Empire of the Overmind: Tracy Chapman, Gramsci's Theory of Cultural Hegemony
Suddenly, this Tracy Chapman song was everywhere. The year was 1988, and Talkin’ Bout a Revolution's plea for non-violent revolt was broadcast nationwide on every pop radio station. The song wasn’t screaming revolution like Rage Against the Machine’s Killing In The Name of would serve up four years later. But it was a powerful statement in a world trying to hold together the nuclear-armed opposing forces of Authoritarianism and Democracy, who have been staring each other down in the collective human mind for hundreds of years.
There are two options:
Humans either come together and choose Group rule. This means morally educated citizens commit to each other’s Common Good, deferring their right to defend their life, liberty, and property to “The State,” which elects legislators who write and pass laws that are enforced by public servants and interpreted by experts in the intent behind those laws.
Or we submit to living under the will of tyrants, along with the occasional benefactor throwing crumbs to prevent revolts that spark revolutions.
Until the machines take over, there is no other choice.
A spiritual revolution occurred on the North American continent in the mid-18th century. The First American Great Awakening produced a generation of moral thinkers who fought for independence and then designed a system of government built to prevent tyrants from seizing power from The People for as long as The People understood the collective responsibility that comes with maintaining individual liberty. Like a wire mesh cage in a compost bin prevents rodents from assaulting the keeper, the Constitution was built to serve and to change with the Will of the People.
America is due for another of these moral and spiritual awakenings. These cultural-spiritual events have nothing to do with guns. Guns don’t work in the realm that hosts this kind of revolution.
America doesn’t work for all Americans. Anyone with eyeballs and a brain can see it and feel it. And there are many opinions about who is to blame. So, why does nothing seem to change, except to grow worse by the day? Strangers, friends, and family are at each other’s throats or leaving each other alone, which is often the cruelest measure.
To understand the answer, we must go back a century to when the question of why The People hadn’t yet revolted was asked during a modern time of mass murder from the darkened mind of a prisoner punished for thought crimes against “The State.”
This ends the free preview. I would love your support by subscribing to this newsletter. Read the rest of this essay and the books I’m writing, hear the music I’m making, and dig into the art I’m digging on. Annual sub is cheaper than monthly.
About 100 years ago, in Italy, a man named Antonio Gramsci was arrested by Benito Mussolini’s authoritarian government. Gramsci was charged, judged, and imprisoned for twenty years for “Conspiring Against The State.” He was removed from society because of his thoughts regarding the equality of human beings living in a world of scarce resources with alternative uses.
In the critical 20th-century years leading up to the First World War, Gramsci served briefly as Secretary-General of the Italian Communist Party, a role that earned him no favor with Mussolini.
Gramsci was once a believer in a brighter day for the human species. Then he was imprisoned for the rest of his sad life, allowed to die in what passed for freedom in 1937, before the big fighting had even begun in Europe. While serving time for a thought crime, Gramsci asked himself, Why haven’t the people revolted? He thought they were ‘Talkin ‘Bout a Revolution? Gramsci obsessed over this question during much of his time in prison. Eventually, he excavated, identified, and weighed all the factors. What emerged was a concept encapsulated in two words that hold great significance for the challenges in our modern world.
Cultural Hegemony
Gramsci’s social theory of cultural hegemony was one of the few social theories I recall from my college Sociology courses near the turn of the last century. It’s also the only concept I needed to understand. Gaining a fundamental understanding of Gramsci’s theory is the foundation of everything the dominant group opposes in what some call “Woke Liberal Education.”
Gramsci challenges us to consider the groups that dominate decision-making for allocating scarce resources with alternative uses in our world. Who owns media outlets? Sports teams? What corporations operate the largest churches and fund dictators and elected representatives equally? Who purchases the favors of Supreme Court Judges?
Gramsci focused on economic classes in his definition of groups that dominate and those that are dominated. He argued that dominant groups establish and maintain their power not just through force or economic controls but also through the ideology, norms, and culture we all share.12
Gramsci argued that we find Cultural Hegemony operating when subordinate groups act against their best interests and in favor of the dominant groups, while considering their actions “Common Sense.”
Revolutionaries on all sides of the political spectrum in the first three decades of the 20th century were preoccupied with thinking and talking about an entity commonly referred to as “The State.” As if these institutions that comprised “The State,” these social entities born from flawed human minds, were something separate from the humans who created them.
Gramsci argued that the state has two primary methods of control:
The use of force, which he defined as a “Polite Society.” Polite Society maintains law through the threat of physical violence or loss of liberty.
Through consent, which he defined as a “Civil Society.” Civil Society relies on Cultural Hegemony broadcast from its institutions. Gramsci considered the institutions of Civil Society to include schools, churches, and the media, all of which influence and shape public opinion into “Common Sense,” which the few use to manipulate the many.
To Gramsci, a Capitalist society maintains its dominance by controlling the means of production and by shaping culture and ideology to ensure that its values of laboring to consume and collect become accepted behavioral norms. Gramsci believed that individuals consent to their exploitation because they perceive the Capitalist system as just and fair, and some even view it as the only possible system to support Democracy. It’s a neat trick they’ve pulled to have it both ways. When people scream about revolution, they make money. When people don’t scream about it, they also make money.
This is because Revolution is an action, not a talk. And sometimes, revolutions happen when people refrain from taking action.
The Few start squirming in their chairs when one or two of The Many start talkin’ bout a revolution. That’s when someone with power moves to the control board.
Control over education is crucial in maintaining cultural hegemony. Who's burning good books these days?
Controlling the mechanism of democratic law is also essential in maintaining cultural hegemony.
Making Laws.
Enforcing them.
Interpreting them after they are already applied.
Suppose a dominant group can control two of these three facets of Law. In that case, it is probably enough to keep Cultural Hegemony in place, allowing The Few to manipulate the many for profit, even to the doom of The Many, as many poor dead soldiers can attest.
Suppose dominant groups control all three facets of Law. In that case, society will likely regress into authoritarianism, and the liberty of the individual citizen, along with the stability of our community at every functional level, will become a fading memory, something still worshipped as a hollow ideal once a year, accompanied by fireworks and music.
As for Churches, I often ask myself, “What if Heaven were a prison, too?”
We are all aware of the issues with the media.
Gramsci’s Social Theory of Cultural Hegemony became a foundational element of what came to be known simply as “Theory.” Through the Cold War, Theory evolved through Sociology scholarship and study, branching into several offshoots, including “Critical Race Theory.” And now you know why people are so afraid of these ideas, how dangerous they are to The Few who pull on many strings at once.
Serious matters require serious inquiry and sober conversations. This is why serious people talk about a revolution; they don’t scream. And revolutions are not talk. They aren’t art, either. If they have a sound, Revolutions are indeed a whisper.
Resources
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Antonio Gramsi [[LINK]]
