrial development, with the obvious caveat that China still has a reactionary political system and has even claimed, contra Gramsci, that communism can fi nd roots in Confucian thought. It is arguable that the Asia-Pacific has replaced the Atlantic as the centre of world capitalist history. This makes the USA—as Gramsci speculated—a state facing the Asia-Pacific rather than, or as well as, Old Europe, and to be rethought as part of a ‘new’ history with new hegemonic combinations. Yet, as he also speculated, Asian-Pacific societies have frequently remained deeply hostile to innovative hegemonies—even of a passive capitalist type—and have relied on their millennial traditions to reject them, openly proposing an ‘Asian’ mode of production. While millions remain part of the parasitic classes of traders and transporters that Gramsci thought might disappear but have not done so, all his strictures about the difficulty of getting a real modern American system going still remain. Only India and Japan have moved clearly into a stage of a modern passive revolution in which advanced industrial production has been accompanied by liberal-democratic institutions and a cult of production has similar bases to those in the USA. We could project Gramsci’s general theory of common and good sense onto these changing realities of the region despite the difficulties that I have


77

pointed out in another article.12 As a preliminary, it would still be worthwhile considering the work already done in Asia on national hegemonies rather than a general regional global hegemony, although only work that uses Gramsci subsequent to the publication of the 1975 critical edition of the Prison Notebooks should really interest us. In this connection it is interesting to note that, in China, work on Gramsci’s theory has not flourished. The basic edition of Gramsci used in China has been for years the truncated Russian edition of Gramsci’s works that made him a Stalinist nationalist. In India and Japan, on the other hand, there is a flourishing study of all the aspects of Gramscian theory based on the 1975 critical edition of his work. This could provide a basic starting point for analysis of the Asia-Pacific and those states’ place in that region. This work has emerged since the 1970s above all.13 Major work has been done on the themes in this book by K. O’Hara and Hiroshi Matsuda.14 In India, in the fi rst decades of its publication, the influential Subaltern Studies was expressly Gramscian under the editorship of Ranajit Guha. In most cases, this work focussed on Gramsci’s politics and political theory, and on the State and the integrative function of a passive revolution rather than on the study of the promotion of good sense coming from below. Extensive research has also been done in the major littoral powers without residues of earlier classes and traditional intellectuals: the US, Australasia, and Canada. But little is concerned with those states as part of an Asia-Pacific region within a global economy. Again the concerns are with national bourgeois hegemonies informed by a justifiably Americanist approach. Latin American scholarship on Gramsci is extensive in Mexico and Chile, both states with a longer history than any other settler regions of involvement in the Asia-Pacific.15 I merely note that the major scholarship from Latin America is both more national and also more political—concerned with the creation of an alternative hegemony—than that in the United States or Australia. It also comes more from Atlantic states rather than Pacific states.16 Nevertheless, there already exists a rich lode of scholarship to be assembled and mined.

NOTES 1. See G. Baratta, Le rose e i quaderni (Rome: Carocci, 2003). My own view of the relation between hegemony and globalisation is developed in ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and Globalisation,’ Kasarinlan, Philippine Journal of Third World Studies, 20(2)(2005):4–36; see also G. Liguori, ‘Stato, Nazione, Mondializzazione’ in Sentieri Gramsciani (Rome: Carocci, 2006), 43–54. 2. See A. Gramsci, Lettere dal carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1965), 58–60. 3. See G. Gri, Intervento in Marina Paladini Musitelli, ed., Gramsci e la societa di massa, Instituto Gramsci Friuli (Trieste: Venezia-Guilia, 1997). 4. See V. Santoli, ‘Tre osservazioni su Gramsci e il folclore,’ Critica Marxista, September 1951, 389–397; for Deledda see D. Turchi, ed., Deledda: Tradizioni popolari di Sardegna Credenze magiche, antiche feste, superstizioni

78

Alastair Davidson

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

e riti di una volta nei piu significativi scritti etnpografici dell’autrice sarda (Rome: Newton Lampton, 1995). See generally R. La Capria, Armonia perduta (Milan: Rizzoli, 1986), 109, 124– 5. That is, the revolutionaries. See A. Gramsci, ‘Il Grido del Popolo’ in Sotto la Mole 1916–1920 (Turin: Einaudi, 1960), 231–2. See Alberto Cirese, ‘Concezione del mondo, filosofia spontanea, folclore’ in Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea (Rome: Riuniti, 1967), II. See my ‘Gramsci, Folclore ed autonomia’ in G. Baratta and G. Liguori, eds., Gramsci da un scolo all’altro (Rome: IGS/Riuniti, 1999). See for example, Gramsci 1975, Q11§12. On this, see my article ‘People’s History and Popular Culture,’ Labor History 46, May 1984:116–157; also ‘Gramsci, the peasant and popular culture,’ Journal of Peasant Studies XI, 4 July 1984:139–154. See, for example, ‘Gramsci, Folclore ed autonomia.’ For earlier work in Japan see I. Yamazaki, ‘Gli studi di Gramsci in Giappone’ in Gramsci e cultura contemporanea (Rome: Riuniti, 1967), II, 443–451. For India, see R. Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997). See also the series of articles by A. Chaudhuri, et al, Economic and Political Weekly 23, 30 January 1988:19–36. See also H. Matsuda, ‘Stato e rivoluzione passiva in Giappone’ in G. Baratta and G. Liguori, eds., Gramsci da un secolo all’altro (Rome: Riuniti, 1999), 113–119. See, for example, D. Kanoussi, ed., Los estudios gramscianos hoy (Mexico D.F.: Plaza y Valdés Editores, 1998); for Chile, see A. Aggio, Frente Popular, Radicalismo e Revolução Passiva no Chile (Brazil: Annablume/FAPESP, 1999). See C. Countinho, Pensiero politico di Gramsci (Rome: Carocci, 2006); F. Alvarez, et al, Gramsci en America Latina: Dal silenzio al olvido. (Caracas: Fondo editorial tipograficos UV, 1991); A. Boron, et al, America latina en los 90: Gramsci e la teologia de la liberacion (Buenos Aires: Utopias del Sur, 1992); L. Ferreyra, et al, Gramsci Mirano al sur sobre la hegemonia en los 90 (Buenos Aires: K and I, 1994); O. Astorga, et al, Perfiles del marxismo I La filosofia della praxis. De Labriola a Gramsci (Caracas: Alfadil/Collecion Tropicos/ UCV, 1986).

REFERENCES Aggio, A. 1999. Frente Popular, Radicalismo e Revolução Passiva no Chile. Brazil: Annablume/FAPESP. Alvarez, F., et al. 1991. Gramsci en America Latina: Dal silenzio al olvido, Fondo editorial tipograficos UV. Caracas. Astorga, O., et al. 1986. Perfiles del marxismo I La filosofia della praxis. De Labriola a Gramsci. Caracas: Alfadil/Collecion Tropicos/UCV. Baratta, G. 1997. Intervento. In Gramsci e la società di massa, ed. M. P. Musitelli. Trieste: Instituto Gramsci, Friuli, Venezia-Giulia. ———. 2003. Le rose e i quaderni. Rome: Carocci. Boron, A., et al. 1992. America latina en los 90: Gramsci e la teologia de la liberacion, Buenos Aires: Utopias del Sur. Cirese, A. 1967. Concezione del mondo, fi losofia spontanea, folclore. In Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea. Rome: Riuniti.

Hegemony, Language, and Popular Wisdom in the Asia-Pacific 79 Chaudhuri, A., et al. 1988. Economic and Political Weekly 23 January 30:19–36. Countinho, C. 2006. Pensiero politico di Gramsci. Rome: Carocci. Cuoco, V. 1998. Saggio sulla rivoluzione di Napoli. Bari: Lacaita. Davidson, A. 1977. The Literary Criticism of Antonio Gramsci. In Critical Essays in Language and Literature, eds. S. Knight and M. Wilding. Sydney: W and W. ———. 1984a. People’s History and Popular Culture. Labor History 46, May. ———. 1984b. Gramsci, the peasantry and popular culture. Journal of Peasant Studies 4:139–154. ———. 1999. Gramsci, folclore ed autonomia. In Gramsci da un scolo all’altro, eds. G. Baratta and G. Liguori. Rome: IGS/Riuniti. ———. 2005. Gramsci, Hegemony and Globalisation. Kasarinlan: Philippine Journal of Third World Studies 20(2). Ferreyra, L., E. Logiudice and M. Rey. 1994. Gramsci Mirano al sur sobre la hegemonia en los 90. Buenos Aires: K and I. Gri, G. 1997. Intervento. In Gramsci e la società di massa, ed. M. P. Musitelli. Trieste: Instituto Gramsci Friuli, Venezia-Guilia. Gramsci, A. 1955. Uomini di carne ed ossa. Ordine Nuovo. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1921a. Ordine Nuovo. January 2. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1921b. Ordine Nuovo. May 8. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1960. Il Grido del Popolo. Sotto la Mole 1916–1920. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1965. Lettere dal carcere. E. Fubini and S. Caprioglio eds. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. V. Gerratana , ed. Turin: Einaudi. Guha, R. 1997. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Howson, R. 2005. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London: Routledge. Kanoussi, D., ed. 1998. Los estudios gramscianos hoy. Mexico D.F.: Plaza y Valdés Editores. La Capria, R. 1986. Armonia perduta. Milan: Rizzoli. Liguori, G. 2006. Stato, Nazione, Mondializzazione. Sentieri Gramsciani. Rome: Carocci. Matsuda, H. 1999. Stato e rivoluzione passiva in Giappone. In Gramsci da un secolo all’altro, eds. G. Baratta and G. Liguori. Rome: Riuniti. Pasolini, P. P. 1975. Le Ceneri di Gramsci. Italy: Garzanti. Santoli, V. 1951. Tre osservazioni su Gramsci e il folclore. Critica Marxista September:389–397. Turchi, D., ed. 1995. Deledda: Tradizioni popolari di Sardegna Credenze magiche, antiche feste, superstizioni e riti di una volta nei piu significativi scritti etnpografici dell’autrice sarda. Rome: Newton Lampton. Vacca, G. 1992. Gramsci and Togliatti. Rome: Riuniti. Yamazaki, I. 1967. Gli studi di Gramsci in Giappone. Gramsci e cultura contemporanea. Rome: Riuniti.

6

Hegemony and Power in Gramsci Benedetto Fontana

I Power and hegemony are important concepts in the study of politics. Power, especially, is crucial. Most thinkers regard power as the underlying and unifying concept of politics. In both normative and empirical theory it has played a central role in the formulation of theoretical frameworks and analytical models to describe and prescribe political behavior. From Aristotle and Thucydides, to Hobbes and Machiavelli, to Dahl, Arendt, and Foucault, its meaning, defi nition, and utility have been debated and contested.1 Thus, there is an enormous literature on power and its analysis, a literature that extends centuries to the origins of political thinking in the West. Hegemony, however, has gained wide currency only in recent decades and today has become quite popular in academic as well as in public discourse. Though it may be traced all the way back to the ancient Greeks, it fi rst emerged as a conceptual and theoretical tool in the post–War World II era as a consequence of the dissemination of the work of the Italian revolutionary and Marxist Antonio Gramsci. 2 Originally used by Gramsci within a specifically Marxist, European, and Western context, the term has been deployed throughout the humanities and the social sciences. It is found in various and widely different disciplines and fields of study, from political science (and its constituent subfields, especially international studies) to sociolinguistics, sociology, literary, and cultural studies, to the fields of education and pedagogy. Indeed, ideas originally formulated by Gramsci pervade contemporary political and cultural discourses. This chapter will discuss Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and its relation to his political thought. It will attempt to clarify and explicate its multilayered senses and try to unpack the complex of ideas that together form the concept. In so doing, it addresses such questions as: why hegemony? That is, how and why did Gramsci come to talk about hegemony? Why was hegemony added to the discussion and analysis of bourgeois capitalist society regarding relations of domination and subordination, class confl ict, revolution, and reform? And fi nally, in what ways, if at all, does it differ from such other terms as power, domination, subjection, and dictatorship?


81

Does it add new or novel intellectual and theoretical substance to the discourse of power?

II Gramsci’s thought is the product of three fundamental developments that came together in the fi rst decades of the twentieth century: fi rst, the debate within Marxism about the necessary and sufficient conditions for revolution; second, the victory of fascism and the defeat of the left in Italy and parts of Western Europe; and third, the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. 3 All three compelled Gramsci to rethink the theoretical and conceptual bases of Marxist political thought, especially its understanding of power and the state. Before we take up hegemony in Gramsci, however, a discussion of the way hegemony was understood and used prior to Gramsci will be useful. It will both place contemporary notions of hegemony in context and at the same time help to identify Gramsci’s use of it. Moreover, it will be seen that Gramsci’s notion was especially prefigured in that of ancient Greek thinkers.4 Hegemony derives from the Greek ¹γεµών (guide, ruler, leader) and ¹γεµονία (rule, leadership), and generally it means the preeminence or supremacy that a state, social group, or even an individual may exercise over others. In ancient Greece, one meaning attributed to the term ‘hegemon’ is leader of a military alliance of the various city-states freely and voluntarily entered into. A second related meaning of hegemon is a polis as the leader of an alliance constituted by a number of poleis, which join together freely as a response to military threat. Thus hegemony may be seen as an interstate system where a given state exercises power and leadership over an alliance of reciprocally consenting states. Herodotus in his Histories relates the war of the Greeks against the Persians and sees the Greeks coming together under the hegemonic leadership of Athens and Sparta. Thucydides, too, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, often uses hegemony as a means to describe both a military and a political alliance of autonomous states. Thus the Delian League, originally established as a consensual alliance of free states under the hegemony of Athens as a means to repel the Persian threat against the common interests of the members, gradually turned into the Athenian Empire in which allies were transformed into dependent subjects. From an alliance in which Athens’ leadership served the common interest, the League was transformed into a form of rule in which power was exercised purely in the self-interest of Athens. 5 Thus, with the ancient Greeks, hegemony is used to describe an alliance in which a state attains preeminent military and political leadership. Such a hegemonic alliance is characterized by four fundamental elements.6 First, it has dual structure: the leading state or hegemon and its allies are

82

Benedetto Fontana

structurally independent and distinct from each other. The second element is the absence of an alliance-wide or common citizenship. Each polis retains its own citizenship criteria. The third element pertains to the fluid nature of membership in the alliance: poleis joined or left the alliance periodically, and their membership depended upon both their perceived self-interest and the shifting power relations of the international environment. And the fourth element is the historical (but not conceptually or analytically) tendency of the hegemonic alliance to become transformed into an empire. In addition, both Aristotle and Isocrates refer to hegemony and use it to make a dichotomy between despotic or imperial and hegemonic rule. In the Politics, Aristotle establishes two fundamental forms of rule: despotic and political (or constitutional). The fi rst refers to power exercised over unequals in the self-interest of those who exercise power, whereas the second refers to power exercised by and among equals in the common interest of all. The term hegemony is used when Aristotle wants to discuss the leadership of equals in the interest of all, and despotism is used when he discusses the domination of others in the ruler’s self-interest.7 The distinction here is crucial: the fi rst refers to rule or government of free and equal citizens, while the second describes the power exercised by a master over slaves. Aristotle directly opposes hegemony (understood as leadership) to despotism or domination. It is also important to point out that hegemony in Aristotle is intimately linked to his typology of regimes or constitutions, in which legitimate or just forms are contrasted with illegitimate and unjust types, where supremacy of the law and pursuit of the common good are the distinguishing criteria. Hegemony is also important to the rhetorician Isocrates. In his Panegyricus, for example, Isocrates criticizes the Athenians’ utilitarian transformation of the Delian League into the Athenian Empire, and simultaneously ascribes Athens’s defeat by Sparta to its despotic rule over Greeks. Like Aristotle, he distinguishes hegemonic from despotic rule: the fi rst is leadership exercised over consenting and autonomous allies, and the second is domination coercively exercised over conquered subjects. At the same time, Isocrates understands the exercise of hegemony as closely interwoven with the generation and formulation of moral/intellectual, cultural, and educational ideas. He sees Athens as the generator and organizer of such ideas, and thus as the logical and natural hegemonic leader. Athens is the school of Hellas, the teacher and guide (that is, the hegemon) not only of Greeks but also of all peoples (Isocrates 2000, 20, 50). The idea that Athens is the cultural, moral, and intellectual leader of Greece (an idea depicted by Thucydides in Pericles’ Funeral Oration) suggests another meaning for hegemony, one different from those described above yet related to them in important ways. This other sense is that of hegemony as a guiding or governing principle or idea. Again, we can fi nd this in Isocrates. Elaborating on both Plato and Gorgias, Isocrates posits the preeminence of reason and discourse in all human and social affairs.


83

Within the context of Athenian political and social institutions, such a belief meant that rhetoric, public speech, and dialectical reasoning were seen to be crucial to both state and society. At the same time, the intellectual and moral controversies (such as those between Plato and the Sophists) spawned various schools of thought, each formulating opposing discourses and narratives that competed for recognition and preeminence (Guthrie 1971). In addition, Greek political thought emerged out of, and tried to grapple with, the perennial problem of the relative value of power and knowledge, and of the nature of their relation. The problem was how to wed knowledge (philosophy) and power (political leadership) such that a just and stable political order could be established. Power denuded of knowledge becomes mere violence and coercion, purposeless and mindless. At the same time, knowledge stripped of power lacks a social and political foundation, and is thus ineffective. Thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates delved into the ways that power and knowledge could mutually reinforce each other. In effect, hegemony understood as a governing or guiding principle underlines the purpose and direction of Greek political thought: to achieve a synthesis of power and knowledge, such that each would inform the other. Since ancient political thought—and before Gramsci’s social and political theory—only two usages of hegemony may be identified. The fi rst, under the general name of ‘hegemonism,’ equated hegemony purely and simply with any form of domination or exercise of power (Scruton 1982, 200). Generally, hegemony was viewed as the application of the term to international politics, in which hegemony referred to states possessing or exercising a preponderance of power, such that one state dominates and subjugates other states. A second understanding of hegemony, one more closely related to that of the ancients and Gramsci, appeared during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the course of the debates and polemics among the leaders of the Russian Social Democratic Party (Anderson 1977, 15–17). As socialists such as Plekhanov, Axelrod, Lenin, and Trotsky introduced into a socio-economically and politically backward Russia a Marxist socialism originally designed for the advanced capitalist societies of the West, it became necessary to defi ne the role of a minority working in an overwhelmingly peasant society, as well as to establish the relation between this class, the peasantry, and the national minorities of the Russian Empire (Haimson 1966). In the process, they used hegemony to describe the leading role of the proletariat in a revolutionary system of alliances among the antitsarist forces. Thus Axelrod writes, ‘By virtue of the historical position of our proletariat, Russian Social Democracy can acquire hegemony (gegemoniya) in the struggle against absolutism’ (Anderson 1977, 16). Lenin also called for the establishment of a ‘real hegemony’ of the working class in Russia (Anderson 1977, 16). And he notes, ‘As the only consistently revolutionary class of contemporary

84

Benedetto Fontana

society, it [the proletariat] must be the leader in the struggle of the whole people for a fully democratic revolution, in the struggle of all the working and exploited people against the oppressors and exploiters. The proletariat is revolutionary only in so far as it is conscious of and gives effect to this idea of the hegemony of the proletariat’ (Anderson 1977, 17). It is clear that hegemony was understood by Lenin and Trotsky as a tactical alliance between the working class and other exploited groups (especially the peasantry), one to be directed at both the political absolutism of the tsars and the socioeconomic supremacy of the ruling groups. At the same time, it is also clear that the hegemonic leading role assigned to the working class was the product, not so much of a convergence of values and interests among the revolutionary groups, but rather of the value, weight, and position the proletariat was given in a Marxist and later Leninist theory of revolution. That is to say, the working class is hegemonic precisely because it is the carrier and bearer of the most advanced political and social knowledge. Thus, the hegemony of the working class presupposed and required the subordination of the allied groups and the loss of their political autonomy to the hegemon. In any case, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and the subsequent armed dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in 1918 froze all political activity. The imposition of party dictatorship and revolutionary terror underlined the bankruptcy of alliance formation as a means to state power and revealed hegemony as a mere political formula (to use Mosca’s phrase) that masked the reality of domination and subjection. Gramsci, using both the ancient Greek understanding of hegemony and the experiences of the Bolsheviks in Russia, developed the concept as a means to understand and to explain the strength and the resilience of modern bourgeois society. With hegemony, Gramsci tried to capture the power dynamics and power differences within society and to show the ways and means by which power persists and endures over time.

III Gramsci’s political and theoretical enterprise was to discover, within a fragmented Italian and European reality, the material and cultural forces that would lead to the formation of a new, more universal socio-political order.8 All this, of course, was in order to develop the political, theoretical, and strategic means to organize and mobilize what he called the subaltern (subordinate) groups so they might usher in a new form of state and a new order. It is ironic that today hegemony, developed by Gramsci in order to further the goals of socialist revolution, lives on as a theoretical and conceptual term while the mass and popular movement for which it was originally developed no longer exists. In Gramsci, hegemony means the supremacy of one group or class over other classes or groups; it is established by means other than reliance


85

on violence or coercion. In the prison writings, he used hegemony as a way of explaining political failure; and in his earlier writings, hegemony is also used to describe the leadership position of the working class within an alliance of other classes. We should note that the second was a formulation used by Gramsci in the struggle for power, and the fi rst was elaborated after the power struggle was lost, and thus was a means to explain the failure. Gramsci emphasizes that politics and political activity is fundamentally centered on attaining and maintaining power. And power, according to Gramsci, is constituted by a dual or dyadic opposition: force and consent, violence and persuasion. Here Gramsci is consciously using Machiavelli’s metaphor of the centaur in Chapter 18 of the Prince.9 Gramsci notes that the ‘dual perspective’ pertains to the two levels or two elements of political action, which correspond to the ‘dual nature of Machiavelli’s Centaur—half-animal and half-human. They are the levels of force and consent, authority and hegemony, violence and civilization, of the moment of the individual and that of the universal (“Church” and “State”) . . . ’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§13; Gramsci 1971, 169–170). These oppositions parallel Gramsci’s characterization of the supremacy of a social group in terms of the exercise of moral and intellectual leadership over allied and associated groups, and of the exercise of domination—‘even with armed force’—in order to subdue antagonistic groups. Here is the full reference: The methodological criterion on which our own study must be based is the following: that the supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘domination’ [dominio] and as ‘moral and intellectual leadership’ [direzione]. A social group dominates antagonistic groups, which it tends to ‘liquidate,’ or to subjugate perhaps even by armed force; it leads kindred and allied groups. A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘leadership’ before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power); it subsequently becomes dominant when it exercises power, but even if it holds it fi rmly in its grasp, it must continue to ‘lead’ as well (Gramsci 1975, Q19§24: Gramsci 1971, 57–58) It should be noted that this formulation bears a striking resemblance to the distinction established by Aristotle and Isocrates regarding the exercise of political power: leadership or hegemonia is exercised over equals and allies in the interest of those over whom power is exercised, and domination or despoteia is exercised over enemies over unequals, such as slaves or ‘barbarians,’ in the interest of those who exercise power. The dominio/direzione dyad, moreover, parallels quite closely the ancient Greeks’ (such as Isocrates’ and Thucydides’) understanding of an inter-state alliance

86

Benedetto Fontana

based on the voluntary consensus of free and autonomous members (Fontana 2000). Gramsci’s reference to ‘kindred’ and to ‘allied’ must be linked to the important qualifier to his term ‘leadership,’ namely ‘moral and intellectual.’ It is the latter that determines the nature of the relation between leader and led, ruling and led; just as it is the latter that defi nes the meaning and content of what is kindred and allied. Leadership (moral and intellectual) is again closely linked with hegemony in one of Gramsci’s letters from prison, in which he says that ‘Croce emphasizes solely that moment in historico-political activity which in politics is “hegemony,” the moment of consent, of cultural leadership, to distinguish it from the moment of force, of constraint, of state-legislative or police intervention’ (Gramsci 1965, 616). Gramsci’s emphasis on the moment of consent, of persuasion, and of leadership leads him to construct a theory of intellectuals and their role. Intellectuals are the ‘organizers’ of consent and persuasion. The stability, legitimacy, and persistence of the overall socio-political system is achieved by means of moral, intellectual, and cultural systems formulated by intellectuals. As such, intellectuals act as links or mediators between the subordinate groups and the elites (Gramsci 1971, 12). Intellectuals, for Gramsci, ‘exercise hegemony, which presupposes a certain collaboration, i.e., an active and voluntary (free) consent’ (Gramsci 1971, 271) on the part of the people. In his discussion of intellectuals, Gramsci identifi es civil society as the locus or space within which the organization of consent is generated.10 He delineates ‘two major superstructural “levels”: the one that can be called “civil society,” that is the ensemble of organisms commonly called private, and that of “political society” or “the State”’ (Gramsci 1971, 12). Hegemony is exercised within the fi rst level, and ‘direct domination or command’ is exercised within the second. These two levels are connected by intellectuals. They provide both vertical and horizontal mediation. That is, within both political society (such as administrative and public agencies) and civil society (such as sects, interest groups, political parties) intellectuals act as agents of reciprocal communication; they simultaneously connect civil society with political society. The dual nature of power is revealed more sharply in another letter of his, in which Gramsci again contrasts ‘political society (or dictatorship, or coercive apparatus to ensure that the popular masses conform to the type of production and economy of a given moment’ with ‘civil society (or hegemony of a social group over the whole national society exercised through so-called private organizations, like the church, trade unions, schools, etc.’ (Gramsci 1965, 481). Thus we have a series of opposing, yet interrelated, dyads. One set, derived from Machiavelli’s force/persuasion polarity, identifi es as a general proposition the defi ning characteristic of politics:

Hegemony and Power in Gramsci Force

Consent

Authority11

Hegemony

Violence

Civilization (Civiltà)

87

A second set locates the foregoing within a particular historical and political context (namely, the Risorgimento and the formation of the Italian state): domination is opposed to leadership (moral and intellectual). The process of Italian unification relied too heavily on domination and not sufficiently on leadership. Cavour and his party unified the peninsula by means of conquest and annexation. Because the popular masses—the overwhelming majority of which were peasants—were not mobilized and were excluded, the ruling groups established a state with an exceedingly narrow social and political foundation. Moreover, because the formation of a liberal state meant destroying the political and territorial power of the Papacy, the new state could not mobilize and deploy religion (the Catholic Church and its various ancillary organizations within society) to generate social and cultural support. Thus the Italian state was the result of an imposition from above (domination), rather than a product of a mass movement from below (moral and intellectual leadership). Gramsci’s reference to Machiavelli underlines several important points. First, politics occurs in the context of confl ict, struggle, and contestation. As Machiavelli says, ‘There are two methods of fighting [my italics] . . . ’ (Machiavelli 1985, Chapter 18). Second, without consent or persuasion it would be impossible to wield effective force or violence—in the same way that force is necessary to guarantee or secure the use of persuasion. As Machiavelli puts it in the Prince, ‘When they [prophets, or innovators] . . . are able to use force, then it is that they are rarely in peril. From this it arises that all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed ones were ruined . . . [for] the nature of peoples is variable, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion. And thus things must be ordered in such a mode that when they no longer believe, one can make them believe by force’(Machiavelli 1985 Chapter 6). Machiavelli’s ‘armed prophet’ corresponds to Gramsci’s polarity domination/leadership. In addition, by equating political action with confl ict and competition, Gramsci points to the necessary and intimate connection with their opposites, namely community and consensus. Indeed, one presupposes the other. Sheldon Wolin, in his famous Politics and Vision, describes politics, or the political, as constituted by two apparently contradictory, yet closely interwoven, elements, each mutually acting on the other (Wolin 1960). The fi rst is the search for a common ground or topos within which the common or the public good may be engendered and attained. The second sees politics as a competition or struggle for advantage and for power, both in terms of material interest or economic goods and in terms of competing or opposing

88

Benedetto Fontana

values and beliefs. In the fi rst, politics is seen as the activity by which community, consensus, and shared values are developed. In the second, politics is the mechanism by which antagonistic groups attain and maintain power and supremacy. What connects the two is power. It underlies, and gives meaning to, both views of politics. The history of political thought in the West may be seen as a dialogue, and as a reciprocal interaction, between these two perceptions of politics. Since Plato’s polemic against the Sophists, political thinkers have focused now on one, now on the other version of politics. Polemarchus’ defi nition of justice (Plato, 331E–336A)—helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies—anticipates Machiavelli’s ‘two ways of fighting’ and Gramsci’s domination/leadership dichotomy. Politics and political action comprise a dynamic interaction of social groups and structures continually forming and reforming in a process of construction and deconstruction. In a kaleidoscope of multiple perspectives and multiple centers of power, where centripetal and centrifugal forces are simultaneously in play, power shifts and differences appear as instances of the variations in the relative proportion between confl ict and consensus, force and persuasion. Transformations in the social group or social structure are contingent upon the nature and degree of integration or disintegration, mobilization or fragmentation, which in turn are determined by the perspective of the engaged actors, as well as that of the observer. Moreover, the processes of the fragmentation and dissolution of a given social structure are simultaneously processes for the integration and dynamic growth of another and different structure. In the same way, what appears as group confl ict and factional strife is, from a slightly different perspective, also the generation of community and social cohesion. In effect, the confl ict generated by antagonistic factions is the mechanism by which those very factions not only come into existence but also, by developing into determinate and conscious political forces, might eventually form the basis of a new sociopolitical order. At the same time, the generation of community, consent, and moral and intellectual leadership within a given group is what enables it to engage in the struggle for power and advantage. The nature and degree of such consent, that is to say, the degree to which the ruling groups disseminate and proliferate ‘moral and intellectual’ systems of belief throughout the subordinate groups, reflects and indicates their relative power in relation to antagonistic groups. We should recall that Gramsci opposes political society to civil society, where the latter denotes the realm of consensus, persuasion, hegemony, and moral and intellectual leadership, and the former denotes the realm of force, dictatorship, and coercion. These distinctions parallel the conventional and classical liberal and neoliberal (that is, Lockean and Hobbesian) dichotomy between state and society. Society represents the sphere of free contract, private property, and liberty, where individuals and groups engage in economic, political, and various other kinds (such as religious, cultural, etc.) of competition. And the liberal state, what Gramsci calls the


89

‘night-watchman state’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88) represents force and coercion: it provides the necessary force to guarantee and to secure the liberty and property that are the bases and the motive force for the competition. Thus we have: State as force

State as consent

Political society

Civil society

Dictatorship

Hegemony

The distinctions correspond to Machiavelli’s general formulation regarding the nature of power and politics as the synthesis of force and consent, incarnated in the figure of the centaur. Moreover, the Marxist and Leninist critique of liberalism and bourgeois society reproduces the distinction between state and society and assigns to the state a purely negative, repressive, and coercive character. In Marx and Lenin, the state has no positive functions; its organization and purpose are merely to protect and to secure property and the market.12 In this sense, both liberals and their critics share the view of the state as a coercive apparatus. Here the state has no redeeming value: to the former it is an organization of coercive power, which, precisely because it is necessary to regulate and secure the ‘private’ activities occurring within society, is dangerous to liberty and prone to abuse of its power; and to the latter it is a repressive apparatus that, precisely because it is necessary to guarantee the stability and order of the socio-economic order, is an instrument of the ruling groups. IV Gramsci has a more nuanced, subtle, and articulated understanding of the state and of its relation to society. He returns to the Hegelian distinction between the two and, in so doing, gives the state a positive (that is, cultural, educational, and transformative) character. In a discussion of free trade and market competition, Gramsci notes that the ideas of the ‘Free Trade Movement are based on a theoretical error . . . on a distinction between political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological. Thus it is asserted that economic activity belongs to civil society, and that the State must not intervene to regulate it. But since in actual reality civil society and State are one and the same, it must be made clear that laisser faire too is a form of State “regulation,” introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means’ (Gramsci 1971, 159–160). The distinction between state and civil society, like that between domination and moral and intellectual leadership, is methodological and analytical; it is not meant to reflect the social

90

Benedetto Fontana

and political reality. Similarly, Gramsci expresses a similar notion when he points to Guicciardini’s assertion that two elements are ‘absolutely necessary for the life of the State: arms and religion’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§87; Gramsci 1971, 170). Gramsci translates and modernizes Guicciardini’s formulation into the now familiar polar terminology: ‘force and consent; coercion and persuasion; State and Church; political society and civil society; politics and morality (Croce’s ethico-political history); law and freedom; order and self-discipline . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 170). This set of polarities is quite different from the fi rst set noted above, and it reveals a significant reevaluation of the nature of the state and civil society. In the fi rst polarity, political society/dictatorship/domination was equated with the state, and hegemony/consent/persuasion was equated with civil society. This issues from the conventional liberal dichotomy. In this last series, however, the polarity political society/civil society, force/consent no longer denotes the opposition between state and civil society, but it is rather subsumed within the idea of the state itself. In effect, what Gramsci has accomplished is a broadening of the notion of the state. The state is now seen as the ensemble of socio-economic and politicalcultural relations. The ‘state’ now becomes the ‘integral State,’ where the latter is defi ned as ‘dictatorship + hegemony,’ and as ‘political society + civil society’ (Gramsci 1975, Q6§88; Gramsci 1975, Q8§130). A socio-political order is therefore formed by the interpenetration of these two analytically separate, but intimately interwoven, spheres. Thus Gramsci offers two notions of the state, closely related: one narrow, the other more broad. The fi rst is reminiscent of what the classical liberals and neoliberals understand by state: the administrative, juridical, and military organization of the governmental apparatus, the guarantor of peace, security, and order. This limited state is opposed to civil society, where the two together (state and society, dictatorship and hegemony) constitute what he calls the integral state. In a note in the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci says that differences in socio-political structures between Russia and the West require different revolutionary strategies. He writes: ‘In Russia the State was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous; in the West there was a proper relation between the State and civil society, and when the State trembled a sturdy structure of civil society was at once revealed. The State was only an outer ditch, behind which there stood a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks’ (Gramsci 1971, 238). The reference to the nature of the state in Russia means that the governmental apparatus, especially the coercive organs, is so pervasive that it overwhelms social and political life. It means, moreover, that the practices and norms specific to ‘political society’ (the culture and way of life specific to bureaucracy and administrative organizations) become prevalent and are generalized throughout the society. At the same time, to say that civil society is ‘primordial’ and ‘gelatinous’ is to say that civil society does not, or barely, exists. Social, cultural, and economic


91

activity is not autonomous, and it is permeated with the culture of the state apparatus. On the other hand, in the West there is a ‘proper relation’ between state and society. ‘Proper’ here would mean not only that the two spheres cannot exist separately from each other, but that the state is (1) limited and circumscribed and (2) responsive and subordinate to civil society. While a state may exist in the East without a civil society, in the West it is impossible to have one without the other. Thus Lenin was able to launch a direct attack on the state and seize power successfully: once the tsarist state fell, there were no socio-political institutions sufficiently autonomous and sufficiently resilient to withstand the Bolshevik party organizations. Such a direct assault Gramsci calls the ‘war of movement,’ evidently possible only in countries politically and economically less advanced. In the West, however, the strength, resilience, and persistence of civil society account for the failure of revolution, and thus require a radically different method of struggle, the ‘war of position.’ What the ‘proper relation’ between state and civil society implies is shown in a passage where Gramsci discusses the radical and revolutionary nature of the bourgeoisie and its difference from all other previous social classes. It is a passage that also reveals Gramsci’s fundamentally Hegelian perspective. He writes: The previous ruling classes were essentially conservative in the sense that they did not tend to construct an organic passage from the other classes to their own, i.e., to enlarge their class sphere ‘technically’ and ideologically: their conception was that of a closed caste. The bourgeois class poses itself as an organism in continuous movement, capable of absorbing the entire society, assimilating it to its own cultural and economic level. The entire function of the State has been transformed; the State has become an ‘educator,’ etc (Gramsci 1971, 260). The notion of the state as educator harks back through Hegel, Rousseau, and Vico to ancient constructions of politics and the state. These assert that cultural and moral/intellectual life is made possible by, and can only occur within, the polis or the state.13 Modern or Western civil society is the product of the cultural, economic, and political activity of the liberal bourgeoisie, and the state as educator means that the state acts as the bearer of the cultural and socio-political values and ruling principles of the dominant groups. As such, force and violence (which are specific to ‘dictatorship’ and to political society) are minimized and delimited (though of course never eliminated), and, correspondingly, consent and persuasion (which are specific to hegemony and civil society) are generated by means of the proliferation and dissemination of moral/intellectual and cultural values and principles. These values may range from the religious to the secular, and the principles may be both ethical (‘ideological’) and ‘technical’ (that is, rational and scientific, economically productive, and technologically

92

Benedetto Fontana

instrumental systems of knowledge). As Gramsci notes, the educative and ‘formative’ role of the state is that ‘of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the “civilisation” and morality of the broadest popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production; hence of evolving even physically new types of humanity’ (Gramsci 1971, 242). In effect, the state as educator functions on two related levels. First, on the material level it makes possible economic/technological and scientific technical production by establishing stable and regular (more or less predictable) procedures and structures. In this sense, the state here approximates Hobbes’s conception of the Leviathan as the ground upon which trade, arts and sciences, and ‘commodious’ living emerge and develop (Hobbes 1968, I, 13). And second, the state presents itself as a cultural, as well as moral and intellectual hegemon—that is to say, it presents itself as exercising leadership in the ancient Greek sense of power based on a persuasive and rational discourse. It exercises power by presenting itself as ‘ethico-political,’ as the representative of universal moral values and as the carrier of rational and objective principles independent of narrow socioeconomic and socio-cultural interests. The state as educator, and as ethicopolitical, transcends the narrow liberal conception of the night-watchman and returns to the Hegelian idea of the state that attempts to realize reason and liberty by encompassing within its sphere all the activities within civil society. At the same time it is reminiscent of Hobbes, who calls the state the ‘mortal God,’ a striking phrase that combines the material, cultural, (moral/intellectual) and political functions of the modern state (Hobbes 1968, II, 17). In the same way that the immortal God is the ground for the objective continuity of universal reality and the standard for the determination of value, so too the state is the founder and generator of socio-political and socio-cultural reality, as well as the standard for the determination of meaning in space and time. As noted above, such a mortal God Gramsci calls the ‘integral State’ and is described by the unity of political society and civil society, dictatorship, and hegemony. The dyads depict the state as the embodiment of an ethical/cultural life reinforced by force and coercion. Or, alternatively, they represent the rationalization of power, or the enculturation of power. The state is no longer brute force, nor is it any longer brute interest or narrow appetite.

V It is precisely the ‘proper relation’ between state and civil society, and between dictatorship and hegemony, that enables the state to appear as educator and as ethico-political (that is, precisely as rational and as hegemonic). The state, rather than imposing itself on society, emerges and


93

gathers its cultural force from society. State power (dictatorship and force) issues from civil society (most especially from the economic/technical and the cultural/scientific apparatuses embedded within civil society), and, at the same time, civil society maintains its coherence and stability through the rational authority of the state. All of which brings us back to hegemony and to civil society as the space within which hegemony emerges and within which it is socially and politically defi ned and concretized. We should remember that, to Gramsci, modern society (which, for him, is fundamentally liberal and bourgeois) is structurally constituted by a multiplicity of independent secondary associations and by a plurality of autonomous socio-political and socio-cultural groups (these are political, economic, cultural, educational, religious, or social). And, at the same time, civil society is characterized by a plurality of ideological/cultural conceptions and moral/intellectual systems of knowledge. It is here that the ‘war of position’ assumes importance. As Gramsci notes: . . . [t]he massive structures of modern democracies, both as State organizations, and as complexes of associations in civil society, constitute for the art of politics as it were the ‘trenches’ and the permanent fortifications of the front in the war of position: they render merely ‘partial’ the element of movement which before used to be ‘the whole’ of war . . . (Gramsci 1971, 243). The war of position is a cultural confl ict involving ideology, religion, forms of knowledge, and value systems. It occurs within civil society, which is itself a ‘complex’ of highly articulated, multilayered associations and voluntary groups. But the complexity and sophistication of socio-political life extends beyond the civil sphere. They encompass the ‘State organizations’ themselves. In effect, the level of articulation and complexity within civil society is mirrored within political society. For the state organizations, while juridically and analytically distinct from those of civil society, are nevertheless rooted and grounded within civil society, which provides the educational and cultural resources that determine the character of the state organizations. The greater the complexity of civil society and the more sophisticated the scientific/technical apparatus of the associations within society, the more complex and the more articulated will be the state institutions. There is a direct link between the complex articulated structures of civil society and the structural differentiation and political/constitutional specialization of the modern state. Referring specifically to parliamentary forms of government, Gramsci writes that ‘hegemony . . . is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating too greatly over consent’ (Gramsci 1975, Q13§37; Gramsci 1971, 80). Only a modern and democratic state has the resources (technological and cultural) to develop systems of mass

94

Benedetto Fontana

persuasion and mass mobilization ‘to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion—newspapers and associations . . . ’14 Civil society is the sphere in which a continual process of confl ict and community, dissent and consent, is generated. It is here that the dialectic between confl ict and consensus, factional strife over particularistic ends and the generation of common goals, is conducted. Gramsci contrasts what he calls the economic-corporative with the political. Such an opposition occurs, and is ultimately resolved, within civil society. The economic-corporative refers to particular, purely economic goods, utilities specific to the interests of a given group; the political refers to goods that transcend the purely economic and particular, goods that are universal to the extent that they encompass the interests of other multiple groups. The movement from the particular to the universal, from the economic to the political, is precisely a hegemonic movement where a multiplicity of groups is established and where moral and intellectual leadership is exercised. Consent is generated by such leadership because the interests of the federated or associated groups are aggregated. But such consent is generated within the alliance of groups in competition with an antagonistic alliance of opposing groups. Hegemony and civil society have generally been associated with consent and community, and rightly so. Yet it is important to note that in Gramsci, civil society, while representing and denoting the sphere of liberty and consensus, is at the same time the sphere in which competition, confl ict, and factional strife occur. On the one hand, it is the sphere in which different systems of belief and knowledge, different conceptions of the world, oppose each other and vie for the favor of the people. In the process, consent is manufactured, consensus is mobilized, and popular support is attained. The mobilization and deployment of the people are achieved through the mediation of ideological and cultural prisms. Moreover, civil society is the locus wherein the state (and its various political organs and functions) generates support and consent for itself—both through electoral competitive mechanisms and through its ability to accumulate and distribute immense sums in the form of socio-economic and social welfare measures. The electoral competition and the economic programs mutually reinforce each other and thus strengthen the authority and legitimacy of the state. In this sense, the state and the political order in general are deemed legitimate (that is, consent is generated) to the extent that it is able to penetrate (and, in turn, be penetrated by) the multifarious associations that together form civil society. This interpenetration contrasts starkly to liberal and neoliberal doctrine, which states there is a distinct separation between the state and civil society. However, while there is certainly a legal and juridical distinction between the two, on the political, social, and economic level, the distinction is purely analytical and formal. For the material and moral strength of the state depends precisely upon its ability to assimilate the cultural and ideological activity (electoral, educational, political, economic,


95

even religious) taking place within civil society in order to transform it into legitimating support. At the same time, it is important to realize the close link between the cultural/ideological and the material/economic. The relationship, within the space formed by civil society, between the economic reality and the construction of ideological, cultural, and moral/intellectual ways of thinking constitutes an important factor in Gramsci’s hegemony. Thus, in a note entitled ‘Cultural Themes. Material and Ideological,’ Gramsci proposes to analyze the theoretical and ideological bases of the power of the dominant groups: ‘A study of how the ideological structure of a dominant class is actually organized: that is to say, material organization understood as maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical and ideological “front”’ (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44). This amounts to an inquiry into hegemony, how it is expressed, how it is institutionalized, and how it functions concretely within civil society. His analysis focuses on ‘the most dynamic part of the ideological structure,’ which comprises . . . publishing houses (which implicitly and explicitly have a political program and which base themselves on a given orientation), political newspapers, journals of every type—scientific, literary, philological, mass market, etc.-various periodicals including local and parochial bulletins and gazettes. (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44). Gramsci looks at institutions such as schools, libraries, voluntary associations and various clubs, religious groups (especially the Catholic Church), universities and colleges, and other groups that pluralist theorists today would call interest or pressure groups. His analysis intends to be thoroughgoing and encompasses even the physico-spatial and the urban-architectural structure of civil society, such as buildings, streets, and boulevards, as well as their names. All these institutions, structures, and socio-cultural practices are precisely what Gramsci means by the ‘powerful system of earthworks’ that make up civil society: the ‘formidable complex of trenches and fortifications of the dominant class’ (Gramsci 1975, Q3§44). These are the ideological and cultural, and thus hegemonic, apparatus of civil society. At the same time, they are economic and material. Newspapers, journals, magazines (the mass media in general), educational and scientific institutions, publishing houses—the whole complex system devised to construct and generate, to communicate, store, and retrieve, knowledge and information rests on an economic, technological, and material base. Such a complex network, moreover, parallels, and is dependent upon, a market that desires access to it. Such a market extends in progressively ever-widening concentric circles from narrow, specialized, and technical groups of intellectuals (with their specialized languages) to popular and mass audiences. In all cases, these markets must be intellectually and economically capable of generating demand (both in terms of literacy and in terms of

96

Benedetto Fontana

disposable income). Thus the instruments of hegemonic persuasion cannot emerge or function without a material foundation, at once spatial, physical, technological, and economic. And it is this base that makes possible the generation and manufacture of permanent consent—that is, hegemony. It is indicative that, during and after the three great revolutions of the West that inaugurated modern mass politics and eventually culminated in the modern world generally—namely, the English, the American, and the French—their respective societies underwent a rapid and profound growth in the proliferation and dissemination of ideas by means of the print media (newspapers, pamphlets, broadsides, etc.). At the same time, such a growth was accompanied by an expansion in the manufacture and in the marketing of printed materials.15 On the other hand, precisely because civil society is the sphere of liberty and competition, such legitimating activity is counterbalanced by forces and groups antagonistic and hostile to the prevailing group and to its system of values and beliefs. These forces (what Gramsci calls the ‘subaltern classes’) (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2–5) may exist at various stages of development, some merely embryonic, some more mature, some barely politically conscious, others more coherent ideologically and thus better organized. In other words, it is here, in the sphere defi ned by civil society, that the war of position takes place. As the term implies, the war of position presupposes consensus within the cultural/political and organizational body of the protagonists, but confl ict and strife among and between them. The war of position is therefore preeminently a series of moral and intellectual battles whose goal is the construction of social and political reality. In a note on ‘“Language,” Languages, and Common Sense,’ Gramsci says that ‘philosophy is a conception of the world and philosophical activity is not to be conceived solely as the “individual” elaboration of systematically coherent concepts, but also and above all as a cultural battle to transform the popular “mentality” and to diffuse the philosophical innovations which will demonstrate themselves to be “historically true” to the extent that they become concretely—i.e., historically and socially—universal’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10§44; Gramsci 1971, 348). What he says about philosophy can also be said about morality, ethics, knowledge, and culture in general. The generation and organization of consent is a competitive struggle—that is, the exercise of moral and intellectual leadership in a ‘battle’ (Gramsci 1975, Q10§13; Gramsci 1975, Q11§65) whose purpose is to generate, proliferate, and disseminate a given conception of the world, such that it becomes ‘historically true,’ which, in turn, means its transformation into the ‘commonsense’ of the people. The exercise of intellectual and moral leadership is simultaneously the transformation of philosophy and knowledge into the commonsense of the people; in turn, such a transformation is simultaneously the organization and proliferation of consent. And all this occurs within civil society, by means of a ‘battle,’ through confl ict and strife.


97

VI The notion of a battle between and among opposing conceptions of the world, or Weltanschauungen, is central to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and underpins his entire political and theoretical enterprise. It is crucial because it captures on several levels Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony and the manner in which it operates both within political society (state in the narrow sense) and civil society. In the fi rst place, the battle of hegemonies underlines Gramsci’s original purpose in developing his political theory: to understand the failure of socialism and to identify social groups within bourgeois modern society capable of challenging morally and intellectually the supremacy of the dominant groups. To Gramsci, a subordinate group, or the ‘subaltern,’ would not be equal to ruling unless it developed internally what he calls a ‘critical understanding of self’ (Gramsci 1971, 333). Internally (in terms of consciousness) and externally (in terms of organization), the subaltern to Gramsci exhibits, and is characterized by, incoherence, fragmentation, and disintegration. As such, the subaltern groups are subject to the action and initiative of the dominant groups (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2–6). As Gramsci notes, ‘The subaltern classes . . . are not unified and cannot unite unless they are able to become a “State”; their history is thus interwoven with that of civil society, it is a functionally “disaggregated” and discontinuous part of the history of civil society . . . ’ (Gramsci 1975: Q25§5). Thus it is necessary to identify instances of subaltern autonomous activity that indicate opposition, either cultural or political, to the established system of beliefs and structures of power. It is only when the subaltern begins to know itself that it begins the process of becoming hegemonic. Gramsci notes that ‘To know oneself means to be oneself, to be master of oneself, to free oneself from a state of chaos, to exist as an element of order—but of one’s own order and one’s own discipline in striving for an ideal’ (Gramsci 1977, 13). What is the process by which the popular masses attain critical awareness and political coherence? In a note in the Notebooks on the ‘passage from knowing to understanding to feeling and vice versa’ Gramsci makes an important analytical distinction between those who ‘know’—intellectuals—and those who do not know but merely ‘feel,’ the ‘people-nation.’ Intellectuals may possess knowledge but not necessarily feeling or understanding, and the people may possess feeling or understanding but not knowledge. To know something politically and socially, as opposed to abstractly or purely intellectually, is to understand it with feeling and with passion. Gramsci says: The intellectual’s error consists in believing that one can know without understanding or even more without feeling and being impassioned (not only for knowledge in itself but also for the object of knowledge; in other words that the intellectual can be an intellectual (and not a

98

Benedetto Fontana pure pedant) if distinct and separate from the people-nation, that is, without feeling the elementary passions of the people, understanding them and therefore explaining and justifying them in the particular historical situation and connecting them dialectically to the laws of history and to a superior conception of the world, scientifically and coherently elaborated—i.e., knowledge. One cannot make politics-history without this passion, without this sentimental connection between intellectuals and people-nation (Gramsci 1971, 418).

The knowledge of intellectuals becomes life and politics only when linked to the feeling/passion of the people. The synthesis of intellectual/ people and knowledge/passion is what provides the motive force for political and historical activity. Such a synthesis, in turn, is what transforms a fragmented and disorganized subordinate group into an actor capable of questioning the established system and presenting a viable alternative. Such a process is necessarily hegemonic, and it involves a reflexive and conscious movement, from passive acceptance of the given reality to active engagement with it, as well as a movement from fragmentation to integration. Active engagement presupposes a condition of confl ict and strife, such that the subaltern group understands itself and realizes itself in opposition to the dominant groups. Thus: ‘[c]ritical understanding of self takes place . . . through a struggle of political “hegemonies” and of opposing directions, fi rst in the ethical field and then in that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at a higher level of one’s own conception of reality’ (Gramsci 1971, 333). This hegemonic process is precisely the formation of a ‘personality,’ the manufacture of a social and political subject capable of acting in history. In Gramsci’s words, it is the giving of a ‘personality to the amorphous mass element’ (Gramsci 1971, 340). The above passage points to Gramsci’s critique of positivism, scientism, and evolutionary economism. Gramsci tries to disencumber Marxism of its positivist and deterministic encrustations, and he presents a theory of knowledge in which the relation between the subject that knows and the object of knowledge is active and dynamic. For Gramsci, to know is to master—and to know is to construct material and social reality by giving form and structure to it. To know, therefore, is to ‘creare il reale’ (Gramsci 1975, Q11§59; Gramsci 1971, 345–346). Knowing is not simply an abstract activity, it is a conscious engagement with reality, such that the very act of knowing gives form, meaning, and ‘personality’ to the object. Thus, reality is not passively perceived, but it is actively and passionately seized, captured, and possessed by the subject. In this sense, Gramsci is fundamentally Vichian. Gramsci, like Vico, understands knowledge in terms of doing and making: verum et factum convertuntur. According to Vico, ‘[t]he criterion of the truth is to have made it’ (Vico 1988, 45–46). Man knows truly and fully only what he has made. Indeed,


99

‘facts’ exist, and are perceived as such, precisely because they come into being as facta, as the products of man’s historical and political activity. The battle of hegemonies, in this sense, is the battle to transform reality, which involves the battle to create alternative facta. Yet, to act in history also means to speak as a political actor in society: thus the importance of language in Gramsci. Since hegemony is intimately related to the development and proliferation of opposing conceptions of the world and of differing structures of knowledge, the nature and type of languages are crucial to hegemony. The transition from subaltern to hegemonic, therefore, equally means the transformation of a subaltern language (such as a dialect) into a hegemonic language. The language, in other words, must be equal to the constitution of a knowledge and a conception of the world that both capture and construct a particular reality. Language and knowledge mutually presuppose each other. Therefore, language, like knowledge, does not passively represent reality, and it does not merely describe a preexistent world; rather, language actively structures and constructs the world, and subjects it to the ends and values established by the speaker/knower.16 Such an understanding of knowledge explodes the positivist distinction between subjective knowledge and objective reality, and simultaneously undermines the Marxist dichotomy between structure (material objectivity) and superstructure (cultural and moral/intellectual subjectivity). Thus, for Gramsci, the problem of revolution is no longer the ‘scientific’ analysis and identification of the objective (material/economic) conditions. These had been present in the West since the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The question, in the modern bourgeois world, is the formation and development of the subjective conditions. As Gramsci says, ‘ . . . men become conscious of fundamental confl icts on the level of ideology . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 164). And further, he notes in ‘Utopia,’ one of his early preprison essays: ‘It is not the economic structure that directly determines political action, but rather the interpretation given to it and to the so-called laws that govern its development’ (Gramsci 1958, 281–282). A strictly abstract and scientific analysis of the material economic conditions, though obviously necessary for understanding social reality, is not sufficient. What is required is the formation of a self-disciplined ‘personality’ (collective and institutional) that is politically and morally determined to act. And political action in turn presupposes both consciousness and will. These latter recall Gramsci’s syntheses of knowledge and passion, and of intellectuals and people. Nietzsche famously asserted that there are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena (Nietzsche 1966, 85). Gramsci may be said to perform a similar operation on knowledge and its relation to what is known. Thus, structural and material reality is not merely perceived through ideological and cultural prisms, but these prisms condition and transform the reality itself.

100

Benedetto Fontana

VII To sum up: Gramsci’s hegemony is a complex and highly articulated notion, defi ned by means of interlinked yet distinct polarities. It is to be understood as an element within the duality of force/consent and violence/ persuasion that to Gramsci characterizes the nature of power. It acquires concrete structure and specific content particularly during those periods in history in which the people or the masses either form the ground of political action or have become a force in politics. In the manner of the ancient Greek dichotomy between political (constitutional) and despotic (dominating) rule, hegemony may be seen as an alliance or association of groups that share similar interests, a consensual alliance under the leadership of a group pursuing the interest of the associated groups. Conceptually this is expressed by the dyad ‘domination/ leadership.’ A group exercises ‘leadership’ over ‘allied’ groups and exercises ‘domination’ (‘even with armed force’) over antagonistic groups. In this case, hegemony is opposed to dictatorship, where the latter represents domination and force and the former represents consent/persuasion/opinion. Underlying such a notion is the reciprocal relation between force and consent, such that hegemony may also delineate a balanced ‘equilibrium’ between force and consent, where force does not prevail ‘too greatly’ over consent. Alliance formation based on consent and on the autonomy of the constituent coalition partners requires the formation of a political-social group that is able to transcend narrow, particular interests (of a class, nation, or other social group) to more general universal ones. Thus hegemony describes a movement from the economic to the political. In addition, hegemony understood as the generation and organization of consent is directly related to the mechanisms and processes by which knowledge and beliefs are fi rst, produced, and second, disseminated. Here, the crux is the formation of a ‘conception of the world’ and its dissemination throughout the people. A conception of the world (an ‘ideology’ or a system of beliefs) is always opposed to different conceptions of the world. Thus, these are constantly in confl ict, in a ‘battle’ against each other, and the hegemonic conception is one that has become the ‘commonsense’ of the people. But a counter-conception is constantly generated, even if only embryonically, to challenge the prevailing commonsense. In effect, to be hegemonic is to be political both at the level of consciousness (subjective and intersubjective) and at the level of rule (power), such that to be political is to be hegemonic (or to strive towards hegemony, that is to be counter-hegemonic). For every hegemony presupposes a counter-hegemony. If this is the case, that is, if hegemonic = political = ruling, then the issue is the formation of a group or a subject capable of rule: thus, as Gramsci says, a hegemonic relationship is a pedagogic relationship—that is, the development of what Gramsci calls a ‘personality’ that is conscious, active, and autonomous—autonomous understood


101

as self -governing and self-ruling. Hegemony operates at two levels: fi rst, internally, the formation within the social group of self-discipline and self-government, that is, the self-constitution of the group into a coherent and active political actor, and second, externally, the extension and dissemination of the group’s conception of the world throughout the society. We conclude by recalling the centaur, for Machiavelli and for Gramsci the metaphor that embodies the dual nature of power: force and consent, violence and persuasion. Both elements defi ne political action. The question is to identify the ‘proper’ balance or proportion in the dyadic relation. For Gramsci, as for Machiavelli, the exercise of power (or the relation between ruler and ruled) rests (or should rest) on an inverse relationship between force and consent, which, in turn, depends upon the generation of consent. The more weight consent acquires, the less force is necessary. To Gramsci, the power and resilience of a socio-political order (the ‘State’) is defi ned by the individuation of consent and persuasion within concrete political and social structures. Hegemony is the institutionalization of consent and persuasion within both civil society and the state. Yet the element of force and domination, as the balancing and limiting pole of the dyad, cannot be eliminated. Machiavelli, Sheldon Wolin wrote, tried to establish a politics characterized by an ‘economy of violence.’ Hegemony represents Gramsci’s attempt in the modern world simultaneously to delineate and to construct such an economy. NOTES 1. See M. Haugaard, ed., Power: A Reader (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002) and H. Goverde, P. C. Cerny, M. Haugaard, and H. Lentner, eds., Power in Contemporary Politics: Theories, Globalizations (London: Sage Publications, 2000). 2. The literature on Gramsci’s hegemony is legion, and constantly growing. See, for example, G. A. Williams, ‘The Concept of Egemonia in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 21;4(1960):586–589; G. Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari: De Donato, 1970); C. Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci et l’Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975); P. Anderson, ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,’ New Left Review 100(1977):5–78; W. L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Cultural and Political Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); D. Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of A New Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). 3. See J. Cammett, Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967); A. Davidson, Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography (London: Merlin Press, 1977); M. Clark, Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution That Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). 4. On this see B. Fontana, ‘Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony,’ Journal of the History of Ideas 61;2(2000):305–326. See also

102

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

Benedetto Fontana B. Fontana, ‘Hegemony,’ in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York: Scribners, 2004). Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). Thucydides’ uses the term hegemony in various senses, such as military leadership (I, 128; II, 11; III, 105, 107), power (I, 94, 130; IV, 91; V, 7; VII, 15), and political leadership (I, 4, 25, 38, 76, 95–96; III, 10; V, 16, 47, 69; VI, 76, 82; VII, 56). On this, see V. Ehrenburg, The Greek State (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960). See also V. Ehrenburg, From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization during the 6th and 5th Centuries BC (London: Meuthen Books, 1973). Aristotle, Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 1277 b, 1278 b-1279 b, and 1333 a 39–1334 a 5. On Gramsci’s method and its relation to his political and theoretical enterprise, see J. Buttigieg, ‘Gramsci’s Method,’ boundary 2, 17(1990);2:60–81. See also the invaluable J. A. Buttigieg, ‘Introduction,’ in A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Volume 1 (New York: Columbia University Press). For an incisive analysis of the relation between politics, language, and conceptual formulation in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, see the discussion in J. A. Buttigieg, ‘Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci,’ boundary 2, 21(1994);2:98–138. N. Machiavelli, The Prince. H. C. Mansfield, Jr., trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). ‘Thus, you must know that there are two ways of fighting: one with laws, the other with force. The fi rst is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the fi rst is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man. This was covertly taught to princes by ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised. . . . To have as teacher a halfbeast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince must know how to use both natures, and one without the other is not durable’ (translation somewhat altered). On civil society and Gramsci, see especially N. Bobbio, ‘Gramsci e la concezione della società civile,’ P. Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari, 23–27 April 1967. Vol. I, 75–100 (Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci, 1975); E. Garin, ‘Politica e cultura in Gramsci (il problema degli intellettuali),’ in P. Rossi, ed., Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari, 23–27 April 1967. Vol. I, 37–74 (Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci, 1975); G. Nardone, Il pensiero di Gramsci (Bari: De Donato, 1971); C. Buci-Glucksman, Gramsci et l’Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie (Paris: Fayard, 1975); D. Germino, Antonio Gramsci: Architect of A New Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). See also J. A. Buttigieg, ‘Gramsci on Civil Society,’ boundary 2, 22(3):1–32; W. L. Adamson, ‘Gramsci and the Politics of Civil Society,’ Praxis International 3–4(1989):320–39; J. Texier, ‘Sur les sens de “société civile” chez Gramsci,’ Actuel Marx 5(1989):50–68. See also, J. Cohen and A. Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992). Perry Anderson, in ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,’ renders autorità as ‘domination.’ While Gramsci directly opposes dominio (domination) to moral and intellectual leadership, in this case Gramsci opposes ‘authority’ to hegemony because he wants to stress the nonvoluntary, binding, and coercive character of this particular type of authority. Here it must be understood as


12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

103

a legal command enforced by legal sanctions. Thus, in the case of hegemony dissent or disobedience carries no legal penalties, whereas in the case of authority disobedience is a violation of the law and penalized by the coercive force of the state. On the Marxian notion of the state, see K. Marx, ‘The Civil War in France [1871],’ in D. Fernbach, ed., The First International and After (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974). See also K. Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [1852],’ in D. Fernbach, ed., Surveys from Exile (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973); and F. Engels, ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State [1884],’ in Marx and Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: International Publishers, 1968). See also S. Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); G. Lichtheim, Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970) and R. C. Tucker, ‘The Political Theory of Classical Marxism’ in The Marxian Revolutionary Idea (New York: Norton, 1969). The notion of the state as educator, which of course harks back to Plato and to Aristotle, and which is historicized by Hegel, is central to Gramsci. As he notes, ‘The relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship,’ and, ‘The relationship between teacher and pupil is active and reciprocal so that every teacher is always a pupil and every pupil a teacher . . . [Such a relationship] exists between intellectual and nonintellectual sections of the population, between rulers and the ruled, élites and their followers, leaders and led, the vanguard and the body of the army’ (Gramsci 1971, 350). Thus an educational relation is hegemonic, and is also political. Ibid. Referring specifically to public opinion and its relation to the consensual basis of state power, Gramsci writes: ‘What is called “public opinion” is closely linked to political hegemony, that is, it is the point of contact between “civil society” and “political society,” between consent and force. The State, when it wants to initiate an action that is not too popular, will preventively create the public opinion desired, that is, it organizes and centralizes certain elements within civil society. History of “public opinion:” naturally elements of public opinion have existed even in Asiatic satrapies; but public opinion as it is understood today was born on the eve of the fall of the absolute states, that is, at the time of the struggle of the new bourgeois class for political hegemony and for the conquest of power. Public opinion is the political content of the public political will, one which is very possibly discordant and contradictory: thus there is the struggle for the monopoly of the organs of public opinion: newspapers, parties, parliament, in such a way that only one force models opinion and thus the national political will, reducing opposition to atomistic and disorganized dissent.’ What connects state and civil society is ‘public opinion.’ See Gramsci 1975, Q7§83. Gramsci sees that the formation and organization of opinion within the sphere of civil society are central to the generation of both hegemony and an opposing hegemonic movement. Thus public opinion can both legitimate and delegitimate state power. For a historical overview of the relation obtaining among communication media, politics, and their technological and economic foundation, see P. Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004). Gramsci 1971, 38–43, 323–325, 348–351. Gramsci’s writings on language, its relation to knowledge and to thought, and the manner in which it informs the politics and the socio-economic position of contending factions, are crucially related to his epistemology and to his understanding of revolutionary activity. The relation Gramsci establishes between hegemony and language is another important point of contact between Gramsci’s hegemony and that of

104

Benedetto Fontana the ancients. See F. LoPiparo, Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci (Bari: Laterza, 1979). For an excellent analysis, see also P. Ives, Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).

REFERENCES Adamson, W. L. 1980. Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Cultural and Political Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Adamson, W. L. 1987. Gramsci and the Politics of Civil Society. Praxis International 3–4:320–39. Anderson, P. 1977. The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. New Left Review 100:5– 78. Aristotle. 1999. Politics. H. Rackman, trans. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Avineri, S. 1971. The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bobbio, N. 1975. Gramsci e la concezione della società civile. In Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari 23–27 April 1967, Vol. 1, 75–100, ed. P. Rossi. Rome: RiunitiIstituto Gramsci. Buci-Glucksman, C. 1975. Gramsci et l’Etat: pour une théorie matérialiste de la philosophie. Paris: Fayard. Buttigieg, J. A. 1990. Gramsci’s Method. boundary 2 17(2):60–81. ———. 1992. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Volume 1. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1994. Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci. boundary 2 21(2):98–138. ———. 1995. Gramsci on Civil Society. boundary 2 22(3):1–32. Cammett, J. 1967. Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Clark, M. 1977. Antonio Gramsci and the Revolution that Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cohen, J. and A. Arato. 1992. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Davidson, A. 1977. Antonio Gramsci: Towards an Intellectual Biography. London: Merlin Press. Ehrenburg, V. 1960. The Greek State. New York: W. W. Norton. ———. 1973. From Solon to Socrates: Greek History and Civilization during the 6th and 5th Centuries BC. London: Meuthen Books. Engels, F. 1968. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State [1884]. In Marx and Engels, Selected Works. Moscow: International Publishers. Fontana, B. 2000. Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the Ancients on Hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas 61(2):305–326. Fontana, B. 2004. Hegemony. In Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Scribners. New York. Garin, E. 1975. Politica e cultura in Gramsci (il problema degli intellettuali). In Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari 23–27 April 1967. Vol. I, 37–74, ed. P. Rossi. Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci. Germino, D. 1990. Antonio Gramsci: Architect of A New Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.


105

Goverde, H. P., C. Cerny, M. Haugaard and H. Lentner, eds. 2000. Power in Contemporary Politics: Theories, Globalizations. London: Sage Publications. Gramsci, A. 1958. Utopia, in Avanti!, Piedmontese edition, 25 July 1918, XXII, no. 204, in Scritti giovanili, 281–282. Turin: Einaudi, ———. 1965. Lettere dal carcere. S. Caprioglio and E. Fubini, eds. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, eds. New York: International Publishers. ———. 1975. Quaderni del carcere. V. Gerratana, ed. Turin: Einaudi. ———. 1977. Socialismo e cultura, Il Grido del Popolo, 29 January 1916, in Scritti giovanili 1914–1918. Einaudi, Turin. 1975: 75, in Q. Hoare, ed., J. Mathews trans. Selections from Political Writings 1910 –1920. New York: International Publishers. Guthrie, W.K.C. 1971. The Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haimson, L. H. 1966. The Russian Marxists and the Origin of Bolshevism. Boston: Beacon Press. Haugaard, M., ed. 2002. Power: A Reader. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Hobbes, T. 1968. Leviathan [1651]. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Isocrates. 2000. Panegyricus. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Ives, P. 2004. Gramsci’s Politics of Language: Engaging the Bakhtin Circle and the Frankfurt School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lichtheim, G. 1970. Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Praeger Publishers. LoPiparo, F. 1979. Lingua, intellettuali, egemonia in Gramsci. Bari: Laterza. Machiavelli, N. 1985. The Prince. H. C. Mansfield, Jr,, trans. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marx, K. 1974. The Civil War in France [1871]. In The First International and After, ed. D. Fernbach.. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ———. 1973. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [1852]. In Surveys from Exile, ed. D. Fernbach. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Nardone, G. 1971. Il pensiero di Gramsci. Bari: De Donato. Nietzsche, F. 1966. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, W. Kaufmann, trans. New York: Vintage Books. Plato. 2000. Republic. P. Shorey, trans. Loeb Classic Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Rossi, P., ed. 1975. Gramsci e la cultura contemporanea, Proceedings of the international conference of Gramsci studies held at Cagliari 23–27 April 1967. Rome: Riuniti-Istituto Gramsci. Scruton, R. 1982. A Dictionary of Political Thought. New York: Hill and Wang. Starr, P. 2004. The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications. New York: Basic Books. Texier, J. 1989. Sur les sens de ‘société civile’ chez Gramsci. Actuel Marx 5:50– 68. Thucydides. 2002. The Peloponnesian War. C. F. Smith, trans. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Tucker, R. C. 1969. The Political Theory of Classical Marxism. In The Marxian Revolutionary Idea. New York: Norton. Vico, G. 1988. On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians Unearthed from the Origins of the Latin Language. Including the Disputation with the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia. L. M. Palmer, trans. Ithica: Cornell University Press.

106

Benedetto Fontana

Williams, G. A. 1960. The Concept of Egemonia in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation. Journal of the History of Ideas 21(4):586–589. Wolin, S. 1960. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

7

Hegemony, Subalternity, and Subjectivity in Early Industrial Sydney Kylie Smith

Traditional Australian national and labour history has focused on the major institutional factors and changes, which are said to have fashioned the nature of Australian society since European invasion in 1788.1 Despite recent advances in historical methodology and theorising, there are still vast silences and absences in these histories that have brought about the marginalization and exclusion of particular groups or people, not only from history but also from contemporary Australian society. This chapter argues that we can understand these processes of marginalization and exclusion through an application of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and by exploring the links between this theory, Gramsci’s notions of common sense and subalternity, and some psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity. These ideas are applied in particular to a group of working class youth in nineteenth century Sydney (Australia) called larrikins and by exploring the ways in which this group was constructed discursively at both the material and symbolic level—and its implications for similar groups in contemporary society.

HEGEMONY, COMMON SENSE, AND SUBJECTIVITY Many words have been written about the concept of hegemony as Gramsci developed it in the Prison Notebooks, and many of these words explore the relationships between structures and superstructures in the making of hegemony. This chapter argues that there is a subjective element to this theorisation of hegemony which is often overlooked, but with which Gramsci was intensely concerned. Gramsci saw clearly the potential for capitalism to reach right into the heart of the human self, and he expressed his ambiguity about this project and its implications for human social and personal life. The chapter suggests that by exploring the relationship between structures and superstructures at the level of the subjective, we can see the way in which subalternity is produced and reproduced in both the theory and practice of hegemony. There are links then between the notions of common sense, subalternity, and subjectivity that help to expand the complexity of

108

Kylie Smith

the theory of hegemony and demonstrate how hegemony works in a particular social and historical moment. The introduction to this volume raised the idea of hegemony as a complex process. In this theorization, it becomes apparent that the concept of hegemony, as Gramsci elaborated it, is not a simple shorthand for domination, but rather it attempts to deal with the complex relations between structures, superstructures, and human agency. In his concept of the historical bloc, Gramsci demonstrates that hegemony is formed at the intersection of social, political, and economic relations, and that it is only when these relations are aligned around certain nodal points, or “hegemonic principles” (Howson 2006, 23), that hegemony prevails. Hegemony, then, is not something that is imposed; rather, it is a form of leadership that is developed over time, with the active participation of the members of society, articulated in and through “civil society” (Buttigieg 1995, 2005; Fontana 2000). That is, it does not operate purely at the level of the economic, nor is it ever static, nor uncontested. Gramsci makes it quite clear often enough that hegemony is only really hegemony if it is established through a war of position that comes before the seizing of power, and that legitimate power is only that which has active consent based on moral and intellectual leadership. He also makes it quite clear that this process can and must happen through civil society—that no amount of economic or legislative coercion or military domination makes for hegemony. Hegemony lies in the relationship between the economic, political, and social spheres, and these cannot be separated one from the other. If hegemony is a complex process, this is because, if it is based on leadership and consent, it must continually adapt to the organic demands of the people themselves. Gramsci has shown that where these demands are actively repressed or pacified and absorbed into the hegemonic principles, without effecting real change, than coercion comes to dominate and hegemony no longer prevails. Subalternity and subjectivity are central to the theory of hegemony, and they operate through the dual concepts of common sense and hegemonic principles. If these are the core values that characterize a particular hegemony, then it is the nature of these values that will determine to what extent the hegemony is open and based on consent and leadership, or where it has become coercive and dominative (Howson 2006, 27–31). It is at the level of subjectivity that human agency operates—where hegemony is resisted, where it must penetrate into “hearts and minds.” Thus, it is around the hegemonic principles that both subjectivity and subalternity are created, and common sense, in this paradigm, is the discourse through which these principles are negotiated; it is the organic language of subalternity. The hegemonic principles of developing industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in this instance in Sydney, Australia, were based on the creation of a particular kind of citizen: a wage worker, a consumer, a private property holder. These principles relied on a transformation at the level of the self—the sublimation and repression


109

of so-called “animalistic” behaviours, the internalization of discipline required for capitalist processes, and the creation of desire for the products of capitalist markets. These are also the processes Gramsci observed taking place under Americanism and Fordism—the rationalization of capitalist ways of being as a new form of morality requiring the transformation of animalistic energy away from sexuality, violence, and drunkenness and into the productive and social relations of industrial capitalism. Hence, Gramsci argues that “the new type of man demanded by the rationalisation of production and work can not be developed until the sexual instinct has been suitably regulated” because the history of industrialism has always been a continuing struggle . . . against the element of “animality” in man. It has been an uninterrupted, often painful and bloody process of subjugating natural (i.e., animal and primitive) instincts to new, more complex and rigid norms and habits of order, exactitude and precision which can make possible the increasingly complex forms of collective life which are the necessary consequence of industrial development (Gramsci 1975, Q22§10). At the time in which he wrote this, that is, 1934, he noted that “the results to date, though they have great immediate practical value, are to a large extent purely mechanical: the new habits have not yet become second nature” (1975, Q22§10). While Gramsci remained ambiguous about the long-term success and consequence of these processes, he understood that they were not hegemonic until they were “second nature.” He also noted that the increase in psychoanalysis could be seen as “the expression of the increased moral coercion exercised by the state and society on single individuals and of the pathological crisis determined by this coercion” (1975, Q22§1). So, while he may have seen some value in these new habits, he noted that there would be problems where they were imposed coercively and that resistance to them was not only normal but was significant and necessary, part of the usual historical process. Resistance to this process can be linked with the creation of subalternity. If these principles were not negotiable, they created a discourse where people who did not comply were made subaltern but they were made subaltern at the level of the subjective—they were the wrong sort of people, there was something inherently wrong with them, not with the system or the society in which they lived. This was particularly evident from the nineteenth century with the rise of the urban, consumerist middle class, with its attendant moral and social reform programs (Lake 1986; McConville 1987). These movements were based on an almost scientific belief in human progress and improvement, that all people were capable of being productive members of society if they were self-disciplined, hard workers, moral, and proper. Human energy should be put into work and self-improvement, mastering of the mind and body, not dissipated into sexuality or alcoholism, and moral

110 Kylie Smith reform movements took up the cause of intemperance and prostitution with religious zeal (Roe 1965). Respectability was seen as the cornerstone of modern civilisation, an integral part of nation building. As Janet McCalman has shown, “respectability prescribed disciplines in behaviour which could alter the conception of the self. In demanding cleanliness, sobriety, extra-marital chastity, thrift, time-consciousness, self-reliance, manly independence and self-responsibility, it promoted an ego that was self-regulating, responsible and mature” (McCalman 1982, 90). As Gramsci suggests, however, this process of changing human behaviour was far-reaching and problematic: In order to achieve a new adaptation to the new mode of work, pressure is exerted over the whole social sphere, a puritan ideology develops which gives to the intrinsic brutal coercion the external form of persuasion and consent (Gramsci 1992, Q1§158). This is the nature of hegemony, where the factory is more than just a physical production line; it is a whole way of life. It is not just a structure, but is a whole set of social relations. The factory is everywhere, it is in culture and education, religion and leisure—all social relations and institutions become imbued with the rationality of capitalism. This entails a deliberate attempt “to create, with unprecedented speed and a consciousness of purpose unique in history, a new type of worker and of man” (Gramsci 1996, Q4§52). To effect this change, man must be persuaded, coerced, or forced into accepting new kinds of morality, ideology, behaviour, and discipline. For Gramsci, this process is dependent on the social and moral/intellectual realms as much as on any political or economic coercions. It is only when the practices and discourses of everyday life are so pervasive as to convince man that he changes himself by his own will and brings about self-discipline that a historical bloc can be said to be “hegemonic” (Gramsci 1992, Q1§158). For most, the incentives of evolving capitalism were strong enough to bring about a complete transformation in work and social life. This is, however, a tenuous transformation, never fully complete, never stable. This is particularly true at the level of the personal—as Freud argued, “modern life” is a kind of nightmare, made bearable by “palliative measures” which deflect, substitute for, or numb the pain of living. This is because, “Life, as we fi nd it, is too hard for us; it brings too many pains, disappointments and impossible tasks” (Freud 1975, 12). If man is driven by the pleasure principle, and this pleasure is “happiness,” its attainment in the world is problematic. Society is not constructed for the unqualified happiness of every individual; to pursue it brings only suffering. This suffering is twofold; it stems from the initial repression of man’s natural instincts, what Gramsci called his “animality”—sexual pleasure, physical comfort, psychic joy—and it stems from the frustration of fi nding appropriate sublimations. For Freud, “the task here is that of shifting the instinctual aims


111

in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world” (Freud 1975, 16). These frustrations are relational, they occur because the instincts are antagonistic with existing social relations that are working to eliminate instinctual behaviour. Whether for good or bad, Freud noted that the sublimation of the instincts was becoming essential for life in the “civilised,” industrial world, and that this would have consequences of a particular psychological nature. While Gramsci remained suspicious of psychoanalysis itself, this process of repression and sublimation as an aspect of industrialism was evident to him. In his note on the “Problem of Collective Man,” Gramsci elaborated on the potentially hegemonic nature of these processes when he wrote that the aim of the state “is always that of creating new and higher types of civilization: of adapting the civilization and the morality of the broadest popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production: hence of evolving even physically new types of humanity” (Gramsci 1971, 242). This was not a simple process, firstly because Gramsci saw quite clearly that people were not determined simply by the economic circumstances into which they were born; rather, people were made at the intersection of many different influences on thought and action: “man cannot be conceived of except as historically determined man—i.e., man who has developed, and who lives, in certain conditions, in a particular social complex or totality of social relations” (Gramsci, 1971, 244), and that this social totality consists of the variety of influences and associations that are sometimes contradictory (Gramsci, 1971, 265) but which all contribute to the formulation of a particular conception of the world (Gramsci, 1971, 324). Secondly, he argued that people were still free to choose their way of being in the world and that this complicated the matter further—that is, “the will and initiative of men themselves can not be left out of account” (Gramsci 1971, 244). In the same way that Marx argued that men made themselves but not in circumstances of their own choosing, so Gramsci was aware of the tension between structures and human agency. But for Gramsci, the situation is more complex because of the importance he gave to the dialectical nature of hegemony. While it may be the case that a particular hegemony may require a particular kind of person, it is also true that people themselves shape hegemony and that they do this based on the creation of philosophy, or through their particular conception of the world: “Every man, in as much as he is active, i.e., living, contributes to modifying the social environment in which he develops (to modifying certain of its characteristics or to preserving others); in other words, he tends to establish ‘norms,’ rules of living and of behaviour” (Gramsci, 1971, 265), and in so doing “reacts upon the State and the party, compelling them to reorganize continually and confronting them with new and original problems to solve” (Gramsci, 1971, 267). In some notes on “The Study of Philosophy,” Gramsci differentiates, however, between ways of thinking and being that he classifies as common

112 Kylie Smith sense as opposed to philosophy. He does this in an attempt to grapple with the complexities of the formation of human consciousness. If common sense, in this usage, is the world view that a person takes uncritically from their environment, philosophy is the ability to be self-reflective, selfcritical. “Is it better to think” he asks, without having a critical awareness, in a disjointed and episodic way? . . . to take part in a conception of the world mechanically imposed by some external environment, i.e., by the many social groups in which everyone is automatically involved from the moment of his entry into the conscious world . . . or . . . is it better to work out consciously and critically one’s own conception of the world and thus, in connection with the labours of one’s own brain, choose one’s sphere of activity, be one’s own guide, refusing to accept passively and supinely from outside the moulding of one’s personality? (Gramsci 1971, 267). This does not automatically imply some kind of “right thinking” (where “common sense” is transformed into the “good sense” of socialist consciousness) but can be applied more broadly to the way in which everyday people make themselves in the world. In some of the work that has been written about subaltern social groups, there is a tendency to attribute this critical self-consciousness only to particular elements of society, for example, the organized working class or the party, and therefore to denigrate subaltern conceptions of the world as mere bad common sense, to assume that the personality of the subaltern is uncritical, passive, determined. In the Australian setting, this dichotomy is not so easy to sustain. The issue of common sense and subaltern social groups in Australia is made more complex by the historical circumstances in which there was no peasant folklore to be overcome but rather, an already potentially radicalized and coerced working class. In this situation, the creation of capitalist “good sense” was based on an attempt to close down society around hegemonic principles and to negate the ensuing resistance to this project. This resistance can be seen to have taken place at the level of the subjective because it was here that the hegemonic principles were aimed. Subalternity was created around subjectivity—the resistance to wage labour, to respectability and discipline, to consumption and commodification. The level of the subject, the self, was the last frontier in a war against hegemony that had become dominative and coercive at the structural level and ideological at the superstructural. The self was the last thing for sale, and many subaltern people in Australia were made subaltern because they would not sell themselves, because they did not buy either the nightmare of production or the dream of consumption. To dismiss subaltern groups for their rejection of these processes would be to fall prey to the tendency to assume that subaltern worldviews are nonsense, something that Gramsci himself warned us against. Too often, for Gramsci, subaltern groups are represented in ways that actively seek to diminish their importance, that is, “instead of studying the origins of a


113

collective event and the reasons why it was collective, the protagonist was singled out and one limited oneself to writing a pathological biography, all too often starting off from motives that had not been confi rmed or that could be interpreted differently. For a social elite, the members of subaltern groups always have something of a barbaric or pathological nature about them” (Gramsci 1975, Q25§1). In this way, subaltern groups are easy to dismiss, especially where they operate at the level of the subjective.

LARRIKINS AND LABOUR HISTORY This is a process that has been facilitated by the discipline of labour history itself. This chapter, and my research more broadly, is concerned with the creation of one particular subaltern social group in Australian history who have come to be known as larrikins. The term larrikin is now ubiquitous in Australian society, almost synonymous with “Australian-ness” itself. It has become associated with the quintessential Australian male—fun-loving, antiauthoritarian, but always lovable, always within the law. Yet this usage does not reflect the history of larrikins in their own time, how they were considered, or how they were dealt with. Furthermore, this usage is itself applied unproblematically; there is no serious history of the term, or of its origins, and the people who constituted this original group are markedly absent from both Australian national and labour histories. This is because, while there has been much work in the vein of social history in Australia, labour history itself remains largely concerned with the institutions of organised labour and its related culture. 2 This is problematic, because when we study only the organised working class, we end up talking about a particular kind of working class, where it is assumed that a “correct” consciousness is the kind that agitates for better wages and conditions and seeks to ameliorate the working experience in general. Those who fall outside this area are at best invisible, at worst guilty of a kind of false consciousness and are accused of failing to reach their potential or of taking energy from the revolutionary cause. This kind of history “reads history in the light of subsequent preoccupations, and not in fact as it occurred. Only the successful (in the sense of those whose aspirations anticipated successful evolution) are remembered. The blind alleys, the lost causes, and the losers themselves are forgotten” (Thompson 1991, 9). Are larrikins then, a lost cause, a blind alley? For the majority of Australian historians, they have fallen victim to the “enormous condescension of posterity” (Thompson 1991, 9), which sees larrikinism as an anathema to the organised labour movement. For example, Andrew Metcalfe suggests that the larrikin mode of resistance did nothing to progress the cause of working people and had the effect of actually dividing the working class (Metcalfe 1988). Similarly, in their assessment of larrikins, Australian historians Connell and Irving note that “the pushes” (as larrikin “gangs” were

114

Kylie Smith

called) may have taken energy away from a more organised attack on property relations (Connell and Irving 1992, 112). This perspective prevails because, I would argue, Australian labour history traditionally privileges the respectable. This is not entirely a contemporary problem as it reflects the importance of respectability in the language and practice of class throughout the nineteenth century in Sydney itself (Connell and Irving 1992, 83– 125; Smith 2002). Unions could only hope to affect change in working conditions if they were seen as respectable, an inheritance of their skilled artisan tradition. Similarly, respectability was often a way of maintaining dignity in the face of capitalist exploitation (Metcalfe 1988). Respectability, however, has always been a double-edged sword, and this is because it is so intrinsically a part of capitalist rhetoric and is tightly connected to the project of imposing labour discipline, as Gramsci so clearly articulated in his work on Americanism and Fordism. This problem of respectability has been reinforced in Australian history, and to some extent in international labour history more generally, largely because of an insistence on a split between the organized and the spontaneous elements of resistance to capitalist social relations. Resistance is seen to emerge from the objective conditions of working class life, and to be worthy of study, only when it takes the form of an apparently organized and disciplined frontal attack on the institutions of capitalist power as embodied in the state or workplace. Spontaneous elements who refused to be part of this process are seen as problematic, pathologised, and dismissed, but Gramsci warned against this when he said, “Ignoring, and even worse, disdaining, so-called spontaneous movements . . . may often have very bad and serious consequences” (Gramsci 1996, Q3§48), not only because spontaneous movements will be reacted to by the state (and this reaction is in itself revealing) but because it is in spontaneity that the seeds of an organic hegemony—a war of position—can reside. It is not the intention of my research to romanticize particular subaltern social groups or to attribute to them politically revolutionary consciousness where there was none. It is the case that larrikins in particular can be said to have been in “a state of anxious defence” (Gramsci 1975, Q25§2) and that their rebelliousness occurred through subjectivity at one level at least because they were given no other way in which to express themselves. But it is also the case that their actions were consciously and overtly aimed at the symbols of capitalist life as it was evolving in Australia and that, sensing the danger they posed, the state acted accordingly. Interestingly, in this scenario it was not just the state that sought to exclude particular groups from both political and civil society. Larrikins were workers, but they did not form part of the “glorious” labour activism of the late nineteenth century Australia. This is because, at that time, the spontaneous element of working class resistance was actively marginalized by the organized working class as much as by the state because of the overt complicity between that organized working class and the processes and institutions


115

of capital themselves. Hence, larrikins continue to be marginalized from the discourse of Australian labour history, and have, in fact, been sanitized into the wider narrative of mainstream nationalist history. These histories assume that the existing literature about larrikins is unproblematic, and in doing so, they leave unanswered some basic questions; that is, at the level of the material, who were larrikins precisely and why were they considered so problematic and, at the level of the discursive, what are the processes by which they were marginalized and excluded, and what does this reveal about Australian society more broadly?

LARRIKIN SUBJECTIVITY AND SUBALTERNITY By larrikins, then, I am referring to groups of working class youth much complained about by the Sydney press and police for their attacks on “respectable” citizenry, in the form of insults, assaults, loitering, riots, and resisting arrest. I am also referring to larrikinism as it was described by its contemporaries: a “culture” of overt sexuality and high costume, drinking, dancing, gambling, violent sports, and a quasi-gang organisation. There are similarities between this group of urban working class youth and the hoodlums and hooligans being noted at the same time in the world’s major port cities of New York, San Francisco, and London. This is not a coincidence—Sydney was the great port city of the south Pacific, and the maritime influence on larrikinism is significant. The daily traffic through the ports where many larrikins worked as casual labourers was intense, and the labour force on Sydney’s docks numbered at least four thousand (Fry 1956, 66). It is from here that the Australian radical dockworker tradition emerged, as it did in other major port cities around the world at this time. 3 While it is difficult to make a defi nitive statement about the national origins of larrikins, this influence was not unnoticed in their own time. Government census statistics were especially concerned with the countries of origin of the working classes, and data shows that more than 30 per cent of the metropolitan population was born overseas. In 1881, 33.36 per cent of Sydney’s population was born in England, Ireland, or Scotland, and another 3.6 per cent were listed as “foreign.” By 1895, this amounted to 149,200 people from England, 75,000 from Ireland, and 36,800 from Scotland, with a further 3,500 from America and 1,074 from Canada (Coghlan 1887, 773). Given that most of these people preferred to settle in the city, because they had come from cities in their places of origin and were generally semi- and unskilled labourers, artisans, or sailors (Fry 1956), it is safe to assume that their influence on larrikin culture was considerable. Irish radicalism and British “cockney” in particular can be linked to larrikinism through the provenance of song, poetry, dialect, slang, and distinctive costume, especially hats and shoes (McLachlan 1950; Pearson 1983). Furthermore, the English and Irish in

116 Kylie Smith particular are proportionally over-represented in the arrest figures for “crimes against good order” discussed below, which indicates they were a significant element in the groups that police considered larrikin. Ethnic or otherwise, this was a community continually under scrutiny from the popular press, the police, and other social commentators. In 1878, in his Annual Report to Parliament, Edmund Fosbery, the inspector general of police, referred to larrikins for the fi rst time as a distinct social group with specific problems: No one can read the complaints and comments in the Press respecting the increasing annoyance suffered by the Public from the disorderly conduct and petty misdemeanours of youths who assemble together in large numbers . . . without being aware that the nuisance of the socalled larrikin element is greatly on the increase (Fosbery 1878, 565). Larrikins’ greatest crime, according to the press, appeared to be their blatant disregard for respectable society and respectable leisure activities. Their propensity to be seen in public wearing garish clothes, in overt displays of sexuality with equally garish women, offended the moral majority no end (Finch 1993, 76). They were more interested in vulgar pastimes like bare-knuckle boxing and rough dancing than cricket and rowing (Murray 1973, 53). This was problematic for a society so heavily concerned with the creation of a respectable and disciplined citizenry. This was a new phenomenon in Australia, with a short history of only forty years since the cessation of transportation. Continuous attempts at social engineering designed to eradicate the convict stain, or any traces of convictism in the population, had met with some success but had never been totalising. From the 1870s onwards, the growth of the idea of Australia as a self-sufficient nation necessitated the creation of a stable labour market with stable patterns of production, consumption, and acquisition (Davidson 1991). That this required more than just a work ethic was obvious to those attempting to organise Australian society. Anyone could be made to work, but they could not be made to like it, or the way of life it entailed, until it appeared to be the normal way of social organization. The discursive processes that accompanied the structural creation of a particular kind of wage-earning labour force (compliant, self-regulating, punctual, thrifty, sober, and individualised) were essential then to the normalisation of life in all its forms under capitalism in this period. As the theories of both Freud and Gramsci suggest, there are strong links between respectability, sexuality, and discipline, which impact on our understanding of larrikinism. It has already been noted that respectability meant a transformation of the self, not just of externals but of the way in which people thought and felt about themselves. Given the animalistic history of the Australian “proletariat,”4 the repression of the instincts was paramount to this process. In this sense, then, the factory was everywhere. Social and moral reform programs can be seen


117

as attempts to instill factory discipline right into the heart of the self. If a respectable appearance was the defi ner of normalcy, then disciplining of the self was essential. This was not just a disciplining of external behaviours (which anyone could “fake” from nine to five) but was a psychological process that sought to bring about self-discipline in thoughts, motives, and understandings. It required a complete identification of self as a particular kind of worker and human being, and in making work respectable, work itself became normalised and idealised. So did the disciplines required to ensure stability in the work force and in capitalist social, economic, and political relations. A failure to adopt this way of being in the world became, then, an abnormal and individual “pathology.” The “pathologising” of the larrikin was evident in the way in which the contemporary press dealt with the phenomenon. If the term “larrikin” is now a common one in the Australian lexicon—and is now used to refer to a person, usually male, who displays a mischievous sort of antiauthoritarianism—this is because of a long process by which the real social threat of larrikinism was romanticized and trivialized, a process actively undertaken by the press in the late nineteenth century that has defused much of the larrikins’ original meaning and threat (Connell and Irving 1992; Rickard 1998). This is in itself a hegemonic process, but Gramsci’s theory and method of the subaltern helps to make sense of the consequences of this process. In his analysis of the histories of David Lazzaretti and his group of followers (who were active in Italy in the same time period as larrikins), Gramsci noted that bourgeois journalists and authors had the habit of removing collective events among subaltern groups from their wider historical context and of pathologising the individuals involved. Subaltern activities then were seen as a kind of individual madness, barbaric and primitive, with no real significance for the class struggle of that moment (Gramsci 1975, Q25§1). This is certainly the case with many public responses to larrikins. In 1892, The Bulletin described larrikinism as epitomised by: Idleness, destruction of property, acts of violence, obstructing the highway, bad language, the assumption of an aggressively disrespectful attitude, noise, dirt, profanity, ignorance, an unshaven aspect, a retreating forehead, a fishy eye, a braided coat, a soft black hat, bell bottomed trousers, high heeled boots and a general and promiscuous cussedness of demeanour [emphasis added] (Sept 10, 4). This kind of characterisation was typical and an essential part of the process of “othering” larrikinism. Larrikins were constructed as an individual, not social, problem, a choice made willfully, a deviant other against which the normal was defi ned. Popular fiction and other journalistic pieces had the further effect of showing larrikins and larrikinism in their worst possible light, particularly emphasising their animalistic or bestial natures, especially in comparison to the fi ner sensibilities of

118 Kylie Smith the civilised upper classes. A sensationalistic “journalist” Ambrose Pratt wrote two novels and several journalistic pieces that portrayed larrikinism as a system of organised gangs using primitive initiation practices, based on a coerced form of loyalty, ready to kill those who betrayed them, and with simplistic and uneducated understandings of politics and society (Pratt 1900; Pratt 1901; Pratt 1902). Even the most famous and the supposedly most sympathetic treatment of larrikins, Louis Stone’s novel Jonah, portrays larrikins as dim-witted, prone to emotional extremes, violent and reactionary, and ultimately capable of only tragedy (Stone 1933). The mainstream press varied in its treatment of larrikins over time, initially showing some sympathy for the exuberance of youth, progressing to disdain for their supposed immorality and laziness, and later becoming more active in their portrayal of larrikins as a deviant subculture of violence and animalism that needed to be eradicated if Australia was going to progress as a civilised nation. This was particularly so late in the century as the question of Australian national identity became more pertinent in the lead up to federation. The Bulletin played a major role in this process, transforming larrikins from harmless youth into a social and personal evil as they sought to valorise the romantic image of the noble bushman as the national type (Morgan 1997). More intense vitriol came from the pen of bourgeois visitors to Sydney, who lamented this “dark underworld” for its lack of civilisation, the bestial and primitive nature of its inhabitants, and their unwillingness to become productive members of “civilised” (or capitalist) society (Twopenny 1973; Gould 1974). In this way, the bourgeois press facilitated fear and hysteria about larrikins, but removed any class content from their activities, paving the way for the coercive elements of the state to step in. This coercion is most clearly evident in the changing definitions of, and responses to, crime in this period. In 1870, for example, a group of behaviours labelled “Crimes Against Good Order” included offences such as drunkenness, drunk and disorderly and indecent, riotous, or offensive behaviour. As a result of extensive parliamentary debates about the problem of larrikinism, and the desire to tighten criminal law procedures in an attempt to eradicate them, by 1891 this category was extended to include crimes such as vagrancy; threatening or abusive language; being an idle or disorderly person; gambling; prize fighting; public mischief; escape from custody; conduct lewd or scandalous; and hindering or resisting arrest. It was these activities that larrikin types were most often arrested for, and arrest rates rose accordingly—in the single year 1885, there were 32,078 arrests and 28,417 convictions of males alone. In the ten-year period of 1880–1890, there were 272,364 male and 60,332 female arrests, and 242,544 male and 54,692 female convictions under the “offences against good order” category. This is a 90 per cent increase in arrests under this category from the previous ten-year period.5 Whereas, in 1861, arrests in this category accounted for 52 per cent of all arrests, in 1899 they accounted for 88 per cent of all arrests in the city of Sydney (Garton


119

1991, 22–23). This activity on the part of the state was a deliberate attempt to control and defuse the threat of larrikinism. It is interesting to note, however, that at the same time, thinking about the role of prisons shifted and a debate ensued about whether prisons should not rather be places of reform than deterrent or pure punishment.6 It was with this idea in mind that Frederick Neitenstein, who had been in charge of the industrial school ship system, was appointed to comptroller general of prisons in 1896 (Garton 1982; Scrivener 1996). Neitenstein brought with him an extensive knowledge of international prison systems and some of the latest penological theories, as well as strong views on the issue of larrikinism. While he suggested that “it is an undoubted fact that there is a great deal of undisciplined animalism on the part of certain of our young men” (Neitenstein 1896, 63), he believed the current prison regime of pure physical punishment would do little to put an end to their animalism. Accordingly, he amended the harsh physical punishment system and, while keeping the inmates separate, set them on a course of physical and moral improvement “on the principle of ‘the sound mind, the sound body’ theory.” However, Neitenstein is quick to point out that prison was not necessarily the answer for larrikinism: In the suppression of larrikinism, too much has been left to the police and to the prisons; but other measures should be taken before the disease is allowed to attain full development. . . . In most cases there is no real vice or harm about the majority of these lads. They have the spirits and virility natural to their age. Society should consider that it has some obligation to them, and should not neglect its duty (Neitenstein 1896, 64). Neitenstein was not the only official to try and link larrikinism to changes in the nature of Australian society. While Police Inspector Fosbery’s calls for increased police and court powers remained consistent, his ideas about punishment also came to incorporate the need for social change as well as physical discipline. In 1880 he commented that The idle and dissolute habits of many of the youth in large cities may I think be also attributed to a change in the tone of social organization and an absence of restraint upon the young, especially exemplified in the discontinuance to a great extent of the practice of apprenticing boys to a trade or handicraft, in substitution of which, large numbers of young people of both sexes can now find employment in factories where they can earn good wages, giving them a command of money and long hours of leisure, unrestrained by parental control (Fosbery 1880, 138). There is much in this worth considering. Firstly, Fosbery makes quite clear the link between larrikinism and the changing nature of work. This was a problem noted fi fteen years earlier with the establishment of the industrial school ship system, where Neitenstein had already recognised the

120

Kylie Smith

futility of teaching vagrant youth specific skills when there was no longer any employment for them in these areas (Smith 2004). Hence, the forms of punishment instituted in prisons and reform schools were centred on mental and physical discipline. Neitenstein’s and Fosbery’s assessments of larrikins are revealing in this respect. The problem was not that larrikins were unemployed or refused to work, it was that they conducted themselves outside of work in ways that showed they were not moral or respectable, they were not disciplined. Both officials were hesitant to label these young people as particular types, and Neitenstein especially was hesitant to see them punished, but this did not prevent the clear articulation, from the state, of an awareness of a problem that was linked to social changes, and that needed to be dealt with on a psychological basis. In his theories of the development of the self, Freud stresses the importance for ““modern civilisation” of the ability to control the human passions (Freud 2001). Overt expressions of sexuality, violence and aggression, the lack of self-discipline, the use of alcohol—all of these things in larrikins Freud would find significant. It is no coincidence that one of the most frequent complaints about larrikin men and women was their lack of morality, their physical and sexual aggressiveness and openness. Along similar lines to Freud’s own observations (1975, 41), Gramsci suggests that: The new industrialism requires monogamy; it does not want the workingman to squander his nervous energies in the anxious and unruly search for sexual gratification. The worker who goes to his job after a wild night is not a good worker; excitement of the passions does not go with the timed movement of machines of productive human motions (Gramsci 1996, Q4§52). If, as Freud suggests, there are three ways to deal with the repression of instincts required from work—to deflect, to substitute, or to intoxicate—then it is possible that larrikinism is a combination of all three of these responses. At one level, larrikin behaviour can be seen as substitutions for happiness—if larrikins found their work so unfulfilling, then it is not surprising they would turn to wild forms of leisure that can be seen as “essentially a protest against their own submission to labour discipline throughout the week” (Golder and Hogg 1987, 67). It is also possible to express those instincts, but as Freud suggests, this becomes increasingly difficult in a world that cannot tolerate those outside the “norm.” It is in this sense that the psycho-social theories of Freud connect with Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Freud was quite clear that “norms” of human behaviour were socially constructed, indeed, much of his psychoanalytic practice was based around attempts not just to understand mental illness but to examine the ways in which “normal” human behaviour was constructed. The development of the self could not be understood outside of its social and historical context (Bocock 1983, 157). Of particular


121

pertinence to this study is Freud’s suggestion that aggression, a natural human instinct, is an important aspect of healthy sexuality, and that the forces that would tame this aggression and sexuality, such as disgust, shame, and morality, are imposed from the outside (Freud 2001, 157). This taming process was essential to the creation of industrial capitalism in Australia in this period.

CONCLUSION Through the prism of larrikins, then, we can see the way in which the historic bloc operated in late nineteenth century Australia. Larrikins were constructed at the economic level through structural changes to the nature of work and the increasing level of deskilling, casualisation, and disciplining of work places. At the political level, they were created through coercive measures from the state involving increased surveillance, imprisonment, and punishments, and they were created at the social level through a narrative of “othering.” These levels demonstrate the spheres of the historic bloc, but it is important to note that this in itself does not constitute hegemony. The economic and political forces that acted upon larrikins were immediate and conjunctural. They continued, but in different forms, with differing effects. It is at the level of the social, however, that the hegemonic processes around larrikins fi nd completion. Without the symbolic practices that created larrikin behaviour as, fi rstly, a moral pathology, and secondly, as something quintessentially Australian, then the economic and political forces that acted on people’s sense of themselves, and their position within society, would not have been possible. In resisting these forces, larrikins articulated a refusal to deliver themselves to the factory door of capital, but they also helped to reinforce the hegemonic principles that they sought to avoid. This is not to label them failures or to blame them for the actions of the state. If they had not been excluded from the broader working class at that time, then the nature of class relations in Australia would have looked markedly different. It is this lesson that we can take from larrikins into the contemporary social and political situation. Gramsci argues that “true” hegemony resides in the process of a war of position. The idea that revolution lies in a war of movement has been proven false in theory and in practice, not least because a war of movement, in a frontal attack on the state, does not have a basis in leadership and consent through which power is maintained, but also because a war of movement does little more than ape the tactics of the enemy. If capitalist social relations seek to act on the heart of the self, and to exclude from political engagement those groups who do not conform to the new hegemonic principles, then to dismiss or overlook groups who resist at this particular level is to dismiss and overlook potentials for a truly organic hegemony. More than this, it is to overlook the fact that capitalist social relations have

122

Kylie Smith

bought about a complete transformation in ways of thinking and being in the world to the extent that alternatives become unthinkable, and reformism remains the norm. Many are wary of individualism and identity politics, and sometimes for good reason, but if we continue to ignore the way in which capitalism seeks to transform human nature itself, we will continue to ignore possibilities for real social change.

NOTES 1. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as K. Smith, “Subjectivity, Hegemony and the Subaltern in Sydney, 1870–1900,” Rethinking Marxism 19 (Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2007), 169–179. http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. A recent survey of research interests and projects in Labour History revealed that of sixty researchers surveyed, twenty-one expressed interest in industry studies, twenty in political movements and thirteen in trade unions and activism. See M. Kerr, “Current Research Interests in Australian Labour History,” (2004). 3. The significance of maritime culture for larrikinism will be discussed further in my forthcoming doctoral thesis, especially to what extent larrikins can be considered part of Linebaugh and Rediker’s “motley crew”. See P. Linebaugh and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra, (2000) 4. By “animalistic proletariat” I am referring to the longer history of the coerced working class in Australia, with its origins in transported convicts from England. The moral degeneracy of these large groups of young men had been a major concern for the early administrators of the penal colony, and an even greater concern when they became free men upon whom the future of “English civilization” in the antipodes rested. See in particular M. Roe, Quest for Authority (1965) and A. Davidson, The Invisible State (1991). 5. Crime statistics compiled from S. Mukherjee, Sourcebook: 252 (1989) and NSW Statistical Register (1890), Part III:269–270. 6. Prison Reform, Parliamentary Debates 1894–5;6:973

REFERENCES Bocock, R. 1983. Sigmund Freud. London: Routledge. Buttigieg, J. A. 1995. Gramsci on civil society. boundary 2 22(3):1–32. ———. 2005. The contemporary discourse on civil society: a Gramscian critique. boundary 2 32(1):33–52. Coghlan, T. A. 1887. The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales. Sydney: Statistician’s Office. Connell, R. W. and T. H. Irving. 1992. Class Structure in Australian Society: Poverty and Progress. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. Davidson, A. 1991. The Invisible State: The Formation of the Australian State 1788–1901. Melbourne: Cambridge. Finch, L., ed. 1993. On the streets: working class youth culture in the nineteenth century. In Youth Subculture: Theory, History and the Australian Experience, 75–79, ed. R. White. Hobart: National Clearinghouse for Youth Studies. Fontana, B. 2000. Logos and Kratos: Gramsci and the ancients on hegemony. Journal of the History of Ideas 61(2):305–326.


123

Fosbery, E. 1878. Police Department Annual Report. Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly. Sydney: NSW Goverment Printer. ———. 1880. Police Department Annual Report. Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly. Sydney: NSW Goverment Printer. Freud, S. 1975. Civilisation and its Discontents (1930). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. 2001. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Volume VII, 123–124, ed. J. Strachey. London: Vintage with Hogarth Press. Fry, E. C. 1956. The Condition of the Urban Wage Earning Class in Australia in the 1880’s. PhD Thesis. Canberra: Department of History, Australian National University. Garton, S. 1982. Bad or mad? Developments in incarceration in NSW 1880–1920. In What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History, 89–110, ed. The Sydney Labour History Group. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Gould, N. 1974. Town and Country: Stray Notes on Australia (1896). Ringwood: Penguin. Garton, S. 1991. Pursuing Incorrigible Rogues: Patterns of Policing in NSW 1870– 1930. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 77(3):16–29. Golder, H. and R. Hogg. 1987. Policing Sydney in the Late Nineteenth Century. In Policing in Australia: Historical Perspectives, ed. M. Finnane. Kensington: University of New South Wales Press. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Hoare, Q. and N. Nowell Smith, eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ———. 1975. Quaderni del Carcere. Gerratana, V., trans. and ed. Turin: Eianudi. ———. 1992. Prison Notebooks Volume I. Buttigieg, J. A., ed. and trans., A. Callari trans. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1996. Prison Notebooks Volume II. Buttigieg, J. A., trans. and ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Green, M. 2000. Gramcsi Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern. Rethinking Marxism 14(3):1–24. Hobsbawm, E. 1965. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Kerr, M. 2004. Current Research Interests In Australian Labour History. Labour History 87. Nov:245–251. Lake, M. 1986. The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context. Historical Studies 22(86):116–131. Linebaugh, P. and M. Rediker. 2000. The Many-headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. London: Verso. New South Wales Statistical Register. 1890. Sydney: NSW Government Printer. McCalman, J. 1982. Class and Respectability in a working class suburb: Richmond, Victoria before the Great War. Historical Studies 20(78):90–103. McConville, C. 1987. Rough Women, Respectable Men and Social Reform: A Response to Lake’s ‘Masculinism’. Historical Studies 22(88):432–440. McLachlan, N. 1950. Larrikinism: An Interpretation. MA Thesis. Melbourne: Dept. of Sociology, University of Melbourne. Metcalfe, A. 1988. For Freedom and Dignity: Historical Agency and Class Struggle in the Coalfields of New South Wales. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. Morgan, G. 1997. The Bulletin and the Larrikin: moral panic in late nineteenth century Sydney. Media International Australia 85:17–23. Mukherjee, S. 1989. Sourcebook of Australian Criminal and Social Statistics 1804– 1988. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. Murray, J. 1973. Larrikins: Nineteenth Century Outrage. Melbourne: Lansdowne. Neitenstein, F. 1880. Police Department Annual Report. In Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly 1881–1882. Sydney: NSW Government Printer.

124

Kylie Smith

Pearson, G. 1983. Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears. London: Macmillan. Pratt, A. 1901. “Push” Larrikinism in Australia. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, July. Pratt, A. 1902. The Great “Push” Experiment. London: Grant Richards. Rickard, J. 1998. Lovable Larrikins and Awful Ockers. Journal of Australian Studies 56:78–85. Roe, M. 1965. Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia 1835–1851. Parkville: Melbourne University Press. Scrivener, G. 1996. Rescuing the rising generation: Industrial schools in NSW 1859–1910. PhD Thesis. Sydney: Dept, of Sociology, University of Western Sydney. Smith, K. 2002. Radical and Class Language in the NSW Vindicator and People’s Advocate BA Honours Thesis. Wollongong: School of History and Politics, University of Wollongong. Smith, K. 2004. Labour Discipline and the Industrial School Sydney in Sydney 1870–1900. Alpheus: Faculty of Arts Online Postgrad Journal, July. http:// www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/ejournal. Stone, L. 1933. Jonah. Sydney: The Endeavour Press. Thompson, E. P. 1991. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin. ———. 1995. The Poverty of Theory, or an Orrery of Errors. London: Merlin Press. Twopenny, R. E. N. 1973. Town Life in Australia (1883). Sydney: Sydney University Press.

8

Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour Andrew Wells

INTRODUCTION This paper adapts Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to the colonial setting.1 Gramsci once speculated that Asia would become central to global capitalism as the dynamic centre of the world economy would move to the Pacific Rim. While there is little explicit discussion by Gramsci on colonialism, and none on forms of colonialism in Asia, his writing on the Southern Question, as well as briefer notes on Italian foreign policy and international relations, are suggestive and occasionally explicit on colonialism (Kiernan 1995, 171–90). This is not the fi rst attempt to view Asia in a Gramscian context. The subaltern studies approach has attempted to apply Gramsci’s problematic to the Indian colonial context, and the most extended work in this idiom is Guha’s (1977) Dominance Without Hegemony. Guha’s central argument is that hegemony represents a form of consent negotiated with the subaltern classes and not the imposition of coercive control. His essential thesis is that British imperialism in India was based on the imposition of coercive domination lacking tacit or active subaltern consent. On this basis, there could be no hegemony in India. I will argue here that Guha’s ‘culturalist’ approach takes us some distance from Gramsci and presupposes an ahistorical and simplistic concept of hegemony. Further, this chapter will argue that British imperialism did produce hegemony but was ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 29) where coercion gave rise to a constrained consensus. In making this argument, this chapter will begin with an exposition of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. It will then describe the operation of British imperialism and the impacts on colonial labour showing how the application of hegemony proceeded. The conclusion will elaborate the critique of Guha’s interpretation of hegemony on the basis of a more complex approach to the nexus between coercion and consensus.

126

Andrew Wells

HEGEMONY IN GRAMSCI—A BRIEF SKETCH Gramsci’s thinking was saturated by ideas derived from the European Enlightenment, particularly those of Marx and Hegel. It was also saturated with a profound knowledge of history, sociology, and linguistics, especially but not exclusively Italian theorists, including the writings of its leading liberal intellectual, Benedetto Croce. Gramsci was particularly attentive to concepts and evidence showing how relations within and between the hegemonic and subaltern classes in modern Italy were formed and maintained. Unified Italy—created from disparate states at different levels of ‘development’—was a late capitalist state linked to the wider global marketplace. Understanding hegemony in an Italian context required a detailed understanding of its internal structure, including its undeveloped agrarian south (Gramsci 1957, 28–51), its integration into the wider capitalist economy, and the trajectory of its advanced industrial and fi nancial north (Gramsci 1971, 419–72). To further complicate matters, global capitalism had moved beyond the international movement of commodities: fi nance capital and labour were increasingly internationally mobile. Thus the labour question had to include an extended analysis of emigration. In the 1920s and 1930s, it was by no means clear that capitalism would survive. The capacity of national leaders was sorely tested by internal and external threats, there was no single global hegemonic power (rather, an increasingly unstable and competing equilibrium), and the subaltern classes (nationally and internationally) were beginning to see themselves as potential ruling classes. Most of the leading capitalist powers relied upon colonial empires to sustain their wealth—but colonial insurrection was on the rise. The crisis of authority within the capitalist economy was becoming ‘organic’ in the sense that it was based on challenges at the level of politics and culture, as well as against the intelligentsia. Exceptional and ‘Bonapartist’ regimes were imposed to ‘manage the crisis,’ and the ‘morbid symptoms’ produced when ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’ were widely observed (Gramsci 1971, 276). In this specific context, Gramsci sought to address a particularly perplexing question: with obvious economic, political, and intellectual crises in Italy and throughout the capitalist world, how could the system survive? The strength of capitalist hegemony and the inadequacy and immaturity of the socialist alternative (the modern prince) was Gramsci’s provisional answer. As a thinker captured in a fascist goal, the challenge was to rethink and reconceptualise the communist project.

HEGEMONIC PRINCIPLES2 The hegemony of capitalism brings into being a social order that combines the universal problems of relations between leaders and led, as well as

Hegemony, Imperialism, and Colonial Labour

127

specific problems that come from the particular nature of capitalism— wage labour and commodity production, technological and organisational innovation, and forms of exploitation and appropriation. The political problem is restricted citizenship and formal democratic representation that does not restrict the capacity to govern by the ruling class. Once the hegemony of private property is well established and inscribed into the legal order, the organisational bureaucracy (public and private), the subject and subaltern people (the led), are slowly rewarded for their acquiescence through the granting of citizenship. However, trade unions and left political organizations that advocate and practice a transformative notion of ‘citizen worker’ are rigorously regulated, circumscribed, and if necessary, proscribed. Thus, the feared and active ‘citizen worker’ must be moulded into the passive ‘citizen owner/consumer.’ Capitalism cannot remain a viable form of production until a solution that simultaneously addresses the economic, political, and philosophical problems inherent in its extended reproduction has been found. Capitalist hegemony therefore requires the formation and development of the appropriate factory, parliament, and university. Each is a distinctive form of practice, but each operates in a coherent and articulated fashion. The factory is the foundation of a unique capitalist hegemonic form. It is the place where labour is redefi ned, where new instruments of production are introduced, and where new disciplining techniques are refi ned. It imposes the tyranny of private property by radical dispossession, and it generates unimaginable wealth to a property owning class. Without control over the production process and its extension into the ‘life world’ of the workers, the reproduction of capitalist hegemony is doomed. Though control of the production process is the necessary condition of this new hegemony, it is never sufficient. Economic power has to be translated into political and social (moral and intellectual) power to produce hegemony as a complex historical bloc. The means of securing private property—political dictatorship, conquest, and military occupation—need refi nement into a persuasive symbolic, legalistic, and partially representative form for the evolution of the new social structure. Gramsci’s ideas about hegemony are methodological principles of analysis rather than prescriptive universal propositions. There are, however, defi nite hegemonic principles (Howson 2006, 23) that defi ne capitalist hegemony, and without understanding them, it is difficult to explore its distinctive hegemonic modalities. On the other hand, every society dominated by capitalists bears the imprint of its past and its spatial location in the global division of labour. These matters cannot be known a priori; they require empirical investigation to reveal unique manifestations of capitalist hegemony. The new formation created by the rising bourgeois class (forged outside the feudal state, but within the society) transforms into a new state designed to universalise private property and wage labour. This state precedes and maintains the determinate capitalist market relations. While the

128 Andrew Wells essence of this new society can be theorised, its specific manifestation cannot. Gramsci’s investigations of capitalist hegemony show it to be the effect of diverse forms of historical causation—there is no certain path to capitalism. Gramsci consequently privileges philosophical and methodological procedures in analysis, rather than stating ontological certainties. He is particularly scathing of Bukharin’s crude attempt at a systematic sociology of society (Gramsci 1971, 419–72). He reads Marx in a particularly fruitful way that leads to questions: if we assume the dominance of the capitalist mode of production, what are its necessary laws of motion? Further, what is the appropriate state and ideology that can maintain capitalist hegemony? He then investigates these questions socio-historically: that is, how are the circumstances of capitalist hegemony created and reproduced in particular social and political settings? Finally, he rereads the concept against history and vice versa. It is not necessarily the case, as Finiocchiaro (1988) argues in Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought, that Gramsci reads Marx through Croce (and vice versa)—that would justify an idealist interpretation of Gramsci. Instead, history—congealed human practices—is the fi nal arbiter in determining the adequacy of the questions and their underlying concepts. Gramsci’s assertions that Marxism is an ‘absolute historicism’ and ‘a theory of practice’ signals the power of his interpretation—he separates his critique of capitalism from the complicated intellectual legacies of Marx (and Engels) and provides the means of constantly enriching critical thinking without mindlessly invoking the textual authority of its high priests. But we should be reminded that the production (and reproduction) of capitalist hegemony is typically a product of violent imposition: hegemony is coercion plus consent. The precise mix of these two is historically determined. Such methodological propositions invite us to forge a critical theory within and beyond its Marxist starting point. Our task then is to read Gramsci and his concept of hegemony in a critical way: can we add anything, or perhaps clarify the theory of hegemony through its application to colonial circumstances?

HEGEMONY IN THE COLONIES Colonies in the capitalist era may be divided into two groups. The fi rst are generally called ‘settler colonies,’ where indigenous people are marginalised, and people, institutions, and hegemonic principles are brought from a capitalist metropolis. 3 The second and more complicated form of colony involves the domination of large indigenous populations and the attempt to impose capitalist hegemony over a refectory and frequently resistant population. The object of colonial possession and the formation of a colonial bureaucracy and officialdom is to effect quite dramatic social change. The


129

principles of colonial rule appear as surprisingly straightforward. They include: Imposing law and order, securing political borders, and marking out territory. Negotiate where necessary with existing rulers and incorporate them or their rivals into the new authority structures to give it some legitimacy. Negotiate or impose borders with neighbouring rulers or states to minimise territorial ambiguities. • Change the existing order of property relations in various ways. Reserved land for indigenes is required, especially if you are dependent on supply of food and seasonal labour. Within the reserved land, ‘property rights’ implicitly held by existing or newly imposed headmen might need to be codified. This strengthens the hand of the headman in relation to his villagers and creates bonds of dependence on the colonial state. Land outside of the reserves (including minerals, forest, and strategic waterways) become ‘crown’ lands available for sale or gift by the colonial state. The principle of terra nullius is widely used in most colonial settings. • Impose market relations in production, with products focused on the imperial market, the rapid spread of a monetary economy (for taxation and trade), and relocation and transformation of the nature of control over labour. The formation of a labour market and the formation of a disciplined workforce are the most difficult issues. Frequently labour has to be imported from far afield. We will now turn to examining some of these issues in colonial India and Indochina. COMMODIFYING COLONIAL LABOUR— INDIA AND INDOCHINA, 1860–1940 Bringing these two ‘colonies’ under formal imperial control was necessarily complex; needless to say, from different situations, and via divergent processes, colonial control was ultimately achieved. The essence of this process was that state control was exercised by powerful and more economically advanced European nations with well-organised military and administrative structures. More than a century of the British East India Company’s control of South India ceased in 1858 after the Indian Mutiny, when the British government assumed direct control of the Madras presidency. British rule in India was centred in Calcutta, and then divided into three principal presidencies: Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. The Madras presidency, our particular area of interest, comprised much of the southern, and specifically the southwestern, region of India. It was perhaps the most diverse part of the country. It was not economically, culturally, or ethnically integrated. Its particular interest

130

Andrew Wells

for the purposes of this discussion was that it encompassed Tamil Nadu, and more specifically Tanjore, located on the delta of the Kaveri River (van Schendel 1991, 81–85). It was from here that millions of Indian indentured workers left between the 1830s and the 1930s to work in the tea, sugar, and rubber plantations of Ceylon, the West Indies, Fiji, and Malaya (Tinker 1974). Fort St. George in the city of Madras ruled the presidency. In reality, the word ‘ruled’ is something of a misnomer because political and economic power was unstable and shared (perhaps contested is a better word) between Britain, Calcutta, Fort St. George, and the vast—largely Indian staffed—administrative bureaucracy. In Madras, the British were imposing state control over the turbulent chaos that emerged from the collapse of the Vijayanagar kingdom and undisciplined private British interests derived from occupation, seizure, and purchase. Beneath the British rulers and senior administrators was an Indian bureaucracy that penetrated into every village (see Washbrook 1976), though not without struggle and resistance. In Indochina, the process of achieving colonial control was shorter and of more recent origin (Murray 1980; Woodside 1976). Private commercial and religious incursion occurred beginning in 1850, weakening the Nguyen dynasty and expanding French global colonial interests. This resulted in a negotiated annexation, the so-called Patenotre-Nguyan van Tuong Treaty in 1884. The southern ‘frontier’ region of the kingdom (Cochinchina) became a colony, and the Tonkin (north) and Annam (cental) regions became French protectorates. It then took nearly fifteen years to pacify the fractious villages and villagers. Despite the different contexts of the colonisation of India and Indochina, certain similarities emerged. Like the Raj, Indochina became a single entity under a French governor-general, and the three ‘colonies/protectorates’ were each administered by resident superiors, beneath whom was a Vietnamese administrative system, created to parallel and oversee the traditional mandarin-based system of imperial tribute collection (Adams 1978; Pham 1984). Once established, the colonial powers began to interfere directly in village organisation. There seems no reason to accept the view that the British and French systems of rule were fundamentally different (indirect versus direct colonialism) or that these forms of imperialism were a superficial overlay (an administrative superstructure) on a traditional village (economic infrastructure) system.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE VILLAGE Perhaps the most contentious issue in historical accounts was the extent and significance of changes wrought upon peasant societies by the colonisers. These social relations included power relations within the village community and extended into the ownership and access relations over land. More specifically, they represented tenure relations that were of direct relevance to


131

the issue of introducing commodity relations. To measure the extent and consequences of changes to land tenure presupposes a base from which to make comparisons. While we can easily agree that a large number of regional variations existed, we are nevertheless required to construct something of an ‘ideal type.’4 Consequently we can make eight generalisations about the Vietnamese village:

1. Villages were close to self-governing communities of peasants and artisans. 2. There were limited and insecure land ownership rights for village families that worked the land. 3. There was a significant proportion of land held in common or land available for temporary occupation and exploitation (to 1980). 4. There was limited capacity to amass large areas of land, though some families and their kin did control more productive and extensive areas than others. 5. The emperor had ultimate ownership of the land. Thus, the village as a whole was held responsible for paying its annual taxation burden. 6. Taxation took two broad forms: the provision of a portion of the harvest, and conscription for either civil construction (corvee labour) or military service when required. 7. There was limited trade within and between villages and modest urbanisation; commodity exchanges were not widespread. 8. The emperor’s responsibilities were to provide peace, security, and public works. In southern India, especially in the Tanjore area, things were rather more complicated, yet we can still note the following similarities and differences:

1. Villages were clearly differentiated by class and caste, and while control was in the hands of local families, power was accumulated by the larger landowners (Kumar 1965). 2. A long tradition of slave, bonded, and landless labour was evident in these villages, including a group of hereditary agricultural slaves (the basis of the Harijans or Scheduled Castes). 3. Ownership rights were more complicated than in Indochina. Until the late nineteenth century, there was unoccupied agricultural land, common land, land granted to temples, and seemingly private land. The shifting kingdoms that dominated the region were, however, the ultimate landowners, and they extracted considerable tribute.

132

Andrew Wells

4. Taxation combined in-kind harvest, cash, and compulsory labour service to the state. 5. Trade was similarly limited, and the caste system reflected distinct artisanal skills in most villages. 6. Unlike the relative stability of the Vietnamese dynasties and the sophistication of the bureaucracy, southern India was subject to periodic local and foreign wars and occupation. Because the real world is more complex than generalisations can grasp, we should be wary of simplifications that deny many villages (especially in India) incipient but nevertheless sometimes all-too-real class relations and well-entrenched pre- or protocapitalist modes of exploitation. There were intrigues, injustice, and confl ict within villages, and periodic peasant wars and uprisings against exploitative rulers who overtaxed the peasantry or underserviced the public hydraulic infrastructure. The tradition of revolt seemed to have been stronger in Vietnam than in India. From the point of view of the commodity form, however, three issues are crucial. Firstly, there had been only limited commodification of land: there were rarely simple or unambiguous forms of individual or family tenure, and thus land alienation was technically impossible. 5 Secondly, there were limited commodities entering the marketplace, at least from the village economy. There was, however, an extensive internal and international trade, linking centres of wealth and power. There was an agricultural surplus to both appropriate and trade, and a complex array of urbanised and aristocratic needs to fulfi l. Lastly, there was only limited wage labour. Slaves were bought and sold and used for personal service, military duty, and productive work. Thus, some people were commodified and bound. Wage labourers certainly existed, and limited rural and urban proletarianisation occurred. In poor villages, landless proletarians existed, and poor peasants supplemented their subsistence needs through wage labour. This was more extensive in India than in Indochina, but in neither case was it typical. The principal theoretical point to be made is that in the precolonial village, when we examine land ownership, commodity exchange, and labour regimes, the commodity form was limited and subordinate to the dominant forms of precapitalist production relations (Nguyen Tu Chi 1980; Nguyen Khai Tung 1981). To take the theoretical point one further step, we can usefully speak of a dominant tribute-based mode of production in which the principal form of surplus labour was the coercive expropriation of produce and labour. Commodity relations were latent rather than manifest. To relocate labour and impose capitalist discipline required slavery or indenture. The colonial State was the necessary coercive instrument to realise these changes.


133

THE IMPACT OF THE COLONIAL STATE The colonial state was a fairly complex and frequently cumbersome beast: it was neither omniscient nor omnipresent. In broad terms, the state worked to reorganise villages, including their internal dynamics and their relationships, with the wider colonial political economy and, ultimately, the metropolis. The starting point (at least heuristically) in understanding this transformation was in the field of land taxation and land ownership. Colonies were expected to be self-sufficient and pay tribute to the coloniser. Self-sufficiency implied that the colonial administration, public works, law and order apparatuses, and the armed forces would be supported by taxes extracted from the colonised. Initially, colonial taxation adapted the precolonial tribute system. Subsequently, as society and its production relations were transformed, various commodities—especially salt, alcohol, and opium—and trade (via customs excise and other duties) expanded and transformed the tax system. Thus the trajectory was from in-kind to monetary taxes, and it reflected the monetisation of the economy as a whole. In the initial phase of colonialism, once ‘order’ had been imposed, the transformation of land ownership was a subsequent but important step. In Indochina the following innovations occurred:

1. Taxation was based upon a careful identification of the complex pattern of fields, as well as their differential fertility and productivity. Cadastral maps were drawn to identify both ownership and optimal taxation (Nguyen Duc Nghinia 1980). 2. Ownership was given a clearer and personal form—the producer and his family was carefully noted. 3. Communal land was taken into state ownership and either granted as concessions to French settlers or leased to landlords (Wiegersama 1976). 4. Taxation was reassessed on the basis of ownership and fertility, and paid by individuals in cash. 5. Rates of taxation were significantly increased. 6. The village headman was imposed by the state to collect tax, administer the law, and maintain control. The maire (mayor), as he was now called, was not selected or elected by the village but imposed by the colonial state. 7. Village land was ultimately the property of the state, occupied by tenants of the state. The state was the legal owner, and its property rights were transferable.

134

Andrew Wells

8. Land that was unused—that is, vacant, waste, deserted, or previously used communally—was now directly alienated by government. By this innovation, some twenty per cent of all arable land was transferred into imperial ownership (White 1982; Robequain 1944). In Madras, developments were a little different. There were various forms of control over the villages (Baker and Washbrook 1975). The first involved the installation and recognition of a landowning class of zamindars. The colonial state entrusted them to lease land to the peasants and collect rents for the colonial state. This system was subject to inevitable corruption and provided an inefficient mechanism to deliver a large enough surplus. The alternative form of control, closer to the French approach, was imposed in the 1850s. The Ryotwari system transformed villages into collectivities of individual tenant farmers who were individually assessed and provided cash tribute to the state. The enforcement of taxes required a very large group of Indian inspectors and tax officials (Speer 1965, 189–201; Beteille 1974; Frykenberg 1979; Rao 1962). The principal features were as follows:

1. Each field had to be mapped, its features listed and its tenant identified. 2. The taxation rate was raised from around 20 to 25 per cent to 50 per cent or higher, and was paid principally in cash. 3. State monopoly prices for key crops were established. 4. A large, unwieldy, and corrupt public service was trained to administer a system that incorporated an unbelievable set of regulatory forms. 5. Previously designated public land was granted in large sections to temples and to pliant village notables. Indian landed aristocrats were thereby created by state patronage. 6. The sale of property rights was now simple to negotiate. 7. The British state remained the ultimate landlord and thus frequently changed ownership and tenure relationships. 8. A considerable level of disturbances, riots, and periodic famines suggested the destabilisation caused by these changing tenure relations. 9. An already differentiated peasantry became more strongly shaped by ownership, tenancy, and wage labour relationships. 10. Despite the official ban on slavery, de facto slavery was tolerated well into the twentieth century and debt bondage remained widespread. Perhaps the bulk of the 20 to 30 per cent of peasants who were landless were bound for most of their relatively short lives.


135

We can reasonably claim that land was commodified as land tenancies were bought and sold, taxes were paid in cash, and prices for rice, wheat, and other goods were determined by the state. Within villages, human control over the land changed significantly. Land ownership was consolidated and enlarged, the percentage of tenant farmers increased significantly, the percentage of landless labourers expanded, and the level of rural indebtedness grew. The incipient class relations we have already noted became clearly apparent (Gough 1962). In Tonkin, the subsistence village dominated by peasants gave way to a new model of agrarian classes replicating the French rural experience (Hy 1992). As the taxation impost grew, new ownership relations took effect, and the demography of the countryside was dramatically altered. The already overcrowded Red River Delta between Hanoi and Haiphong witnessed increased starvation, landlessness, and indebtedness (Gorou 1955). Labour was forced to look much further afield for employment, either because they had been reduced to landlessness or forced into debt bondage (or perhaps both). Meanwhile, land that had been expropriated by the state was given as concessions to French colonisers, Catholic religious orders, and private imperial companies. Some of this land was used for commercial agriculture, some for mining, and, in the south, vast stretches for plantations. Workers were recruited to develop and sustain these new enterprises in Indochina and other French colonies. In Tanjore, a dire situation emerged. The famines of 1876–78 killed an estimated four million in the Madras region and affected nearly ten times that number (van Schendel 1988). The tradition of slavery intensified. Poverty, illness, and dispossession were especially notorious. It is little wonder that single male workers were forced into indenture and spent a minimum of five years trying to ease their debts by working overseas. The most pernicious form of bondage, debt bondage, was widespread and frequently inherited. It could just as easily be acquired by borrowing in order to maintain ownership over marginal holdings. Once in debt, and given the punishing rates of interest extracted by the richer peasants or professional moneylenders (who were also present in colonial Indochina), it was nigh impossible to regain nominal freedom. Tanjore and its environs contained the largest concentration of bound labour in India and supplied much of the labour needs of other British colonies (Washbrook 1975).

RELOCATING AND COMMODIFYING LABOUR Encouraging workers to migrate long distances to become wage labourers proved difficult. Slavery as such was no longer acceptable in a ‘civilised’ colonial state, having been abolished in 1833 throughout Britain and its empire. Slavery was also unacceptable to the French. So a complex mode of control somewhere between slavery and free wage labour was used.

136

Andrew Wells

Workers were persuaded and occasionally press-ganged into putting their thumb print on a contract (an indent) that many could neither read nor understand. From Madras, some eleven million workers went to work in the tea and later rubber plantations of Ceylon (the forebears of the Tamil Tigers), to the sugar plantations of the West Indies, to the tea plantations of Assam, and hundreds of thousands to the rubber plantations of Malaya. These indentured workers were organised into gangs by village recruiters tied to the plantations (Kangani), shipped overseas, and worked as subcontracted gangs in the planting and harvesting of rubber. These rubber concessions were granted by the colonial state to British investors looking for the means to grow and market the profitable tropical harvests. Indians were much preferred as coolie labour in Malaya and elsewhere. The more readily available Chinese workers were regarded as too militant and too well organised. Indians were considered docile and thus better workers (Omveldt 1980). In Tonkin, landless peasants signed contracts to be transported to work on rice plantations in the Mekong Delta, the coalmines near Haiphong, the nickel mines of New Caledonia, or to the new rubber plantations being established on the red soils north and west of Saigon. Labour was mobile and was readied for new forms of work. This ‘new system of slavery’ saw work undertaken under military style discipline, with dangerous and very strenuous conditions. Food was inadequate and frequently bad, housing consisted of rudimentary barracks, corporal punishment was rife, and the failure to meet work quotas was punished by fi nes. It was possible to work for months or even years without payment, and on many plantations, the workers were effectively imprisoned within fenced and patrolled grounds. This system of plantation wage labour was in many respects more insidious than slavery. The indenture effectively commodified the person (not just their capacity to labour) while placing merely a nominal value on their skills as workers. Unlike many established slave settlements, indentured labourers were incapable of reproducing themselves as they were denied the opportunity or resources to establish families. These indentured workers were, it could be argued, more intensively enslaved than many former and ‘traditional’ slaves. Over time, a substantial section of Vietnamese and Indian indentured workers settled in these frontier regions of capitalism and brought women or married other indentured workers and formed families. The system of indenture was abolished, workers organised, and conditions improved. Over decades of struggle, a proletariat, even a classconscious proletariat, came into existence.6

PERIPHERAL COMMODITY RELATIONS We are now in a position to draw some conclusions from this analysis. The most important observation is that the process of changing labour


137

relations and the forms of labour exploitation had not occurred by magic or from a deep-seated individual desire to embrace capitalism. It had been initiated by colonial states seeking to impose capitalist property and labour relations. The achievement of these changes required that consistent, persistent, and theoretically informed action had to be taken. The eradication of communal and nontransferable rights in landed property was the crucial initial step. The ideas of Locke and John Stuart Mill were resolutely imposed, but even this change involved a cruel twist. Race and cultural traditions (including the reification of religious values) were now mobilised by the colonisers to draw a rigid distinction between the imposition of new property relations and delaying or removing the legal, political, and educational rights of indigenous citizenship. This was justified on the grounds that the ‘childlike qualities’ of non-European races would require a very long process of political adolescence before maturity might be reached. Rather than seeing ‘tradition’ as something that might be displaced by social change, it was carefully cultivated and used to justify enslavement and the denial of citizenship. Looked at from a Gramscian perspective, we might say that colonialism created a very effective mode of coercion over the indigenous subjects, but failed to create a self-sustaining form of imperial hegemony. Race and religion were effectively harnessed as hegemonic mechanisms used to evade the requirements of recognising the colonial subject as a subject entitled to share in ‘the rights of man.’7 In our two case studies, land was commodified, while labour was vastly more complicated. The commodification of land and the dispossession of the peasantry were the pre-conditions for labour emigration, wage labour, and ruthless disciplining. The colonial state was either deployed directly or devolved its authority to private employers to facilitate the disciplining and punishment of this developing working class. Workers were unable to leave their employers, and unable to organise, collectively bargain, or strike. They were beaten, starved, imprisoned, and fi ned. They were preyed upon by unscrupulous overseers—through the offers of loans for gambling, alcohol, or opium—while being racially vilified and sexually abused. The work regimes beggar belief, and death rates were often appalling. The profits made by companies, banks, and imperial investors were immense. Somewhat paradoxically perhaps, the state slowly intervened to stop the worst excesses. Left to their own devices, the companies were becoming dangerously like genocidal machines. Labour was thus commodified in a formal sense and subject to the brutal regime of capitalist discipline, but it remained disconnected from the impersonal laws of motion of capital. The rationality of capitalism as a mode of production—the result of the amassing of the means of production by a class of highly competitive entrepreneurs—the organisation and strategic deployment of fi nance capital, and the structuring of a competitive labour market was far from complete. Instead we have all the formal

138

Andrew Wells

(totally exploitative) characteristics of capitalism without its social and productively innovative substance. Kathleen Gough argued in 1981 for the need to conceptualise a ‘colonial mode of production,’ a mode that combined market relations in land and labour with a sustained drain of the economic surplus to the imperial centre. This perpetuated primary accumulation for the metropolis, without expanded reproduction in the colony. ‘Therefore, [she argued] most production relations [in the colony] remained ones of only formal subsumption under capital’ (Gough 1981, 412; McEachern 1976). The evidence presented here supports this claim.

CONCLUSION There are some interesting conclusions to be drawn from these colonial examples. An understanding of colonialism enables us to better understand the origins of capitalism, even in its heartlands. The violence and brutality of its origins in the colonies were clearly on display, but were they so different from its metropolitan past? Edward Thompson (1993) has suggested that in order to understand the process of dispossession and transformation of the English working class, we might look to colonial processes. Gramsci’s analysis argues that the inclusion of colonial and precapitalist people into the global marketplace was both necessary and desirable: he rejected empathy for the ‘primitive’ and ‘traditional.’ Rather, in his judgement, labour control, psychological and sexual discipline, and the mutual rights and dependencies implied by citizenship were important benefits derived from the transition to capitalism, although he remained well aware of the potential problems these would cause if they were imposed coercively, arguing that an organic hegemony emerged only when people sought actively to change themselves (Gramsci 1971, 279–318). However, a connection to a world-historical language (Gramsci 1971, 325) and access to the global storehouse of science and literature was a precondition for self and collective government (Gramsci 1971, 341–342). The very possibility of a socialist society presupposed the formation of a new good sense, and indeed a new person, in the capitalist cauldron. Where the real contradiction lay was in the refusal of most colonial regimes to see the implications of limiting capitalism to the fundamentals of property and wage labour, and refusing to create a wider and deeper hegemony. Racial strategies were deployed, ethnic differences exacerbated, and pseudo-traditional leaders and customary laws forged while earlier principles of community self-government were extinguished. Shameless acts of forced migration, genocidal labour regimes, and inhumane treatment of minorities, women, and children abounded. There seemed no moral, ethical, or human principle motivating this orgy of exploitation. Colonialism revealed what capitalism might contemplate when unrestrained by its collective organization and ideology—the modern state—and freed from investigation by the press, the church, and the moralist.


139

Although Gramsci had no principled objection to colonialism, he clearly had a view that, like his argument in the Southern Question essay (Gramsci 1978, 441), the moral resolution could only be a socialist project. An alliance between the new hegemonic class with leading elements of the subaltern class would be needed to create the material and moral conditions for mutual self-advancement. In this context, self-advancement would be a double act of education—the colonial elite learning the art of hegemony and thereby increasing their autonomy in dealing with the imperial elite— and might be thought of as the process of national liberation whereby the national elite begin dissolving the strong national distinction between leaders and led. The problem with Guha’s interpretation and concomitant formulation of hegemony is that it disconnects consent and coercion in a formulaic way. This chapter has shown that the construction of imperialist hegemony in India and Indochina, while more reliant on coercion than consensus, nevertheless produced consensus, albeit constrained. For Gramsci, writing from goal as the leader of a banned party comprising murdered, incarcerated, dispersed, and intimidated militants, the operation of coercion with consensus was all too obvious. On the other hand, the idea that the imposition of colonial regimes was overly reliant on coercion and therefore nonhegemonic reproduces a simplistic and ahistorical distinction between the coloniser and colonised. In colonial situations, the movement from coercion to consent exists and represents a deepening and widening of commodity relations within an emerging global historical bloc. NOTES 1. A version of this chapter appeared as A. Wells, ‘Imperial Hegemony and Colonial Labour,’ Rethinking Marxism 19(2007):2:180–194 (Taylor & Francis Ltd). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. The term ‘hegemonic principles’ is drawn from Howson 2006, 23–24. 3. While we shall not be discussing this form of colonialism in any further detail, it is instructive to analyse these colonies to further understand the operation of hegemony—frequently they operate closer to the pure logic of the ‘determinate market’ because residual and oppositional traditions are absent. The process of labour disciplining and accepting occupational and geographical mobility as a condition of work has been well inculcated, and the roles imposed on the new citizen are well understood. To maintain this ‘advanced’ form of hegemony, indigenous people and immigrants are frequently racially stigmatised, regulated, and denied citizenship. Historical investigations of the principles of territorial annexation and expropriation, the mobilisation of racist ideology and legitimising restricted citizenship, is a particularly fertile ground for analysing the economic, political, and theoretical principles of advanced capitalist (apparently consensual) hegemony. 4. Vietnamese historiography has a greater consensus on this matter than its Indian counterpart. We should recognise that this might be the result of the more homogeneous, controlled, and ideological nature of Vietnamese

140

Andrew Wells

research. See, for example, the Foreign Language Publishing House (Hanoi) Journal Vietnamese Studies with its ‘The Traditional Village (I),’ Vietnamese Studies 61(1980) and ‘The Traditional Village (II),’ Vietnamese Studies 65(1981). 5. Land was, of course, seized, conquered, exchanged ,and cleared; indeed, the strength of any kingdom or empire ultimately depended on the stability and extent of its territory and the surplus labour of those who farmed it. In the south of India, there was institutionalised slavery (generally war booty) frequently used to relocate labourers into frontier agricultural settlements. 6. Similarly, the indentured Indian labours of Malaya settled, became organised, and slowly challenged their oppressive work regimes. In both cases, Japanese invasion slowed and even reversed this assertion of workers’ economic and political rights. 7. French socialists, including some of the early governors, were acutely aware of this contradiction in their imperial project. British liberals, including those who followed the advanced ideas of John Stuart Mill, seemed less worried by the racist justifications of imperialism and colonial exploitation (Stokes 1978). This helps explain the complex (and sometimes positive) relationship between Vietnamese radicalism and French republicanism and the more critical response of Indian nationalists to English liberalism.

REFERENCES Adams, N.S. 1978. The meaning of pacifi cation: Thanh Hoa under the French, 1885–1908. PhD thesis. Yale University. Baker, C. J., and D. A. Washbrook. 1975. South India: Political Institutions and Political Change 1880–1940. New Delhi: Macmillan. Beteille, A. 1974. Studies in Agrarian Social Structure. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chi, N. T. 1980. The traditional Viet village in Bac Bo: Its organisational structure and problems. Vietnamese Studies 61:7–119. Duong, P. C. 1984. Vietnamese Peasants Under French Domination. Berkeley: University Of California Press. Finiocchiaro, M. A. 1988. Gramsci and the History of Dialectical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frykenberg, R. E., ed. 1979. Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History. New Delhi: Manohar. Gorou, P. 1955. The Peasants of the Tonkin Delta. R. R. Miller, trans. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files. Gough, K. 1962. Caste in a Tanjore Village. In Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and Pakistan, ed. E. R. Leach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gough, K. 1981. Rural Society in Southeast India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gramsci, A. [1926] 1957. The Southern Question. In The Modern Prince and Other Writings, trans. and ed., L. Marks. New York: International Publishers. ———. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. N. Smith, trans. and eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Guha, R. 1977. Domination without Hegemony. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Howson, R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London: Routledge.


141

Luong, H. V. 1992. Revolution in the Village, Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam, 1925–1988. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Kiernan, V. G. 1995. Imperialism and its Contradictions. New York: Routledge. Kumar, D. 1965. Land and Caste in South India: Agrarian Labour in the Madras Presidency During the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lan, T. 1980. On communal land in the traditional village. Vietnamese Studies 61:120–63. McEachern, D. 1976. The mode of production in India. Journal of Contemporary Asia 64:185–212. Murray, R. 1980. The Development of Capitalism in Indochina, 1870–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press. Nghinia, N. D. 1980. Land distribution in Tu Liem district according to land registers. Vietnamese Studies 61:164–257. Omvedt, G. 1980. Migration and colonial India: Articulation of feudalism and capitalism by the colonial state. Journal of Peasant Studies 7, 2:185–212. Rao, V. K. R. V., ed. 1962. Agricultural Labour in India. Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Robequain, C. 1944. The Economic Development of French Indo-China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Speer, P. 1965. The Oxford History of Modern India, 1740–1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stokes, E. 1978. The Peasant and the Raj. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thompson, E. P. 1991. Customs in Common. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Tinker, H. 1974. A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tung, N. K. 1981. The village: settlement of peasants in Northern Vietnam. Vietnamese Studies 65:7–42. van Schendel, W. 1988. Slow change in colonial South India and the transformation of Thanjavur. Development and Change 19(2):301–25. van Schendel, W. 1991. Three Deltas: Accumulation and Poverty in Rural Burma, Bengal and South India. New Delhi: Sage. Washbrook, D. A. 1975. Political change in a stable society: Tanjore district 1880 to 1920 in C. J. Baker and D. A. Washbrook, eds., South India: Political Institutions and Political Change 1880–1940. New Delhi: Macmillan. ———. 1976. The Emergence of Provincial Politics: the Madras Presidency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. White. C. K. P. 1982. Agrarian Reform and National Liberation in the Vietnamese Revolution: 1920–1957. Ann Arbor: University Microfi lms. Wiegersma, N. 1976. Land tenure and land reform: A history of property and power in Vietnam. PhD thesis. University of Maryland. Woodside, A. B. 1976. Community and Revolution in Modern Vietnam. Boston: Houghton.

9

Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua New Guinea Charles Hawksley1

INTRODUCTION Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of Italian and European history informed his understanding of the social, political, and economic transition of societies. 2 He was able to chart and connect this change before and during his lifetime to explain the emergence of the capitalist mode of production, and specifically how, through hegemony, those who labour for the profits of others come to support a system that depends on their exploitation. While explanations of how hegemony has been constructed and maintained in the West are illuminating, the concern of this chapter is with how this transformative process operated in a region where, prior to colonial rule, there was no state, no capitalism, limited trade, and, crucially, no concept of civil society. How can Gramsci’s theory of hegemony be relevant to these areas? This chapter suggests hegemony is not a concept to be confi ned to books about theory; it is a living concept as valuable today as in the early twentieth century. It not only helps to explain the changes of the past but also can be used to explain such change today. Indeed, Fontana (2002, 35) notes hegemony involves ‘the synthesis of culture/knowledge and power as it moves in history’ and that, in essence, hegemony is the ‘proliferation throughout the people of a particular worldview.’ This conceptualization of hegemony is a particularly useful starting point for understanding the emergence of what Gramsci termed the ‘historical bloc,’ a synthetic system of relations of force that incorporates economic, political, and social dimensions. The historical bloc is always a dialectical process that does not itself produce change, rather it is the expression of that change, and therefore the expression of hegemony. As Roger Simon (1999, 96) notes, the historical bloc indicates ‘the way in which a hegemonic class combines the leadership of a bloc of social forces in civil society with its leadership in the sphere of production.’ In Papua New Guinea (PNG) the colonial state acted as this hegemonic ‘class’ and behaved as an integral state that dominated both civil society and production. Coercion however has its limits, and for hegemony to actually exist, people need to consent to participate in

Hegemony, Education, and Subalternity in Colonial Papua

143

capitalist relations: in short, people have to want to be part of the system. For PNG, the concept of historical bloc thus provides a useful example of how a colonial administration attempted to create a civil society and then bind it to capitalist production. The relevance and explanatory value of hegemony is particularly important in assessing the relationships between state, citizen and the historical bloc, and nowhere more so than in the modern world where debates about the role of the state now centre on good governance, ideology, civil society, the rule of law and the importance of institutions in the creation of viable states (e.g., Fukuyama 2004). Those states that lack these characteristics are said to have ‘failed,’ or at least be failing (e.g., Gros 1996; Kaplan 2006; Rotberg 2005), and there is a significant debate surrounding the concept of state-building, with calls for historical and geo-political appreciation of the process of state formation as it relates to capitalist development (Berger 2006a). In the post war period in particular we can observe shifting global hegemonies where initially modernization relied on the vehicle of the state to foster development, but by the 1970s state-driven development process was ‘exhausted’ and was replaced by US-led neoliberal globalization. (Berger 2004, 1–24; Berger 2006b; Berger and Webber 2006). If we are to hope to understand current thinking about politics and its relations to capitalist production, or indeed to change it, we need fi rst to examine how the state as a unit has become naturalized as a feature in world politics. We may then turn our attention to the historical blocs within states to reveal how they maintain support through hegemony. Using colonial PNG as an example this chapter aims to explore these issues.

COLONIAL STATE AND PASSIVE REVOLUTION The modern state of PNG is a product of colonial boundaries (Hawksley 2006, 162). In the early days of World War I, Australia attacked and occupied German New Guinea, and it later secured a League of Nations mandate over these confi scated German territories. Australia thus officially administered both Papua and New Guinea from 1921 until independence in 1975, interrupted only by a short Japanese occupation of parts of New Guinea from 1942–45. In December 1946, the United Nations confi rmed that New Guinea was under Australian trusteeship, and the governing Australian Labor Party, then deeply committed to internationalism and self-government, voluntarily submitted Papua to similar reporting obligations (Downs 1980, 4). Building on the unified military administrative system established during the war by the Australia New Guinea Administrative Unit (ANGAU), the administrations were fi nally combined, fi rst under provisional administration in 1946 and then under civilian government in 1949 (Smith 1987, 159).

144 Charles Hawksley The creation of the United Nations at the end of World War II promoted ideas of self-determination and the universalisation of the nation-state as the system of political organization for human societies. The expansion of the state coincided with the effort to entrench capitalism throughout the world. Empires that had existed for centuries ended in a matter of years. As they waned, new states emerged in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and, eventually, the Pacific, where decolonization was relatively late, just as colonialism had been relatively late. Yet in the immediate aftermath of World War II some parts of the world were not thought ready for full statehood, so administering territories concluded trusteeship agreements with the United Nations. Administering power in these territories then had a responsibility to promote social and economic progress that would lead to eventual political independence. This was in essence a modernizing ‘project’ that involved both social transformation and state formation. In Europe, such political and social consolidation that had taken centuries to develop, often violently, and only fi nally replaced empires (as the ‘nation-state’) after World War I. After 1945, the state became the only possibility for people emerging from colonial rule. Our concern here is with the important stage of state development before independence, particularly how the Australian administration attempted to create stable conditions for capitalist hegemony in what would later become Papau New Guinea. A trusteeship agreement allows examination of conscious attempts by a ruling elite—colonial administrators and other agents of the colonial state—to fashion a modern society and a modern state. In Gramscian terms, this elite tried to transform the ‘folkloric commonsense’ of a general populace living essentially outside of modernity into a new ‘capitalist commonsense’ that underpins popular consent for the economic and social systems of modern life. In a way, administrators were also organic intellectuals as they tried to create a new hegemony. This process can be understood as a ‘passive revolution’ in that it was initially induced, planned, and executed without the need for active consent of the populace. The concept of passive revolution can be understood as the management of existing crises within capitalism so that nothing really appears to be changing (Morton 2006, 2007; Showstack Sassoon 2001); however, this view relies upon the existence of class interests that incorporate or absorb such criticism. On the other hand, Simon (1999, 55) notes that Gramsci also conceived of passive revolution as a situation in which, in the absence of class, the state takes a leading role in the process of renewal. In this sense for PNG, social transformation was state-directed and was unrelated to popular consent. This is not to say the colonial state in PNG was ever consciously Gramscian in its approach, but we may still understand what it tried to do in terms of passive revolution. The creation of what might be called ‘state authority’ in PNG was uneven. In 1949, much of the country was not even fully pacified, and the level of experience with Europeans among indigenous peoples varied


145

widely. For example, effective German administration in the Gazelle Peninsula of East New Britain dated from the 1880s, and by independence in 1975, the region’s Tolai people had almost a century of exposure to Western modernity through colonial administration, Christianity, plantations, wage labour, commercial enterprises, and the early introduction of self-government. On the other hand, Europeans only ventured into the highlands regions from the 1930s, and only after the Pacific War did the administration consolidate its presence and pacify peoples and areas. The process of ‘bringing people into the state’ through effective patrolling and the dissemination of ideas of peace and commerce were the fi rst steps in the education of the new ways. In contrast to Gramsci’s own belief that the liberation of the subaltern rested on a ‘massive educational effort’ that would overcome the structural obstacles erected by the state within the existing educational curricula (Borg, Buttigieg and Mayo 2002, 4), in PNG we see that it was actually government policy to encourage education and to promote self-government and responsibility. This can be seen as an attempt to encourage critical reassessment of the existing folkloric commonsense of everyday life and to promote the values of modern capitalist commonsense. The education of the subaltern, however, came in various ways. It was both formal in terms of government schools as well as informal life education. It was seen both by indigenous people and by the administration as a mechanism through which social change could occur. I argue here that education was crucial to this project of modernity and state-formation and that it informed all aspects of people’s lives. In its widest sense, education in colonial PNG covered not only formal schooling where literacy, numeracy, discipline, respect, cleanliness, and Christianity were promoted, but also manual trades, wage labour, monetization, the rule of law, democratic representation, and the creation of a common language. Below, I address formal education fi rst before examining informal education through lived experience.

FORMAL EDUCATION AND THE SUBALTERN In the postwar world, Australian administration believed that education was the key to making a stable and independent state. Working with religious missions, the state and religion worked in tandem to place an emphasis on Christianity, cleanliness, discipline, and English language acquisition. For the most part, the main emphasis in formal schooling was on primary school students, and while there was a conscious state attempt to create an intellectual elite for independence, this plan came very late in the piece and only after a policy of gradual and equal development had been shown to have essentially failed. Religious missions were the pioneers of pedagogy in PNG, so historically the colonial state had left the business of education to the missions and did

146 Charles Hawksley not enforce a common syllabus. In the main, the missions instructed in native languages, but the extent of their teaching was often limited to the Bible. 3 To bring the missions to contribute to the state’s designs, the fi rst Director of Education, W. C. Groves (appointed in 1946), drew up a plan in 1948 to pay the salaries of mission teachers. Initially the government recognised five types of schools. Village schools were mission-operated under administration subsidy and taught in local languages for three years with a fourth year that included reading and writing in English. Village higher schools were operated by either the missions or the administration and had four years of tuition that included English as a subject, but they also used local languages. Area schools gathered children from a number of close villages but otherwise operated as village higher schools. Central schools were divided by gender and conducted by either the administration or the missions, taught for two years in English only, and were intended to have a manual training component. Higher training centres taught for three years, the fi rst of which was preparatory, and the next two were devoted to teacher training (Smith 1987, 169). By 1951, the state had not yet made inroads into the missions’ educational dominance in PNG; it taught less than 3,000 pupils compared to more than 100,000 taught by missions (Downs 1980, 50). Groves believed in academic freedom and had allowed administration teachers to set their own educational curriculum, which they sometimes did in local languages. In 1955, the Minister for Territories, Paul Hasluck—who held the portfolio from 1951 to 1963 in the Liberal government of Robert Menzies (1949– 1965) and who was the main architect of Australia’s post-war policies in PNG—forced Groves to develop a national curriculum in English. The revised education strategy set out new priorities, with a concentration on primary schools in controlled areas that taught children to read and write in English. It aimed to improve the standard of mission teaching and to develop manual and technical training where appropriate. The administration began to inspect and register mission schools if they met the state’s standards and taught the approved syllabus (Smith 1987, 191). The revised 1955 curriculum recommended morning schooling from 7:30–10 am, which included, at 7:30, ‘Fall in and personal hygiene inspection, smartening up exercise, marching,’ and at 7:45, ‘Morning hymn and prayer.’ From 8 am, the children would separate into the lower and upper divisions. The lower division would study language (thirty minutes) followed by recess (fi fteen minutes), organised game or group activity, numbers (thirty minutes) and social studies (thirty mins of stories, plays, handicrafts, or singing). The upper division studied numbers rather than language at 8 am and language rather than numbers at 9 am, but was in other respects the same. Children commenced school between the ages of five and seven, and schools were racially segregated. Of the 132 administration schools in New Guinea in 1956, 113 taught 6,239 indigenous children (86 per cent), as well as 22 children classified as ‘mixed race,’ with 364 ‘Asian’ children.


147

Indigenous teachers made up 227 of the 329 teaching staff, but there were 98 European and 4 Asian teachers. Each school catered to different aged children and needed two divisions, one taught at lower level and one at a higher level (Smith 1987, 203–204). At three hours a day, education was regular at five days per week, but rather limited. It was perhaps as much time as the administration could expect parents to part with their children, who could otherwise be usefully engaged in gardening, hunting, fishing, or village obligations. In the early 1960s, the state began to expand its capacity, with 198 schools in 1960 and 294 by 1963, of which 269 were primary. This still lagged far behind the missions, which by 1963, operated more than nine hundred registered primary schools. The administration’s schools taught more than twenty-six thousand indigenous students and the missions taught seventy-five thousand (NGR 1962/3, 283–5). The gap continued to narrow as the country moved toward the 1970s. The state relied on the missions to shoulder some of the burden of educational instruction and was never in a position to become the only provider of education. While the missions and the state to an extent delivered the same package of modernity, state education was more clearly linked to a political and governmental structure as schools were commonly built near to patrol posts. The large number of mission schools exempted by the state (more than 1700 in 1963) assisted in the survival of local languages. As Hasluck had ordered, the bulk of this educational drive effort was directed towards the youngest children, the primary grades, but from 1960, secondary education also began to receive more attention (Downs 1980, 263). Because of the disparities in levels of exposure to education, administration schools were categorised primary A (preparatory grades 1–6), primary T (standard grades 1–6), junior high, secondary, technical, pre-entry and auxiliary training branch, and teacher training, which relied heavily on expatriates. The fi nal decade before independence was marked by a shift in emphasis from primary eduction to the creation of an educated elite that could lead the independent state. Despite a recognition of only partial success in primary and secondary education, the administration looked to the creation of an intellectual elite through the University of Papua New Guinea, established in 1966, although this was largely a reaction to the report from the visiting United Nations Commission of 1962 (the Foot Report), which drew attention to inadequate provision for future self-government and slow progress in formal education. State educational planning shifted focus to high schools and enrollment in government schools passed those of missions in 1964 (3,050 to 2,593), and by 1968 government schools taught 7,750 students at high schools compared to 5,850 by missions (Smith 1987, 226). These schools were mostly residential and coeducational. As many as twenty identified students were also sent to Australia each year under the Australian Scholarship Scheme, which began in 1954, but a 1967 review of the program found it had not produced the

148

Charles Hawksley

intended flow-on effect to university enrolments. The 1969 Advisory Committee (the Weedon Report) was even more observant, fi nding that the differing viewpoints of the point of education for the state and the missions was understandable, but ‘if Papua and New Guinea is ever to be a nation it must be something more than a collection of villages’ (Smith 1987, 255). Thus a national educational system was still lacking a few years before independence, and while the mission schools perhaps lacked the kudos of government schools, they still contributed to the overall formation of a new commonsense way of thinking about the world. Taken as part of the state, in the way that church supports state through ideological teaching, we can see that passive revolution utilised religion as much as the official resources of government to promote modern thinking. By 1975, the population was an estimated 3.5 million while formal education perhaps touched 300,000. With the large number of children in remote areas of PNG, what was meant to be ‘universal’ primary education was never achieved, and secondary education remained extremely limited. A larger educational success, however, was achieved across the country, where living under colonial rule provided a wider educational experience.

INFORMAL EDUCATION AND THE SUBALTERN For the colonial administration to make a nation that would survive required the imposition of centralised government and the rule of law, but in parts of PNG there were attempts to resist the new ways. Clan groups sometimes engaged in what Gramsci termed a ‘war of movement’ against the officers of the state and their indigenous police. On occasion, such confl ict might result in the deaths of officers or missionaries, but in general, traditional spears, axes, bows, and arrows were no match for the modern rifles and guns. Perhaps because of the lack of common language and the autochthonous nature of clan politics in PNG, no serious and continued resistance to the state endured long. When physical resistance occurred, it was pursued by the administration and dealt with quickly and effectively. Perpetrators were apprehended, tried, often removed from their communities, and imprisoned. While ‘fi rst contact’ between administration officers and indigenous people sometimes resulted in deaths, this was against the official policy of ‘peaceful penetration.’ Force was used when required, but in the main the administration preferred to encourage consent and acceptance of its rule. The combined strategy of ‘pacify and convince’ was not always possible, but once peaceful relations had been established, the adherence to the new rules of the pax Australiana in a region meant it could be said to have come under ‘government influence.’ Over time, areas outside of this controlled belt diminished. In 1961, there were still some eight thousand square miles of territory classed as ‘restricted’ and fit for only armed patrol officers; by


149

1970, there were just 670 square miles officially ‘restricted,’ all of which was in the trusteeship of New Guinea. Despite the administration’s policies that stressed gradual and even advancement across all parts of PNG from the 1950s, some areas moved much faster than others into the modern world, and uneven development resulted. Gramsci saw all life as a continuous process of learning, reflection, and a reinterpretation. In a situation where there is governing group and a governed group (the subaltern), the desire to aspire to be like the rulers often causes changes in a normative grammar or a common language. Reflecting on grammar, Gramsci noted that the subaltern try to speak like the dominant classes (1999b, 305–6) in order to assimilate more easily, but for the colonial state the biggest problem for effective communication within PNG was that there was no common language. As a region, Melanesia is linguistically diverse, with more than a quarter of all the world’s languages, and PNG alone has more than eight hundred languages (Hawksley 2006, 162). Melanesian pidgin (Tok Pisin) was used in New Guinea for day-to-day communication between the administration and people, and later between indigenous people themselves. An improvised form of the Motu language (Hiri or ‘Police’ Motu) was also used in some parts of Papua. Tok Pisin was however widely regarded as a bastardized form of English, even by the administration. Australia’s Ministry for Territories set policy for PNG, and the fi rst Minister Eddie War wrote in 1946 that he wanted ‘white people . . . to make a point of teaching the natives proper English.’ In 1953, the visiting United Nations mission found few indigenous people with whom they could converse in English, and in 1954, the nominated representatives to the Papua and New Guinea Legislative Council, Pita Simogun and Merari Dickson, who rarely spoke in meetings, felt strongly enough about this issue to criticize the use of pidgin as a language of instruction (Smith 1987, 160, 193, 195).4 With control and communications, the administration imposed its rule. Through a succession of regulations and ordinances affecting the criminalcodes, the previous ‘common sense’ world view of the indigenous people— which had centered on exchanges of pigs and women, ancestor worship, animist religion, sorcery, tribal fighting, and in some places, ritualistic cannibalism—became increasingly restricted, and many aspects of traditional life came under severe challenge. This ideological assault on folkloric commonsense began with contact patrols, but was backed with increased surveillance and apprehension until fi nes and imprisonment diminished the chance of organized resistance to the colonial state. Laws governed behaviour in public and in areas of European settlement, but it could do no more than restrict. Real hegemony required self-policing and popular consent for domination, so the encouragement of taking on new ways of thinking and behaving required more than simply blocking off resistance, but rather people living within the structural coercion of the state in what Foucault (Gordon 1980, 109–33) described as governmentality.

150

Charles Hawksley

While the new system aimed to convince people of the futility of alternatives, it also encouraged them to participate. The administration offered its alternative in a sort of social contract: obedience to the state in exchange for peace and economic development. The colonial administrators promoted commerce and economic exchange using monetary units (coins and notes for exchange as opposed to shells or pigs), wage labour, production for sale in a market, Christianity, civil society organizations, and new dress codes. They offered subaltern people financial and political incentives for participation in wage labour, production for the capitalist economy, and eventually even political autonomy. The administration essentially had to create a civil society that extended past clan boundaries and a market that would support a capitalist state and capitalist hegemony. For example, in the eastern highlands, which only began to be seriously considered for economic development/exploitation after World War II, the administration promoted production for sale by distributing seedlings of cash crops such as peanuts, passion fruit, and later coffee, to go alongside existing staples such as sweet potato and taro. The colonial state then purchased this produce, often at above-market rates, to generate economic interest among the population. It then transported this produce to lowland markets and arranged for the sale of passion fruit and peanuts to Australian companies. Market farming quickly became a major revenue raiser for people in the highlands, and from the mid 1960s, indigenous production of coffee began to exceed that of the white settler population operating plantations on leased land (Hawksley 2007, 202–4). The colonial state thus encouraged people to become involved in the agricultural market economy and purchased their produce in an effort to disperse widely the ideals of capitalism. As most of the people involved in day-to-day vegetable production for subsistence were women, effort was made to educate men in cash crops, but younger men were also considered to be a threat to the stability of the government. Prohibiting tribal fighting deprived men of opportunities for status advancement, so the administration instead offered men opportunities to labour on coastal plantations, for terms of up to two years. Schemes such as the Highlands Labour Scheme ran from 1950, and between 1952–57 it provided opportunities for around twenty thousand highlands men to gain money, learn pidgin, and return home with better knowledge of the new ways (Hawksley 2002, 380). Many returnees were incorporated into the government’s system of village officials, with some 1,620 eastern highlands men holding the office akin to village official by 1958/9. We have in PNG what Fontana (2002, 30) terms the ‘state as educator’ where it exerts ‘moral, intellectual, and cultural force,’ and represents its values as universal. Thus, any involvement in the institutions of state and in civil society with a view to escaping from subalternity and eventually achieving power fi rst involved people becoming part of those same associations and groups, largely created for them by the state. Essentially, the educator state had to build both civil society and the market before either


151

could be ‘internally colonized’ by the subaltern. Viewing education in this wide and informal sense, employment figures reveal wage labour was initially rather limited. In 1949, there were just forty-five thousand Papuans and New Guineans from a population of just under 1.4 million in paid employment, working as police, on plantations, and with the administration (as medical aids or servants), and this workforce was overwhelmingly male. By 1956, in New Guinea alone there were forty-five thousand workers in paid employment. By 1962, workers in the towns of Rabaul, Lae, and Madang had formed workers’ associations with a total of twenty-one hundred members, but by 1973, there were more than thirty-five thousand workers in industrial organizations in New Guinea (NGR 1972/3, 229), and overall employment figures had also grown. By 1971, in New Guinea alone there were 98,870 ‘residents’ (i.e., indigenous people) who were classified as receiving salary and wages, up from 71,570 the previous year, of whom more than 60 per cent received between $4,000 and $10,000 per year (NGR 1972/73, 286). The state was heavily involved in regulating employment to restrict possible abuses by the private sector, with no fewer than eight pieces of major legislation governing working conditions, including the provision of food, clothing, washing facilities, toilets, payment of allowances, and provision of medical assistance. It also moved to provide a legal framework that recognized industrial organizations and developed an arbitration system for wages, such as existed in Australia (NGR 1962/3, 97). The state’s objectives of getting people involved in the capitalist mode of production strategy appeared to be working in as much as wage labour was leading to class formation, the fi rst step in the creation of class-consciousness. In retrospect, such changes can be understood as the state’s attempt at a passive revolution, not to fi x existing problems within capitalism, but to actually create the conditions for a capitalist mode of production. Finally, education in terms of political advancement adhered to the principle of no taxation without representation, so the poll tax was introduced along with Native Local Government Councils (NLGCs). These elected bodies had substantial autonomy over local affairs. Manus Island and the Rabaul region in New Britain led the way, with councils established from 1950. Those of New Britain covered from 3,000 people in 22 villages up to 11,000 people in 32 villages (NGR 1962, 199). By 1960, regions in the highlands and the Sepik river also had their fi rst NLGCs, and there were more than fi fteen hundred councillors in fi fty councils in the territory of New Guinea, covering more than half a million people (NGR 1962/3, 28). Although NLGCs were at fi rst assisted by administration officers in terms of their operations and management, such bodies quickly became the building blocks for local power plays, with candidates obtaining vital electioneering practice for later national elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972 for the House of Assembly, which became the parliament of the independent state of PNG.

152

Charles Hawksley

COMMONSENSE, GOOD SENSE, AND HEGEMONY Papua New Guineans were confronted with an imposed worldview that claimed the advancement of indigenous peoples through colonial tutelage was a progressive goal. Only by stepping back can we see the power relations inherent within such a claim. While preparation for self-government was, in the minds of colonial administrators, for the ‘good of the people,’ it involved a conscious attempt to transform their day-to-day lives, a matter that required the individual consciousness of the subaltern to be applied to their social, political, and economic conditions. As Diana Coben (2002, 263) has observed, politics itself is a ‘supremely educative process,’ especially for adults, and in PNG, both adults and their children took advantage of education in the widest sense. They jettisoned previous cultural practices in favour of new ways of doing things, indicating a reflective aspect to their understandings of place and power. For those on the receiving end of colonial rule, they employed what Gramsci termed ‘good sense,’ essentially a capacity to reflect in a philosophical way on one’s own existence and then to bring this knowledge to bear on everyday life in order to transform the understanding of one’s own existence (Gramsci 1999b, 693– 698). These notions of commonsense and good sense are frequently misunderstood, and Coben draws attention to the problems caused by popular usage of ‘commonsense’ to mean something like obvious observable facts or behaviour, which is rather different to how Gramsci employs the term. Indeed, Gramsci (1999b, 695–8) writes of ‘commonsense’ as a fluid system of conception of ‘life and man,’ something that is constantly being added to and improved: it is, in his words, ‘a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given place and time.’ Yet Liguori (2007) argues the mature Gramsci views commonsense as an essentially negative feature of life, and that Gramsci sees the subaltern as imbued with passive and negative traits, like people stuck in tradition unable to escape. Overcoming passivity and subalternity requires harnessing an understanding of the intellectual order through which each person makes sense of the world. What is required is to adapt philosophy (or, for Gramsci, ‘good sense’) to form a new commonsense, a modified view of the world reached through the accommodation of old and new knowledge. This suggests that commonsense itself is continuously in a state of change as it is constantly being revised through the good sense of reflection and self-criticism. In essence, what we fi nd in all human societies are competing versions of commonsense, some of which from time to time appear to be the dominant way of understanding situations. This is not to say that things cannot change, merely that certain views become widespread and accepted as the way to understand events at specific periods of history. The continuous contest between different worldviews allows us to understand the operations of hegemony. By reflecting on social conditions, we may move from a state of subalternity, where things happen to us and we


153

are essentially powerless, to what Gramsci viewed as essential for human liberation, a philosophy of praxis that involves self-transformation and the creation of a more informed view of the world that eventually results in ethico-political action. When applying Gramsci to colonial PNG, we can see a self-critique of the old ways that allowed a partial departure from the folkloric commonsense and the acceptance of aspects of the capitalist common sense of modern social and productive relations, a process in which education was critical. Using hegemony, we can observe how the colonial administration attempted to entrench capitalist productive relations within the emerging state of PNG. The success of this attempt, however, ranged widely, largely due to the different levels of exposure of groups to European ways, to central government, commerce, commodities, the capacity of people to adapt to capitalism, and the varying intensity of government efforts. Formal school education played a central role for children in establishing respect for these principles, which were held up as superior to the old ways of village life. While the colonial state made advances in this area, universal education remains a significant challenge for the independent state of PNG, with figures from 2000 (AusAID, 2003) showing 84.9 per cent of school-age children enrolled in primary school but fewer than 23 per cent of school-age children enrolled in secondary school. 5 In 1990, adult literacy (from aged fi fteen upwards) in PNG was 56.6 per cent and youth literacy (ages 15–24) was 68.6 per cent (UNDP 2004, 40). The problem appears to be worsening, with adult literacy in 2002 a little lower at 63.9 per cent (AusAID 2003). None of these figures is surprising given the dispersed and rural nature of population in PNG, its continued concentration in small villages, and budgetary difficulties. A wider view of the lasting effects of education on adults is more revealing of deeper structural problems for the state. The colonial state sought to have adults comply with the law, obey a central government, produce surplus, labour for wages, and engage with a market economy. At independence, even the most advanced regions struggled to adapt to this new commonsense. The Tolai of New Britain were long perceived as the most economically advanced people in colonial PNG, but even Tolai independence leader John Kaputin (1977, 398–406) noted that the cooperatives introduced in the 1950s had all collapsed by 1970, that in the mid 1970s trucks broke down as they lacked spare parts, and some five thousand trade stores had operated for between two and six months before exhausting their initial capitalization, and then stood empty. The Tolai formed the New Guinea Development Corporation,6 which functioned both with the Kina and with traditional Tolai shell money (tabu), indicating a capacity to live between two worlds (Kaputin 2007). Similarly, a recent study of the Porgera gold mine in Enga province in the PNG highlands has shown that a ‘shop’ only sometimes contain goods and is only sometimes open. Actual commercial trade in such shops is clearly more of a marginal economic

154

Charles Hawksley

activity than the principal source of revenue. Effectively, the shop is not the focus of economic activity but a supplement to other revenue. It appears that in the Porgera region compensation money for relocation has been used to purchase commodities, but has not really become capital. Former Porgera landowners act as rentiers rather than businessmen (Banks 2004). As Eric Wolf (1982, 79 and 302–310) once noted, there is a marked difference between wealth and capital. The former has always been around, but to become capital it must seek to internalize the process of production, to control social labour, or as Wolf put it: ‘Capitalism to be capitalism must be capitalism in production.’ The endurance of shell money or the limited nature of trade in trade stores point to the limited success of the overall project of social transformation and the failure to consolidate capitalist principles. It indicates the transition from premodern to modern has failed to occur in PNG, and many people remain not fully integrated into the world capitalist economy, despite some areas being economically more developed than others and the presence of wage labour relationships in cities. Land and village remain the focal points of most peoples’ lives in PNG. The colonial state alienated around 3 per cent of land, and customary land ownership is today at around 95 per cent, with 85 per cent of people engaged in small-holder agriculture as their primary economic activity (DFAT 2004, 163). Because so many people remain attached to their lands, formal employment is relatively rare and this affects the capacity of the state to raise funds through taxation. An inability to raise enough money to fund the service expectations of citizens has meant that PNG has come to rely on aid, particularly from Australia, which has since the 1990s emphasised issues of law and order, efficiency and good governance, and has moved in the new century toward increased intervention (Hawksley 2004, 2005).

CONCLUSION PNG remains a state inhabited by people living two versions of commonsense: children go to school, but only for a few years; most go to Christian churches, but they also engage in important village feats, such as marriage and moka ceremonies—where pigs are slaughtered and eaten in days of feasting to, inter alia, preserve alliances, create new alliances, settle outstanding debts, and confi rm the power of existing leaders who may or may not be ‘formal’ politicians. People use money, but most appear to spend it on immediately consumable goods, rather than save it and deploy it as capital for reinvestment. From a Gramscian perspective, PNG has problems that stem from the inability of colonial and postcolonial elites to shift the thinking of indigenous people past folkloric commonsense and to naturalise capitalist common sense. The durability of folkloric commonsense through the retention of customary land ownership, limited engagement with wage


155

labour and the market economy, and the retention of many aspects of precapitalist social, political, and economic organization (so-called ‘traditional’ society) has exposed the limitations of externally imposed statebuilding, a feature all too common in the modern world, and one that is accepted most uncritically. The commonsense of capitalism, including the subjugation of citizen to state, of local politics to the state, and of people to the market, has failed to take a stranglehold on the people of PNG. Like other people in developing countries they have used good sense to construct for themselves a new type of commonsense, one that combines aspects of both old and new visions of the world. The challenge for people in PNG today is to navigate the difficult terrain of two competing hegemonies. One of these emerges from the villages and seeks to retain the old ways while attempting to adapt to newer notion of state and capitalism. The other, capitalist social relations, is an externally imposed project, fostered originally through the agency of the colonial state by means of passive revolution. More recently, this vision has been mediated through international regimes committed to what Richard Howson (2006, 23) has described as the ‘hegemonic principles’ of capitalism—private property and profit. What we can see is that there exists a historical bloc within PNG, but it is not one that supports mass consumption and privatization of ailing services, nor even of full engagement with the market economy. While Australia may view PNG as troublesome in its failure to respond appropriately to the logic of neoliberal globalization, many in PNG remain between two worlds of common sense, and they are perhaps no worse off for it.

NOTES 1. The author thanks Peter Ives, Department of Politics, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, for his very helpful comments and suggestions on a draft of this chapter. Errors of interpretation or fact are the responsibility of the author alone. 2. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as C. Hawksley, ‘Constructing Hegemony: Colonial Rule and Colonial Legitimacy in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea’ in Rethinking Marxism 19:2:195–207 (Taylor & Francis Ltd: 2007). http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 3. There were many Christian missionary organisations in postwar PNG, with over twenty-three groups operating schools in 1955, and thirty-four operating schools in 1963 in New Guinea alone (NGR 1955, 204; NGR 1963, 292). Among them were the Assemblies of God, Roman Catholics, and various American Protestant missions including the New Tribes Missions. The oldest and best established were the Lutherans, who operated 700 schools, of which 221 had been recognised by the state in 1963. 4. While official policy opted for English in schools, both pidgin and Hiri Motu remained in wide use, and today these three languages are all official languages. While all are spoken, they have not displaced local languages (ples

156

Charles Hawksley

tok) as mother tongues, so many people in PNG will normally know and speak at least five or six languages well: the mother tongue of their clan group, the languages spoken by neighbouring clan groups, Tok Pisin/Motu, and English. 5. Statistics for PNG, as for the rest of the Pacific Islands, are notoriously slow in emerging. When they do become available, they are often imprecise and unreliable, due to the limited capacity of agencies to assess accurately the true state of affairs. Such figures as are offered thus provide a general picture. 6. In a move to secure both political and economic power, and thus ensure a stable and prosperous future for generations to come, the Tolai formed the Mataungan Association in 1968 to oppose the formation of a multiracial local government council that would in their view have put the future development prospects of the region in the hands of non-Papua New Guineans. In seeking to separate the economic power of capital from the political power of government, the Tolai sought to advance their claims in both realms. This organization formed the backbone of the New Guinea Development Corporation (NGDC), which was launched in 1970s and which by its incorporation in 1972 had raised K125,000 from more than ten thousand people. [At the time one Kina (K) was equal to one Australian Dollar (AUD)]. The NGDC purchased a storage facility, a copra drier, a cocoa fermentary, plantations, and also leased service stations on the Gazelle Peninsula. Later it purchased properties in Port Moresby, the capital of PNG. While originally a Tolai concern, minority ethnic populations from the Morobe and Sepik regions were also shareholders in NGDC (Kaputin 1977, 406–412). It became a model of indigenous business enterprises in PNG.

REFERENCES AusAID. 2003. Australian Aid to Papua New Guinea at a Glance. Australian Agency for International Development. http://www.ausaid.gov.au/country/png/ png_intro.cfm. Banks, G. 2004. Porgera Economic Baseline, August 2004. Unisearch PNG Ltd. Survey of business in the Porgera Valley. Study courtesy of Dr. Glen Banks. Berger, M. T. 2004. The Battle for Asia. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ———, ed. 2006a. Third World Quarterly, Special Issue: From Nation Building to State-building. 27:1. ———. 2006b. From Nation-Building to State-building: the geopolitics of development, the nation-state and the changing global order. Third World Quarterly, Special Issue: From Nation Building to State-building. 27(1):5–26. Berger, M. T and H. Webber. 2006. Beyond State-building: Global governance and the crisis of the nation-state system in the 21st century. Third World Quarterly, Special Issue: From Nation Building to State-building. 27(1):201–208. Borg, C., J. Buttigieg and P. Mayo. 2002. Introduction: Gramsci and Education: A Holistic Approach. In Gramsci and Education, eds. C. Borg, J. Buttigieg, and P. Mayo. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Coben, D. C. 2002. Metaphors for an Educative Politics: ‘Common Sense,’ ‘Good Sense’ and Educating Adults. In Gramsci and Education, eds. C. Borg, J. Buttigieg, and P. Mayo. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. DFAT. 2004. The Road Ahead: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 1 December 2004, http://www.dfat.gov.au/publications/png_the_road_ahead/ index.html.


157

Downs, I. 1980. The Australian Trusteeship Papua New Guinea 1945–1975. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Fontana, B. 2002. Hegemony and Rhetoric: Political Education in Gramsci. In Gramsci and Education, eds. C. Borg, J. Buttigieg, and P. Mayo. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Fukuyama, F. 2004. State Building: Governance and World Order in the Twenty First Century. London: Profi le Books. Gordon, C., ed. 1980. Michael Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Gramsci, A. 1999a. Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks. In Essential Classics in Politics: Antonio Gramsci, ed. and trans. D. Boothman. London: ElecBooks. ———. 1999b. Selections from Cultural Writings. In Essential Classics in Politics: Antonio Gramsci, eds. D. Forgacs and G. Nowell-Smith. London: ElecBooks. Gros, J. G. 1996. Towards a taxonomy of failed states in the New World Order: decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti. Third World Quarterly 17 (3):458–461. Hawksley, C. 2002. Administrative Colonialism: District Administration and Colonial ‘Middle Management’ in Kelantan 1909–1919 and the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea 1947–1957. PhD thesis. University of Wollongong. ———. 2004. The Enhanced Cooperation Program between Australia and PNG: The Intervention You Have When You’re Not Having an Intervention. Refereed paper for the First Oceanic Conference on International Studies (OCIS), 14–16 July 2004. http://rspas.anu.edu.au/ir/Oceanic/OCISPapers/index.html ———. 2005. The Intervention You Have When You’re Not Having An Intervention. Australia, PNG and the Enhanced Cooperation Program. Social Alternatives 24 (3): 34–39. ———. 2006. Papua New Guinea at Thirty: late decolonisation and the political economy of nation-building. Third World Quarterly. 27 (1): 161–174. ———. 2007. Constructing Hegemony: Colonial Rule and Colonial Legitimacy in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Rethinking Marxism 19 (2):193–205. Howson. R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London: Routledge. Kaplan, Robert, 2006. The Coming Anarchy. In Classic Readings and Contemporary Debates in International Relations, 3rd edition, eds. P. Williams, D. M. Goldstein, and J. M. Shafritz. Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth. Kaputin, J. K. 1977. The New Guinea Development Association. In Racism: the Australian Experience Vol 3, 2nd edition: Colonialism and After, eds. F. S. Stevens and E. P. Wolfers. Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Book Co. ———. 2007. Statement of Sir John R. Kaputin, Secretary-General of the Africa, Caribbean and Pacifi c Group of States at the Global Conference on Social Responsibility, Vilamoura, Portugal, 16 February 2007, http://www.acpsec. org/en/pahd/sg_speech_social_responsibility_16–02–07_e.htm. Liguori, G. 2007. Common Sense in Gramsci, seminar paper to the Hegemony Research Group. Faculty of Arts. University of Wollongong. Morton, A. D. 2006. The grimly comic riddle of hegemony in IPE: where is class struggle? Politics 26(1): 62–72. ———. 2007. Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy. London: Pluto Press. NGR (Territory of New Guinea Reports). 1945–1973. Report to the General Assembly of the United Nations on the Administration of the Territory of New Guinea. Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer.

158

Charles Hawksley

PR (Territory of Papua Reports). 1950–1970. Report to the General Assembly of the United Nations on the Administration of the Territory of Papua. Canberra: Commonwealth Government Printer. Rotberg, R. I. 2005. Failed States, Civil Wars and Nation Building in International Politics: Enduring concepts and contemporary issues, 7 edition, eds. R. J. Art and R. Jarvis. New York: Pearson Longman. Showstack Sassoon, A. 2001. Globalisation, hegemony and passive revolution. New Political Economy 6(1): 5–17. Simon. R. 1999. Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction. In Essential Classics in Politics: Antonio Gramsci. London: ElecBooks. Smith P., ed. 1987. Education and Colonial Control in Papua New Guinea: A Documentary History. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire. UN Human Development Report 2004. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/ global/2004/. Wolf. E. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

10 The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam Susan Engel

There is a growing literature in the discipline of International Political Economy (IPE) that draws on the work of Antonio Gramsci for theoretical, political, and methodological inspiration and insight. This chapter provides an introduction to the ways that Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is utilised in IPE. However, in line with the view that the ‘fabric of hegemony cannot be analysed at the level of theory but only by a concrete analysis’ (Morton 2003, 139), the main focus of this chapter is an analysis of the role of one of the key international fi nancial institutions in the world today, the World Bank, and how it operates in a transition country, Vietnam. This case study is particularly relevant to the themes in this book in at least three ways. First, the World Bank claims to have shifted its development philosophy and approach in the late 1990s and, given that the Bank both reflects and constructs the current neoliberal hegemony, studying the Bank’s turn helps to understand the nature of change in the late 1990s. In Gramscian terms, I am interested in whether this movement in the Bank indicates a fundamental and structural shift in the current neoliberal hegemony, or a short-term and conjunctural one. Second, Vietnam, like many other countries in the Asia-Pacific, is in the midst of transition and transformation. Economically, it is pulling off one of the more successful postcommunist transitions whilst maintaining politically a domestic power structure, or historical bloc, based on the Communist Party. This bloc appears relatively strong and has provided a basis for some resistance to pressure for neoliberal ‘reform’ from the Bank and others. Third, analysis of how the Bank acts in Vietnam in terms of Gramsci’s conception of hegemony as requiring the organisation of consent as much as the use of coercion can shed light on the nature of neoliberal hegemony.1

HEGEMONY AND WORLD ORDER Gramsci’s key ideas have been eloquently outlined and debated in other chapters in this book, so I start this chapter with only a brief introduction to some of his key ideas, in particular those that have been most influential

160 Susan Engel in IPE: hegemony, historical blocs, and leadership (Germain and Kenny 1998, 6). Hegemony, in contrast to its use in mainstream IPE as meaning domination, is used by Gramsci to describe ‘a relation, not of domination by means of force, but of consent by means of political and ideological leadership. It is the organisation of consent’ (Simon 1991, 2). Gramsci was predominantly interested in how the working class can organise to obtain hegemony within a country; however, he also analysed the nature and form of bourgeois hegemony. Anderson (1976, 20) claims that it was this later use of ‘the concept of hegemony for a differential analysis of the structure of bourgeois power in the West’ that ‘was a new and decisive step’. This later usage of hegemony is also where he developed it as a combination or synthesis of coercion and consent (Anderson 1976, 31). Hegemony operates in society across both the economic structure and the superstructural levels of civil society and political society. 2 It is organised through leadership, alliances, and networks in a context of continuous ideological and political struggle. Consent can be obtained by combining the interests of various social forces around particular populist causes such as struggles for democracy; or it can be obtained through compromise and persuasion. As Gramsci says: Obviously, the fact of hegemony presupposes that the interests and tendencies of those groups over whom hegemony is exercised have been taken into account and that a certain equilibrium is established. It presupposes, in other words, that the hegemonic group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind; these sacrifices, however, cannot touch the essential . . . the decisive core of economic activity (Gramsci 1996, 138). The paragraph offers the idea that each hegemonic system is organised around a set of core ideas that cannot be challenged without overturning the hegemony, which following Howson are labelled here as ‘hegemonic principles’ (2006, 25). The ideological and political struggles of hegemonic groups are designed to change the theoretical, social, and also cultural framework of social forces in order to ensure support for hegemonic ones. Ideology, the framing of knowledge, is one of the key terrains on which hegemonic struggles are fought. The efficacy of ideology is partly the product of specific agents, or ‘organic intellectuals,’ who enunciate, organise, and reform its components. As Gramsci puts it, every social force ‘creates one or more strata of intellectuals who give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the political and social fields’ (1971, 4). These intellectuals are the organisers of the superstructure: The intellectuals are the dominant group’s ‘deputies’ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These

The World Bank and Neoliberal Hegemony in Vietnam

161

comprise: 1. The ‘spontaneous’ consensus given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production. 2. The apparatus of State coercive power which ‘legally’ enforces discipline on those groups who do not ‘consent’ for the whole of society in anticipation of moments of crisis of command and direction when spontaneous consent has failed (Gramsci 1971, 12). Gramsci’s belief in the power of organic intellectuals to transform the working class is somewhat difficult to understand in today’s climate; at the same time, there is little doubt that intellectual production has played a significant role in the ascent of neoliberalism to its current hegemonic position. Moreover, his discussion and analysis of ideology is a useful antidote to mainstream IPE, which is generally silent on this issue. If dominant forces are successful, meaning that they predominate for long periods, Gramsci terms this an ‘historic bloc’ (Simon 1991, 32–3). For critical IPE scholars, historical blocs provide a way past the mainstream international relations closure on the contents of the state. Historical blocs are not always hegemonic nor are they static—social forces are constantly shifting, influenced by subaltern movements as well as shifting internal power. Gramsci highlights two types of change: short-term and nonstructural versus significant, structural, and often long-lasting. Structural change generally results in reshaping all elements of the historical bloc: institutions, alliances, and ideology (Simon 1991, 39). Gramsci does not dismiss either form of change because ‘a social form always has marginal possibilities for further development and organisational improvement’ (Gramsci 1971, 222). He has a particular interest in the response of dominant social forces to significant changes in socio-economic systems that, when confronted with such change, normally employ a strategy of ‘passive revolution’ or ‘revolution from above.’ The primary form of this strategy is utilisation of the institutions of the state to achieve structural changes in the economy to shape a new historical bloc (Simon 1991, 50). 3 This analysis is very relevant to the role of an international institution like the World Bank. Gramsci largely analyses hegemony at the national level, though in one of his key notes, ‘Analysis of Situation. Relations of Force,’ he states clearly that ‘international relations intertwine with these internal relations of nation-states, creating new, unique and historically concrete combinations’ (Gramsci 1971, 182). As Anderson points out, the ‘terrain of discourse is manifestly universal’ (1976, 20). Examples of Gramsci’s analysis of the simultaneous operation of social forces in national and international arenas include his critique of the Comintern, the impact of Fordism on Europe, and his writing on the structure and organisation of the Catholic

162

Susan Engel

Church.4 Ultimately, though, Gramsci does not have as much to say about either analysing or challenging hegemony operating across countries or ‘internationally’ as he does about domestic forces. This is where the work of Robert Cox is useful as he was one of the first IPE scholars to develop a framework for analysing hegemony at the level of world orders. Cox develops a schema in which hegemonic and nonhegemonic forces are analysed utilising three interrelated spheres of historically current activity: social forces, states, and world orders. Social forces are fundamentally shaped by relations of production and this, for him, is the starting point for analysing hegemony. 5 Following Gramsci’s understanding of the state as the product of the relations between a civil/political society nexus and the economic arena, Cox does not accept the unity of the state. Forms of state need to be explained via analysis of state and civil society (social forces) connections (Cox 1986, 223). They can be influenced by the structure of the world order and can influence the structure. Cox utilises the Gramscian idea of an historical bloc to analyse the development of recent forms of states and their underlying dominant social forces, as well as their movements towards hegemony. And following Gramsci, too, the purpose of this is always a practical one—only through such understandings can an understanding of the potentials for resistance and transformation be developed (Cox 1986, 230). In the fi nal sphere of world orders, Cox retains (as in Gramsci) the national sphere as the foundation of the creation of hegemonic historical blocs. Thus, he suggests, that a ‘world hegemony is thus in it beginnings an outward expansion of the internal (national) hegemony established by a dominant social class’ (Cox 1996, 137). A national hegemony can form the basis of a world order if the hegemony is universalist and the national state can ensure its progress and protection. As Bieler and Morton explain: [h]egemony can therefore operate at two levels: by constructing an historical bloc and establishing social cohesion within a form of state as well as by expanding a mode of production internationally and projecting hegemony through the level of world order (2004, 93). Thus, the internationalisation of the state can be as important as the internationalisation of production. Cox sees the current global hegemony as an outwards expansion of an American historical bloc, which he labels the pax Americana. The legitimating ideology of pax Americana is, of course, neoliberalism. Under pax Americana, reconciliation of the world economy and domestic pressures involved factors such as the practice of policy harmonisation, the role of key state agencies in both dominant and other states, and the role of international institutions (Cox 1986, 230–2). Cox also identified a range of ways in which hegemony is expressed by international organisations as both the products of


163

the hegemonic world order and institutions that facilitate the expansion of the rules of that order, in this case neoliberalism. Institutions function to legitimate rules, engage social forces in developing countries in an order, and assimilate (Cox 1996, 138) ideas. 6 Germain and Kenny (1998) have questioned the accuracy of Cox’s (and other critical IPE scholars’) reading of Gramsci. Morton pointed out, however, that this critique represents a kind of ‘austere historicism’ that suggests the ideas of writers in the past are not relevant to the analysis today (2003, 120). Further, as Morton demonstrated, austere historicism is not consistent with Gramsci’s theoretical or political project, which was a transformative one (2003, 120).7 Thus the purpose of understanding Gramsci in critical IPE is not to articulate a universal Gramscian framework, rather it is to explore concepts and ideas that are useful for understanding and analysing the forms and operations of IPE today. While taking the work of Cox as an inspiration, I hope through this case study of the World Bank in Vietnam to more effectively incorporate Gramsci’s inspiration and example by building a more in-depth understanding of pax Americana. Thus the goal is to interrogate the World Bank and to clarify its nature by exploring five key areas. First, the Bank needs to be studied as an institution that serves the interests of the dominant hegemony, pax Americana, via promotion of its historical bloc expressed as neoliberalism. However, the proviso must be made that hegemony is both historically contingent and never complete—there are always challenges. At the same time, pax Americana has fundamental hegemonic principles that it maintains. Thus this study of the Bank explores how it defends neoliberal hegemonic principles as well as where it successfully legitimises rules or supports particular social forces and ideologies. But it also examines where the Bank has not been successful and where the gaps or tensions are. Second, one particular complexity is that the World Bank is an international bureaucracy, and Gramsci noted that bureaucracies are subject not just to the will of sometimes competing states, but they have their own dynamics that result in the development of their own interests and logics (Gramsci 1971, 175). Third, international institutions operate differently in different locations; they utilise what Gramsci called democratic centralism to allow adaptation to different expressions of local social, political, and economic realities (1971, 188). This adaptive capacity is central to the survival of not just an organisation but to the social forces they represent. Studying what can be modified and, more pertinently, what can never be challenged, sheds much light on the nature of neoliberal ideology. Fourth, a Gramscian framework directs attention to how World Bank policies and programs are best understood in the coercion/consent dialectic and whether the post-Washington Consensus has shifted the Bank’s tactics. Finally, the Gramscian framework points to questions about whether the post-Washington Consensus represents structural and fundamental

164

Susan Engel

transformation, or whether it involves utilising the state and international organisations to continually shape the current historical bloc.

APPLYING HEGEMONY: THE WORLD BANK Harry Dexter White from the US Treasury conceived the idea for a World Bank in 1941 as part of planning for the post–World War Two economic order (Block 1977, 46). It was second in his focus, however, to what was to become the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Indeed, continued planning for the Bank was partly due to the focus of the pre-eminent economist and the head of the British economic planning team, John Maynard Keynes. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), as it became known, took shape during the conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944. It was largely, as its title indicates, designed to assist in the postwar reconstruction of Europe, though development was included in its purposes largely at the request of the Mexican delegation (Urquidi 1996, 9). The Bank began operations in 1946. After Marshall Plan aid to Europe from the US usurped its role in reconstruction, it shifted its focus to lending for development activities in the less industrialised countries. In 1961, the International Development Association (IDA) was added to the IBRD and the Bank became a group.8 The IBRD and IDA operate as one organisation. Both provide loans to developing countries; however, the IDA lends only to the least developed countries and the loans are more concessional than IBRD loans. After substantial growth in the 1970s under the presidency of Robert Strange McNamara, the Bank became the most significant international development agency in the world (Gosovic 2000, 454). In 2007, it gained its 185th member, it had offices in more than one hundred countries, more than ten thousand staff, and it had lent cumulatively $590 billion for development activities. In addition to lending activities, the Bank: provides technical assistance; organises consultative groups of major donors to coordinate and direct development assistance; undertakes macro and microeconomic surveys; and manages international debt relief programs. It is also the largest development research organisation in the world (Stern and Ferreira 1997). Private financial companies rely on the Bank’s analyses of a country’s creditworthiness—this alone gives it tremendous power. The 1990s were a mixed time for the Bank. In the early part of the decade, the end of the Cold War increased Bank membership, and demand for funds, plus bilateral aid from rich countries, waned. Yet historically high levels of capital flows, in particular foreign direct investment (FDI), poured into many (if not all) developing countries. Private capital generally comes with fewer strings than Bank loans and thus is a direct competition for it. In 1997, the Asian financial crisis dried up short- and long-term capital flows to many developing countries and again bought the Bank’s significance as a lender to the fore. After September 11, 2001, global aid flows again increased in real


165

terms, and by 2002–2003, capital flows to developing countries were again on the increase, though most of this went to just a handful of countries. However, many countries remain substantially dependent on the Bank, and the authoritativeness of its country economic analysis and model of development has increased. So what is the Bank’s development model? In the early 1980s, neoliberal governments came to power in key Western states—UK, US and Germany— and neoliberalism became the predominant political theory across the globe. The hegemonic neoliberal government, the US, set about reordering not just its own economy but the international economic structure as well. The refocused agenda is commonly referred to as the Washington Consensus, and its core policies were a commitment to macroeconomic stability, outward orientation, and domestic liberalisation.9 This program dominated Bank development thinking and practice into the 1990s. The Washington Consensus was not, however, a panacea for developing countries; indeed, many performed worse economically in the 1980s than in earlier decades. It also came with high social costs and created a strong backlash—too strong in fact. By the time of the Asian financial crisis in late 1997, Washington Consensus prescriptions were under strong challenge from a number of fronts and the Bank was claiming to have surpassed it with a new development framework. Most of the assessments of this shift conclude that it was more about style than substance. It has been labelled the post-Washington Consensus (PWC) to indicate its continuities with the Washington Consensus. The next section explores the shift to the PWC in a little more detail and highlights both the continuities and discontinuities with the Washington Consensus. This provides the framework to examine World Bank operations in Vietnam in order to demonstrate how neoliberal hegemony expanded beyond national arenas to become a global phenomenon.

FROM WASHINGTON CONSENSUS TO POST-WASHINGTON CONSENSUS The Washington Consensus was labelled as such because it involved development of shared belief in core economic policies between three Washington-based institutions: the Bank, the IMF, and the US government.10 The consensus on economic policy evolved into a common set of policy prescriptions used by the World Bank and IMF as conditions for their loans. Despite the Bank’s protests to the contrary, there is little doubt that the Washington Consensus dominated Bank lending until the mid-1990s. The policies were implemented often quite simplistically and with some single-mindedness during the mid-1980s; for example, the prescription for outward orientation led the Bank to push all of its borrowing countries to expand agricultural exports without undertaking any macro assessment of the impact this might have on global commodity prices. The results were predictable, with a protracted and significant decline

166

Susan Engel

in prices in the 1980s and 1990s, leaving many producers facing prices that did not cover the costs of production (Caulfield 1998, 158). By the early 1990s, variations in Bank prescriptions between countries and policies had increased. The process of change was gradual, but 1997 was a key year: the early reforms of James D. Wolfensohn (appointed as president in 1995) were being felt; the Asian financial crisis again put the Bank under the spotlight; and the Bank released a controversial World Development Report indicating a shift in its politico-economic commitments. Indeed, The State in a Changing World: World Development Report 1997 is a key marker of the Bank’s ‘reinvention of liberalism.’11 The report maintains neoclassical commitments to markets but recognises the importance of state intervention ‘in defining the structure of market-mediated economic relations’ (Berger and Beeson 1998, 499). It is indicative, theoretically, of the impact of new institutional economics on the Bank. Politically, it shows the influence of the Clinton Administration in the US and of the NGO critique of the Bank, in particular of the need for more local community participation in projects and a greater focus on poverty reduction.12 Given space constraints, I briefly outline the key differences between the Washington Consensus and the PWC that have led to the claim of a distinctive PWC. These are:

1. A fundamental continuation of the neoliberal conservative approach to monetary and fiscal policy meaning: a preference for monetary policy (especially interest rates) over demand-side measures to control the economy and an independent central bank to control interest rates; fully convertible currencies; and a strong fiscal restraint on the state. However, approaches to liberalisation of prices and capital accounts, etc., in particular, tend to be more cautious, given concerns about market failure and applicability to local conditions. Support for trade liberalisation, however, remains intact (Broad 2004, 136). 2. Following from above, and the (supposed) abandonment of one-sizefits-all approaches to development, greater attention to the specific country situation. This should include better developed socio-economic analysis of local conditions as well as consideration of global and regional impacts. 3. An expansion of the role of state as a complement to, rather than competition for, markets—in a weak form, this only promotes a state that provides a good policy environment for business, in other words an active, procapitalist state (Cammack 2003, 5). A further step allows more space for state institutions to engage with market imperfections (information and transaction costs). A strong version analyses actors and interests in the society and the distribution of power/resources between them, as well as analysis of who wins and loses from policy proposals (Wodsak 2002, 44).


167

4. Increased concern with market failure to complement the existing focus on government failure—this would be indicative of a stronger version of the PWC. Practical outcomes include analysis of markets prior to promotion of privatisation. 5. Increased attention to the sequencing of reform programs, in particular adequate regulatory frameworks relevant to local conditions prior to liberalisation. 6. A greater concern for the social costs of adjustment and poverty in general. 7. More appreciation of local knowledge and practices tempered by a concern about coherence and coordination (Wodsak 2002, 91). 8. Expanded participation in the planning, design, and implementation of activities; this needs to be considered both in terms of the type of participants involved and the extent and nature of the participatory process. 9. Increased attention to decentralisation as a policy prescription for supposedly increasing participation, ensuring local needs are met and improving governance. 10. A concern with and analysis of social capital—this extends to economists analysing social factors but not social scientists in the Bank analysing the economy and state. 11. A slightly broader approach to health and education. 12. Interest in corruption understood as the result of government and market failure, thus transforming it from a political to an economic issue relevant to Bank programs.13 13. A rejuvenated focus on property rights and institutions as they are essential to minimising transaction and information costs, and thus to economic growth, they are a prerequisite to ‘getting the prices right’ (North 1998, 23–5). This summary draws on and confirms the analysis of scholars such as Ben Fine, who concludes that the PWC is, at core, a way of incorporating the ‘dissent against its neoliberal predecessor’ without fundamentally challenging its model and assumptions (Fine 2001b, 172).14 For example, the Bank’s concern with social issues addresses community concerns, but the approach rests on the impact of social factors on ‘economic development or the functioning of markets’ (Wodsak 2002, 98). All of this suggests that the term post-Washington Consensus in the hyphenated form—indicating its continuities to the Washington Consensus—is an appropriate description.

168

Susan Engel

The next section examines whether the PWC has impacted on World Bank lending through a case study of its program in Vietnam. The case study commences with an examination of the overall Bank program, including its size and influence as a lender; the analysis underpinning its country program; and the sectors, sizes, and types of loans. The next two sectors of Bank lending are examined in two periods to correlate to the Washington Consensus (1993–1997) and PWC (2000–2004). The sectors include structural adjustment and energy loans, as these are two of the largest sectors of Bank lending. Insights from the overall research are utilised in the concluding remarks.

THE WORLD BANK PROGRAM IN VIETNAM Vietnam has a population of around eighty million; it is a socialist republic with a unitary system of government and an elected National Assembly that oversees law making. The role of the Communist Party of Vietnam is not clearly defi ned in the constitution, but it basically parallels the state and directs it. However, its influence does seem to be slowly declining. Vietnam was never as collectivised as some of the other socialist states, but weak economic performance combined with the massive cost of decades of war with the French, Americans, Chinese, and Cambodians, left some 70 per cent of the population living in poverty by the mid-1980s. To address this situation, in 1986 the government of Vietnam (GoV) started a program of gradual economic reform known as Doi Moi (renovation). The program has been quite successful in reducing poverty and in promoting economic growth. By 1993, when the World Bank reengaged with Vietnam, economic growth was at ten per cent and poverty levels were declining. The Bank is a very significant source of development funding for Vietnam.15 Between 1993 and 2004, it committed over USD $5.125 billion to Vietnam, an average of $465 million per annum. In 2004, lending shifted to what the Bank called its high scenario for lending—loans totalled over $744 million. This placed the Bank at the top of the list of Vietnam’s development assistance providers. The Bank’s influence goes beyond the actual dollars it lends because of the key role it plays in donor coordination. This is an area the Bank has been active in, particularly after 1999 when Vietnam agreed to be part of the pilot Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) process and the associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process—new initiatives that were the frontline of the Bank’s PWC approach. Donor coordination involves the Bank in coordinating other countries to focus on particular regions or sectors and encouraging joint funding of loans. The Bank also plays a lead role in promoting a ‘development’ agenda. A 2001 study by Nørlund confi rmed this, noting that for the most, the response to the role of the Bank was positive as it was seen as having a ‘very open attitude in Vietnam’ (Nørlund 2001, 6).


169

The Country Assistance Strategy The document that outlines the Bank’s plan for each country is called the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). There are references to a CAS for Vietnam in September 1994; however, prior to 1998 the Bank kept its country programming documents confidential (even from the recipient government). A Structural Adjustment Credit (SAC I) provided in 1994, does give some indications of early Bank priorities. It indicates strong support for the program of Doi Moi, which is presented as the start of a Washington Consensus structural adjustment package—conservative monetary and fi scal policy combined with (some) price liberalisation to control the budget deficit and inflation and to ‘get the prices right’; currency devaluation and fi nancial sector reforms; reforms to state enterprises; openness to foreign direct investment; de-collectivisation and property rights; and limited and highly targeted social programs (World Bank 1994). However, there has been a debate about whether Doi Moi can really be understood in neoliberal terms.16 Conditions on the loan were in the areas of government budgeting, the program for state enterprise reform, the legal framework for property rights, and commercial transactions and banking reforms. SAC I praised ‘ownership’ by GoV of the reform, but the 1998–2002 CAS notes differences between the Bank and the GoV on the pace of reform, with the Bank urging a faster rate (World Bank 1998, ii). This issue frequently reappears in Bank documentation—indeed, I think it is not going too far to suggest that this issue is at the centre of Bank/GoV relations. The Bank’s overarching focus on pace is ultimately indicative, too, of the limited extent to which it has taken on board warnings on the pace and timing of reform over the Washington Consensus concerns with government failure. In line with the PWC model, the Bank and other key donors in Vietnam supported an increased focus on poverty in Vietnam. They started supporting poverty assessments and survey work, and the process was linked to the development of a PRSP in 1999, which the government was required to produce if it wished to access structural adjustment lending. An interimPRSP, released in mid-2000, was produced quickly in order to maintain access to structural adjustment lending and involved little public participation. The full PRSP, called the Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (CPRGS), was released in May 2002 (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2002). It involved significant consultation with various levels of government, local NGOs, international NGOs, and donors. An evaluation of the process concluded that, initially it had little impact on the GoV or the broader community but has progressed to becoming ‘a “secondtrack” policy forum, paralleling government and party policy’ with limited broader impact (Nørlund 2003). Vietnam’s CPRGS has a strong focus on relatively standard Washington Consensus macroeconomic prescriptions to create economic growth and thus supposedly reduce poverty. But more

170

Susan Engel

than other PRSPs, it includes a number of fi rm measures to increase GoV expenditure on redistributive mechanisms.17 The 2003–2006 CAS claims to be based on Vietnam’s CPRGS and sets out three broad objectives derived from this:

(i) High growth through a transition to a market economy; (ii) An equitable, socially inclusive, and sustainable pattern of growth; and (iii) Adoption of a modern public administration, legal, and governance system (2002a, i). Although these three themes do appear in the CPRGS, they are not indicative of its structure or priorities. The Bank’s focus only on the Washington Consensus macroeconomic policy settings ignores the social redistributive measures. Its presentation of the themes differs subtly but significantly from the CPRGS, which, drawing from overall objectives in the Government’s Five Year Plan, aims to: Bring about a significant improvement in the people’s material, cultural and spiritual life, lay the foundations for the country’s industrialization and modernization, build a prosperous people, strong country and a just, equal, democratic and civilized society, and establish the institutions of a socialist-oriented market economy . . . (emphasis added) (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2002, 6). The Bank’s version ignores the socialist-orientation of the market economy and changes the ‘people’s material, cultural and spiritual life’ into an ‘equitable . . . pattern of growth.’ In terms of public administration and the legal environment, the Bank’s key descriptor is ‘modern,’ the CPRGS, on the other hand, refers variously to a fair, level, transparent, and efficient system (2002, 7). ‘Modern’ is clearly a synonym for neoliberal capitalism—this translates in the Bank’s lending as projects focused on the design of key laws of a ‘market-driven economy’ in particular, land-use rights (aimed at creating private property), and gas and electricity laws (World Bank 2002a, 63). Here two of the hegemonic principles of the PWC are revealed—the primacy of private property and markets. The CAS’s examination of Vietnam’s historical bloc is revealing: social aspects receive little attention and account for only one paragraph of fourteen. Indeed, the limited space means the economic analysis is limited and consists of broad claims. It focuses on promoting a faster pace of policy reform and building a market economy. Monetary and fiscal policy analysis continues the Washington Consensus approach. There is no consideration of potential impacts from the external environment, which is surprising given that the Asian financial crisis was still fresh in people’s minds. The CAS


171

proposes three possible scenarios regarding lending volumes with the actual outcome linked only to the ‘pace of progress on the Government’s policy and institutional agenda’ (World Bank 2002a, iii). It is not linked to performance on poverty outcomes or to the potential impact on Vietnam of regional or global events. There are no alternative scenarios in case the economy or poverty levels do not respond to the proposed policy prescriptions. So, although the Bank needs and wants to be more ‘organic’ in the PWC period, both its structures as a Bank and commitment to the hegemonic principles of the Washington Consensus ultimately prevent it from moving this commitment beyond more surface interventions.

The Bank’s Lending Program If the Bank has significantly shifted from the Washington Consensus, this might be reflected in the overall nature of its country lending operations. Thus, this section examines the evolution of Bank lending in terms of sectoral focus, types of loans, and the size of loans in the two case-study periods: 1993–1997 and 2000–2004. In terms of sectoral focus the transport and energy sectors were the focus of Bank activities in 1993–1997 (see table), accounting for almost half of total lending. Transportation is comprised mainly of projects to rehabilitate highways and ports; energy projects are predominately electricity generation, distribution, and management; and fi nance, the third major sector, comprises predominately

Table 10.1. World Bank New Loan Approvals to Vietnam as a Per Cent of Total Lending by Sector 1993–97 and 2000–04 Sector

1993–1997

2000–2004

(%)

(%)

Transportation

29

16

Energy

20

23

Finance

16

7

Law, justice and public administration

9

18

Health and other social services

9

1

Agriculture, fishing and forestry

7

11

Water, sanitation and flood protection

6

18

Education

4

6

Source: World Bank Projects Database

172

Susan Engel

banking reform projects. Health and education receive scant attention in either period.18 The 1998–2002 Vietnam CAS indicated that its program would shift to focus more on poverty and social issues. Looking at the table, in terms of the relative focus on health and education, that shift cannot be said to have occurred. There were some poverty-focused projects in the area of rural developments, which was also a Bank focus. Energy and transport remain key sectors, though law, justice, and public administration projects push transport into third place. This focus was suggested by the analysis of the PWC, in particular its emphasis on property rights and business and regulatory frameworks to reduce market and government failures. The nature of this governance lending is explored in the section on structural adjustment lending.

Structural Adjustment Lending in Vietnam Vietnam has had four structural adjustment credits, one in the 1993–1997 period and three in 2000–2004. Structural adjustment lending increased from almost 9 per cent of lending in 1993–1997 to more than 16 per cent in 2000–2004. This is less than the current bank average of 33 per cent of lending (World Bank 2003, 36). As noted earlier, there is limited information available on the 1994 credit, however, conditionalities are in core Washington Consensus areas and the documentation presents a neoliberal reading of Doi Moi. The gap in adjustment loans until 2001 was because the Bank could not reach consensus with GoV about a program, which indicates the Bank’s commitment to its hegemonic principles over country ownership of its economic program (World Bank 2001, 1). As a result, the Bank attempted to implement aspects of its structural reform program through sector programs. Structural adjustment credits in the second case-study period are called Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs); there are three of these, commencing in 2001. There is a significant shift from PRSC I to II / II (2003/4) whereby the policy reform agenda is expanded to incorporate social reform issues.19 PRSC I covers reform in five areas: the private sector climate; SOE reform; banking reform; trade reform; and public expenditure management. All five are core Washington Consensus concerns. From PRSC II, additional items include health, education, land use and transferability, environmental sustainability, government planning, and legal reform. However, the five sectors from PRSC I, which conform to the Washington Consensus agenda, continue to receive the most attention. Decentralisation and corruption appear in PRSC II and become more prominent in PRSC III; these are part of the PWC focus on governance and provide additional grounds for the Bank to propose ‘reforms’ in Vietnam’s legal and regulatory system. The number and types of conditions changes over the loans—PRSC I for $250 million contains twenty-four conditions for the two tranches in


173

the five sectors mentioned above. In PRSC II ($100 million), conditions are dropped in favour of ‘policy actions,’ nineteen of which are specified across twelve sectors, plus there are fourteen ‘triggers’ for PRSC III. By PRSC III ($100 million) only triggers remain—fi fteen of them. Conditionality is a controversial area for the Bank, particularly in relation to structural adjustment loans. The Bank claims that triggers ‘are not conditions,’ but their explanation of what they are suggests otherwise: ‘[p]rogress on most triggers and no backtracking on any of them leads in principle to the preparation of the next PRSC operation . . . ’ (2004a, 17). The triggers for PRSC IV include both broad directives and specific actions, for example Vietnam must draft new ‘Enterprise and Investment Laws in accordance with the Guiding Concepts and Principles date April 26, 2004’ (2004a, 32). As Griffi n notes, these broad ‘postconditionality’ mechanisms often increase the Bank’s ‘encroachment into the day-to-day governance of developing countries’ (Griffi n 2006, 578). One of the most controversial aspects of the PRSCs is the requirement for ‘equitisation’ of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). GoV describes ‘equitisation’ as transforming the ownership of the mode of production. 20 A study of the forms of equitisation suggests that it is increasingly little more than privatisation (Evans 2004, 1). From 1992 to 2000, pilot equitisation of about 450 firms took place. PRSC I required equitisation of more than 450 firms prior to the release of the first tranche of funding (which was obviously already the case) and adoption of a five-year SOE reform program covering one-third of SOEs. The second tranche release included five conditions (of twelve) on equitising SOEs: streamlining the equitisation process, completing equitisation of 200 major and 200 minor SOEs, equitisation of noncore assets of general corporations, and modification of a redundancy fund for SOEs (World Bank 2001a, 41–2). PRSC II and III continued the push; PRSC III gives an overall aim of equitising, selling, or liquidating around twenty-four hundred SOEs from 2004–2006 (World Bank 2004a, 22). The actual pace of equitisation has been slower than envisaged by the Bank, and this has been a significant source of tension between the Bank and GoV. The Bank was concerned that smaller, less strategic enterprises were being equitised to meet targets. Thus, in an indication of the Bank’s more coercive techniques to pursue hegemonic principles, from PRSC II the Bank shifted from broad numerical targets to a program actually listing enterprises and the target dates for equitisation. Nevertheless, the pace continued to be slower than the Bank would like. This is not surprising given, first, the complexity of the process, which has stretched the administrative and regulatory capacity of the government, and second, the sensitivity of the process itself, in particular the ‘considerable labour retrenchment’ (World Bank 2004a, 37).21 In terms of the process of equitisation, the big issue is the valuation of enterprises and, in particular, land valuation. Valuation originally required an independent audit, yet to speed up the process, the Bank successfully

174

Susan Engel

pushed to have this requirement dropped. This was despite experience indicating that companies were not appropriately valuing assets, in particular land (an easy task given that the market for land is undeveloped to say the least). Dropping the audit made it easier for managers to deliberately undervalue assets in order to gain control over enterprises (Evans 2004, 13). The Bank’s continuing pressure on the government to equitise SOEs, despite its own judgement that ‘insider privatization’ is taking place, is indicative of its judgement regarding the importance of government and market failures (Sam and Hai 2004, 3). PWC ‘lessons’ about market failure and pace and sequencing of reform and the experience in Vietnam to date remain second to the Washington Consensus agenda on privatisation. As part of PRSC I, the Bank negotiated additional support for redundant workers under a specially established fund for SOEs. The fund provides more generous assistance than the Labor Code in the form of lump-sum compensation plus a six-month vocational retraining voucher. Other than the voucher, this is a passive labour market policy. 22 While the redundancy package demonstrates a concern with the social costs of adjustment, its form and implementation is indicative of a view of a limited role for the state in social issues. This is the PWC with a weak version of the role of the state, limited to promoting business and providing adjustment welfare not redistributive justice.

The Energy Sector The World Bank has, since its fi rst loan in the electricity sector in early 1995, had as its main goal a fully privatised electricity sector. It has pursued this through six loans and one guarantee in the sector, as well as numerous linked technical assistance grants and conditions in PRSCs. There were two loans during 1993–1997 and three plus a guarantee in 2000–2004. The Bank’s program in Vietnam is similar to that followed in other Asian countries—it started with the introduction of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) on the generation side of the industry (Beder 2003, 86–100), the preconditions for which were introduced by the 1995 Power Sector Rehabilitation and Expansion Project and an associated technical assistance grants. These funds ‘assisted’ the power sector move toward a more commercial structure and helped to unbundle the generation, transmission, and distribution functions (World Bank 1995). Conditions on the loan included implementation of the outcomes of Bank-funded studies on industry structure, legislative requirements, fi nancial management, and electricity tariffs. The introduction of an IPP, called Phu My 2–2, at the Phu My power generation complex outside Ho Chi Minh City was a condition of the 1996 power sector development loan. A Bank’s report hailed this development as a ‘breakthrough in the introduction of private power in Viet Nam’ (World Bank1995). The loan included funding to develop the technical, commer-


175

cial, and legal structure of the IPP. An associated technical assistance grant aimed to create ‘a legal and regulatory framework for the power sector that would be conducive to private sector participation’ (1995, 32–3). The construction of Phu My 2–2 by foreign investors was assisted by a USD $75 million guarantee from the Bank in 2002; much of the other capital was sourced from the Asian Development Bank and Japan Bank for International Cooperation. 23 The Bank guarantee to the private investors is, in turn, guaranteed by the GoV. Further, the state owned electricity company, EVN, was required to sign a twenty year power purchase agreement for Phu My 2–2 outputs. So at the end of the day, Phu My 2–2 was designed by the World Bank fund, it was built with their guarantee, and the private investors assume virtually no risk—it is transferred to the GoV and EVN, which must continue to purchase power at a set price even if technological or other breakthroughs result in a significant decline in the costs of generation or if demand is not sufficient. This certainly begs the question of why have private companies in the fi rst place. The Phu My 2–2 guarantee is a powerful statement of the Bank’s views on the role of states and markets. Given that the project was approved two years before the new National Electricity Law was passed by the National Assembly, it also indicates that the pace and sequencing of reform is secondary to privatisation. Two of the Bank’s three loans during the 2000–2004 period were in rural electrification (RE), these aimed to expand access to electricity in rural areas via grid extensions and alternative energy sources. Expanding rural household’s access to energy could have significant impacts on living standards. There are, however, a couple of catches in the loans showing the more coercive side to Bank hegemony. First, connection to the national grid, the largest part of the program, is only provided to communes that demonstrate adequate economic rates of return from the connection. 24 Poverty reduction is thus second to economic growth. Second, the distribution model is archetypal Washington Consensus. In rural areas, electricity distribution is undertaken by a variety of commune and district level enterprises. The RE projects formalises this system of well over a thousand communal and provincial electricity distributors. A condition of the RE projects is the commercialisation and subsequent equitisation of these distributors (and the equitisation of EVN assets as well). 25 The documents contain very little analysis of the technical and fi nancial viability of small operations across different parts of the country, but this model certainly serves to keep rural operations separate from urban ones, a core part of the Bank’s utilities privatisation model (Amenga-Etego and Grusky 2005). Two new ideas appear in the energy loans in the second period of study: decentralisation and participation. Decentralisation is a key policy prescription in all three loans in the second period. It is a policy that superficially responds to critics of the one-size-fits-all view of Bank programs and is assumed to provide more local participation in decision-making (Hadiz 2004, 700–1). However, as in Vedi Hadiz’s analysis of decentralisation in

176

Susan Engel

Indonesia, decentralisation in the loan projects is a technical issue regarding the most efficient level to manage and administer electricity enterprises. Moreover, this form of decentralisation facilitates privatisation of profitable distributors. Participation has limited purposes too: communities in RE projects are consulted to ‘determine the need for electrification,’ which means to assist the assessment of the economic rates of return and confi rm that 60 per cent of the local population are willing to pay for the service. This supports Cammack’s argument that the Bank’s vision of civil society participation is a deliberate strategy ‘to induce people to experience tightly controlled and carefully delimited forms of market-supporting activity as empowerment’ (2003, 12).

FROM WASHINGTON TO POST-WASHINGTON CONSENSUS: A LIMITED IMPACT ON LENDING This analysis of the Bank’s lending program in Vietnam suggests that the impact of the PWC on lending is more limited than on Bank policy documents and research output. There are some notable influences, such as the expansion of the structural adjustment agenda, concessions to potential impact of activities on poverty, and the focus on public administration, decentralisation, and corruption. However, when the two agendas confl ict, the hegemonic principles underlying the Washington Consensus prevail over PWC concerns with, for example, market failures, the pace and sequencing of reform, and the role of the state. This is particularly the case in the key Washington Consensus items of privatisation and liberalisation. In these areas, too, it is clear that the Bank’s agenda is not driven by a concern for economic efficiency and performance but rather by a political agenda of systematically removing control from government in favour of private interests. The positive changes that have occurred, such as the increase (though limited) in participation and the Bank’s support of a higher percentage of the national budget going to education, can be traced to the Clinton administration, new institutional economics, and the NGO challenge. Returning to the Gramsci framework, it is clear that the shift in development ideology and practice represented by the PWC is not a systemic transformation, rather it is a short-term conjunctural project to deepen and extend the hegemonic control of a neoliberal pax Americana, achieved by reconfiguring the Bank’s mission from one predominately focused on reshaping the economic structure of recipient countries to a project of reshaping the historical bloc to be compatible to US needs and more palatable to local social forces. The Washington Consensus did not live up to pax Americana’s needs in promoting countries not just sympathetic to it but able to support its existence politically, socially, economically, and militarily. Its costs were too high and its outcomes too limited. This revised mission required new tactics.


177

The Washington Consensus mission enabled the Bank to more or less rely upon economic coercion during the 1980s. The post–Washington Consensus focus on political and social relations requires increasing reliance on more consensus-based strategies, in particular a leading role in moral and intellectual leadership of development discourse and practice. Not surprisingly, the Bank’s adoption of these tactics and roles has not always been complete or successfully implemented. In the analysis of how the PWC translates to lending practices, it is possible to see some of the gaps, inconsistencies, and problems and to utilise these to challenge the Bank’s activities. Equally, the case study approach indicates the way in which domestic historical blocs interact with the Washington Consensus and PWC agendas. In Vietnam, where the Bank has been confronted by a strong, coherent but not necessarily liberal state, it has often adopted consensus-based strategies, aimed at slowly modifying the moral and intellectual terrain of debate. At the same time, it falls back on coercion, particularly in defending the hegemonic principles of the Washington Consensus. 26

NOTES 1. One of the key notes in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks on hegemony is entitled ‘Analysis of Situations: Relations of Force,’ in A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, eds. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 175–209. This is also the position of R. Howson, Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity (London: Routledge, 2006), 13. 2. E. Augelli and C. N. Murphy, ‘Gramsci and International Relations: A General Perspective and Example from Recent US Policy Towards the Third World,’ in ed. S. Gill, Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 128. On the political/civil society relationship, see J. A. Buttigieg, ‘The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique,’ boundary 2(2005):32;1. 3. On the sometimes competing uses of the terms ‘state’ and ‘civil society’ in Gramsci, see Anderson, ‘The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci’ (1976), 10–13. 4. On Fordism see Gramsci (1971), 279–318. His analysis of the Catholic Church is more scattered. See Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, especially the Fifth Notebook, but also pages 76 and 116–7. For an analysis of the international nature of this analysis, see Augelli and Murphy (1993): 129–30 and 44. 5. Bieler, A. and A. D. Morton, ‘A Critical Theory Route to Hegemony, World Order and Historical Change: Neo-Gramscian Perspectives in International Relations,’ in Capital & Class 82(2004):89; R. W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,’ in Neorealism and Its Critics, ed. R. Keohane, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 220–5. 6. A different but largely synergistic approach can be found in G. Arrighi, ‘The Three Hegemonies of Historical Capitalism,’ in Gramsci, Historical Materi-

178

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

Susan Engel alism and International Relations, ed. S. Gill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 182. See also M. Rupert, ‘(Re-)Engaging Gramsci: A Response to Germain and Kenny,’ Review of International Studies 24, 3(1998): 427–34. Three other bodies have been added to the group since 1961, but only the IBRD and IDA provide development lending. The IBRD and IDA are what the World Bank Group itself states is meant when using the term ‘World Bank’ The World Bank Group Website; available from http://www.worldbank.org (accessed March 2003). On the Washington Consensus, see P. Cammack, ‘Attacking the Poor,’ New Left Review 13(2002): 125–134; M. Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (London: Zed Books, 1997); W. Easterly, ‘The Lost Decades: Developing Countries’ Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980–1998’ (Washington: The World Bank, 2001); S. George and F. Sabelli, Faith and Credit: The World Bank’s Secular Empire (London: Penguin Books, 1994); Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development (Boston: Beacon Press); J. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (London: Penguin Books, 2002); E. Toussaint, Your Money or Your Life! The Tyranny of Global Finance. R. Krishnan and V. Briault Manus, trans. (London: Pluto Press, 1999); R. Wade, ‘Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Perspective,’ New Left Review 217(1996): 3–36; V. Wodsak, ‘World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation: Change and Continuity in the World Bank’s Approach to Development in the 1990s’ (2002), a thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts. Queen’s University. John Williamson labelled these commitments and policies ‘the Washington Consensus’ in 1990. See B. Fine, Social Capital Versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium (London: Routledge, 2001), 132. M. T. Berger and M. Beeson, ‘Lineages of Liberalism and Miracles of Modernisation: The World Bank, the East Asian Trajectory and the International Development Debate,’ Third World Quarterly 19, 3(1998): 499. See also Wodsak, World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation (2002), 71–74. See for example Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative Network; available from http://www.saprin.org/ (access date: July 2004). The Bank’s Articles of Agreement explicitly prohibits it from political activity (Article III, Section 5(b)). See also B. Fine, ‘Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus: An Introduction.’ in Development Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond the Post-Washington Consensus, eds. B. Fine, C. Lapavitsas and J. Pincus (London: Routledge); N. Hermes and R. Lensink, ‘Changing the Conditions for Development Aid: A New Paradigm?’ Journal of Development Studies 37, 6(2001): 1–16; D. Porter and D. Craig, ‘The Third Way and the Third World: Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion in the Rise of “Inclusive” Liberalism,’ Review of International Political Economy 11, 2(2004): 387–423; Wodsak, World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation. Figures are from OECD and World Bank sources. All figures are in USD. Commentators from the left and right who suggest Doi Moi was like a structural adjustment program include W. Turley, ‘Viet Nam: Ordeals of Transition,’ in Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis, ed. K. D. Jackson (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,


17. 18.

19.

20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

179

1999) and B. Van Arkadie and R. Mallon, Viet Nam: A Transition Tiger? (Canberra: Asia Pacific Press at The Australian National University, 2003). However, Stefan de Vylder amongst others makes a good case for being cautious about such a characterisation, see S. de Vylder, ‘State and Market in Vietnam: Some Issues for an Economy in Transition,’ in C. L. Gates and V. C. Dam, Vietnam in a Changing World (Surrey: Curzon Press Ltd., 1995) For a review of the content of PRSPs in this regard see Panos Institute, Reducing Poverty: Is the World Bank’s Strategy Working? (2002). http:// www.panos.org.uk. Accessed March 2005. Note that despite the focus on poverty reduction in the PWC, overall levels of lending for education, the environment and health across Bank lending have remained fairly stable since 1996 at a level lower than the fi rst half of the 1990s and that social ‘sector lending has only increased marginally following the record low of 2.5 per cent of Bank lending in 1996.’ Wodsak, World Bank Reform—a Critical Investigation, 90. World Bank, Program Document for a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Second Poverty Reduction Support Credit (P7584, May 30, 2003); World Bank, Program Document for a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Third Poverty Reduction Support Credit (28916-VN, May 25, 2004); World Bank, Report and Recommendation on a Proposed Poverty Reduction Support Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (P-7446-VN, April 23, 2001). Note that in late 2004, structural adjustment lending was renamed development policy lending. This can take place through one of four methods: maintaining the existing state capital value and issuing shares to attract capital; selling part of the existing state capital value of the enterprise; selling part of the enterprise; and selling the entire state capital value of an enterprise and turning it into a joint stock company, M. Evans, ‘Embedding Market Reform through Statecraft—the Case of Equitization in Vietnam,’ Paper presented at the Workshop on Equitisation in Vietnam, Institute of Social Science, Ho Chi Minh City (October 2004, 6). The World Bank’s own estimates are that from 2004–2006, 300,000 to 400,000 workers will be made redundant. B. D. Hai, New Focus on Redundant Workers (Institute of Social Sciences, 2003); T. T. Sam and B. D. Hai, ‘An Overview of the Most Crucial Period of Equitization in Vietnam,’ Paper presented at the Workshop on Equitisation in Vietnam, Institute of Social Sciences, Ho Chi Minh City (October 2004). World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed International Development Association Partial Risk Guarantee to Mekong Energy Company Ltd in the Social Republic of Vietnam. (24692, August 2002). World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Rural Energy Project (20351-VN, May 1, 2000); World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Second Rural Energy Project (29860-VN, October 21, 2004a). The other project is outlined in World Bank. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a System Efficiency Improvement, Equitization and Renewables Project (24192-VN, June 4, 2002a). For a contrast with Indonesia see S. Engel, ‘Where to Neoliberalism? The World Bank and the Washington Consensus in Indonesia and Vietnam,’

180

Susan Engel in Asia Reconstructed: from Critiques of Development to Postcolonial Studies. Sixteenth Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (Australia: University of Wollongong, 2006). http://coombs.anu. edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/proceedings.html.

REFERENCES Amenga-Etego, R. N. and S. Grusky. 2005. The New Face of Conditionalities: The World Bank and Water Privatization in Ghana. In The Age of Commodity: Water Privatization in Southern Africa, eds. D. A. McDonald and G. Ruiters. London: Earthscan. Anderson, P. 1976. The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci. New Left Review 100:5– 78. Arrighi, G. 1993. The Three Hegemonies of Historical Capitalism. In Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations, 148–185, ed. S. Gill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Augelli, E. and C. N. Murphy. 1993. Gramsci and International Relations: A General Perspective and Example from Recent US Policy Towards the Third World. In Gramsci, historical materialism and international relations, 93–124, ed. S. Gill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Beder, S. 2003. Power Play: the fight for control of the world’s electricity. Melbourne: Sage Publications. Berger, M. T. and M. Beeson. 1998. Lineages of liberalism and miracles of modernisation: The World Bank, the East Asian trajectory and the international development debate. Third World Quarterly 19(3):487–504. Bieler, A. and A. D. Morton. 2004. A critical theory route to hegemony, world order and historical change: neo-Gramscian perspectives in International Relations. Capital & Class 82:85–113. Block, F. L. 1977. The origins of international economic disorder: a study of United States international monetary policy from World War II to the present. Berkeley: University of California Press. Broad, R. 2004. The Washington Consensus Meets the Global Backlash: Shifting Debates and Policies. Globalizations 1(2):129–154. Buttigieg, J. A. 2005. The contemporary discourse on civil society: A Gramscian critique. boundary 2 32(1):33–52. Cammack, P. 2002. Attacking the Poor. New Left Review 13:125–134. Cammack, P. 2003. What the World Bank Means by Poverty Reduction. Staying Poor: Chronic Poverty and Development Policy. IDPM. University of Manchester. Caufield, C. 1998. Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations. London: Macmillan. Chossudovsky, M. 1997. The globalisation of poverty: impacts of IMF and World Bank reforms. London: Zed Books. Cox, R. W. 1986. Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory. In Neorealism and its Critics, 205–254, ed. R. Keohane. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1996. Gramsci, hegemony, and international relations: an essay in method. In Approaches to World Order, eds. R. W. Cox with J. W. Sinclair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Vylder, S. 1995. State and Market in Vietnam: Some Issues for an Economy in Transition. In Vietnam in a Changing World, eds. L. Norlund, C. L. Gates and V. C. Dam. Surrey: Curzon Press Ltd, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.


181

Easterly, W. 2001. The Lost Decades: Developing Countries’ Stagnation in Spite of Policy Reform 1980–1998. Washington, D.C.: World Bank. Engel, S. 2006. Where to Neoliberalism? The World Bank and the Washington Consensus in Indonesia and Vietnam. In Asia Reconstructed: from Critiques of Development to Postcolonial Studies. 16th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia. University of Wollongong, Australia. http:// coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2006/proceedings. html. Evans, M. 2004. Embedding Market Reform through Statecraft—the Case of Equitization in Vietnam. Workshop on Equitisation in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City: Institute of Social Science. Fine, B. 2001. Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus: An Introduction. In Development Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond the post-Washington Consensus, eds. B. Fine, C. Lapavitsas and J. Pincus. London: Routledge. ———. 2001. Social Capital Versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the millennium. London: Routledge. George, S. and F. Sabelli. 1994. Faith and Credit: The World Bank’s Secular Empire. London: Penguin Books. Germain, R. D. and M. Kenny. 1998. Engaging Gramsci: international relations theory and the new Gramscians. Review of International Studies 24:3–21. Gosovic, B. 2000. Global intellectual hegemony and the international development agenda. International Social Science Journal 52(166): 447–456. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, trans. and eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. ———. (1996). Prison Notebooks. J. A. Buttigieg, trans. and ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Griffi n, P. 2006. The World Bank. New Political Economy 11(4):571–581. Hadiz, V. R. 2004. Decentralization and Democracy in Indonesia: A Critique of Neo-Institutionalist Perspectives. Development and Change 35(4): 697–718. Hai, B. D. 2003. New Focus on Redundant Workers, 7. Ho Chi Minh City: Institute of Social Sciences. Hermes, N. and R. Lensink. 2001. Changing the Conditions for Development Aid: A New Paradigm? Journal of Development Studies 37(6):1–9. Howson, R. 2006. Challenging hegemonic masculinity. London: Routledge. Morton, A. D. 2003. Historicizing Gramsci: situating ideas in and beyond their context. Review of International Political Economy 10(1): 118–146. North, D. C. 1998. The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development. In The New Institutional Economics and Third World Development, eds. J. Harriss, J. Hunter and C. M. Lewis. London: Routledge. Nørlund, I. 2001. Vietnam—a country view of the partnership process, 9. Paper supplied to the author. Nørlund, I., T. N. Ca, et al. 2003. Dealing with the Donors: The Politics of Vietnam’s Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. Institute of Development Studies. Helsinki: University of Helsinki. Panos Institute. 2002. Reducing Poverty: Is the World Bank’s Strategy Working? http://www.panos.org.uk. Porter, D. and D. Craig. 2004. The Third Way and the Third World: Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion in the Rise of ‘Inclusive’ Liberalism. Review of International Political Economy 11(2): 387–423. Rich, B. 1994. Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development. Boston: Beacon Press. Rupert, M. 1998. (Re-)Engaging Gramsci: A Response to Germain and Kenny. Review of International Studies 24:427–434.

182 Susan Engel Sam, T. T. M. and B. D. Hai. 2004. An Overview of the Most Crucial Period of Equitization in Vietnam. Workshop on Equitisation in Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh City: Institute of Social Sciences. Simon, R. 1991. Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction. London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd. Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 2002. The Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy. 139. Hanoi. Stern, N. and F. Ferreira. 1997. The World Bank as ‘Intellectual Actor.’ In The World Bank Its First Half Century, Volume 2: Perspectives, eds. D. Kapur, J. P. Lewis and R. Webb. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Stiglitz, J. 2002. Globalization and its Discontents. London: Penguin Books. Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative Network. http://www.saprin.org/. Toussaint, E. 1999. Your Money or Your Life! The Tyranny of Global Finance. R. Krishnan and V. B. Manus, trans. London: Pluto Press. Turley, W. 1999. Viet Nam: Ordeals of Transition. In Asian Contagion: The Causes and Consequences of a Financial Crisis, ed. K. D. Jackson. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Urquidi, V. L. 1996. Reconstruction vs. Development: The IMF and the World Bank. In The Bretton Woods—GATT System: Retrospect and Prospect After Fifty Years, 30–51, ed. O. Kirshner. Armonk, NewYork: M.E. Sharp. Van Arkadie, B. and R. Mallon. 2003. Viet Nam: A Transition Tiger? Canberra: Asia Pacific Press at The Australian National University. Wade, R. 1996. Japan, the World Bank, and the Art of Paradigm Maintenance: The East Asian Miracle in Political Perspective. New Left Review 217:3–36. Wodsak, V. 2002. World Bank Reform—A Critical Investigation: Change and Continuity in the World Bank’s Approach to Development in the 1990s. MA Thesis. Ontario, Canada: Queen’s University. World Bank. 1994. Viet Nam— Structural Adjustment Credit I Program Information Document. Report No. PIC1073. Washington. ———. 1995. Staff Appraisal Report: Viet Nam Power Sector Rehabilitation and Expansion Project. Report No. 13586-VN April 14. Washington. ———. 1996. Staff Appraisal Report: Viet Nam Power Development Project. Report No. 14893-VN January 2. Washington. ———. 1998. Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Report No. 18375, August 20. Washington. ———. 2000. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Rural Energy Project. Report No. 20351-VN, May 1. Washington. ———. 2001. Report and Recommendation on a Proposed Poverty Reduction Support Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Report No. P-7446-VN, April 23. Washington. ———. 2001. Vietnam—Country Assistance Evaluation, Operations Evaluation Department. Report No. 23288, November 21. Washington. ———. 2002. Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Report No.24621-VN, September 16. Washington. ———. 2002. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a System Effi ciency Improvement, Equitization and Renewables Project. Report No. 24192-VN, June 4. Washington. ———. 2002. Project Appraisal Document on a proposed International Development Association Partial Risk Guarantee to Mekong Energy Company Ltd in the Social Republic of Vietnam. Report No. 24692, August. Washington.


183

———. 2003. Program Document for a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Second Poverty Reduction Support Credit. Report No. P7584, May 30. Washington. ———. 2003. The World Bank Annual Report 2003. Washington. ———. 2004. Program Document for a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Third Poverty Reduction Support Credit. Report No. 28916VN, May 25. Washington. ———. 2004. Project Appraisal Document on a Proposed Credit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for a Second Rural Energy Project. Report No. 29860VN, October 21. Washington World Bank Group Website. http://www.worldbank.org.

11 Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism The Case of West Bengal, India Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase INTRODUCTION The intensification of globalisation has marked the ascendancy of neoliberal paradigms in development thinking. Its impact in the Asia-Pacific region has brought about significant social and cultural change. Over the last decade, developing countries such as India have pursued policies of economic liberalisation. The unswerving faith in liberalization policies as the solution to the overall improvement of the population’s standard of living underpins the state’s rationale for forging ahead with the economic reforms. The middle class is said to have expanded greatly and benefited from the structural adjustment reforms to the economy and industry. Based on fieldwork among lower middle class households in the Indian state of West Bengal, this chapter examines the concrete experiences of those affected by these policies. In particular, we examine the ways in which the reforms have made inroads into the lives of people who were ardent supporters of a different way of thinking. According to a number of authors, neoliberal approaches have become the new orthodoxy in development (Portes 1997; Gosovic 2000; Fourcade-Gorinchas and Babb 2002). The resurrection and hegemony of market-driven approaches identify state intervention as inefficient and counterproductive and thereby call for developing countries to privatise state owned enterprises, adopt a range of stabilisation measures to address balance of payment crises, and limit public expenditure. The deleterious effects of these policies on Asia’s poor (Scrase, Holden and Baum 2003) and the positive consequences for the ‘new rich’ (Robison and Goodman 1996) are amply evident. However, beyond these dichotomous analyses, the ways in which local communities, classes, and specific cultural groups confront, challenge, or acquiesce to the shifts in noninterventionist approaches of governments in economic and social arenas remain relatively unexplored. In the Indian context, the competing narratives of the supporters of the reforms (Bhagavati 1993; Ahluwalia and Little 1998) and the critics (Corbridge and Harriss 2000; Chandrashekhar and Ghosh 2002; Chakrabarti and Cullenberg 2003) of the reforms overlook the experiences of those who

Hegemony, Globalisation, and Neoliberalism

185

do not fit neatly into the extremes of the social spectrum. By contrast, our research explores the complexities and contradictions of a segment within the middle classes who remain both supporters of neoliberalism yet are sceptical of the promised benefits. By presenting a critical analysis of the underlying reasons for people to engage in certain neoliberal ideologies of the workplace, such as elitism, privatisation, and efficiency, this chapter draws attention to the ways in which hegemony is operationalised and sustained.

GLOBAL EFFICIENCY AND THE DYNAMICS OF A NEW WORKPLACE CULTURE In Notebook 22, entitled Americanism and Fordism, Gramsci (1971, 279– 318) sought to explore the changes taking place in production across the West. In effect, Gramsci was exploring the nature of ‘globalised’ capitalist production by comparatively analysing the changes and developments to capitalism that were emerging in America to understand whether these changes marked the beginning of a new historical situation or whether it was a mere conjunction with no lasting significance. While Gramsci offered no definitive answer, the nature of his analysis—that is, his linking features of the superstructure with changes occurring in the socio-economic base and projecting the trends into the future—is significant. First, Gramsci was able to show that changes in production could not be achieved simply by altering the factory. In effect, production was intimately tied to the social and cultural realms, so any required changes in the one demanded concomitant changes in the other. Second, Gramsci highlighted the national specificity of the basis of production; in other words, capitalism in America was devoid of the ‘parasitic’ groups such as the aristocracy that plagued the development of efficient production in Europe (Gramsci 1971, 281). The importance of this difference suggests that capitalism works most effectively when it is able to control socio-cultural tradition and override cumbersome economic practices. Central to this change was the nascent middle class. Finally, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, as now, the revolutionary working class, and the left more generally, was in decline, thus enabling a new ideology to infiltrate the mass of workers and produce what Gramsci refers to as a ‘passive revolution.’ Further, Gramsci sets out inter alia the beginnings of a new worker subjectivity that incorporates elitism and consumption, which today is most clearly aligned with neoliberal ideologies. This in turn, provides a useful backdrop to understanding the responses of people in this study. So, for example, how is it that some workers express ideologies of work efficiency, often, in the face of, lifelong thinking and practice? Why are the notions of efficiency, privatisation, and deregulation so rapidly gaining currency as the central motifs of everyday language and practice? These are complex questions to be sure,

186

Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase

but while their answers are not immediate, it is clear that these socio-cultural phenomena did not manifest automatically. Just as Gramsci (1971, 293) pointed out that ‘Americanisation’ requires a particular environment so, too, the global infiltration of neoliberalism into India requires a certain environment that is created by both governments and international inter-governmental bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. In this environment, the liberalism that provides the ground for new ideology and practice does not require the promotion of free trade and political liberty as much as ‘free initiative’ and ‘economic individualism’ operating at the level of civil society so that through its historical development it gives rise to a new workplace regime (Gramsci 1971, 293). In much the same way as Gramsci articulated the American situation, Harvey (2005) suggests that the promotion of the work ethic and the nobility of efficiency and productivity in the contemporary moment has been made possible through persuasive socialisation and coercive maintenance, or in other words, through a hegemonic process. Here the state takes a proactive role in the inculcation of the population with particular ideologies of the workplace. The state works within a historical bloc formed between the owners of capital, the political class, and the intellectuals, such as the media. The fundamental motivation for the dissemination of capitalist logics, such as the deployment of ideals that included ‘efficiency’ and ‘flexibility,’ is the security and maintenance of the economic and political systems. However, this was not merely a case of imposition of these ideologies, but the articulation of a common value system or hegemony through the incorporation of ideological elements from the broad socio-cultural sphere (Mouffe 1981, 230). Crucially though, within this hegemonic system operates ‘hegemonic principles’ (Howson 2006, 23) that, while allowing the operation of interests and needs from other subaltern groups, does not alter the emphasis on certain politico-economic interests as imperatives. It is through the protection of these hegemonic principles that neoliberal hegemony operates as a ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 29) and is then able to legitimise certain ideologies via the state as those of the mass. This dominative hegemonic process resonates with Branislav Gosovic’s (2000, 447, 448) notion of a ‘global intellectual hegemony’ (GIH) that is central to neoliberal globalisation. This GIH is perpetuated through the frequent use of particular terminology and clichés that legitimise its principles and imbue it with positive qualities. So that in the language of GIH, which echoes Gramsci’s (1971, 301–307) critical analysis of Taylorism in the emerging American capitalist hegemony, neoliberal globalisation is packaged as new, modern, scientific, results orientated, and inevitable. It is above all rationalist and elitist and [i]t is certain that they are not concerned with the ‘humanity’ or the ‘spirituality’ of the worker, which are immediately smashed. This ‘humanity and spirituality’ cannot be realised except in the world of


187

production and work and in productive ‘creation.’ They exist most in the artisan, in the demiurge, when the worker’s personality was reflected whole in the object created and when the link between art and labour was still very strong (Gramsci 1971, 303). Any questioning of this neoliberal paradigm is dismissed as old fashioned. In this context, public institutions are represented negatively and as inefficient in marked contrast to representations of private institutions (Gosovic 2000, 450, 453). Gosovic (2000, 452) goes on to claim that individuals, particularly those who are in the service of governments, may have their own reasons for not speaking out against neoliberalism, including their desire to keep their jobs and obtain promotions. Bourdieu (1998) discusses the insecurities that have become normative under the paradigm of globalisation as playing a significant role in the institutionalisation, and thus the adoption of particular market discourses into the language and actions of workers. The growing unemployment and casualisation of the workforce has shaped the actions and responses of many workers, breaking down any form of resistance, and more often than not setting worker against worker. In light of these market articulations, and indeed out of fear, workers strive to become the most efficient, flexible, and productive workers in an organisation. These forces affect everyone whether employed or not; ‘the awareness of it never goes away: it is present at every moment in everyone’s mind’ (Bourdieu 1998, 82). People living under the effects of global neoliberalism constantly feel that they are replaceable; as a result, there is a definite sense that people come to regard work as a privilege, ‘a fragile threatened privilege’ (Bourdieu 1998, 82), and most certainly not a right. In this new neoliberal hegemony, rationality and elitism mark what Gramsci (1971, 303) referred to as the ‘human complex of an enterprise’; it is this complex that must be maintained, just as any other machine.

METHODOLOGY: TOWARDS AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNT OF ECONOMIC REFORMS IN WEST BENGAL, INDIA Based on the exploration of 120 households, our study is ethnographic and qualitative in nature. Fieldwork was conducted over a seven-year period (1999–2006) in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the capital of the state of West Bengal and in the provincial town of Siliguri in North Bengal district. The narratives of our informants are derived from participant observation and in-depth interviews with low-ranking salaried workers and their families. People in our study can be best described as belonging to lower–middle class households. The lower middle classes in Bengal can be defined in terms of a particular economic bracket and a cultural milieu. The average household incomes of people in our study range between US $250–500 per month.1 In terms of cul-

188


ture, this group forms part of the Bengali bhadralok. The term is multivalent but means most of all ‘respectable people.’ The bhadralok were distinguished by their refined behaviour and cultivated taste, but not necessarily substantial wealth and power. They emerged as a new social group in the late eighteenth century in Bengal and were the first to gain entry into urban professional occupations. Although originally linked to upper castes in contemporary Bengali society, they are a distinct status group that is neither coterminous with caste nor class (Mukherjee 1975). Changed from their original position for two centuries as a reasonably well-off, educated, and highly cultured status group, the bhadralok are now a heterogeneous group and often indigent. They still seek education above all for their children and attempt to maintain a veneer of their once high social status by engaging in writing, music, and the arts, but the economic reality of the present has meant that the penchant for cultural pursuit, the traditional status maintainer, is giving way (often to their disadvantage) to conspicuous consumption (Scrase 1993). Throughout the 1990s the International Monetary Fund (IMF) implemented structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in India. In July 1991, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was formulated. West Bengal developed its own NEP in 1994. In a dramatic reversal of protecting domestic industrial capital, the current economic reforms aim at liberalising the economy from various bureaucratic regulations and controls that are said to have stifled growth. Making the economy more efficient through increased market orientation is the major goal of the reforms. The central strategy is to secure a greater share of the global market in industry, trade, and services through increased productivity. This is in marked contrast to the postindependence developmental strategy of self-reliant economic growth and the rhetoric of ‘socialism.’ Under the earlier five-year plans, the government played an interventionist role in industrialisation through the public sector, which assumed the ‘commanding heights’ through licensing and regulatory mechanisms. The new market oriented state ideology and economic reforms are confusing to many people. This was particularly the case in West Bengal, which has been ruled by a coalition of left political parties since 1977, dominated by the Communist Party of India CPI (M). Initially opposed to market reforms in its rhetoric, the Left Front government has now become vociferous in its attempt to attract foreign transnational corporations into the state. The Left Front’s position is central to our analytical concerns.

RESEARCH FINDINGS Fear of retrenchment was ever present for some of our respondents. However, what struck us most was the growing prominence of a political rationality that is geared towards producing a principle of personal responsibility. The most salient feature of our respondents’ acquiescence was the technocratic solutions that underpin market discourses. Technocratic solutions have a


189

degree of appeal among our respondents because of the latter’s familiarity with the modernising discourses of rational planning characteristic of developmentalism in postcolonial states, regardless of political ideology. Therefore, the Left Front’s pragmatic embrace of market solutions, which are now being reconfigured as ‘rational’ progress towards better developmental outcomes, appears to our respondents as part of a continuum, not a radical departure. More significantly, as Hann (2002) has demonstrated in his ethnographic accounts of transitional economies, it is equally important to recognise the meaning that socialist ideologies have in the aspirations of ordinary people, as well as the significance of their emancipatory rhetoric and practical benefits. Suffice to say that for many people in West Bengal, the CPI (M) has been a symbol of some remarkable transformations and a catalyst for others (Lieten 1996). These confl icting approaches to planned development were reflected in the narratives of our informants. An overwhelming majority of respondents disputed that privatisation could bring many benefits to people in West Bengal. This view was directly related to their attitudes to the nature of the private sector. For many lower middle class people, ‘private’ is synonymous with small fi rms. Such companies offer low salaries, little or no job security, and lack any well-founded labour protection laws. Insecurity and uncertainty in these organisations formed the basis for respondents’ denials of the benefits of privatisation. The majority of those employed in the unregulated sector were not aware of the work practices of transnational corporations (TNCs) or even large private companies like the TATA Corporation (India’s own multinational, which provides numerous benefits to its workers). Many government employees were similarly unaware of employee benefits offered in large corporations, other than the high salaries offered to upper-level professionals. If these employees lost their jobs, it was likely they would end up working in the unprotected, small-scale private sector. Some were well aware that given their level of education and training, it was unlikely they would gain entry into positions in major companies or TNCs. Our respondents repeatedly emphasised the safety nets offered by government employment. Not only was private enterprise characterised by insecurity, but it was also inherently driven by the profit motive. In contrast, government organisations were seen as more humane. Respondents often compared the callous attitude of the private sector with the compassionate nature of the state. While the former was entirely driven by profit motives, leaving workers to the vagaries of owners and managers, the latter was typified by universal rules and was said to exist for the benefit of all. On the one hand, our informants’ positive appraisals stand in marked contrast to the arguments that characterise the developmental state as oppressive. On the other, neoliberal conceptions, such as the idea of working for profit or of government enterprises being ‘profitable,’ were anathema to many of our informants, who regarded government service as a public duty. Their identities were tied up with working in it. Parents continually reinforced

190 Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase the importance of the public sector to their children. The objectivity and open-minded nature of government bureaucrats were compared with the personal whims of employers in private enterprise. From the perspective of low-ranking clerical employees, personal vendettas of owners and managers in private enterprise were a key concern. The following comment exemplifies such sentiments: If you make a mistake in a government organisation, the officers are impartial. They will examine the situation and will judge accordingly. They will not have a personal vendetta against you because you made a mistake. Nor will they do you special favours because you happen to be in their good books (male, thirty-one years old, clerk, state university). Asserting that IMF clauses on adjustment are farcical, a number of key informants argued that economic liberalisation is a policy choice engineered entirely by powerful classes and that the government of the day had implemented it in an undemocratic fashion. However, others countered the claims that citizens were being excluded from decision-making processes by arguing that the reforms have not been implemented according to the original plans. These confl icting perspectives were primarily determined by the respondents’ locations in public and private sectors. Optimistic about liberalisation, a number of formal3 private sector workers felt that the ethos of hard work and effi ciency inherent in the private sector should prevail among government employees. In short, the latter’s current misery was attributed to their own failings. Such unforgiving attitudes were partly the result of those expressing them never having worked in a public institution and were further reinforced by relentless media commentaries on state inefficiency (cf. McLean 2001). They were also consistent with the growing call for workers’ ‘self-responsibility.’ This is a strategy of replacing old-fashioned regulatory techniques with techniques of self-regulation (Lenke 2001). According to Beck (2001), this is the ideal individual worker, who will take responsibility for his or her part in the creation of an efficient and responsible enterprise. The ‘price’ of individuality means taking personal responsibility for any failure or misfortune. The benefit is that individuals can now feel a sense of control—‘not passive refl ections of circumstances but active shapers of their own lives, within varying degrees of limitation’ (Beck 2001, 167). In recent years, positive appraisals of private enterprise for its dynamism, initiative, and offer of incentives have captured the public imagination and come to dominate public opinion. Employees are extolled for the virtues of punctuality, diligence, dedication, and enthusiasm. The public sector is portrayed as its obverse: bureaucratic and unproductive, its workers lethargic. Among our respondents, advocates of private sector efficiency included workers from large private corporations, private school teachers, a small number of highly qualified civil servants, and young people in general. The popularly held opinions concerning government employees, particularly their tendencies to ‘skive off,’ were


191

universal among our respondents from the private sector. More often than not, pre-existing disdainful attitudes towards public sector workers underpinned their assumptions. Typically, they were from genteel social backgrounds and had neither worked nor intended to work in the public sector. Parallel standpoints could be identified among older workers in the public sector and retired people, who pointed to the decline of the work ethic. However, it was essentially moral discourse that framed their critique. For example, a retired headmistress of a public school was emphatic that ‘teachers nowadays are always slacking off’ and remarked, instead of being there for the students [in government schools] they’re more interested in setting up private tuitions in their homes. Sure, this has been a growing trend in the last two decades, only now it has got worse. They have to buy all the consumer goods advertised on TV somehow; it may as well be the students [paying for it] . . . teachers as a group have been highly critical of liberalisation from an ideological point, but many of their colleagues are practising the worst kind of privatisation.

WORK PLACES AND IDEOLOGICAL ORIENTATIONS We found that experiences within given work settings have shaped the outlook of employees. We explored the experiences of respondents who had initially worked in the private sector and then joined government service. They compared the two sectors and found that private sector work was monotonous and offered no freedoms. Freedom was highly valued by many people. The absence of autonomy and freedom in private enterprise lie at the heart of their criticism. But theirs was also a moral critique, directed at the profit motive that drives private enterprise, which was always prone to rationalisation and staff cut backs. Many of our respondents were keen to point out the qualitative differences between the two sectors. These were regarded as special conditions that money could buy. Accordingly, they argue that privatisation would not necessarily improve efficiency. Table 11.1 shows the distribution of attitudes towards privatisation as a means to improving the efficiency of an organisation. Some departments, such as education and health care, exist for the public good and should not be privatised. In general, their views were characterised by a collectivist orientation: they believed not only that privatisation is detrimental to the self, but also, more broadly, that others will suffer from it. Many of these employees have long been politically active, though not always as CPI (M) cadres.

192 Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase Table 11.1 Privatisation Improves Efficiency of Organisation (N=86) Frequency

Percent

Valid

yes

14

16

no

41

48

64

don’t know

6

7

71

N/A

25

29

100

Total

86

Cumulative Percent 16

100.00

The following comment from someone who had shifted from the private sector to the public sector challenges the commonly held view that the public sector lacks a culture of work: There is a usual assumption that in the government sector there is no work culture, but if you look around here, everyone is deeply involved in their work. You won’t even find this kind of commitment within a private firm. No, I’ll never want privatisation. Another respondent currently working in a government job was previously employed in a private company. He denounced the private sector in the following way: Listen, I was in a scientific organisation before I came here. Things were very different to this place. Everything was run for a commercial purpose, for a profit . . . Certainly progress can be made, but you can’t apply the same ethos in government. You just can’t engage in any risktaking activity. You have the fear that this belongs to the government and you can’t do as you wish. As public sector employees, they defended its continued existence. The table above shows that only one in eight respondents felt that privatisation would improve the efficiency of government organisations. Although some respondents acknowledged the deficiencies of government departments, they were dismissive of charges of inefficiency and lack of a work culture. Instead, they argued that the shortcomings were trivial and we should not focus on them. More significantly, they challenged the bogey of privatisation that is often paraded as a punitive threat to discipline work forces. One informant surmised ‘ . . . if this place is privatised, there is no guarantee that it would be more efficient or that people would work more.’ To most low-ranking government employees, poor management was responsible for inefficiencies, not workers. They argued that it is innovative management practices rather than privatisation that enhance the efficiency of an organisation. The onus on managers to enhance an organisation’s efficiency will be considered


193

in the final section of this chapter. In general, public service respondents were emphatic that government departments should not be judged according to private sector performance measures because some key institutions and utilities cannot be privatised. Their main concern was that once privatised, these economic assets will be sold off to transnational corporations at cheap rates—a recognition that it is not beneficial to common people. Their fears appear to be well-founded, as is demonstrated by the cases of privatisation of utilities in other parts of the world (Beder 2003). In West Bengal, intense public debates have continued on investment and infrastructure. Our respondents remain unconvinced that TNCs will make any investments that will benefit Indians. They remained suspicious of privatisation and foreign capital. Many of our respondents’ views reflected anticolonial, nationalist value orientations, especially among the older generation. In accordance with such perspective, they wanted foreign investment to be favourable to Indians but also were highly sceptical that this was possible. Yet, despite such deeply held beliefs and defence of the public sector, there has been a considerable shift in the views that have come to dominate public discourse, which in turn have crept into everyday life. There have been two such remarkable shifts that reflect the schisms of the Left Front. The first is the necessity of SAPs; the second is the view that reproduces the rhetoric of efficiency, only this time in relation to the state. The argument that SAPs will redress the balance of payments crisis is widely accepted. Many of our respondents argued that, although inherently just and rational, bureaucratic state procedures might be cumbersome compared with the speed of private enterprise decision-making. Even those opposed to privatisation on ideological grounds urged that government organisations should become efficient.

WORK EFFICIENCY The ways in which workers internalised and reproduced the rhetoric of efficiency became most apparent when we interviewed a number of workers in a newly established training and research institute, set up with government funding. Currently, it has an autonomous status, and it is envisaged that ultimately it will become self-funding. We were particularly interested in this organisation because it is a new endeavour and many of its clerical and technical personnel were recruited from among experienced private and public sector employees. While many of the public sector employees were on secondment (‘deputation’) from other divisions, the private sector employees had all resigned from their previous posts. The experience and attitudes of such workers enabled us to gain an insight into the ways in which workers have internalised and reproduce the rhetoric of efficiency. Most of the clerical and technical workers expressed a generally positive view of the organisation and their own career mobility within it. One of their favourite preoccupations was the efficiency of government organisations in

194


order to be viable. This view was held by many workers who were at pains to assert that ‘their’ organisation is the most efficient. This was a markedly different view from those who said that the performance of government departments should not be evaluated according to private sector criteria. Respondents deployed the language of managerialism as important to enhancing efficiency while rejecting privatisation. Frequently used terms to describe the qualities that individuals and their coworkers possess were ‘flexible’ and ‘embracing strategic changes.’ In general, they were apprehensive about the negative social consequences of liberalisation and feared that privatisation would result in large-scale retrenchment. Yet they advocated the imposition on government employees of the kind of strict work discipline that is common in private enterprise. A commonly expressed sentiment was, ‘No, I don’t want privatisation. But I want people to work as if it was a private organisation.’ A project officer remarked: We are operating like a private company for all intents and purposes. We earn for ourselves. You will find people working here till late at night, on holidays. We do not clock on and off like some government servants. The ideal was simultaneously to increase manpower and maintain efficiency through the use of technology, although respondents were divided about its impact on the workforce. While some believed that unemployment would increase, others were optimistic about retraining and employment generation. A postal clerk explained his vision: I think instead of privatising it, we should use more of the latest technology, so that we can provide best service to the public. For instance, we could take up courier services. If we could provide such services, the public would turn to us in a greater numbers. For this, we have to boost our infrastructure. Ultimately, most hoped that the state will develop appropriate policies to stave off privatisation. Yet their main defence was that they have acquired the necessary qualities of being strategic and efficient.

GENERATIONAL DIVIDE There are generational differences in the embrace of neoliberalism; agebased differences prevail in attitudes towards government services. Mores associated with privatisation have permeated more broadly among youth. Their positive attitudes to the privatisation of government enterprises stemmed from the decade-long public debates about government inefficiency, the concomitant declining support for the Left Front’s ideology


195

in urban areas, and the contradictory messages from elders within their own families. During fieldwork, we found that despite older people’s fierce defence of the public sector and suspicions of foreign capital and privatisation, they remained highly critical of the laziness of workers in government organisations. Many framed their critique in terms of an erosion of the work ethic within their own generation and pointed to the commitment of younger people to work hard, often drawing on the experiences of their own children. Young people routinely incorporated the language of efficiency and the much-needed ‘work culture’ among public sector workers into their everyday conversations. Oft repeated remarks included, ‘I think privatisation is good. You can work hard and you will be rewarded’; ‘Government organisation is good too, but I have no problems with privatisation’; ‘You can genuinely work in private enterprise’; and ‘People committed to hard work can get job satisfaction in private organisations—it does not happen in government jobs.’ Some were quick to point out the casual atmosphere in government offices compared to their previous experience in the private sector: ‘In my previous job, I was fully immersed in my work. Here, you get a lot more leisure.’ Others were eager to show that, ‘See, you are able to interview me here. This would not have been possible in a private organisation’! In contrast to older workers’ anxieties about uncertainties and fear of job losses, young people were not perturbed by the prospect of workplace restructuring or closure. As a young receptionist confidently explained, she could easily obtain employment elsewhere: We were told six months prior to the closure of the East West airlines. It was not a shock to me. We were told; we knew well ahead. Then a lot of us tried to get jobs in other airlines. I got a job with the Royal Jordanian airlines. But it had odd hours and I was already married. So I didn’t take it up. Then I looked around and found this job. Despite recognising the failure of the airline to pay her the threemonths’ salary owed to her when she was retrenched, she was not embittered and felt optimistic that greater opportunities would appear in future. Similar sentiments prevailed among the call centre workers who have remained in their jobs. For example, Prithviraj, who had joined his company two years ago and moved up to the position of team leader, felt that the future held unlimited possibilities. Arguably, it is among the youth that the Left Front’s own ambiguities came sharply into focus. We found that while sharing the generally optimistic attitudes of urban middle class youth to liberalisation, some believed that a cautious and gradualist approach to privatisation is necessary. Others ideologically opposed to privatisation also reproduced the discourses of efficiency.

196 Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase HEGEMONY AND STRATEGIC SELF-INTEREST The dilemma for many respondents was that they value highly the freedoms allowed in the public sector but were concerned about the abuses of these very privileges. Many respondents feared that without the work ethic, they would face closure. On the one hand, there was a realisation these days that publicly owned enterprises should be profit-oriented and operate like the private sector. On the other hand, people criticised this new ethos of ‘market citizenship.’ As noted earlier, many were concerned that elements of the public sector cannot be privatised. The logic of respondents’ reproduction of the rhetoric of global effi ciency lies in the pervasive influences of the ideologies that associate ‘efficiency’ with ‘privatisation.’ Their legitimacy arises from their articulation with liberalisation policies, especially the valorisation of efficiency, which incorporates ideological elements from various powerful groups. Here Gosovic’s (2000, 450, 453) notion of global intellectual hegemony, and its negative portrayal of public institutions as inefficient in contrast to private institutions, has particular resonance. It is easy to see how people have internalised the state ideology of global efficiency, particularly the young, because of the terminology and clichés deployed in the public domain to propagate it. Yet, as Kagarlitsky (1996) has shown, official ideologies no longer really convince anyone. It is rather that alternatives to the dominant ideologies are neutralised and dismantled by those in power. Thus, any counter-ideologies fi lter through in such fragmented ways that they do not propose a genuine alternative. Some of our respondents and key informants expressed their disenchantment with liberalisation only in private. However, it would be incorrect to assume that our informants espoused government rhetoric because they were deceived by ideology. They used themes of competition and deregulation in complex ways, whereby they neither rejected nor accepted them. In other words, our respondents did not subscribe to neoliberal ideologies in a uniform and coherent way. Some had hoped to gain a few advantages from them, even though this hope may have been illusory. Such strategic self-interest was combined with a shift in political rationality, increasingly focused on the notion of individual responsibility. Their acquiescence in self-regulation is partly affected by the reconfiguration of earlier discourses of the self-sacrifice, hard work, and rational planning necessary for nation-building.

ROLE OF MANAGEMENT AND EFFICIENCY According to most of our informants, poor management was responsible for ‘sick industries.’ Many attributed inefficiency to poor management rather than the alleged absence of a work culture among employees,


197

arguing that privatisation itself would not solve the problem of public enterprise inefficiencies. Responses differed according to whether people generally held individualist or collectivist views. Those who claimed to be efficient already tended to reproduce neoliberal ideologies emphasising the importance of individuals being responsible for the success of their organisations. This was markedly different from the collectivist perspectives, which rest a general critique of liberalisation on a platform of antiprivatisation. While militant employees’ critiques were consistent with their political orientation, the responses of some highly unionised, unskilled employees revealed a curious sentiment: On the one hand, their identification of the ‘class enemy’ embodied in the capitalist class seemed only to apply to private enterprise. On the other hand, they maintained a deferential attitude to public sector managers. They considered that management in the public sector was in possession of superior knowledge and higher education. The differing assessments of managers in terms of their ‘superior knowledge’ refers to techniques of management. Modern management techniques include the ability to effect and maintain rationality through expert knowledge and yet remain sympathetic to the needs of employees. This managerial model is compatible with furthering the interest of capital while simultaneously averting conflict between capital and labour. Although the relationship between capital and labour is inherently antagonistic, it occurs within a diversity of labour processes. Capital also needs worker co-operation, creativity, and commitment. According to Thompson (1990), this encouragement needs to be more than a material lure or ideological coercion. It appears that in some of the publicly owned enterprises in West Bengal, bureaucrats highly skilled in managerial techniques have been particularly effective in eliciting the consent and co-operation of employees by obscuring the antagonistic relationship between management and workers. This was evidenced by the acquiescence of both those subscribing the ideologies of managerialism and some militant workers. The latter noted most emphatically that the success or failure of an organisation is dependent on talented managers who are able to negotiate good relations with workers to bring about the best outcomes. They fi rmly believed that in all organisations, staff and management were intimately bound together and that a good manager has the capacity to ‘manage change’ by introducing innovative practices to enhance efficiency. At times, respondents expressed a highly respectful attitude to managers and bureaucrats. This is in part due to bhadralok reverence of education and knowledge. Many high-ranking officials in government departments are drawn from the Indian Administrative Service, and such employment is highly respected and valued among the Bengali middle class (as it is in most of India). Therefore, the comparison that some respondents drew between it and formal sector private enterprises was that although the latter may offer better pay, managers there are whimsical and personality-driven,

198


whereas public sector officials are stable and rational and therefore worthy of respect. Alongside their general contempt for private enterprise, they noted the lack of talent and decision-making power among its managers. Contrasting the rational actions of public sector managers with the profit motives of private enterprise, they also challenged popular perceptions of wastage in government. For example, a typical response was: Those who are in charge in government [enterprises] have the knowledge and the requisite qualities to run a complex organisation. This is lacking in private enterprise. You just can’t wake up one morning and decide that you are going to have a lockout or close a college because you are running a loss. In private enterprise you’re here today and gone tomorrow. It must be noted here that because a significant proportion of our respondents were unaware of the management practices in large private corporations, their appraisal of private sector managers is distorted. Contrary to the popular perceptions of our respondents, managers in large private fi rms are no less qualified and are drawn from similar social backgrounds as the public sector managers who were held in high esteem by our respondents. State bureaucrats and CEOs of large private corporations are likely to have done their training in the same prestigious educational institutions. Indeed, management firms such as TATA Consulting Services have been at the forefront of providing the necessary expertise to corporations, especially transnational firms, since liberalisation. Yet it is worth noting that respondents in large private corporations did not praise their management, even though they spoke at length about the advantages and benevolence of corporations that provide medical benefits, transport, child care, schooling, and the like.

CONCLUSION In this chapter we have examined the ways in which people give meaning to notions of efficiency and how they struggle with the contradictions that emerge as they navigate the terrain between the state’s rhetoric of global neoliberal efficiency and the reality of their own lives. A number of people in this study have internalised the government rhetoric as it has moved along a continuum from earlier state discourses of modernisation and scientific rationality. A major reason for talented managers being able to solve their problems is their firm belief in the modernising discourses of techniques and rationality. For some, the transition from scientific socialism to scientific managerialism was made possible by the processes of modern education and political socialisation. Ultimately, our study shows that there exists an essential and ongoing tension between the state and labour in West Bengal, especially in the urban areas. The uncompleted struggle is one whereby the Left Front government


199

must ideologically convince segments of the urban middle classes of the benefits of neoliberalism, its hegemonic principles, and the state’s renewed vigour for liberalisation. However, neoliberal reforms presuppose an individualistic, entrepreneurial spirit, which, in comparison to other states in India, has not been strong in West Bengal. Moreover, many Bengalis see the benefits of collective action and unionisation, a view strongly and commonly held despite political allegiances. In the final analysis, the Left Front government’s attempts to implement workplace change are regarded suspiciously, as a means by which to undermine workers’ rights and remove their state protection, a protection fought for and won over several decades. On one level, the particular commonsense and lived experiences of the lower middle class show an antipathy toward hegemony of neoliberalism and yet, on another, they express a desire for India, and Indians, to move forward and compete in an increasingly globalised, cosmopolitan world. Economic liberalisation is by no means accepted dogma. There is much and various evidence of deep dissatisfaction, frustration, and mistrust of the process.

NOTES 1. The specific group we studied was largely white-collar, salaried persons. Our respondents consisted of clerks, lower professionals and administrators, and sales and service personnel. However, sociological attempts to operationalise class derived from occupational categories and income only partially explain the position of our informants. Nevertheless, as we note above, historical evolution of classes in colonial and postcolonial Bengal provides the socioeconomic backgrounds of our informants. At the time we started our fieldwork, the average household income was Rs10,000, which has subsequently doubled. The approximate exchange rate was Indian Rupees (Rs) 40.00 = US$1.00. 2. For a detailed discussion see Social Dimension of Structural Adjustment in India, 1991. 3. We use this term in light of the debates on the formal and informal sectors of the labour market. In the Indian context, the unregulated sector is often misleadingly equated with the ‘informal sector’ where the vast majority of workers are concentrated. As Breman (1976) has shown, there are structural linkages between the formal and the so-called informal sector. Therefore, we have used the term ‘unregulated sector’ instead. However, there is still a need to identify formal sector as comprising both public and private enterprises.

REFERENCES Ahluwalia, I. J. M. D. and Little, eds. 1998. India’s economic Reforms and Development: Essays for Manmohan Singh. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Beck, U. 2001. Living Your Own Life in a Runaway World: Individualisation, Globalisation and Politics. In On The Edge. Living With Global Capitalism, eds. W. Hutton and A. Giddens. London: Jonathon Cape/Vintage.

200


Beder, S. 2003. Power play: the fight to control the world’s electricity. New York: New Press. Bhagavati, J. 1993. India in Transition: Freeing the Economy. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bourdieu, P. 1998. Acts of Resistance: Against The New Myths of Our Time. Cambridge: Polity Press. Breman, J. 1976. A Dualistic Labour System? A Critique of the ‘Informal Sector’ Concept. Economic and Political Weekly, Pt. I, XI, 48:1870–1876; Pt.II, XI, 49:1905–1908; Pt. III, XI, 50:1939–1944. Chakrabarti, A. and S. Cullenberg. 2003. Transition and Development in India. New York: Routledge. Chandrasekhar, C.P. and J. Ghosh. 2002. The Market that Failed: A Decade of Economic Reforms in India. Left World. Corbridge, S. and J. Harriss. 2001. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fourcade-Gorinchas, M. and S. L. Babb. 2002. The rebirth of the neoliberal creed: Paths to neoliberalism in Four countries. American Journal of Sociology 108(3): 533–579. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, trans. and eds. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Gosovic, B. 2000. Global Intellectual Hegemony and the International Development Agenda. International Social Science Journal 52:447–456. Hann, C. 2002. Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices. London: Routledge. Harvey, D. 2005. The construction of consent. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howson, R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. New York: Routledge. Kagarlitsky, B. 1996. The Agony Of Neo Liberalism or the End of Civilisation. Monthly Review 42(2):36–40. Lenke, T. 2001. ‘The Birth of Bio-Politics,’ Michel Foucault’s Lecture at the College De France On Neo Liberal Governmentality, Economy and Society 30:109–207. Lieten, G. 1996. Development, Devolution and Democracy: Village Discourse in West Bengal. New Delhi: Sage; London: Thousand Oaks. McLean, D. 2001. Tension between State and Capital in West Bengal. South Asia 24(1):93–116. Mouffe, C. 1981. Hegemony and ideology in Gramsci. In Culture, Ideology and Process, eds. T. Bennett, G. Martin, C. Mercer, and J. Woolacott. Open University Press. Mukherjee, S. N. 1975. Bhadralok in Bengali Language and Literature: An Essay on the Language of Class and Status. Bengal Past and Present 95(2):225–237. Portes, A. 1997. Neoliberalism and the Sociology of Development: Emerging Trends and Unanticipated Facts, Population and Development Review 23(22):229– 259. Scrase, T. J. 1993. Image, Ideology and Inequality: Cultural domination, hegemony and schooling in India. New Delhi/Newbury Park: Sage. Scrase, T., T. Holden, and S. Baum, eds. 2003. Globalization, Culture, and Inequality in Asia. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press. Thompson, P. 1990. Crawling from the wreckage: The labour process and the politics of production. In Labour Process Theory, eds. D. Knights and H. Willmott. London: Macmillan.

12 Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc The Australian Experience Damien Cahill

Antonio Gramsci’s prison writings have proved a popular and important theoretical lens through which to analyse the phenomenon of neoliberalism.1 This chapter builds upon such work through an analysis of neoliberal hegemony in the context of contemporary Australia. Defi nitions of neoliberalism vary. It is generally defi ned as constituted by particular forms and combinations of either ideology, state economic management, or processes of capital accumulation. As an ideology, neoliberalism is generally identified as emerging from the work of intellectuals such as Hayek and Friedman, who advocate the withdrawal of the state from regulation of economic activity. As a regime of state economic management, neoliberalism is generally viewed as an application of the retreat of the state. As a process of capital accumulation, neoliberalism is generally defi ned as the reconfiguration of class relations and the rise to power of capital’s fi nancial fraction since the 1970s. Consider also Bob Jessop’s defi nitional approach to neoliberalism as a variety of liberalism that, like its parent, is simultaneously a polyvalent conceptual ensemble in economic, political and ideological discourse; a strongly contested strategic concept for restructuring market-state relations with many disputes over its scope, application, and limitations; and a recurrent yet historically variable pattern of economic, political and social organization in modern societies (2002, 453). Defi nitions of neoliberalism are further complicated by the paradox that exists between the policy prescriptions and rhetoric of its proselytisers and the regulatory logics of neoliberal regimes. While neoliberal theorists advocate the retreat of the state, the reality of neoliberalism is often a reorientation, rather than a diminution in state regulation of economic and social processes. This situation is encapsulated by Brenner and Theodore’s term ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ (2002a, 351–357), which distinguishes neoliberal systems of regulation from the abstractions of neoliberal polemicists. However, mere recognition of a disparity between neoliberal theory

202

Damien Cahill

and practice does not address the issue of how such disparate phenomena can be grouped under the single heading of ‘neoliberalism.’ Further, Harvey notes that neoliberalism is also characterised by ‘uneven geographical development’ (2005, 87–119). In other words, neoliberalism develops uniquely in different temporal but, also, geographical contexts, for example, from Thatcherite Britain (Hall 1988) to the shock therapy of the former Eastern European communist states to the integrationist strategies put in place by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and others throughout the Asia-Pacific. Furthermore, neoliberalism evolves historically and is never a static phenomenon, nor was it born fully formed. We are better advised to adopt a ‘processual defi nition’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, 383) and to speak of the process of ‘neoliberalization’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002a, 353). Thus, to follow Brenner and Theodore further, neoliberalism can begin to be described as a ‘multifaceted, multiscalar dynamic’ that is increasingly reconfiguring and redefi ning the ‘global capitalist system’ through ‘the loosening or dismantling of the various institutional constraints upon marketisation, commodification, the hyperexploitation of workers, and the discretionary power of private capital’ (2002, 342). To apprehend this dynamic or process of neoliberalisation, Gramsci’s concept of the ‘historical bloc’ is deployed in this chapter because it offers a framework for identifying the myriad moments constitutive of neoliberalism. Further, it is able to begin the exposure of the contradictory dynamics that operate within and through neoliberalism and how they intersect with the national/popular collective will. Notwithstanding the spatial and historical similarities and unevenness, Australia, because of its embrace of a neoliberal worldview, represents an important case study of neoliberalism and its evolution and entrenchment. This will be the object of study in the following chapter.

GRAMSCI AND NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY This chapter builds upon the growing literature2 in which Gramsci and the theory of hegemony have been used to understand the globalisation of neoliberalism. This chapter offers an analysis of neoliberalism as hegemonic in contemporary Australia. Unlike earlier analyses, however, it is undertaken from the vantage of a triumphant neoliberalism. Neoliberalism in Australia has ‘rolled back’ older institutional arrangements that underpinned the postwar order and has itself been ‘rolled out’ (Peck and Tickell 2002, 384) in the form of new economic, political, and social institutions and practices. This has been carried out in the absence of any significant politico-social challenge. Moreover, the process of neoliberalisation in Australia has delivered on at least some of its promises; these include economic growth, low infl ation, and relatively low official unemployment rates, as well as a perception of freedom of

Hegemony and the Neoliberal Historical Bloc

203

choice accompanied by social cohesion and improvement. The process of neoliberalisation has resulted in high levels of political, social, and economic stability. To acknowledge the strengths of neoliberalism, however, is not to discount its inherently divisive and exploitative nature. Indeed, the utility of drawing upon Gramsci’s conception of hegemony is that we are able to better understand the inherent instability and to identify its obfuscatory processes. In this context, the contemporary Australian experience of neoliberalism is an important case study of the dynamic nature of the relations of force within neoliberalism because it offers a window into the global experience.

HEGEMONY AND THE HISTORICAL BLOC The Gramscian notion of the ‘historical bloc’ is central to the following analysis because it enables the mapping and evaluation of neoliberalism as hegemonic in contemporary Australia. However, any analysis of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks must be undertaken carefully. As Joseph Buttigieg, the English language translator of the full text of Gramsci’s Notebooks, argues: The text of the prison notebooks does not have a single distinctive starting point but a multiplicity of points of departure, it does not progress along the lines of an overarching thesis but opens up several avenues of inquiry, it does not arrive at nor does it seem headed toward a fi nal synthesis but remains inconclusive and open-ended (1994, 128). He stresses that Gramsci highlighted the ‘provisional character of his notes and . . . the possibility that they may contain errors’ (Buttigieg 1992, 33). However, this should be viewed in the context of the ‘prefatory’ nature of certain notes that, in turn, was due as much to the fact that they were a reflection of his processes of discovery and attention to the particular as they were to the prison conditions under which he wrote (Buttigieg 1994, 62). Therefore, the task is to read the Prison Notebooks through Gramsci’s own method of ‘philology,’ which requires ‘attention to detail’ in order ‘to ascertain the specificity of the particular’ (Buttigieg 1994, 63) within a broader synthetic whole. Gramsci’s method of investigation offers a way to apprehend his Prison Notebooks and its theory of hegemony because it emphasises that the entirety of an author’s writings be studied in detail in order to ‘search for its Leitmotiv, for the rhythm of the thought as it develops’ (Gramsci 1971, 383). This can also be read as a way of interpreting Gramsci’s own work. Thus, ‘a Gramscian way of thinking’ (Morton 2005, 450) and a Gramscian method moves us to focus on the particular and thereby

204

Damien Cahill

enables us to view phenomena not as static but as historic, which in the end, will lead beyond dogmatic interpretations. From here, a useful starting point for understanding the concept of the ‘historical bloc’ is Gramsci’s critique of Croce. While Gramsci views Croce’s work as valuable, he rejects Croce’s idealist interpretation of the dialectic process because it emphasises the ‘dialectic of distincts’ (Hoare and Nowell Smith 1971, xiii). In contradistinction, the historical bloc for Gramsci represents not distinct moments or levels but ‘[the] unity between nature and spirit (structure and superstructure), unity of opposites and distincts’ (Gramsci 1971, 137). What are we to make of this concept? Boothman equates ‘historical bloc’ with ‘totality’ (Boothman 2000). He notes that Gramsci distinguishes between an alliance of distinct forces (blocco sociale) and the ‘historical bloc’ (blocco storico) as a social totality formed through a complex process of synthesis that represents, amongst other things, the interplay and conflict between various levels of the structure and superstructure and distincts and opposites. So, Gramsci’s conception of the historical bloc suggests the dialectical relationship between the various moments or spheres–—that is, social, economic, and political—are not formed and operationalised as a loose alliance but, rather, as a synthesis where one sphere can only be understood in the context of operations of the other spheres. This complex synthesis is expressed in the following passage from the Prison Notebooks: Man is to be conceived as an historical bloc of purely individual and subjective elements and of mass and objective or material elements with which the individual is in an active relationship. To transform the external world, the general system of relations, is to potentiate oneself and to develop oneself (Gramsci 1971, 360). Humanity, then, can be conceived of as an ‘historical bloc’ or the product of the totality of relations of force that embodies a distinction between ontology and epistemology. This distinction and relationship between ontology and epistemology is particularly evident in Gramsci’s writings on the State. As Adam David Morton (2005, 447) notes, Gramsci comprehends the state ‘as a social relation or ensemble of socially embedded institutions and class forces’; it is an ‘enlarged concept of the modern State’ (Buttigieg 2005, 43). For Gramsci, reigning bourgeois conceptions of the state ‘are based on a distinction between political society and civil society, which is made into and presented as an organic one, whereas in fact it is merely methodological’ (Gramsci 1971, 159–160). The State is always the synthesis of civil and political society—that is, an ontological fact—whereas its separation into discrete spheres serves only as an epistemological tool and, as Buttigieg argues, only for methodological or heuristic purposes (Buttigieg 2005, 43). This is reinforced by Gramsci: The analysis of these propositions tends, I think, to reinforce the conception of the historical bloc in which precisely material forces


205

are the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction between form and content has purely didactic value, since the material forces would be inconceivable historically without form and the ideologies would be individual fancies without the material forces (1971, 377). Viewing the historical bloc through Gramsci’s broader prison writings, then, the various spheres must be understood as separable only for analytical purposes, and they always maintain an organic unity, synthesis, or totality in practice. For example, Gramsci writes: The claim, presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism, that every fluctuation in politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx (1971, 407). He rejects the vulgar determinism inherent in much of the Marxism of his time and, in particular, the idea that the economic structure alone determines the superstructure in unilinear and unilateral fashion. Such views constitute ‘primitive infantilism.’ Further, they are simplistic renderings of the ‘philosophy of praxis’ and not reflective of the work of Marx or real social processes. This is precisely the point of departure for conceptualising the historical bloc from an antireductionist and antideterminist position that exposes a clearer sense of Marxism’s internal dynamics: Structures and superstructures form an ‘historical bloc.’ That is to say the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production (Gramsci 1971, 366). His use of the term ‘reflection’ may be an attempt to move beyond reductionist and determinist notions operating in a mechanical fashion within the social relations of production. He goes on to write that there is a ‘reciprocity between the structure and superstructure’ (1971, 366) that expresses a rejection of unilinearity and unilaterality of history. The ‘historical bloc’ moves the theory of hegemony towards recognition of the multiplicity of often antagonistic and contradictory relations of force that occur simultaneously and produce outcomes that are not given by any one particular relation or force. This also emphasises that the historical bloc, as Boothman (2000) clarifies, is not a static ensemble but always historical. For example, in Gramsci’s critique of Bukharin’s Theory of Historical Materialism, he charges Bukharin with ‘mechanical materialism’—that is, Bukharin’s treatise was not historically based but

206 Damien Cahill a static, ahistorical ‘sociology’ and an attempt to derive the laws of historical development through abstract deductive principles. In contrast, Gramsci argues emphatically: The experience on which the philosophy of praxis is based cannot be schematised; it is history in all its infi nite variety and multiplicity, whose study can give rise to ‘philology’ as a method of scholarship for ascertaining particular facts and to philosophy understood as a general methodology of history (1971, 428). In opposition to Bukharin’s mechanical ‘sociological’ approach to history, Gramsci offers ‘philology.’ By this he means ‘the methodological expression of the importance of ascertaining and precising particular factin their unique and unrepeatable individuality’ (1971, 428). The implication here is that close attention must be paid to historical contingency to identify the specific historical relationships within the social, economic, and political historical bloc. That these relationships are historically contingent implies that historical blocs are subject to change. For Gramsci, the vehicle for such change is the contradictions and antagonisms within an historical bloc. This is not reducible to the struggle between ‘objective’ class forces: In reality one can ‘scientifically’ foresee only the struggle, but not the concrete moments of the struggle, which cannot but be the results of opposing forces in continuous movement, which are never reducible to fi xed quantities since within them quantity is continually becoming quality (1971, 438). Human history is not the unfolding of a universal logic. Any historiography that is based on this premise Gramsci terms ‘vulgar evolutionism’ (1971, 426). Instead, it is the contingent and unforeseeable outcome of confl ict and contradiction between the various forces, institutions, and structures within the historical bloc. Human history is therefore a process of change, destruction, and recomposition within and of historical blocs (Boothman 2000). It is now useful to return to the issue of hegemony and identify its relationship with the historical bloc. For Gramsci, hegemony is the process whereby one class exercises control over the social, economic, and political or historical bloc. However, Gramsci distinguishes hegemony from its usage as pure ‘domination’ and instead associates hegemony with a balance between consent and coercion (1971, 57). While elements of both consent and coercion are likely to be utilised by a social group exercising control, Gramsci argues that without ‘leadership’—that is, the attainment of consent—hegemony cannot exist. As Fontana argues, ‘A socio-political order . . . is characterized by a hegemonic equilibrium based on a combination of


207

force and consent, which is balanced in varying proportions, without force prevailing too greatly over consent’ (1993, 141). However, where domination does occur, coercion is seen to be exercised to protect the hegemonic principles of the controlling social group, and the consequence of these actions is the emergence of a ‘dominative hegemony’ (Howson 2006, 26– 30). Here the dominant social group secures hegemonic power by capturing State apparatuses and deploying coercive techniques against opponents. Thus, hegemony entails the use of the State and other spheres within the historical bloc to construct a set of social, political, and economic circumstances that support the dominant interests. Gramsci shows that hegemony can never be successfully constructed and maintained unless certain beliefs and interests that make up a ‘conception of the world’ can be ‘uncritically absorbed by the various social and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average man is developed’ (1971, 419). In other words, hegemony must be constructed across the historical bloc where both are not fi xed and immutable but always subject to transformation. Hegemony therefore emerges out of the historical bloc so that a hegemonic situation reflects a particular configuration of relations of force which are never static and characterised by absolute dominance in every sphere. The contradictory relationships within the multiform historical bloc ensure that any hegemony is only ever likely to be an ‘unstable equilibrium’ (see Introduction to this volume) at best. As Boothman notes, the historical bloc ‘includes the elements of dynamism provided by the direction impressed upon society by dominance and hegemony’ (2000)—that is, struggles for hegemony constitute the engine for transformations within the historical bloc. NEOLIBERAL HEGEMONY IN AUSTRALIA

The economic sphere (processes of capital accumulation) The following analysis of neoliberal hegemony in Australia is organised around the three major foci or social arenas that constitute the contemporary historical bloc in Australia: the economic (processes of capital accumulation); the political (state regulatory regimes and alliances of social forces); and the socio-cultural (civil society, including discourse and common sense). The relationships between these foci are plotted to identify the foundations of neoliberal hegemony. The analytical separation of these foci is, following Gramsci, ‘methodological’—that is, to enable greater clarity in presentation while always cognisant to not impose hard, ossified boundaries between the social, economic, and political blocs. In other words, always recognising the complex synthesis that is the historical bloc. The process of neoliberalisation in Australia entails significant transformation since the 1970s within processes of capital accumulation (the economic sphere), some of which wrought significant social dislocation and

208 Damien Cahill economic hardship. In order to evaluate the extent to which a hegemonic neoliberal historical bloc has emerged from these processes, Australians’ experiences of these processes must be analysed. The employment and output share of manufacturing and primary industries in Australia has declined, while those of the services sector increased dramatically. Production methods within fi rms have been reorganised, including both work intensification and the deployment of new technologies. From the late 1970s until the late 1990s, unemployment was between 6 and 11 per cent. Concurrently, precarious employment (casualisation and job insecurity) and underemployment increased substantially (Watson 2003, 46–61). Under the rubric of labour market ‘flexibility,’ working time has also been restructured, with the erosion of the standardised working day and week. These transformations have been felt particularly acutely in rural areas, urbanised regional centres (Tonts 2000, 52–72), and working class suburbs within Australia’s major cities. The anxiety generated through this process helps to explain the backlash against privatisation and free trade evident in many of these communities. In these areas, the processes of neoliberal economic restructuring have not secured a strong social support base, and therefore undermine the prospects of an ethico-political hegemony. Outside of these specific locales, however, the recent outcome of the process of neoliberalisation is one of significant material reward for many. After persistent nationwide unemployment during the economic ‘shakeout’ of the 1980s and early to mid 1990s, the last decade was one of low official unemployment and, more recently, rising real wages. The sectoral reorganisation of production in Australia is also reflected in the rise of cheap imported consumer goods (reflecting the rise of low-wage manufacturing capital in countries such as China at the expense of domestically located manufacturing industries) as well as the rise of cheap consumer credit and debt-fi nanced consumption (reflecting the rise of fi nance capital). Thus, the pain and dislocation resulting from the processes of neoliberalisation are temporally and spatially specific, with many now enjoying relatively buoyant economic circumstances that have the potential to provide a material foundation out of which an ethico-political neoliberal hegemony could emerge. However, the changing patterns of working life brought about by the processes of neoliberalisation also generate new tensions that undermine the prospects for neoliberal hegemony. Recent studies suggest that the impermanence, intensification, and lengthening of work characteristic of neoliberalism create insecurity and put pressure upon family life (Pocock 2003). So, while neoliberalism returns material benefits to many, it simultaneously erodes key institutions and relationships within civil society, thus undermining the prospects for such material benefits to be converted into an ethico-political hegemony.


209

The Political Sphere (Transformations in State Regulations, Political Alliances and Balances of Social Forces) The process of neoliberalisation in Australia is driven and facilitated by action within the ‘political sphere’ by three inter-related factors: the creation of alliances of social forces; the shifting balance of social forces; and the transformation of state regulations. Political alliances among both employer and employee groups have been crucial to the process of neoliberalisation and to attempts to forge a neoliberal hegemony in Australia. Among employers, a political mobilisation from the early 1980s by fi nance, resources, pastoral capital and large, export-oriented and mobile transnational capital sought to weaken the power of organised labour and remove restrictions upon the flexibility of corporations in the labour market. While the economic and social crisis that beset the advanced capitalist nation-states in the 1970s provided the context and initial impetus for the rise of neoliberalism, it was the political mobilisation of this ‘neoliberal coalition’ (Bell 1997, 81, 116–7) that converted such structural constraints into political pressure. Australia’s most extensive implementation of neoliberalism occurred under successive social democratic governments from 1983–1996. It did so with the active support of the trade union leadership. The 1983 Prices and Incomes Accord (the Accord) was a formal alliance between the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Hawke and Keating Labor governments whereby the unions undertook to moderate their wage demands and industrial militancy and the government promised an increased social wage. For Labor, it was a way of managing the neoliberal transformation of state and economy by tying the fortunes of the unions to the maintenance of a Labor government (Bramble and Kuhn 1999). The Accord helped ensure that the social unrest that characterised the implementation of neoliberalism in Britain under Thatcher did not emerge in Australia. These alliances of social forces are both symptomatic and constitutive of a shifting political balance that significantly buttresses neoliberalism within the political sphere in the contemporary historical bloc in Australia. Organised labour in Australia emerged from thirteen years of social democracy considerably weaker than under the previous conservative administration, with union membership declining significantly during this period, unemployment remaining high, and the difficult-to-organise casualised workforce growing. Therefore, through the vehicle of the Accord, the trade union leadership in effect oversaw an ‘historical victory of capital over labour’ (Berger 1999, 453). Furthermore, organised opposition to neoliberalism has been largely unsuccessful. This is partly due to the trade union movement, whence one might expect opposition to neoliberalism to emanate, tying itself to a party committed to extending the neoliberal project. However, it also attests to the failure of neoliberalism’s opponents

210

Damien Cahill

to establish hegemony within civil society—to mount what Gramsci termed an effective ‘war of position.’ Rather, oppositional forces have been fragmentary and generally short-lived. In contrast, the neoliberal state project is both coherent and well organised, with most major, organised centres of power committed to the extension of neoliberalism. The other crucial aspect of the process of neoliberalisation within the political sphere in Australia is the transformation of state regulatory regimes, particularly since the 1980s. These transformations facilitated the reconfiguration to processes of capital accumulation in Australia. Tariff reductions, the floating of the Australian dollar, and the deregulation of the fi nancial sector exposed Australia more fully to the growing disciplines of international economic processes (Bryan and Rafferty 1999). The scope and sphere of accumulation has been expanded through the opening of formerly state-monopoly activities to profit-making enterprises: the government-owned bank, telecommunications company, and airline have been privatised; markets have been created for public services such as education, welfare, health care, and health insurance; and many public sector jobs have been contracted to private providers. Successive governments also dismantled many of the regulations and institutions governing labour in Australia, thereby facilitating the neoliberal transformations in labour markets and labour processes. Not only do such regulations facilitate transformations in processes of capital accumulation, they also establish qualitatively new neoliberal regulatory regimes. The most important of these is the transformation of labour market regulation. This process entails removing existing restrictions placed upon capital in the labour market and codifying new regulations designed to restrict the ability of workers to organise collectively. New punitive regulatory regimes for the unemployed, such as ‘work for the dole,’ make social security dependency a much harsher form of existence. These are coercive forms of ‘re-regulation’ rather than ‘deregulations,’ and they highlight the active role of the state in the prosecution of neoliberalisation (Anderson 1999). Not only does neoliberalism constitute a new form of state regulation of labour, it also facilitates new forms of market regulation of civil society. For example, Australia’s current relatively low official unemployment statistics hide a reserve army of precariously and underemployed labour, existing alongside the officially unemployed, and thereby exerting a disciplinary pressure upon full-time workers. State facilitation of accumulation is also evident in various industry subsidies provided by the federal government. Some of these have disciplinary effects. For example, as noted, debt-fi nanced consumption is central to the sustained economic growth Australia has experienced over the last fourteen years (Wilson and Turnbull 2000). Various homerbuyers grants from both state and federal governments help stimulate demand for home loans. This puts many people in a precarious fi nancial


211

position that is sensitive to sudden changes in interest rates and employment status. It may therefore act as a form of labour discipline, whereby workers are more willing to engage in the intensified, precarious, or temporally extended forms of work characteristic of neoliberalism in order to meet debt repayments. A similar situation exists with respect to the government-created markets for education and health services. Particularly under the Howard government, Australia has witnessed increased subsidies from the state to private education and private health care, at the same time as public schools and hospitals are increasingly starved of resources. Again, this possibly acts as a form of labour discipline, particularly for those middle- income earners who opt into the private system as a way of guaranteeing an entitlement to quality social services. While political processes facilitate changes in patterns of capital accumulation, such changes in accumulation also impact upon the political sphere, particularly in the case of organised labour. The sectoral reorganisation of Australian capitalism led to the decline in employment density within traditionally unionised industries. Changes within the labour market facilitated increases in forms of employment, particularly casualisation, that are difficult to unionise. That the geographical retreat of services capital and the decline in employment in primary and secondary industries are felt disproportionately in rural communities provides some of the material underpinnings for the populist backlash against neoliberalism. This is manifested in the success of Pauline Hanson’s right wing One Nation Party, which mobilised support through a combination of racism and an antineoliberal economic agenda in the late 1990s. Further evidence of this is that independent rural members of federal parliament with an explicitly antineoliberal policy stance, such as Peter Andren, Bob Katter, and Tony Windsor, have retained their seats in successive parliamentary elections. At the level of the political, within the contemporary historical bloc in Australia, neoliberalism is a powerfully entrenched force. Political representatives of both organised labour and capital facilitated a neoliberal transformation of processes of capital accumulation and of state regulatory apparatuses. These transformations established new forms of state coercion and market disciplines that create powerful pressures for citizens to participate in the new neoliberal regime. There is thus an organic, complementary relationship between the economic and political spheres within the neoliberal historical bloc in Australia. However, neoliberal transformations within the political and economic spheres also generate political dissent, primarily at the geographic and societal margins. This chapter now turns to the socio-cultural sphere to investigate how transformations within the economic and political spheres impact upon the terrain of civil society and the extent to which common sense is transformed to create an ethico-political hegemony for neoliberalism.

212

Damien Cahill

The Socio-Cultural Sphere (Civil Society, Discourse, and Common Sense) Civil society is a key site of struggles for hegemony within any historical bloc. Here people form their basic understandings of the world and here ‘commonsense’ is constituted. In Australia, discursive strategies have been deployed from within the political sphere aimed at buttressing and winning consent for processes of neoliberalisation. Concurrently, changes to state regulations (also from within the political sphere) and the reconfiguration of processes of capital accumulation (from within the economic sphere) reshape the material conditions that structure people’s everyday lives. To evaluate the extent and type of hegemony achieved by neoliberalism in Australia, the relationship between these discursive strategies and the transformations of everyday life are now mapped. Indicative of the new subjectivities of working life offered by neoliberalism’s proselytisers are recent statements by Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard regarding the government’s intention to foster a ‘culture of enterprise,’ characterized by the ‘rise of the enterprise worker’ within Australian workplaces (Howard 2005). According to Howard, ‘enterprise workers’ have a commonality of interest with their employer and shun workplace conflict that is generated by exogenous ‘third parties,’ in the form of trade unions. It is an attempt to forge an identification between worker and firm and to break the solidaristic identification of workers with each other. Another example is the federal government’s description of the ‘entrepreneurial culture’ it argues will be created through its new WorkChoices legislation.3 Embedded within this term is the marketisation of the self—that all workers are individual labour units who develop their marketable attributes and compete with one another and who are rewarded commensurate with their entrepreneurial talent and productivity. The process of neoliberalisation certainly creates some conditions favourable to such subjectivities. One is declining union membership as a proportion of the workforce, particularly in the private sector of the economy, where union membership currently stands at just 17 per cent. Another is the rise of nonemploying fi rms (the owner/worker), which now make up more than half of small businesses in Australia.4 Other data and events, however, caution against such a conclusion. Notwithstanding Australia’s current low level of unionisation, there appears to be significant support for principles of collective workplace representation and social protections designed to mediate between the interests of employers and employees. The deep roots enjoyed by trade unions within the community were apparent in the popular mobilisations in defence of the Maritime Union of Australia during the ‘waterfront dispute’ of 1998. Furthermore, support for collective workplace representative structures extends beyond those likely to participate in direct action, as is evident, for example, in the recent fi nding that around 50 per cent of workers would like to be members of a


213

trade union (Bearfield 2003). Numerous recent opinion polls also confi rm widespread community opposition to the federal government’s industrial relations legislation, which dismantles many of the structures and regulations mediating the relationship between fi rms and workers. This suggests widespread support for social protections and implies that many do not accept the prime minister’s characterisation of the employment relationship as embodying a harmony of interests between employer and employee. Beyond the workplace, however, other profound transformations have the potential to create a basis for neoliberal subjectivities. The process of neoliberalisation entails an increased marketisation of social life—an extension of the range of activities for which market processes are compulsory. For neoliberalism to be hegemonic, such commodifying processes must be matched by complimentary reorganisations of common sense, especially with regard to the nature of the public sphere. There are several issues to consider. The fi rst is that increasingly it is to ‘customers’ that public goods are provided, with citizens increasingly charged for the use of public services. So, market discourses and market structures pervade peoples’ everyday encounters with government. The second is the creation of markets for public services through the establishment of direct competition between public and private providers. In the areas of health care and education, this entails government subsidisation of private providers, such as private schools and the private health-insurance industry. How far these discursive practices are transforming individual subjectivities is difficult to determine. Indicative evidence, however, suggests that neoliberal hegemony is far from guaranteed. Data from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes suggests high-levels of support for government as the main provider of social services in the areas of health care and education (Wilson, Meagher and Breusch 2005, 115–118). This is despite the strong flow of people out of the public system to private providers. The increasing marketisation of social services has progressed through a combination of coercion and consent. For many of those able to purchase a choice, marketisation likely poses few dilemmas, and the logic of purchasing ‘public’ services can be readily grafted onto common sense notions of what is reasonable. For others, however, the coercive nature of marketisation—the fear that a denuded public system drives middle income earners to enter the market for public goods—likely means that it is a logic that is entered into grudgingly. As Pusey and Turnbull argue: Australians live with the contradictions of the market economy—they see benefits in free markets and trade, but also are aware of their drawbacks, and so continue to believe in an active role for government (2005, 179). Finally, to understand the hegemony of neoliberalism, we need to go beyond features inherent to the process of neoliberalisation and consider its relationship with other discourses. Like other nation-states, the process of neoliberalisation has proceeded alongside the nationalistic discourses

214 Damien Cahill deployed by state-elites. The Keating Labor government, for example, pursued a process of integrating Australia much more extensively into global economic processes, concurrently with the elevation of martial symbols from Australia’s past (Frankel 2004). The integrity of the Australian national unit was asserted by state elites at the same time as its coherence was increasingly undermined by state-facilitated processes of global economic integration. A notable feature of the Howard government is its mobilisation of prejudice against refugees, Muslims, and Aboriginal people, and its elevation of the notion of ‘Australian values’ concurrently with the internationalisation of the Australian economy. As Johnson argues, an important effect of this is to ‘reassure in times of great change’ (2000, 60). The reassertion of national myths provides convenient explanations of the profound social transformations wrought by the process of neoliberalisation. For the federal Coalition government, harnessing the anxieties generated by neoliberalism has been used to create a solid electoral support base. However, these national-popular discourses generate their own contradictions. While on the one hand providing the basis for social stability by reconciling processes of profound social transformation into a preexisting nationalistic conceptual framework, the othering of particular ethnic groups inherent in such discourses also encourages social confl ict, as was evident, for example, in the rise of One Nation and the more recent example at Cronulla in late 2005, when a large demonstration by AngloCeltic youths engaged in a violent mobilisation against people identified as Muslims.

NEOLIBERALISM: WHAT KIND OF HEGEMONY? The preceding discussion is necessarily limited in scope. It merely sketches the broad parameters of neoliberal hegemony in Australia through Gramsci’s frame of the historical bloc. More extensive studies are required to explore these issues in greater detail. Nonetheless, it can be concluded that, while there is an organic unity between the economic and political spheres within the neoliberal historical bloc in Australia, the sphere of civil society has proved much more resistant to colonization by the process of neoliberalisation. Although transformations of accumulation and state regulations individuate people, subject them much more to market disciplines, and ensure that social services must increasingly be sourced through market processes, there is only limited evidence of the internalisation of market values in relation to labour markets and public goods. Indeed, evidence considered here suggests the existence of widespread unease with many of the key neoliberal transformations of work and the pubic sphere. The extent of neoliberalism as an ethico-political hegemony is therefore quite limited. Its hegemony comes not from deep roots within civil society. Nor


215

has it reoriented common sense such that neoliberalism is accepted as the new social truth. Nonetheless, neoliberalism is the dominant force within the economic and political spheres of the contemporary historical bloc in Australia. Neoliberalism dominates primarily through a combination of economic and extra-economic coercion, and material rewards in the form of rising wages and easy access to fi nance. It benefits from the failure of alternative programs to secure hegemony within the socio-cultural distinct. Therefore, while neoliberalism is not hegemonic in an ethico-political sense, it certainly is in a dominative sense. However, the process of neoliberalisation also creates its own contradictions. The social transformations of everyday life wrought by neoliberalism generate tensions and insecurity that could provide the basis for a ‘war of position’ against neoliberalism itself.

CONCLUSION This chapter has argued that neoliberalism in Australia is a useful object of analysis because it offers a window into the potentialities of neoliberalism as a viable political project. It suggests that, even when neoliberalism is able to deliver significant material benefits and experiences little organised political dissent, it is still unable to create a widespread social support base. These conclusions are derived by explicating and deploying Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and of the historical bloc. Such conceptual tools enable the myriad and contradictory relationships within a social formation to be identified, and their historically contingent and evolving nature apprehended. They enable the identification of the potential for, and limitations of, the expanded reproduction of the social circumstances that facilitate the dominance of a particular social group. The deployment of such conceptual tools to analyse early twenty-fi rst century Australia also demonstrates the continuing utility of Gramsci’s prison writings.

NOTES 1. A version of some parts of this chapter have appeared as D. Cahill, ‘The Contours of Neo-Liberal Hegemony in Australia,’ Rethinking Marxism, 19:2(2007):21–233. Taylor & Francis Ltd. http://www.informaworld.com. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. 2. See, for example, A. Gamble, The free economy and the strong state: The politics of Thatcherism, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1994); S. Hall, ‘The toad in the garden: Thatcherism among the theorists,’ in eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, Marxism and the interpretation of culture (London: Macmillan Education, 1988), 35–57; B. Jessop, K. Bonnett, S. Bromley and T. Ling, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); H. Overbeek, ed., Restructuring hegemony in the global political economy: The rise of transnational neoliberalism in the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1993);

216

Damien Cahill

B. Birchfield, ‘Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci’s “good sense” and Polanyi’s “double movement”,’ Review of International Political Economy 6, Spring(1999):27–54. 3. Australian Government, ‘Workchoices—A Simpler, National Workplace Relations System for Australia,’ http://www.workchoices.gov.au/ourplan/ overview/Aneworkplacerelationssystem.html. Accessed 8/5/2006. 4. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Recent growth on small business sector. Media Release 16th October 2002.

REFERENCES Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] (2002). Recent growth on small business sector. Media Release. 16 October. Anderson, T. 1999. The Meaning of Deregulation. Journal of Australian Political Economy 44:5–21. Australian Government. 2005. Workchoices—A Simpler, National Workplace Relations System for Australia. http://www.workchoices.gov.au/ourplan/overview/Aneworkplacerelationssystem. html. Bearfield, S. 2003. Australian employees’ attitudes towards unions. ACIRRT Working Paper 82. Bell, S. 1997. Ungoverning the Economy: The Political Economy of Australian Economic Policy. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Berger, M. 1999. Up from neoliberalism: free-market mythologies and the coming crisis of global capitalism. Third World Quarterly 20(2):453–464. Birchfield, V. 1999. Contesting the hegemony of market ideology: Gramsci’s ‘good sense’ and Polanyi’s ‘double movement.’ Review of International Political Economy 6:27–54. Boothman, D. 2000. A note on the evolution—and translation of—some key Gramscian terms. Socialism and Democracy 14. Bramble, T. and R. Kuhn. 1999. Social democracy after the long boom: economic restructuring under Australian Labor, 1983 to 1996. In The state and ‘globalization’: comparative studies of labour and capital in national economies, ed. M. Upchurch. London: Mansell. Brenner, N. and N. Theodore. 2002. Preface: From the ‘New Localism’ to spaces of neoliberalism. Antipode 34(3):341–347. Brenner, N. and N. Theodore. 2002a. Cities and the geographies of ‘actually existing neoliberalism.’ Antipode 34(3): 349–379. Buttigieg, J. A. 1992. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Volume 1, ed. J Buttigieg and trans. A. Callari. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1994. Philology and Politics: Returning to the Text of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. boundary 2 21(2):98–138. ———. 2005. The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique. boundary 2 32(1):33–52. Bryan, D. and M. Rafferty. 1999. The Global Economy in Australia: Global Integration and National Economic Policy. St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin. Fontana, B. 1993. Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Grasmci and Machiavelli. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Frankel, B. 2004. Zombies, Lilliputians & Sadists: The Power of the Living Dead and the Future of Australia. Fremantle: Curtin University Books. Gamble, A. 1994. The free economy and the strong state: The politics of Thatcherism. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.


217

Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith, eds. and trans. New York: International Publishers. Hall, S. 1988. The toad in the garden: Thatcherism among the theorists. In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 35–57, eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg. London: Macmillan Education. Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press. Hoare, Q. and G. Nowell Smith. 1971. Introduction. In A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, eds. and trans. Q. Hoare and B. Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Howard, John. 2005. Address to the Sydney Institute, Workplace Relations Reform: the Next Logical Step. Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney, 11 July. Howson, R. 2006. Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity. London: Routledge. Jessop, B., K. Bonnett, S. Bromley and T. Ling. 1988. Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2002. Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Perspective. Antipode 34(3):452–472. Johnson, C. 2000. Governing Change: Keating to Howard. University of Queensland Press. St Lucia. Morton, A. D. 2005. A Double Reading of Gramsci: Beyond the Logic of Contingency. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 8:8(4) 439–458. Overbeek, H., ed. 1993. Restructuring hegemony in the global political economy: The rise of transnational neoliberalism in the 1980s. London: Routledge. Peck, J. and A. Tickell. 2002. Neoliberalizing Space. Antipode 34(3):380–404. Pocock, B. 2003. The Work/Life Collision. Annandale: The Federation Press. Pusey, M. and N. Turnbull. 2005. Have Australians Embraced Economic Reform? In Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, 161–181, eds. S. Wilson, G. Meagher, R. Gibson, D. Denmark and M. Western. Sydney: UNSW Press. Tonts, M. 2000. The Restructuring of Australia’s Rural Communities. In Land of Discontent: The Dynamics of Change in Rural and Regional Australia, 52–72, eds. B. Pritchard and P. McManus. Sydney: UNSW Press. Watson, I. et. al. 2003. Fragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Life. Annandale: Federation Press. Wilson, S., G. Meagher and T. Breusch. 2005. Where to for the Welfare State? In Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report, 101–121, eds. S. Wilson, G. Meagher, R. Gibson, D. Denmark and M. Western. Sydney: UNSW Press. Wilson, S. and N. Turnbull. 2000. Australia’s Secret Keynesianism. Australian Review of Public Affairs Digest. Online. http://www.australianreview.net/ digest/2000/08/wilson_turnbill.html.

13 Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War Yoko Harada

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City, the use of the terms ‘Ground Zero’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction’ have come to be synonymous with the idea of America as a victim of terror, and they have thus served to facilitate, and give legitimacy to, the prosecution of the ‘war on terror.’ This rhetoric has also facilitated the shifting of alliances and the realignment of national and international interests with those of the United States. In this chapter, it will be argued that in the case of Japan, this has been achieved through a ‘passive revolution,’ where a dominative US hegemony is facilitated by the traditional intellectuals of Japanese media, who have legitimised change in Japanese politics that serves to reproduce and restore existing hegemonic principles, rather than developing a national politics around new principles, and that this process relies on the forgetting, and retelling, of Japanese national history. Every year, on the sixth and the ninth of August, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, hold memorial services to commemorate the victims of atomic bombs dropped by the United States in World War II. Peace declarations by mayors of both cities and events related to the ceremonies do not gain much attention from foreign media nor raise much discussion in the international arena. The bombings of Japan in 1945 were the first occasion in which ‘weapons of mass destruction’ were used on human beings. The resultant blast zone became known as ‘ground zero,’ yet after 9/11, these words became linked to the bombing of the World Trade Centre and the subsequent war against Iraq, their origins in an action of the United States forgotten or transformed. The United States and its allied forces bombed Iraq on 20 March 2003 and launched a military operation in the country as a part of its ‘war on terror.’ They conducted the operation without United Nations’ consent by insisting on the danger posed by the Iraqi regime through the presumed existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and the means to deliver them, which threatened the whole world. Two months later, President George W. Bush declared the end of major combat operations. Saddam Hussein’s ‘evil’ regime was overthrown, and at the very end of that year, the dictator was finally captured. Despite this, Iraq is far from a stable and secure country. Moreover, the existence of ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ which gave legitimacy to the invasion,

Hegemony, Japan, and the Victor’s Memory of War

219

was completely denied. Nevertheless, countries like Japan and Australia still firmly support the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq. Why is that so? This chapter attempts to answer that question by critically analysing the use of a particular rhetoric based on a ‘victor’s memory’ of the war in the Pacific, which has enabled the establishment of a ‘dominative’ US hegemony that has been largely uncontested by the Japanese state or the Japanese media. The chapter argues that the use of this rhetoric has enabled the establishment of this US hegemony in the Pacific, with which the Japanese state is now complicit, and that the traditional intellectuals of the Japanese media have ensured this process.

HEGEMONY AND PASSIVE REVOLUTION This section starts with a discussion of the notion of hegemony in a Gramscian sense and its connection to the notion of passive revolution. This is then related to the existing literature in international relations, which is usually used to explore the workings of US hegemony, but shows how this literature, because it does not engage with the concept of passive revolution, can not account for the complexities of state reactions to US policy shifts and presents hegemony merely as a form of static domination, which is inadequate for our understanding of the current and developing situation in Japan. As the Introduction to this volume has outlined, the notion of hegemony has too often been used to explain a social or political relation that is merely domination. For Gramsci, hegemony was more complex than this. It is not even that a hegemonic situation is one where the forces of consent and coercion are balanced, but rather that consent is the driving force in social and political relations. As Fontana explains, hegemony the word, as Gramsci uses it, relates closest to the Greek word for leadership (Fontana 2000). In this sense then, hegemony is won before power; it is won through a war of position that slowly and patiently cultivates consent at the level of belief rather than of action through self-interest, bringing about ethico-political hegemony within an integral state. Gramsci used many other concepts to differentiate this kind of hegemony from social and political situations that relied on outright force or apparent consent through coercion. Richard Howson has developed these distinctions into ‘types’ of hegemony, which he designates as detached, dominative, and aspirational (Howson 2006, 27). The first two types of hegemony are regressive in that they seek to serve the interests of the few over the many and to either conserve the status quo or bring about change that is not connected to the consent of the mass (Howson 2006, 27–32). The concept of detached hegemony is particularly useful here, as it will be seen to be particularly relevant to the current socio-political situation in Japan. Howson explains that a detached hegemony emerges out of period of crisis in which authority may be challenged but is restored, rather than

220

Yoko Harada

transformed anew, so that ‘an ever-more-powerful political regime . . . has, and continues to, subsume and negate all progressive elements so that the resultant hegemony emerges as a product of a revolution without revolution, or a passive revolution’ (Howson 2006, 28). The notion of passive revolution is particularly significant here. Gramsci explains it in reference to the Italian Risorgimento, where he notes that a section of the ruling class ‘did not wish to ‘lead’ anybody, i.e., they did not wish to concord their interests and aspirations with the interests and aspirations of other groups. They wished to ‘dominate,’ and not to ‘lead.’ Furthermore, they wanted their interests to dominate, rather than their persons; in other words they wanted a new force, independent of every compromise and condition, to become the arbiter of the Nation’ (Gramsci 1971, 104–105). This is not a hegemonic situation because it does not even attempt to cultivate consent, but achieves a ‘de facto acquiescence’ (Showstack Sassoon 2001, 5–17), in which the majority of the population is disconnected from politics and the traditional ‘hegemony’ is restored or reinforced, particularly through civil society. Showstack Sassoon suggests that in relation to globalisation, a passive revolution is occurring because it is ‘a strategy for managing change in which the advantages of the already advantaged are preserved alongside real gains for wide sections of the population, but the full potential of progressive aspects of such profound historical change for the socially excluded is undermined’ (Showstack Sassoon 2001, 8). In this scenario, the role of traditional intellectuals through civil society is paramount. In a detached hegemony that has been bought about by a passive revolution, there has been no outward or overt transformation of society, but rather the reinforcement of particular principles and the absorption of challenges because ‘civil society in this situation is controlled by an evermore-extensive, elitist and distant political ruling class located under a single ideological rubric that is able to effectively subsume and control the community and impose their corporativistic interests unilaterally’ (Howson 2006, 28–29). In the post 9/11 world, this is the scenario in both domestic Japanese politics and in Japanese/US relations, yet because of its focus on the economic realm of globalisation, and the absence of the concept of passive revolution, current international relations literature is inadequate.

MECHANISM OF US HEGEMONY AT THE DAWN OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Labelling the United States’ dominating power in the international arena as hegemony is not a new phenomenon. Robert W. Cox, in his well-known essay that tried to explain the applicability of the concept of hegemony in a Gramscian sense to international relations, described: ‘ . . . following World War II (1945–65), the United States founded a new hegemonic world


221

order similar in basic structure to that dominated by Britain in middle of the nineteenth century but with institutions and doctrine adjusted to a more complex world economy and to national societies more sensitive to the political repercussions of economic crises’ (Cox 1996, 136). Although Cox saw ‘this US-based world order was no longer working well’ in the early 1970s (136) and books like Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance by David P. Calleo or The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic change and military conflict from 1500–2000 by Paul Kennedy, which referred to the decline of US hegemony, appeared in the late 1980s (Wade 1988), the term is seeing a significant revival in this new century. ‘US hegemony’ or ‘American hegemony’ is often used in popular discourse to describe the United States’ unilateral behaviour or the advent of an apparently US-led corporate globalisation in the present international arena. The term is also used by people or media who oppose this unilateral manner, especially in regards to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In early February 2003, addressing a message to ‘all countries with weapons of mass destruction,’ the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in South Africa stated, ‘The PAC reiterates that the world should no longer tolerate US hegemony. There is no room in the world for US supremacy and exceptionalism’ (BBC 2003). Both Xinhua News Agency of China and the New Straits Times of Malaysia described the worldwide protest movement against the Iraq war as an opposition to the US hegemony (Xinhua 2003, New Straits Times 2003). The then Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir was quoted as saying: ‘If international affairs were to be conducted with a blatant disregard for international law and UN authority, and subject to the unilateral doctrine of ‘regime change’ in the name of democracy, human rights and freedom as defi ned by an imperial power like the United States then . . . no nation is safe’ (New Straits Times 2003). Not surprisingly, Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister of Iraq, were participating in this discourse. About a month before his country was invaded by the United States and its allied forces, Hussein said, ‘As for greed, evil, and the desire to expand at the expense of others, you can fi nd these in the United States,’ and he condemned this US hegemony (BBC 2003b). Talking to the Italian media, Aziz ‘urged Europe to stand by Iraq as it would be the next victim of US hegemony’ (BBC 2003a). As a summary of the year 2003, on 31 December, the Australian newspaper the Age wrote, ‘If there was a unifying theme in global affairs over the past year, sadly it was confl ict’ (31 December 2003, 10). Referring to the war, the paper says: ‘The Iraq war was about more than just the removal of Saddam Hussein. It was about the assertion of US power in a way that left the remainder of the international community in little doubt about how the US—at least the US under President George Bush—sees its place in the world. The measure of global discomfort with the new US hegemony has so far been expressed mainly in the annoyed reactions of the

222

Yoko Harada

leaders of countries such as France and Russia, but the full consequences of that discomfort may not be evident for many years to come’ (31 December 2003, 10). This discomfort is evident in the growing discourse that appears to question the legitimacy of US authority in a post-9/11 world. Michael Mann, who described the war in Iraq as ‘an Anglo-Saxon invasion,’ points out in his work Incoherent Empire, ‘American political powers are schizophrenic . . . in international politics they are large but oscillating unsteadily between multilateralism and unilateralism; and when trying to interfere inside individual nation states they are small. Faced with a world of nation states, the US does not have imperial political power. The Age of Empire has gone’ (Mann 2003, 97). This ‘schizophrenic’ character of American power is considered apparent in the United States’ relationship with the United Nations, which is widely believed to have been damaged by American neoconservative forces. It is wellknown that in taking a unilateral approach, the United States has walked out of the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court, and some other international agreements, let alone shown complete disregard for the United Nations’ consensus concerning the invasion of Iraq (Broinowski and Wilkinson 2005, 218). Despite this fact, the United States needs the United Nations, especially in dealing with the aftermath of Iraq and Afghanistan (Broinowski and Wilkinson 2005, 221). George Soros, founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute and the Soros Foundation Network (a neoliberal think tank promoting market principles within a human rights framework), sees the United States’ ‘hegemonic’ project as failing. He states that ‘the Bush administration believes that international relations are relations of power’ and asserts ‘no empire could ever be held together by military power alone’ and that, compared to contemporary finance, the ‘Bush’s pursuit of American hegemony is similar to a boom-and-bust stock market’ (Soros 2003). Despite the use of the word hegemony, then, there is ample evidence to suggest a growing level of ‘discomfort’ with the position of the United States on the world stage, suggesting that internationally, US hegemony is of a more dominative type. In the tripartite model of hegemony (Howson 2006, 27), dominative hegemony is much more active than the detached and relies on a more forceful type of coercion, which may or may not be ‘military.’ When there is a crisis in authority, or a questioning of the legitimacy of the traditional hegemony, then ‘the traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. Perhaps it may make sacrifices, and expose itself to an uncertain future by demagogic promises; but it retains power, reinforces it for the time being, and uses it to crush its adversary . . . ’ (Gramsci 1971, 210–211). Joseph A. Buttigieg has argued that Gramsci emphasised that the practice of power appears in two ways. One is ‘leadership . . . which is achieved through persuasion and the manufacturing of consent’ and the other is


223

‘domination . . . which is imposed by the threat or the actual use of coercive force’ (Buttigieg 2005). Quoting from Gramsci, Buttigieg points out that in modern liberal democratic politics, ‘ . . . the “normal” exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is characterised by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally, without force predominating excessively over consent’ (Gramsci 1971, n80). Buttigieg argues that there are three methods by which the US could establish a global ‘hegemony’: (a) through the exercise of moral and intellectual leadership . . . that would generate a broad consensus for its policies among other peoples and nations; (b) through outright domination, imposing its will on other nations by threatening or actually using force not only against those nations that openly defy it but also against those that harbour aspirations to challenge its absolute military superiority; and (c) by maintaining an effective balance between its leadership role and its capacity for coercion and thus affi rming its status as a hegemonic power in the Gramscian sense (Buttigieg 2005, 53–54). According to Buttigieg, the tragedy on 11 September 2001 may in fact have presented the United States with an opportunity to reaffi rm its hegemonic power based on leadership because after the tragedy the United States was successful in gaining the world’s sympathy (Buttigieg 2005, 54). However, the United States, under the influence of neoconservative forces, took a course that served to discourage sympathy because it was based on the exercise of coercive domination over other countries (Buttigieg 2005, 54–55). The present administration thinks it is better to be feared by other nation states than to be admired, concludes Buttigieg (2005, 59). Mann echoes this point, ‘The new imperialism turned into simple militarism’ (Mann 2003, 252). Given this, it can be argued that United States’ power is based on a type of hegemony that is dominative, rather than being a form of ethico-political leadership. As we have seen, both a dominative and detached hegemony appear to produce a level of consensus, either because the avenues of dissent are shut down, or because it is simply easier to comply. Thus, it seems as though the majority of the world is conceding to the overwhelming pressure from the sole superpower. This is not just simply because of the United States’ militarism. The governments of Japan and Australia are indeed tightly linked to the United States regarding security issues, but they are not threatened by the superpower at gunpoint to follow it, nor are their citizens, who give legitimacy to these governments. But these are citizenries who are themselves living within domestic dominative or detached hegemonies, where passive revolutions have bought about what looks like consensus. This is a consensus manufactured through civil society. Gramsci pointed out:

224

Yoko Harada

‘Indeed, the attempt is always made to ensure that force will appear to be based on the consent of the majority, expressed by the so-called organs of public opinion—newspapers and associations—which, therefore, in certain situations, are artificially multiplied’ (Gramsci 1971, n80). This remark was made decades before the arrival of the age of information or Internet. Now we are living in an era in which people around the world were able to watch the fall of the twin towers in New York live. The effect of ‘the so-called organs of public opinion’ is almost immeasurable. It is impossible to separate the effects of economic or military changes out from the discourse surrounding them, and this discourse is inseparable from the social sphere within which politics occurs. In a situation of passive revolution, where changes in state policy are made covertly, the role of the media is paramount.

TRADITIONAL INTELLECTUALS, THE MEDIA AND NATIONAL MEMORY In an attempt to understand how the Japanese state has linked itself so strongly to the US in a post 9/11 world, despite the need to manipulate, even forget, parts of its own national history, and to ignore internal dissent in order to do so, the following part of this chapter explores the role of the Japanese media and argues that it has acted as a traditional intellectual, facilitating a passive revolution in Japanese society. The now ongoing global war—‘war on terror’—led by the United States of America is said to have started on 11 September 2001. Since that day, up until the US presidential election in 2004, the Bush Administration has heavily promoted a campaign on the war to legitimise and justify its military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The strategy was simple. The United States tried to divide the world into two sides—good and evil—and to place itself in the ‘absolute good’ and ‘absolute right’ position. One day before the strike on Afghanistan, President Bust made a radio address and stated: ‘The United States is presenting a clear choice to every nation: Stand with the civilized world, or stand with the terrorists. And for those nations that stand with the terrorists, there will be a heavy price’ (Bush 2001a). The next day, 7 October 2001, he asserted, ‘Every nation has a choice to make. In this confl ict, there is no neutral ground’ (Bush 2001b). Since then, statements delivered by the Bush Administration were fi rmly based on rhetoric aimed at dividing the world into good and evil. In order to imprint the image on peoples’ minds, some specific terms were chosen and statements were studded with those terms. On the one hand, positive terms such as ‘peace,’ ‘free,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty,’ ‘just,’ ‘stability,’ ‘prosperity,’ ‘civilised’ and ‘democracy’ were attached to the ‘good’ half of the world. On the other hand, ‘terror,’ ‘terrorists,’ ‘violence,’ ‘enemy,’ ‘intimidate,’ ‘threat,’


225

‘fear,’ ‘dictator,’ ‘tyranny,’ ‘oppressed,’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ terms with negative connotations, were used to describe the ‘evil’ side of the world. These terms were used repeatedly in different speeches and repeatedly within speeches, much like an incantation. During the presidential address to the nation on 7 October 2001, Bush said: I’m speaking to you today from the Treaty Room of the White House, a place where American presidents have worked for peace. We’re a peaceful nation. Yet, as we have learned, so suddenly and so tragically, there can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today’s new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it. We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfil it. The name of today’s military operation is Enduring Freedom. We defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear (2001b) (emphases added). This use of terms has persisted since then in messages delivered from the Bush Administration. The use of such rhetoric shows the power of emotional language to inculcate fear and facilitate ‘a defacto acquiescence,’ resistance to which is easily dismissed or demonised. Along with this trend, the United States’ government started to justify and secure legitimacy for present actions through a particular ‘remembering’ of past actions in international affairs. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who appeared at the World Economic Forum in Davos on 26 January 2003, about a month before the Iraq invasion, boldly addressed an audience of business leaders from around the world in a speech laced with the rhetoric of ‘US benevolence.’ He started the speech by referring to America’s ‘responsibilities in the world’ and listing its past ‘good deeds.’ Afghanistan’s leaders and Afghanistan’s people know that they can trust America to do just this, to do the right thing. The people of Bosnia, the people of Kosovo, of Macedonia—they too know that they can trust us to do our jobs and then leave. We seek nothing for ourselves other than to help bring about security for people that have already suffered too much (Powell 2003a). Powell’s ‘good deeds list of America’ continued: Kuwait, Africa, and Latin America were on the list, and Europe, which was helped by the United States ‘to rescue’ itself ‘from the tyranny of fascism,’ was also listed. Later, in the question time, the secretary proudly answered ‘ . . . I don’t think I have anything to be ashamed of or apologize for with respect to what America has done for the world’ (2003b). Two days later in Washington, President Bush delivered the State of the Union Address to the US Congress. After pointing out that ‘the gravest danger’ the world is facing is the possibility for terrorists to possess ‘weapons

226 Yoko Harada of mass destruction’ and use them, he echoed Powell’s aggressive line: ‘This threat is new; America’s duty is familiar. Throughout the twentieth century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America’ (Bush 2003a). Before concluding his speech the President asserted: ‘Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honourable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers’ (2003a). As Christian Reus-Smit points out, ‘Political elites invoke select moments in the past to license their preferred policies and strategies’ (2004, 71). ‘Political elites’ in Washington have shown their absolute confidence in their record in the past, and this rhetoric still continues. This is functioning to forge the heroic image of the United States domestically and internationally, and the question ‘Has the US really always done the right thing?’ hardly comes into a mainstream discourse because the traditional intellectuals of the conservative forces in American political and social life claim knowledge and ownership of this past, presenting it as fait accompli and demonising those who would speak against it.

THE VICTOR’S MEMORY OF THE PACIFIC WAR AND THE ‘WAR ON TERROR’ In order to strengthen the Bush Administration’s simple but overwhelming rhetoric on the ‘war on terror,’ terms and phrases that remind people of the Pacific War, when the United States was on the victor’s side, are repeatedly used by the Administration. The media was quick to pick up on the use of such language as the Bush Administration took advantage of its victor’s heroic image from World War II and tried to reflect this image onto itself facing a ‘new war.’ Observing the media reports in the United States right after the September 11 attacks, John Dower pointed out ‘the immediate reaction to the terror of the September 11 in America was to recall the surprise attack at Pearl Harbour by the Japanese on 7 December 1941’ (Dower 2001, 8) The terms ‘Pearl Harbour’ and ‘a day of infamy,’ a term used by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his speech on the next day of the Pearl Harbour attack to describe the day (1941), reappeared in the media immediately after 9/11. On September 12, 2001, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal had as its title ‘A Terrorist Pearl Harbour’ and asserted, ‘The world is a different place after the massive terrorist attacks on the United States yesterday,


227

much as it was after the bombing of Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago . . . ’ Tom Shales of the Washington Post reported, ‘It may have left the nation feeling more vulnerable and victimized than any single day since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941’ (2001). The use of Pearl Harbour as a symbol for 9/11 immediately spread into the public. A person who was interviewed on the street by CBS News told the reporter ‘It’s another Pearl Harbour for this country’ (The Osgood File 2001). The media outside the United States also followed this trend. In Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald wrote ‘The US was at war, as every official noted, just as it was when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941’ (Alcorn 2001), and the Australian recorded, ‘Like the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbour, this will irrevocably change the national psyche, and the consequences for America’s world view cannot be known’ (Eccleston 2001). A CNN correspondent in London reported, ‘Here in England talking to taxi drivers, people on the streets, people are using the analogy to Pearl Harbour’ (Live at Daybreak 2001). Then, in the State of Union Address for 2002, Bush used the term ‘axis’ of evil, which served to recall the ‘evil’ side of the former world war (Chomsky 2003, 128). Late in that year came the ‘implementing democracy in Iraq in the postwar Japan’s style’ rhetoric. Initially used to describe the strategy of occupation in Iraq after the military operation, it then became the most favoured parable of the White House. The New York Times revealed a story of senior administration officials of the Bush Administration on 11 October saying, ‘The White House is developing a detailed plan, modelled on the postwar occupation of Japan, to install an American-led military government in Iraq if the United States topples Saddam Hussein . . . ’ (Sanger and Schmitt 2002, 1). Immediately after this report, several critiques of the plan appeared in the media. In the Los Angeles Times, Chalmers Johnson wrote, ‘This plan won’t work for the simple reason that Iraq is not Japan’ (Johnson 2002, 19B). John Dower wrote, ‘Does America’s successful occupation of Japan after World War II provide a model for a constructive American role in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq? The short answer is no’ (Dower, 2002). Ian Buruma in the Guardian asserted, ‘It has been suggested that General Tommy Franks would govern Iraq, just as Macarthur had once governed Japan. The merits or demerits of “regime change” aside, this strikes me as an absurd comparison’ (2002, 8). The Boston Herald was kind enough to suggest to the Administration, ‘Instead of the archives of Gen. Douglas Macarthur’s Tokyo headquarters, U.S. planners should be consulting with experts on Iraq, the Arab world and the Middle East’ (2002). All critics equally pointed out unlike Iraq, democracy pre-existed in Japan, the head of the nation, Emperor Hirohito, was supporting MacArthur, and there was no severe ethnic and religious confl ict in Japan. Nevertheless, in many ways the damage was already done, the connection between a noble, heroic, and victorious America in the Pacific and the America that would

228 Yoko Harada bring freedom to Iraq made clear, while the real cost (and motives?) of both campaigns remained unspoken. The idea that the United States’ occupation resulted in Japan being democratised and becoming a ‘good’ friendly nation became a favourite parable for Bush, specifically during his presidential campaign in 2004. In his remarks at the Victory 2004 Rally, President Bush repeatedly presented this parable: I believe in the power of liberty because I have worked closely with Prime Minister Koizumi, who I also will be working with today. Think about this for a minute. When you hear the sceptics and doubters talk about our policies, think about the fact that I sit down with the prime minister of Japan as a friend. And it wasn’t all that long ago that my dad and your dads and grandfathers were fighting the Japanese as a sworn enemy. And after that war was over, fortunately, Harry Truman, and other American citizens believed that liberty could transform an enemy into an ally and worked with Japan to develop a Japanese style democracy. And as a result of that faith in the power of liberty, today I sit down with Prime Minister Koizumi—tomorrow I actually sit down with him—and talk about keeping the peace, talking about the peace that we all yearn for. Liberty is powerful. Someday an American president is going to be sitting down with the duly elected leader of Iraq talking about the peace (Bush 2004). It is doubtful whether Koizumi became more famous in the United States because of this parable or whether any detail of this story was remembered by US citizens. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to imagine that the parable had the effect of creating for a public with a limited memory of the Pacific War the idea that the United States had done something good in the past somewhere in the ‘savage’ Orient by implementing democracy as a result of the war it had won. This would have further enhanced the country’s image of ‘always doing the right thing.’ Despite this persistent linkage between the present and former war, the fact that the terms ‘ground zero’ and ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ which were originally connected to the Pacific War, appeared in the media and in the Bush Administration’s messages through the campaign, the connection was hardly mentioned. In the victor’s memory of the war, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the now-noble and heroic US were invisible. Immediately after 9/11, the term ‘ground zero’ became capital lettered into ‘Ground Zero’ without notice and became a term particularly referring to the site of the World Trade Center. The shocking scene of the towers’ destruction was watched worldwide on live television. It was shown repeatedly for some time afterwards (and the sentiments of the people around the world integrated into that very site). Reports from the site flooded the media. The term ‘Ground Zero’ was imprinted on people’s minds. In the


229

shadow of this creation of memory, the fact that the term ‘ground zero’ initially meant Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other nuclear explosion sites was almost forgotten (Chikusi 2004, 74). Noam Chomsky commented: ‘The interesting thing is that here, almost nobody thinks of it [that ground zero meant Hiroshima and Nagasaki]. Check around. I mean, I’ve never seen a comment in the press or the massive commentary on this that points that out. It’s just not in peoples’ consciousness’ (inside brackets added) (Chomsky 2003). Thus, ‘ground zero’ was disconnected from the original sites. Another disconnection is evident in the failure to link Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the now famous term ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Voted ‘2002 word of the year’ in the United States by the American Dialect Society (Associated Press 2003), the term was widely used in the political field, in the international arena, in the media, and in everyday discourse because the Bush Administration had insisted that it was their existence in Iraq, and their ease of access for terrorist groups, which gave legitimacy to the war there. In the famous ‘axis of evil’ speech, President Bush insisted ‘by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger’ (2002). He added ‘The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.’ One year later, the intensity of the message from the president was enhanced. His address was focused clearly on Iraq, Saddam the dictator, and disarmament of the evil regime (Bush 2003a). About a week later, the most crucial remark concerning ‘weapons of mass destruction’ from the United States was made by Colin Powell at the United Nations Security Council when he said, ‘Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behaviour show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction’ (2003b). Today, even the White House has admitted the absence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iraq. In many arenas, the real absence of weapons of mass destruction has been used to question the legitimacy of the actions of the US and its allies in the Middle East, perhaps enough to have motivated recent policy shifts, but oppositional critique remains largely marginalised. When the United States refers to the need for the disarmament of ‘rogue states,’ it is necessary for the international community to recall the United States was the fi rst state to use ‘weapons of mass destruction’ on human beings. Moreover, it is the major state still holding and producing nuclear weapons (Akiba 2004; Chikushi 2004a; Itoh 2004). How is it possible, then, that a country with such a record has the legitimacy to discipline other ‘rogue states’? In many ways, this is a legitimacy born of forgetting. The actions of the US against Hiroshima and Nagasaki nearly sixty years ago have been ignored in the victor’s memory of the Pacific War. The United States has always been reluctant to inform its public about the devastated grounds

230

Yoko Harada

zeros it created in Japan. This became obvious in the controversy surrounding the exhibition of Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institute. The fully reassembled Enola Gay was put on exhibition in 2003. The display was met with anger from atomic bomb survivors, because it neither mentioned the number of casualties nor showed pictures of ground zero (ABC 2003; Asahi 2003; BBC 2003). For the museum, this was the second time it was involved in a controversial circumstance regarding the display of the Enola Gay. In 1995, a part of the bomber was displayed, and it was planned to coincide with an exhibition concerning atomic bombs. However, because of the harsh response from the US veterans, the plan was put aside and the then-director of the museum had to resign (Asahi 2003). The incidents in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are interpreted as ‘act(s) (which) hastened the war’s end and saved thousands of lives,’ whereas some people say they are in fact some ‘of the world’s worst war crimes’ (BBC 2003). Despite these pockets of oppositional memory, the legitimacy of the use of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ nearly sixty years ago is undecided; yet for those who live with a victor’s memory of the war, the debate has never existed. As Chomsky remarks, ‘Defeated countries are forced to pay some attention to what they did. Victors never are’ (2004).

REACTION FROM THE DEFEATED SIDE Japan, the country in the strongest position from which to raise questions about the legitimacy of the rhetoric surrounding ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ appears to be very ambiguous in this matter. Very little discussion has occurred within Japan concerning the United States’ use of victor’s memory of the Pacific War. This silence gives the impression that Japan is passively accepting the rhetoric and perhaps even supporting it. Its behaviour in relation to the rhetoric surrounding the Iraq war, ground zero, and weapons of mass destruction shows the workings of a passive revolution in process and the impact this has on a national and international level. We return to the rhetoric surrounding the relationship between President Bush and the Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi. A few Japanese newspapers reported that the president had been referring to Prime Minister Koizumi frequently during his presidential campaign in the context of democratising the Middle East (Asahi 2004; Moriyasu 2004; Sankei 2004). However, none of these reports questioned the legitimacy of the analogy between Japan sixty years ago and Iraq in this new century. Rather, articles sounded quite excited that their prime minister’s name was mentioned by the president of the United States—the only superpower in the world—and seemed delighted to achieve recognition in the United States and maybe in the international arena. The prime minister himself,


231

in the meantime, seemed to be delighted by this incident. He was asked by Bush at the summit meeting in September if it was all right for the president to keep mentioning Koizumi’s name during his campaign and Koizumi consented willingly (Sankei 2004). This behaviour only makes sense if we consider the close and peculiar relationship between the US and Japan that has developed since World War II—and it is not simply a situation where one is dominated by the other. In a situation of passive revolution, which gives rise to a detached hegemony, there is an elite group in a society whose interests are furthered by the reinforcement of the continuance of particular hegemonic principles (Howson 2006, 23, 49). This group may not seize power overtly, but creates a situation where little or no alternative is made possible. This is further complicated, as Showstack Sassoon argues, if real material benefits flow to the majority of the population (Showstack Sassoon 2001, 8–10). We do not have room here to explore to what extent all elements of Japanese society have benefited from postwar relations with the US but there is little doubt that Japan has ‘flourished’ in perhaps unexpected ways since the war. This has not been without extensive US influence. If ‘democracy’ is a non-negotiable principle of US hegemony, then it is true, as President Bush kept insisting in his campaign, that under the United States’ supervision Japan has adopted a new democratic constitution. However, what the US has left in Japan is not simply a democratic constitution and parliament. The legacy of the United States still lingers on in various aspects of Japanese society. The most significant area is national defence and security. President Bush proudly said ‘after defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies’ (2003b). But this is not true. In Japan, the occupation by the General Headquarters lasted for six years, and it was not until 1972 that Okinawa was restored to Japan. Moreover, even today, in the twenty-fi rst century, US military forces are stationed in the country. Also, the course of Japan’s rearmament in 1950s took place at the will of the United States, which was then operating within the conditions of the Cold War (Furukawa 2003). This is highly ironic considering the fact that Japan was forcibly disarmed by the United States right after the war. As the rhetoric around the ‘war on terror’ advocated by the United States rises, Japan’s Self Defence Force’s capability is increased, and now Japan is facing a very controversial moment as the decision whether to amend its pacifist constitution must be made—and the United States is now supporting this movement (Furukawa 2003; McCormack 2004). Indeed, in this structure, under the ‘nuclear umbrella,’ Japan was protected during the Cold War. This perception of protection—which it could be argued resembles an immature relationship of paternalism from whose dependence Japan is unable to secede—has enabled an almost proAmerican rhetoric to deeply penetrate into Japanese society, so that even a voice from ground zero is now seen as controversial. In the summer of

232

Yoko Harada

2004, the Peace Declaration released by the mayor of Hiroshima city, Tadatoshi Akiba, was criticised in editorials of two major newspapers in Japan. A Sankei Shimbun editorial said that the mayor should have stressed the threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program more strongly, rather than damning the United States’ unilateral behaviour or its production of smaller nuclear weapons (Sankei 2004a). It also mentioned that Japan should cooperate with the United States and put more pressure on North Korea to dismantle its program. Another newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, more intensely attacked the mayor, who expressed his preference for protecting the pacifist constitution and asked that the present Japanese government not amend it. The newspaper demanded, ‘Do not involve politics in antinuclear appeal’ (Yomiuri 2004). Instead, this paper argued for the amendment of the pacifist constitution and for an increase in the Japanese defence force, ideas that synchronise with the will of the United States. Both editorials, in nationalistic and conservative newspapers, are heavily steeped in the rhetoric of the United States. Yet this is not the conservatism of a traditional (imperial, prewar) Japan; rather, it is the conservatism of traditional intellectuals who emerge from elite power groups to further particular, corporativistic interests that are disconnected from mass politics and that serve to reinforce the prevailing hegemonic principles. That these are the principles of a globalising US-led capitalism seems without doubt. At the same time, there is another very controversial issue for Japan concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Asian countries, mainly China and both Koreas, which suffered severely under Japanese colonisation and occupation in World War II, are criticising Japan in order to protest against the United States. They also refer to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but in a different way. The China Post wrote: ‘But WMD is not necessarily a dirty word. For example, it was the atomic bomb that brought an end to World War II. Without the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the war could have dragged much longer and more lives would have been lost’ (China Post 2003). China understands the incident as ‘the Allies’ nuclear retaliation’ (South China Morning Post 2003). Japan deserved the devastation, and it freed China from Japan’s invasion, according to the paper. This total lack of sympathy from neighbouring countries towards atrocities that happened in Japan has facilitated the growth in a postwar relationship between Japan and the US. Dower describes: ‘One of the most pernicious aspects of the occupation was that the Asian peoples who had suffered most from imperial Japan’s depredation—the Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, and Filipinos—had no serious role, no influential presence at all in the defeated land. They became invisible. Asian contributions of defeating the emperor’s soldiers and sailors were displayed by an all-consuming focus on the American victory in the “Pacific War.” By this same process of vaporization, the crimes that had been committed against Asian peo-


233

ples through colonization as well as war were all the more easily put out of mind’ (Dower 1999, 27). In this sense then, the United States interferes with relations between countries in the Pacific to serve its own ends and to create a sense of isolation from its neighbours for Japan, so that it will more readily accept US doctrine and come to be a material ally for the US in the Pacific. Reus-Smit remarks, ‘Legitimacy is a social phenomenon; an actor or action is not legitimate unless other members of society deem it so’ (2004, 5). In a situation of passive revolution, with a resultant detached hegemony, there is no room for organic critique in Japanese society. Japan’s behaviour since the defeat in 1945 has served to give legitimacy to the past actions of its ‘conqueror’ and thus also to present actions in the Middle East. Japan has relied on the victor’s rhetoric for its own nationalpopular mythology and has forgotten its own history in doing so. ‘Much that lies at the heart of contemporary Japanese society . . . derives from the complexity of the interplay between the victors and the vanquished’ (Dower 1999, 28). In failing to link rhetoric surrounding weapons of mass destruction, ground zero, and Iraq with the history of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the past actions of United States of America, Japan has failed to contest the legitimacy of the Bush Administration.

CONCLUSION In the era when Gramsci was elaborating the idea of hegemony, the world, specifically Europe, was observing the outbreak of world war, the aftermath of it, and the rise of socialist movements, revolution, and fascism (Tokyo Gramsci Kai 2005). The emergence of Americanism and the Great Depression also were key issues around which Gramsci formed his ideas (Ohara 2006, 76). The era was followed by another world war and then the Cold War. Now the Cold War is over, except on the Korean Peninsula, and the sole superpower is creating hegemony by waging a ‘war on terror.’ What would Gramsci have said if he were to witness the present picture of the world? The situation in Iraq shows no sign of getting better. Without doubt, it is important for the international community to examine the present situation and consider how to deal with the country’s future. Nevertheless, it should not forget to question why this atrocity started and why it is continuing—that is, to look to the past. Even though the rhetoric delivered by the United States’ government seems overwhelming, and counterarguments are drowned out by it, the legitimacy of this war should be contested consistently by recalling a memory of the defeated side of the Pacific War. Restoration of elements lacking in the United States’ rhetoric in the mainstream discourse is essential. By doing so, the containment of ‘US hegemony’ in the twenty-fi rst century could be a reality.

234 Yoko Harada REFERENCES ABC News Online. 2003. Rebuilt Enola Gay unveiled in Washington. August 19. http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200308/s927135.htm. Age. 2003. A Year Of Confl ict And Division. December 31. Agence France Presse. 2004. Powell says some in US intelligence knew sourcing on Iraq was suspect. September 14. Akiba, T. 2004. Peace Declaration 2004. http://www.city.hiroshima.jp/shimin/ heiwa/pd/pd2004e.html. All Things Considered. 2001. Analysis: Continuing Coverage of the Terrorist Attack on America. National Public Radio. September 11. Asahi Shimbun. 2003. Bei no hakubutsukan Enora Gei wo kanzen shufuku shusen ni koken [American Museum Reassembled Enola Gay: Wrote ‘Contributed to End War’]. 19 August. ———. 2004a. Shasetsu: Genbaku no hi: Futatabi jindo no kiki no toki ni [The Day of Atom Bomb: On the Occasion of Humanitarian Crisis Recurring]. August 6. http://www.asahi.com/paper/editorial20040806.html. ———. 2004b. ‘Minshushugi yue ni Koizumi shusho to shinmitsu’ to Bei-Daitoryo [The President Said, ‘Because of Democracy, PM Koizumi and I Are Close Friends’]. November 13. www.asahi.com/international/update/1113.html. Associated Press. 2003. ‘Weapons of mass destruction’ Voted 2002 Word of the Year. January 6. Alcorn, G. 2001. Naked Nation Demands Answers. Sydney Morning Herald. September 13. BBC Monitoring Africa. 2003. Opposition PAC Party Urges World Not to ‘Tolerate US Hegemony’. February 6. BBC Monitoring Middle East. 2003a. Iraq’s Aziz Says Saddam to Remain in Iraq ‘Come What May’. February 13. ———. 2003b. Saddam Protests US War Plans at Meeting With Pope’s Envoy. February 16. BBC News. 2003. Enola Gay Display Angers Victims. December 16. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3315729.stm. Boston Herald. 2002. Editorial: Post-War Iraq Won’t Be Japan. October 13. Broinowski, A. and J. Wilkinson. 2005. The Third Try: Can the United Nations Work? Carlton North: Scribe Publications. Buruma, I. 2002. This talk of restoring democracy to Iraq is absurd. It never had a democracy. What it does need is a revolution. Guardian. October 15. Bush, G. W. 2001a. Radio Address of the President to the Nation. October 6. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/2011006.html. ———. 2001b. Presidential Address to the Nation. October 7. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/2011007.html. ———. 2002. State of the Union Address. January 29. http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129–11.html. ———. 2003a. State of the Union Address. January 28. http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128–19.html. ———. 2003b. Radio Address of the President to the Nation. March 1. http:// www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030301.html. ———. 2004. President’sRemarks at Victory 2004 Rally in New York City, September 20. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/200 /09/20040920– 17.html. Buttigieg, J. A. 2005. Amerika Gasshukoku—hegemoni kara shihai he [The United States of America—From Hegemony to Domination]. K. Ohara, trans. Ashikabi. July 31.


235

Chikushi, T. 2004a. Tero no kyoi de kiwadatsu ‘kaku’ no kikensei [Danger of ‘Nuclear’ Stands Out Within Threats of Terror]. Shukan Kinyobi. August 6 and 13. ———. 2004b. ‘Genzai’ to tomoni aru rekishi [History Coexists with the ‘Present’]. Shukan Kinyobi. August 20. China Post. 2003. WMD and World Peace. August 23. Chomsky, N. 2003. Power and Terror: Post-9/11 Talks and Interviews / Noam Chomsky. J. Junkerman and M. Tanaka, eds. New York/Tokyo: Seven Stories Press/Little More. Cox, R. W. 1996. Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method (1983). In Approaches to World Order, 124–143, eds. R. W. Cox and T. Sinclair. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dower, J. W. 1999. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II. London: Penguin Books. ———. 2001. Yosha naki senso: Taiheiyo Senso ni okeru jinshu sabetsu [War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War]. K. Saruya, ed., and G. Saito, trans. Tokyo: Heibonsha. ———. 2002. Lessons From Japan About War’sAftermath. New York Times. October 27. Ecclseton, R. 2001. Fortress Shaken to Its Core—America’s Terrorist War. Australian. September 12. Evening News With Dan Rather. 2001. Terrorist Strikes Hit United States, Damaging Pentagon, Destroying World Trade Center, transcript. CBS News. September 12. Furukawa, J. 2003. Sengo nippon no yuji hosei wa dono yoni tsukurarete kitaka [How the Emergency Legislation of Japan Was Generated After the War]. In Kenpo Saisei Foramu: Yuji hosei hihan [Recovery of constitution forum: Critique on emergency legislation], 54–73. Tokyo: Iwanami-Shoten. Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Itoh, I. 2004. The Nagasaki Peace Declaration 2004. http://www1.city.nagasaki. nagasaki.jp/abm/abm_e/heiwasengen/sengen_main.html. Johnson, C. 2002. Rebuilding Iraq: Japan Is No Model. Los Angles Times. October 17. Kitaoka, S. 2000. Baisho mondai no seiji rikigaku (1945–1959) [Political Dynamics of Reparation Issue]. In Senso, Fukko, Hatten: Showa seiji-shi ni okeru kenryoku to kousou [War, Revival, Development: Power and Concept in Political History of Showa], eds. S. Kitaoka and T. Mikuriya. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppan-kai. Lee, J. W. 1999. Nashonarizumu no tenkei: Datsu-reisenki no Chosen Hanto [Transformation of Nationalism: Korean Peninsula Departing from the Cold War]. Daikokai. October 30. Live At Daybreak. 2001. America Under Attack: Britain Reacts. CNN. September 12. Mainichi Shimbun. 2004. Shasetsu: Genbakuki kaku haizetsu ni nebari zuyoi ishi wo [Editorial: Anniversary of Atomic Bomb: Necessity of Persistent Will Towards Nuclear Abolition]. August 5. http://www.maichini-msn.co.jp/column/shasetsu/news/20040805k000m070146000c.html. Mann, M. 2003. Incoherent Empire. London and New York: Verso. McCormack, G. 2004. Remilitarizing Japan. New Left Review 29:29–45. Mohammed, A. 2004. Powell: Unlikely WMD Stocks Will Be Found in Iraq. Reuters News. September 14. Moriyasu, K. 2004. ‘Waga tomo Koizumi’/Busshu Daitoryo ga zenbei de shokai [‘My friend Koizumi’: Introduced in the United States by President Bush].

236

Yoko Harada

Nippon Keizai Shimbun. September 7. http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/seiji/ 20040907AT1E0400106092004.html. New Straits Times. 2003. Resounding No to US Hegemony. March 25. Nippon Keizai Shimbun. 2004. Shasetsu: Hiroshima no hasshinryoku wo kaku fukakusan ni ikase [Use the Power of Hiroshima’s Message Towards Nuclear Nonproliferation]. August 6. http://www.nikkei.co.jp/news/shasetsu/ 20040805MS3M0500V05082004.html. Ohara, K. 2006. ‘Judo Kakumei’ to gendai [‘Passive Revolution’ and Today]. Asikabi. July. The Osgood File. 2001. Commentary: Reaction to the World Trade Center Attack. CBS News. September 12. Powell, C. 2003a. Remarks at World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2003. January 26. http://www.weforum.org/site/homepublic.nsf/Content/ 14C4AE36B14FC415C1256CBA006B5E93?OpenDocument&PreviewStyle=B D8B6AAB5ED1. ———. 2003b. Remarks to the United Nations Security Council. February 5. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2003/17300pf.htm. Rues-Smit. C. 2004. American Power and World Order. Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press. Roosevelt, F. D. 1941. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Day of Infamy Speech. Dec 8. http:// www.law.ou.edu/hist/infamy.html. Sanger, D. E. 2004. In Bush’sVision, a Mission to Spread Power of Liberty. New York Times. October 21. Sanger, D. E. and E. Schmitt. 2002. U.S. Has a Plan To Occupy Iraq, Official Report. New York Times. October 11. Sankei Shimbun. 2004a. Shucho: Genbaku no hi: Kyocho shitai kita no kaku no kyoi [Editorial: Memorial Day of Atomic Bomb: Emphasise the threat of North Korea’s nuclear program]. August 6. http://www.sankei.co.jp/news/040806/ morning/edtiria.htm. ———. 2004b. Koizumi wa ‘Ii Jinbutsu’: Bei-Daitoryo senkyo enzetsu de shosan [Koizumi is a ‘good man’: President Bush praises during the election campaign]. October 23. http://www.sankei.co.jp/news/041023/kok029.htm. Shales, T. 2001. On Television, The Unimaginable Story Unfolds. Washington Post. September 12. Soros, G. 2003. The Bubble of US Supremacy Grows. Nation (Thailand). March 14. South China Morning Post. 2003. Japan’s Deep-Rooted Militarism. August 7. Special Report With Brit Hume. 2001. Terrorism Hits America. Fox News. September 12. Tokyo Guramushi Kai [Tokyo Gramsci Association]. 2005 Guramushi Shiso Tanbo [Searching Gramsci’s Thoughts]. Tokyo: Irisu. Wade, N. 1988. The Ascent of Books on Decline of U.S. New York Times. April 10. Wall Street Journal. 2001. Editorial: A Terrorist Pearl Harbour. September 12. Xinhua News Agency. 2003. Roundup—Iraq War Goes on Amid Massive Protests, Criticism. Xinhua News Agency. Yomiuri Shimbun. 2004. Shasetsu: Hiroshima Genbakuki: Hankaku no uttae ni seiji wo karameruna [Anniversary of Atomic Bomb: Do Not Involve Politics in Antinuclear Appeal]. August 7. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/editorial/news/ 20040806ig90.htm.

Contributors

Derek Boothman (1944), of Lancashire working-class origins, holds a physics doctorate and is presently professor of English translation at the University of Bologna’s faculty for interpreters and translators (SSLMIT) and a participant in Rome’s regular Seminario gramsciano. His Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, alongside the Hoare/Nowell Smith Selections and the Cultural Writings, is an integral part of the three-volume selected anthology of Gramsci’s Notebooks. An English-language edition of his study of Gramsci’s politico-cultural concept of translatability between languages and paradigms is underway, while his translation of Gramsci’s preprison letters is due out in late 2008. Damien Cahill lectures in political economy at the University of Sydney, Australia. His current research interests include: processes of prison privatisation; the electoral support base of the Australian Greens; and the social foundations of Australia’s contemporary economic boom. Alastair Davidson, born 1939, is adjunct professor at Latrobe University, Australia. He has been professor of citizenship studies at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; Raoul Wallenberg professor of human rights at Rutgers University and is a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has published ten books and more than one hundred articles, in many languages, on globalization, citizenship, and human rights. He is, together with John Cammett, one of the “fathers” of Gramsci studies in the English-speaking world. Susan Engel recently completed a PhD at the University of Wollongong, Australia, on the World Bank and the post-Washington Consensus. Prior to that, she had a diverse working career in government, business, and community-based organisations and in managing development assistance projects. For the past five years, she has been on the management committee of Indigo Foundation, a small nongovernmental organisation that funds development projects in marginalised communities.

238

Contributors

Benedetto Fontana is a professor in political science at Baruch College, New York City. His research interests include ancient, medieval, and modern political theory, as well as contemporary political and social theory. He is the author of Hegemony and Power: On the Relation Between Gramsci and Machiavelli (University of Minnesota Press, 1993), and the coeditor of Talking Democracy: Historical Perspectives on Rhetoric and Democracy (Penn State University Press, 2004). He has published in various journals, such as boundary 2, History of Political Thought, Journal of Classical Sociology, Journal of the History of Ideas, and The Philosophical Forum. Currently, he is working on Antonio Gramsci and his notions of politics and the state, on Machiavelli and his Romans, and on rhetoric and democracy. Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase lectures in sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and is a researcher at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), also located at the University of Wollongong. She obtained her PhD in anthropology from the University of Melbourne and is the author of Global Issues/Local Contexts: The Rabi Das of West Bengal (Orient Longman, New Delhi/Sangam Books, London, 2001). Her research interests include comparative sociology, globalisation, gender relations in Asia, and ethnographic method. She is currently engaged in a cross-national study of the garment industry and its impact on labour relations in the Asia-Pacific. Yoko Harada is a PhD candidate in the School of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her research focuses on the position of Japan and Australia in the Asia-Pacific and in the present world. National identity, nationalism, migration, and multiculturalism are some of her research interests. She is affi liated to the Centre of Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies, UOW, and also is a Friend member of the Centre for Dialogue, La Trobe University, Australia. Her essay “The Occident in the Orient or the Orient in the Occident? Reception of Said’s Orientalism in Japan” is published online. Charles Hawksley lectures in politics and international relations in the School of History and politics in the faculty of arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. His research interests include peacekeeping and intervention, colonialism and imperialism, development politics in the Pacific and Asia, war and state development. He has published in on various aspects of PNG-Australia relations in the journals Rethinking Marxism, Third World Quarterly, and Social Alternatives. Richard Howson is currently convenor of sociology at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and lectures in social and political theory, gender, social policy, and civil society. He is a founding member of the Gramsci Society Asia-Pacific and coordinator of the Hegemony Research Group. He

Contributors

239

is the author of Challenging Hegemonic Masculinity and is currently working on the forthcoming monograph, Sociology of Postmarxism. Hiroshi Matsuda was born 1942 in Fukuoka Prefecture in Japan and graduated from Waseda University. He studied abroad at Perugia University for foreigners and at the Institute Gramsci in Rome, and he was a guest scholar at the University of Florence (1986 to 1987). He is a professor emeritus at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto and a member of the IGS Coordinating Committee and is the author of New Development of Gramsci Studies: For the Innovation of a Gramscian Figure (2003) and coauthor and cotranslator of many others books and essays on Gramsci. Koichi Ohara was born in 1941 in Tokyo and graduated from Keio University. He was a correspondent for the Japanese communist party’s Daily Akahata in Prague (1970–74) and in Rome (1976–81). He is a member of the IGS Coordinating Committee and is coauthor of the book How Is Gramsci Read in the World? and other writings and cotranslator of The Educational Principle in Gramsci by M. A. Manacorda (1996), Essays on Gramsci by N. Bobbio (2003), and many others. Timothy J. Scrase is a leading scholar on the impact of global social and cultural change in Asia. He is the deputy director, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), University of Wollongong, Australia. He has been a visiting research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on development and social change in a range of leading academic journals and edited collections, and he has previously published four books. His fifth and most recent book is Globalization and the Middle Classes in India (Routledge, 2008; coauthored with R. Ganguly-Scrase). Kylie Smith completed her PhD in 2008 at the University of Wollongong, Australia, on the processes of subaltern subjectivity in Australian history. She has published in the areas of Australian history, critical theory, and Gramscian theory and is a founding member of the Hegemony Research Group and the Gramsci Society Asia-Pacific. Andrew Wells is a professor of comparative history and the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He is the author of Constructing Capitalism (1988), and an editor of Industrial Relations in Australia and Japan (1994), Australian Communism: a Guide to Sources (1996), The Maritime Strikes of the 1890s (1992), A History of Wollongong (1997), and Australian Labour and Regional Change (1998). He has also written various chapters and articles on Australian economic, labour, and intellectual history. Current research interests are on Australian communism and comparative studies of Australian and South East Asian labour history.

Index

A America (Americanism), 53, 66, 73, 233 and Fordism, 65, 71–72, 109, 114, 185 see United States of antagonism, 1, 3, 10, 206 Asia-Pacific, 1, 2, 10, 12, 14, 15, 63–77, 159, 184, 202 Australia, 1, 2, 14, 73, 76, 77, 112–122, 143–155, 201–215, 219, 223, 227

C capitalism, 12, 26–29, 54, 63–66, 74, 107–110, 116, 121, 122, 125–128, 138, 144, 154, 185, 211, 232 global, 64, 126 industrial/hegemony of , 108–109, 120–121 capitalist mode of production, 166, 128, 142, 151 society, 12, 20, 80, 118 hegemony, 65–66, 68, 70–72, 75, 126–128, 144, 150, 186 China, 1, 2, 12, 64, 69, 73–77, 208, 221, 232 civil society, 3–6, 9, 10, 41, 52, 55–60, 66, 86, 88–97, 101, 142–143, 150, 160, 162, 176, 186, 204, 207–208, 211–212, 214, 215 and dialectic, 55 subaltern and, 108, 114 and the state, 101 class, 5, 28, 33, 35–46, 51–55, 69, 71–77, 80, 83, 201, 204, 206, 222 alliance, 36, 40, 54

consciousness, 38, 112–113, 151–152 middle-class in India, 184–189, 190, 195, 197–199 ruling/dominant class, 26, 57, 91, 95, 103, 126–127, 139, 142, 220–222 subaltern, 96–97, 125–126 working-class, 27–28, 69, 84, 112–115, 137–138, 208, 237 coercion, 1–15, 31, 41, 52, 55, 55–58, 108–110, 118, 125, 137, 139, 142, 149, 159, 160, 177, 206, 207, 211, 213, 223 and consensus, 1, 63, 73, 125 and consent, 15, 41, 160, 213 colonialism, 13, 125, 130, 133–139 commonsense, 68–75, 96, 100, 144– 145, 148, 152–5 folklore, 66–71, 112 popular wisdom, 63, 67, 70, 71 consensus, 3, 6, 10, 11, 14, 31, 64, 73, 86, 94, 96 and coercion, 13, 31 corporativism, 4, 7, 10, 25, 27–29 consciousness, 4, 30–31, 52–53, 66, 72, 75, 99–100, 112 See also class crisis of authority, 6, 126 Croce, Benedetto, 7–9, 29, 30, 41–42, 48, 86, 128

D dialectic, 53, 55, 94, 163, 204 concept of, 7–10, 40–41, 83 croce and, 7, 204 Gramsci and, 7, 59 Hegel and, 40 hegemony and, 7–9, 111 Historical bloc, 3, 55, 142, 204

242 Index method, 7–9, 10, 53, 59, 94 disunity, 3, 4, 6, 7 domination, 1–7, 10, 12, 15, 25, 27, 28, 38, 40, 51, 58, 80–90, 100–101, 108, 125, 128, 149, 160, 206, 219, 223

E education, 5, 13, 23, 25, 26, 29–31, 44, 63, 71, 80, 89, 93–95, 110, 137, 139, 145–155, 167, 171–172, 188, 189, 191, 197, 198, 210, 211, 213 ethico-political, 3, 7–9, 40, 41, 52, 90, 92, 153, 208, 211, 214, 215, 219, 223

F Freud, Sigmund, 110–111, 116, 120–121

G good sense, 3, 4, 5, 12, 13, 58, 59, 66–71, 73, 76, 77, 112, 138, 152, 155 Gramsci, Antonio, Americanism and Fordism, 65, 71, 109, 114, 185 pre-prison, 4, 16, 24, 31, 33, 45, 55, 99 prison, 16–17, 22, 26–27, 29, 38, 40, 53–54, 57, 60, 65, 85–86, 201, 203, 205 Prison Notebooks, 4, 24, 25, 33, 37, 53, 57–59, 63, 65–66, 77, 90, 177 Southern Question, 4, 13, 16, 23–24, 26, 28, 29, 32, 139 Guha, Ranajit, 13, 77, 78, 79, 125, 139 subaltern studies, 13, 54, 125

H Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7, 40, 91, 103, 126 Hegelianism, 7, 18, 89, 92 hegemonic principles, 6, 10, 15, 27, 28, 53, 65, 108, 112, 121, 127, 128, 163, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 186, 231 hegemony aspirational, 10, 219 capitalist, 65–66, 68, 70–72, 75, 126–128, 144, 150, 186

complexity, 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11–13, 15, 26, 51 counter, 100 dominative, 6, 10, 27, 108, 125, 186, 207, 218, 219, 222, 223 ethico-political, 9, 10, 12, 52, 208, 219 highest synthesis, 10, 14 language and, 42–45, 68–70, 99, 149, 186–187 neoliberal, 159, 165, 186, 187, 201, 207–209, 213, 214 operation of, 1–2, 10, 64 politico-economic, 5, 36, 186 power and, 5–6, 8–10, 27, 51–52, 55, 86, 87–89, 97, 100–101, 108, 121, 126–127, 142, 207, 223 structure/superstructure, 9, 10, 11, 33, 34, 56, 99, 107, 108, 160, 185, 204, 205 theory of, 2, 5, 6–7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 24, 35, 51, 56, 59–60, 63–65, 67, 107–108, 128, 203, 205 hegemony of the proletariat, 4, 25, 26, 30, 38, 39, 46, 84 historical bloc, 3, 7, 9, 14–15, 29, 33, 43, 55–56, 58, 60, 108, 110, 127, 142–143, 155, 159, 161–163, 170, 176–177, 186, 202–209, 211–215 history methodology, 7–9, 29, 40–41, 113–114, 128, 205–206

I ideology, 14, 20, 26, 52, 56, 71, 99, 110, 128, 139, 160, 161, 162, 186, 188, 194, 196, 205 imperialism, 13, 27, 125, 130, 223 India, 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 64, 69, 73–77, 125, 129–136, 139, 184–199 intellectuals, 25, 29, 30, 43, 51, 53, 59, 64–65, 70, 71, 73–74, 75, 86, 95, 97–98, 160, 186 organic, 5–6, 10, 12, 74, 144, 160, 161 traditional, 5–6, 15, 67, 74, 77, 218, 219, 220, 224–226, 232 International relations, 13, 161, 219, 220, 222 Cox, Robert, 162–163, 220–221 Italy, 12, 16, 19, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 34, 35, 38, 41, 44, 45, 46, 54, 64–66, 69, 75–76, 81, 117, 126

Index J Japan, 1, 2, 15, 72–74, 77, 175, 218–233

L language, 42, 43–45, 64, 95, 99, 108, 114, 146–148, 186–187 and folklore, 67 and common sense, 68 dialect, 69–70, 74–75 national, 69–70 local/common, 146–149 larrikins, 12, 107, 113–121 leadership, 3, 7, 9–11, 25,27, 29–31, 33, 35–42, 52, 54–55, 57–58, 81–83, 85–89, 92, 94, 96, 100, 108, 121, 142, 160, 177, 206, 209, 219, 222–223 legitimate, 6, 8, 82, 94, 108 Lenin, Vladimir Illich, 19, 25–27, 35–37, 40, 46, 53, 54, 61, 62, 83, 84, 89, 91, Leninist, 27, 54, 84, 94 liberalism, 9, 18, 89, 186, 201

M Malaya, 13, 130, 136 Malaysia, 1, 2, 221 Marx, Karl, 11, 27, 28, 33, 40, 46, 55, 58, 61, 89, 128 Marxism, 7, 11, 30, 37, 51, 53, 74, 98, 128 national-popular, 12, 53, 202, 214, 233 neoliberal, 88, 92, 165, 166, 184–186, 187, 189, 199–200, 213 Australian politics, 199–202, 207–211, 214 case of West Bengal, 188–196, 197, 198, 199 globalisation, 143, 155, 176, 186 World Bank, 159, 163, 169–170, 172

P Papua New Guinea, 1, 2, 142–155 passive revolution, 41, 65, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 161, 185, 218, 219–220 Japan and, 220, 224, 230–231, 232 Papua New Guinea and, 143–144, 148, 151, 155 philosophy of praxis, 7, 9, 40–41, 59–60, 153, 205, 206 political economy, 5, 10, 14, 133 international, 159–163

243

political society, 5–6, 10, 55, 57–59, 86, 90–91 civil society and, 3, 9–10, 55, 57, 60, 88–90, 92, 160, 162 state government, 57, 86, 93, 97 politico-economic, 5, 36, 166, 186 power, 5–6, 8–10, 27, 51–52, 55, 86, 87–89, 97, 100–101, 114, 108, 121, 126–127, 142, 207, 223 legitimacy and, 51, 108 political, 3, 25, 31, 85, 222 relations, 35, 82, 130, 152 psychoanalysis, 109, 111 psychoanalytic theory, 12, 107, 120–121 repression, 51, 72, 108, 110–111, 116, 120 sublimation, 108, 111

S self, 13, 28, 64, 75, 107, 108, 110, 112, 117–117, 120–121, 191, 212 consciousness, 52, 61, 97, 112 critical, 52, 61, 97, 98, 112, 152 determination, 144 discipline, 90, 99, 101, 109, 110, 117, 120, 190 emancipation, 29 governing, 55, 101, 131, 138, 143, 145, 147, 152 interest, 81, 82, 196, 219 knowledge, 5, 28, 29, 59 referential, 55–56 transformation, 153 state, 5–6, 8–9, 21, 24, 26, 35, 41, 42, 51–52, 54, 55, 77, 86, 89–90, 93, 101, 111, 161, 204 government, 8, 93, 114, 116, 198, 210 integral, 3–4, 9–10, 55–56, 57–58, 90–92, 207 subaltern, 2, 3–4, 5–6, 10, 30, 35, 42, 44–45, 46, 51, 52–54, 58, 59–60, 84, 96, 97–98, 109–113, 114, 117, 126, 127, 139, 145, 148, 149, 150, 152, 161, 186 subaltern studies, 13, 54, 77, 125 subject, 42, 98, 100, 112, 137 subjectivity, 99, 107–113, 114, 185

U United States of America, 226, 229, 233

244 Index (as America), 64, 71–3, 115, 185, 218, 224, 225–227 unstable equilibria, 3, 6, 7, 10

V Vietnam, 1, 2, 14, 130–132, 136, 139–141, 159, 161, 163, 165, 168–177

W war of movement, 6, 91, 121, 148 war of position, 5–6, 55, 57, 65–67, 91, 93, 96, 108, 114, 210, 215, 219 Washington Consensus, 14, 163, 165–172, 174, 176–177 post-, 165, 167 World Bank, 14, 159–177

Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion

Hegemony

Producing Hegemony (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Hegemony

Coercion and Punishment in Long-Term Perspectives

The New Hegemony in Literary Studies: Contradictions in Theory

Coercion, Cooperation, and Ethics in International Relations

Hegemony: A Realist Analysis (Routledge Studies in Critical Realism)

War in the Heavens: Hegemony

Language And Hegemony In Gramsci (Reading Gramsci)

Consensus Design

US Hegemony and International Organizations

Children's Language: Consensus and Controversy

Arthur Jensen: Consensus And Controversy

Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

Coercion to Love

Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent (Hegemony and Experience : Critical Studies in Anthropology and History)

Coercion and market: silver mining in colonial Potosí, 1692-1826

State Building in Putin's Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism

Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion, Second Edition

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies

Forced to care: coercion and caregiving in America

Coercion Capital and European States, AD 990-1990 (Studies in Social Discontinuity)

The Beijing Consensus

Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica

Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica

Logic of Internationalism: Coercion and Accommodation

After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy

American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision

Hegemony Or Survival

Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion

Hegemony

Producing Hegemony (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Hegemony

Coercion and Punishment in Long-Term Perspectives

The New Hegemony in Literary Studies: Contradictions in Theory

Coercion, Cooperation, and Ethics in International Relations

Hegemony: A Realist Analysis (Routledge Studies in Critical Realism)

War in the Heavens: Hegemony

Language And Hegemony In Gramsci (Reading Gramsci)

Consensus Design

US Hegemony and International Organizations

Children's Language: Consensus and Controversy

Arthur Jensen: Consensus And Controversy

Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

Coercion to Love

Reworking Modernity: Capitalisms and Symbolic Discontent (Hegemony and Experience : Critical Studies in Anthropology and History)

Coercion and market: silver mining in colonial Potosí, 1692-1826

State Building in Putin's Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism

Cults: Faith, Healing and Coercion, Second Edition

Psychiatry and Religion: Context, Consensus and Controversies

Forced to care: coercion and caregiving in America

Coercion Capital and European States, AD 990-1990 (Studies in Social Discontinuity)

The Beijing Consensus

Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica

Regime Hegemony in Museveni's Uganda: Pax Musevenica

Logic of Internationalism: Coercion and Accommodation

After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy

American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge Studies in International Relations)

Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision

Hegemony Or Survival

Recommend Documents