Gramsci defines hegemony and later Stuart Hall defines hegemony as the intellectual and moral unity of a class that dominates other groups.

Gramsci defines hegemony and later Stuart Hall defines hegemony as the intellectual and moral unity of a class that dominates other groups.

So Gramsci here is taking the Marxist interpretation of class society and saying that it doesn’t matter– it doesn’t have to be either the capitalist class or the working class putting their ideas forward in a coherent way

but either one is responsible for or is able to create intellectual and moral unity and by doing so can then popularize their ideas about how the world works and make those ideas hegemonic or appear to be the only alternative, appear to be the normative ideas, the de facto ideas of a society, the ones that everybody can interpret and understand.

And so Gramsci is saying, as Marx does, that we are actually always amid a struggle between the capitalist class, between the bourgeoisie, and the proletariat, or the working class.

They are always– they’re in relationship with each other. And they are always in struggle for this intellectual and moral unity and hegemony of their ideas. And so Gramsci would argue that for most of history, we’ve had– the bourgeoisie has had the kind of intellectual and moral unity that is able-

– that enables their ideas to predominate.

So examples of this that we’ve talked about so far are the idea of the American dream, both the piece of ideological machinery of the American dream that suggests that in order to have a good life and get ahead that you should work hard and that then-

– by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that then you have access to becoming a part of the dominant class– so that piece of ideological machinery, but then the converse-

– the idea that if you are not able to lead a successful life and move up on the social ladder in the United States, that it’s somehow your fault as an individual. So those are two pieces of the ideology of the American dream. We see the ideology of the American dream as hegemonic.

Some other ideas that we would now say under the ideological machinery of neoliberalism are hegemonic are what we’ve talked about the idea of business ontology, meaning that the worldview of the capitalist class and the rules of business have also become the rules by which we guide the state and our federal government and the rules-

– they’ve also become cultural rules in the ways that we as individuals relate to each other. So examples of this would be the primacy of efficiency– that we should always do things in the most efficient way.

We see in the Adrienne Maree Brown text her direct rejection of this right, that this is actually bad for transformative justice, that we shouldn’t necessarily be focused on efficiency but should be focused on intentionality and making sure that the things we do, we do them slowly and methodically and not simply with the intention of achieving some end result. But so one piece of the idea of business ontology is this idea of efficiency.

The other, probably, most key piece of ideological machinery in business ontology is the idea of what’s called “rational actor theory.”

So rational actor theory is the notion that all individuals are always going to act rationally to achieve their highest good and that the entire world is populated by choices and that individuals should be able to choose– kind of like consumer goods-

– these choices are kind of like consumer goods– that individuals should be able to choose at any time from a variety of these options and that individuals in doing so will always choose the thing that represents their highest good.

This is a particularly tricky piece of business ontology because it seems like a true thing. And it seems like a good idea. But what we actually know to be true is that the choices available to individuals are actually shaped by power relations in society.

And so rational actor theory doesn’t account for the fact that an incredibly small group of people holds an incredible amount of power in US society.

So while individuals may be acting in their own self-interest all the time and choosing between a variety of options, those options aren’t necessarily good.

And so rational actor theory does the same– has the same rhetorical move as the American dream, which says that if you are not able to from the available choices choose the right one, you as an individual are bad.

And that’s where we get the language of personal responsibility or the idea that it should be incumbent upon individuals to make it in our society, rather than incumbent upon the collective of people.

So this language of personal responsibility, this piece of business ontology has become hegemonic. It’s become an idea that makes sense to all of us.

So when we hear, for example, Ronald Reagan talk about welfare recipients as irresponsible, he’s relying on that ideological machinery.

Or even today when we hear a friend or a neighbor talk about oh, well, this person is cheating on their welfare or this person doesn’t deserve welfare because they don’t work, the underlying logic, the rationality, of that is that the person is irresponsible and that the government shouldn’t provide for irresponsible people.

The opposite logic, the logic that could be hegemonic were the working class to have the kind of intellectual and moral unity that the capitalist class has and that they’ve used to produce business ontology as sort of the overarching idea in society-

– were the working class to have that, they could posit the opposite idea– that, actually, it is the responsibility of governments and the responsibility of institutions to provide for the collective, to make sure that everybody has what they need to survive.

But because we haven’t had a coherent movement of the working class and that largely the last 40 years has meant the decline of the labor movement and the decline of the kind of activism that would militantly confront the capitalist class, the option of developing that narrative hasn’t presented itself it us.

So important to understand, though, that under neoliberalism, this idea of business ontology, the idea of rational actor theory, those ideas have become hegemonic in that we hear regular people repeat them to each other. They are the normative way that we understand the world.

Opportunity cost is another piece of the ideological machinery of business ontology. Again, using ideas that make sense in the generation of profit and under capitalism to then define our lives on the basis of those ideas means that those ideas have become hegemonic, that they guide people’s behavior in broader society.

So Gramsci, here, when he’s talking about the war of position, he’s saying that for those of us who believe in transforming society, for those of us who believe that another world is possible, that we have to achieve popular unity and we have to actualize what already exists within the collective will of the working class, of marginalized groups, of people of color, and women.

We have to bring those ideas together under a single banner and contest for the kinds of intellectual and moral machineries that would make our ideas and our world possible.

So he’s saying we actually have to not just do what he calls a war of maneuver, meaning like a literal confrontation with the capitalist class. He says we need a war of position.

So we need to actually stake out the intellectual and moral territory that we’ll need in order to unify the working class and in order to make our ideas the most popular ideas.

He also is thinking of the idea of the political horizon. So when we say the political horizon, we might liken this to the political science concept of the Overton window.

So the Overton window is the idea that there is a certain– on the spectrum of ideas, there is a certain window and a certain group of ideas within that window that are actually politically possible, meaning they’ll be broadly accepted in popular logic and by the public at large.

And so when we talk about shifting the Overton window, we talk about moving on the spectrum of ideas as left toward left ideas. So we might think of Bernie Sanders as an example of the shifting of the Overton window.

So the Bernie Sanders-style policies, democratic socialist or even social democratic policies of Western Europe, those policies-

– suddenly in US society, things like affordable health care, free college, the $15 an hour minimum wage, unionization or a rolling back of anti-union laws, those now, due to Bernie Sanders’ popularization of those ideas, those now are within the Overton window.

So they are now more politically possible than they were prior to 2016.

So when Gramsci is talking about the political horizon, he’s talking about what is possible, what is within the Overton window, what is available to us ideologically because the public can recognize and understand our ideas as good.

So an example of the shifting of the political horizon would be similar to Bernie Sanders, the more mainstream use of the term “democratic socialism.”

We can see this now with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the congressional candidate from the Bronx, and her use of a Bernie Sanders-style platform and calling it democratic socialism, but including things like abolishing ICE, so expanding that definition of democratic socialism to also mean anti-racism.

So we can see the political horizon expanding. And this is what Gramsci suggests that we do if we seek to win state power is that we must wage this war of position.

And this gets back a little bit also to bell hooks. When bell hooks is saying no education is politically neutral, we can also liken that to the field of politics, of electoral politics, and of ideas in the United States-

– that neoliberal politicians and the capitalist class and social conservatives who all share a consensus about business ontology and that the ideas of business should guide society and the profit motive should guide society, we see that that group of people cohering around also a war position, staking out the territory of big government to take it and privatize it-

– so saying, well, big government is bad and bureaucratic, and therefore, we should allow the profit motive to govern society.

So we should be clear that the social conservatives, political neoliberals, and the capitalist class are in consensus about their war of position. So those of us seeking to transform society should also be clear about the importance of ideological coherence among our ideas-

– that we, too, have to stake out ideological and intellectual territory.

We have to say no, actually, people are good. And people are responsible.

And people can hold their own self-interest in concert with the self-interest of others.

And actually, responsibility shouldn’t be the single determination in an unequal society of whether or not someone is worthy of survival.

And actually, we have a collective responsibility to make sure that everyone survives, to make sure that everybody has adequate health care, adequate housing, adequate education because that’s actually what it means to live in a good society.

So we should stake out that position in opposition to the position that only the most responsible should survive.

1. What ideas are “hegemonic” in today’s political discourse?

2. How do those ideas define the limits of what is politically possible?