Welcome to Monday Methods.
Sorry for the late post, I had the flu for the last couple of days and within suffering the effects, I was not as efficient as I planned to have been.
Anyways, the topic of today's Monday Methods is Marxism, though not so much the school of political thought that seeks to abolish the private ownership of the means of production but rather as a theory with which historians and other disciplines of the humanities and social sciences approach the analysis and understanding of society.
Marxism as a theoretical approach in its broadest sense might be best characterized as looking at history and society through the lens of material, meaning economic, relationships and how this influences political, social, and other factors and prompts them to change. Following Marx's analysis of capitalism, the idea is that the base (meaning the economic relationships in a society) influence or even determine the superstructure (meaning ideology, politics, social relations, the role of religions etc.).
A social-economic system based on landholders, tenants, and serfs produces, according to Marxist thought, different social and political relationships as well as a different view and understanding of the world. Yet, what all social-economic systems have in common is a conflict between between different groups in their setting based on their interest and position within this social-political-economic structure. These groups are called classes and within modern capitalism, the main classes are the bourgeois, i.e. the people who own the means of production such as facilities, machinery, tools, infrastructural capital and natural capital (the things used to produce economic value), and the proletariat, i.e. the people who have nothing to offer but their labor force. Within the social-political-economic system these groups have opposed interests, which they will struggle over whether it is on the ballot box, in the workplace or in other venues.
Viewing history through this lens can give pertinent insight into how societies change and how economic formations can influence political, social, and other factors. There is a vast variety of different approaches even within Marxism to view history and society but the one I'd like to present today is the concept of hegemony.
Pioneered by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian communist, while he was imprisoned in Mussolini's Italy, I felt that hegemony was a pertinent concept because it not only attempts to explain how balance is maintained in an economic system that predicates conflict but also how groups participate in a system in a way that goes against their objective interests, whether these are workers supporting Fascism and thus a system hellbent on destroying unions and empowering certain capitalists or parts of a working class voting for man who literally lives in a golden tower.
Gramsci posits that in order to stay in power a system can not only rely on coercion and force but is also depends on the consent of the governed. As one author summed up Gramsci's concept:
Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class, maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which incorporates both dominant and dominated groups.
In practice this means that within the political discourse, actors persuade dominated groups of society to accept its own moral, political and cultural values and make them accepted as "common sense", i.e. something that seems like the natural order of things and thereby indisputable.
The concrete content of hegemony as well as how it is attained vary from area to area, from point in time to point in time but when we ask the question for hegemony e.g. for the Nazi state, we must research what kind of mixture of coercion and propaganda, media etc. lead German society to accept Nazi rule and its anti-Semitism. So, Gramsci's concept of hegemony becomes a useful lens to better understand historical and contemporary societies.
Gramsci's concept has gone on to enjoy a certain popularity among historians of a post-colonial approach as well as in the field of cultural studies. Raymond Williams one of the fathers of mode4rn cultural studies relied on Gramsci. Eric Hobsbawm, probably the most prominent Marxist historian of the second half of the 20th century, has called Gramsci one of the most influential thinkers he has ever read. His theory is an example on how a Marxist inspired approach can open up new avenues of viewing historical developments and gain insights.
Further reading:
Erci Hobsbawm: How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism, 2011.
The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities (can be read for free with a JSTOR account)
<3 As an undergrad, let me tell you that, I love this sub and all the people that work so hard to maintain its caliber <3
I don't have anything particular to add, other than that I've always found Gramsci's ideas fascinating and convincing, but almost so-much so that it the intellectual hegemony almost becomes an essential factor in a Marxist analysis, at times eclipsing the "real" Marxist relations of production stuff. I don't really know where to go beyond that though. Also, IIRC, Gramsci was the first to formulate Marxist theory along the lines of 'base' and 'superstructure'.
But this was an awesome and interesting read and I wanted to let the AH Gods mods know that I, at least, welcome our new insect overlords really appreciate these more detailed historiography-based Monday Methods posts (even if it's Tuesday afternoon as I type this :P)
Anyone else interested in Laclau and Mouffe's work? Or maybe discourse theory more generally? If anyone is interested in the concept of hegemony I definitely recommend reading Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. I believe they coined the term postmarxism in this text. They take Marxist analysis beyond its notion of class as the historical agent and a universal construct. Instead they consider class as a discursive construct and one that is contingent upon historical context. This frees the concept of hegemony and allows it to be used as an analytic tool in a variety of cases, particularly looking at social movements. I think that Gramsci's notion of hegemony still holds on to class as a universal construct. Laclau and Mouffe free class and allow it to be considered as one of many constructed identities which are competing for hegemony. They also had an expressly political goal in this work. They saw the left as in decline and in need of a new intellectual framework in the late 20th century. This is definitely a must read for those interested in the concept of hegemony.
Out of interest, what evidence would count against the Marxist analysis of everything coming from material underpinnings and what evidence would count against hegemony?
These groups are called classes and within modern capitalism, the main classes are the bourgeois, i.e. the people who own the means of production such as facilities, machinery, tools, infrastructural capital and natural capital (the things used to produce economic value), and the proletariat, i.e. the people who have nothing to offer but their labor force.
Out of interest, what evidence is there that these are the two main classes? Does voting break down in this way? And has Marxist analysis changed to take account of the growing share of human capitl? Eg what's the difference between a farmer farming their own land and a lawyer selling her legal training? And how do government workers fit in? Eg a school teacher at a public school?
Plus, basic economics teaches us that producers in different industries are in conflict with each other - the way to make money is to buy low and sell high, but if another industry's output is your input, eg car makers buying steel, then your interests are in conflict. What sort of empirical evidence do historians have about the importance of conflicts between industries, versus between Marxist-defined classes?
Many of my Marxist friends read and believe firmly in Louis Althusser, who I know has written about the same sort of concept as hegemony, though he uses the term ideological state apparatus. What are your thoughts on the ISA as it relates to hegemony and on Althusser in general?
And yet another point, by the way thanks for this fascinating post, I hope you don't mind me asking so many questions:
but also how groups participate in a system in a way that goes against their objective interests,
How do historians assess that people are participating in a system that goes against their objective interests? Okay, in the case of German and Italian facism, it's obvious in retrospect: facism's failures killed even Hitler and Mussolini. But that strikes me as case of people being terribly mistaken about the methods to achieve their desired outcome (ie not dying violently), and it was a case of everyone driving off a cliff together, while the hegemon concept seems to imply that the "dominant" group is misleading the "dominated" group while actually achieving its own goals.
I suppose, my question is really, do historians worry that they are part of the "dominated" group, and therefore are accepting as natural and common-sense other people's moral, political and cultural values about historical groups' objective interests? It sounds to me like it would be easier for me to be misled about others' objective interests than about my own.