Gramsci’s concept of hegemony has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways, including a theory of consent, of political unity, of ‘anti-politics’, and of geopolitical competition. These interpretations are united in regarding hegemony as a general theory of political power and domination, and as deriving from a particular interpretation of the concept of passive revolution. Building upon the recent intense season of philological research on the Prison Notebooks, this article argues that the concept of hegemony is better (...) understood as a ‘dialectical chain’ composed of four integrally related ‘moments’: hegemony as social and political leadership, as a political project, as a hegemonic apparatus, and as the social and political hegemony of the workers’ movement. This alternative typology of hegemony provides both a sophisticated analysis of the emergence of modern state power and a theory of political organization of the subaltern social groups. This project is encapsulated in Gramsci’s notion of the formation of a ‘modern Prince’, conceived as both political party and civilizational process, which represents an emancipatory alternative to the dominant forms of political modernity. (shrink)

La notion de révolution passive est aujourd’hui reconnue comme l’une des contributions théoriques les plus importantes de Gramsci ; elle a fait l’objet de travaux approfondis en langues étrangères, et est également mise en œuvre pour analyser différents phénomènes historiques et situations concrètes présentes. L’objectif de cet article est de constituer une étude synthétique de l’élaboration et des usages de la notion de révolution passive dans les Cahiers de prison. Pour cela, nous suivons les différentes phases de développement (...) de la notion, ainsi que les déplacements de son sens en fonction des cas pour l’étude desquels elle est mobilisée, même hypothétiquement (le Risorgimento, l’Europe du XIXe siècle, le fascisme, l’américanisme, etc.). Pour Gramsci, il apparaît que les apports de cette notion se situent sur au moins deux plans dialectiquement liés : concevoir une modalité du changement historique qui ne saurait être réduite aux bouleversements révolutionnaires proprement dits ; mettre en évidence d’une manière critique les stratégies politiques des classes dominantes, afin d’œuvrer à l’émancipation de l’activité autonome des subalternes. (shrink)

This article critically engages with debates on uneven and combined development and particularly the lack of attention given in this literature to accounts of spatial diversity in capitalism’s outward expansion as well as issues of Eurocentrism. Through interlocutions with Antonio Gramsci on his theorising of state formation and capitalist modernity and the notion of passive revolution, we draw out the internal relationship between the structuring condition of uneven and combined development and the class agency of passive (...) class='Hi'>revolution. Interlocuting with passive revolution places Antonio Gramsci firmly within a stream of classic social theory shaping considerations of capitalist modernity. As a result, by building on cognate theorising elsewhere, passive revolution can then be established as a lateral field of causality that necessarily grasps spatio-temporal dynamics linked to both state and subaltern class practices of transformation in social property relations, situated within the structuring conditions of uneven and combined development. (shrink)

Passive revolution is one of the most debated notions to come out of the Prison Notebooks. It belongs to the notions that have been used as ‘established’ descriptions of historical and political sequences. However, a reading of Gramsci’s texts suggests that passive revolution is not a ‘historical phase’ and is not limited to the historical interpretation of a particular historical period. Nor is it part of an historical ‘canon’ that would suggest that, in the absence of (...) a ‘proper’ Jacobin revolution, the only alternative is passive revolution. Rather it points to the experimental character of the Prison Notebooks and Gramsci’s confrontation with the profound changes in state apparatuses (and hegemonic apparatuses) and practices of politics and hegemony after WWI, in particular the new ‘mass’ forms of politics and ideological interpellation, and his attempt to elaborate a strategic–theoretical thinking suited to revolutionary politics in such a context. (shrink)

Rehmann provides a comprehensive Gramscian socio-analysis of Max Weber's political and intellectual position in the ideological network of his time. He deciphers Weber as an organic intellectual who constructs a new bourgeois hegemony in the transition to 'Fordism'.

El ciclo político regional de los últimos años ha reabierto una serie de discusiones que parecían desterradas del campo político e intelectual. Recientemente, frente a la crisis de varias de las experiencias políticas de la región, distintos autores han intentado hacer un balance de este ciclo a partir de una comparación con los populismos clásicos latinoamericanos. Recurriendo a categorías de origen gramsciano, principalmente el modelo de la llamada revolución pasiva, estos análisis ven en la intervención populista una clausura desde arriba (...) de las dinámicas sociales que habrían animado el inicio de estos procesos. Retomando algunos antecedentes de este debate en las ciencias sociales argentinas, este trabajo intenta problematizar la visión de los populismos latinoamericanos —tanto clásicos como actuales— que subyace en dichas miradas y, en ese sentido, propone una relectura de los orígenes del peronismo en relación a estas categorías. (shrink)

Exploration of the political roles firms play in society is a flourishing stream within corporate social responsibility research. However, few empirical studies have examined multiple levels of political CSR at the same time from a critical perspective. We explore both how the motivations of managers and internal organizational practices affect a company’s choice between competing CSR approaches, and how the different CSR programs of corporate and civil society actors compete with each other. We present a qualitative interpretative case study of (...) how a French children’s clothing retailer develops CSR practices in response to accusations of poor working conditions and child labor in its supply chain. The company’s CSR approach consists of superficial practices, such as supplier audits by a cooperative business-organized nongovernmental organization and philanthropic activities, which enable managers to silence more radical alternative models defended by other NGOs, activists, and trade unions. By this approach, the core business model based on exploitative low-cost country sourcing remains intact through self-regulated CSR. Through the case study, we develop a framework of dynamism in competing CSR programs. We discuss the implications of our study for CSR researchers, company managers, and policy makers. (shrink)

Despite experiencing an early and protracted neoliberal transformation, France has exhibited an acutely ambiguous stance towards neoliberal practice. This is illustrated by, for example, regular nationwide protests opposed to policies with an overtly neoliberal flavour, or the coexistence of heavy taxation and a profound financialisation of its economy. This article seeks to explain why neoliberalism successfully developed in France, despite such an ambiguity. The focus will be placed on the transformation of labour relations, which will reveal the important role played (...) by both the technocratic elite and firm-level negotiations in legitimating neoliberal practice. It will be argued that while several relevant sociological explanations offer some valuable insights for making sense of neoliberalism’s successful development in France, Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘passive revolution’ provides a very fruitful basis upon which to capture the singularity of the French case. (shrink)

Reconstructing the evolution of Gramsci’s judgement about the Russian Revolution implies an overall rethinking of his own relation to Marx as well as to Kant. Already in the spring of 1917, Gramsci foresaw that the February Revolution could become a proletarian revolution and that this would realise in fact Kant’s moral: only a society completely freed from oppression and exploitation would allow people to be free and autonomous. After the fall of the Winter Palace, Gramsci wrote that (...) the revolution happened “against Marx’s Capital”, or better, against its literal interpretation as spread by the positivistic Marxism of the Second International. Between the end of the 1910s and the beginning of the 1920s, Gramsci thought it possible for Italy and the whole of Europe “to do as in Russia”; yet, from 1924, he started elaborating a different vision of the revolution in the Western World, which in the Prison Notebooks became a contraposition between a war of movement and a war of position. At the same time, he developed the concepts of caesarism/bonapartism and passive revolution which allowed the analysis of phenomena such as americanism and fascism from the perspective of a conservative modernisation, or revolution without a revolution. Still, and most of all, Gramsci developed the concept of hegemony, highlighting the importance of the moment of consensus in the fight for gaining and maintaining power. This drew Gramsci quite far from the marxism-leninism of his time, both from the political and theoretical point of view; for instance, he rejected the “ingenuous realism” of Lenin’s Materialism and Empiriocriticism in favour of a phenomenalism explicitly drawn by Kant. (shrink)

The foundations of biology have been a topic of debate for the past few decades. The traditional perspective of the Modern Synthesis, which portrays organisms as passive entities with limited role in evolutionary theory, is giving way to a new paradigm where organisms are recognized as active agents, actively shaping their own phenotypic traits for adaptive purposes. Within this context, this article raises the question of whether contemporary biological theory is undergoing a cognitive revolution. This inquiry can be (...) approached in two ways: from a theoretical standpoint, exploring the centrality of the cognitive sciences in current theoretical biology; and from a historical perspective, examining the resemblance between the current state of theoretical biology and the Cognitive Revolution of the mid-20th century. Both inquiries yield affirmative answers, though important nuances will be emphasized. The cognitive sciences' explanatory framework is employed to elucidate the agentic characteristics of organisms, establishing a clear parallelism between the Cognitive Revolution and the present state of theoretical biology. (shrink)

Modernity is founded on the belief that the world we build is a human invention, not a part of nature. The ecological consequences of this idea have been catastrophic. We have laid waste to natural ecosystems, replacing them with fundamentally unsustainable human designs. With time running out to address the environmental crises we have caused, our best path forward is to turn to nature for guidance. In this book, Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of a revolutionary approach to sustainable (...) innovation: biomimicry. The term describes the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems, such as passive cooling techniques modeled on termite mounds or solar cells modeled on leaves. Dicks argues that biomimicry, typically seen as just a design strategy, can also serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world. By showing how we can imitate, emulate, and learn from nature, biomimicry points us toward a genuinely sustainable way of inhabiting the earth. Rooted in philosophy, The Biomimicry Revolution has profound implications spanning the natural sciences, design, architecture, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. It presents a sweeping reconception of what philosophy can be and offers a powerful new vision of terrestrial existence. (shrink)

Over three decades after China ventured onto the market path, the Chinese state’s reform programme, which was intended to invigorate socialism, has instead led the country down a capitalist path. This paper situates China’s post-Mao transition in the context of the crisis of the party-state during the Cultural Revolution. Using Gramsci’s idea of ‘passive revolution’, it examines the state’s tactics of crisis management aiming to contain and neutralise emergent opposition and pressure from below. As the combined result (...) of state repression, ideological appropriation and socioeconomic incorporation, a new reform paradigm emerged to rearticulate popular demands and initiatives to an official socialism centring on economic modernisation and market liberalisation. (shrink)

History appears already to the young Gramsci as a system of forces in unstable balance, which struggle to position themselves on the side of history, to identify with it. For this reason, in his reading of Marxism, the unity of history is a result, the product of a successful strategy of hegemony building. This article reviews the Gramscian theory of hegemony and tries to show its coherence with the philosophy of praxis, that is, with the notion of the fundamentally practical (...) nature of reality. In particular, it is argued that, on the one hand, a crisis of hegemony must be understood as disintegrating a hegemonic system, which allows subordinated hegemonic moments to emerge; on the other hand, the crisis itself is determined by the formulation of hegemonic discourses that try to escape their condition of subordination. (shrink)

Dans sa violente charge contre la Révolution française, Edmund Burke avait élevé le débat politique à un niveau philosophique. Son argument le plus profond consistait à reprocher aux révolutionnaires de pécher par apriorisme, en cherchant à déduire, comme des géomètres, une nouvelle constitution à partir des principes abstraits énoncés dans la Déclaration des droits de l’homme. Reprise par les disciples allemands de Burke, cette critique de la méthode adoptée par la Constituante tirait des postulats empiristes des Lumières anglo-écossaises toutes les (...) implications conservatrices que recelaient déjà les textes politiques et historiques de Hume. Or c’est d’emblée sur ce terrain spéculatif que se joue, chez Fichte, la défense du droit de révolution. Reprochant à l’empirisme de réduire l’esprit au « mécanisme aveugle de l’association des idées », passivement déterminé par une extériorité en soi, Fichte entend au contraire fonder l’expérience elle-même sur l’activité d’un « Moi-en-soi », absolument indépendant. Conçu comme causalité libre, pouvant donc s’affranchir des « conjonctions coutumières » humiennes pour commencer une nouvelle série dans l’ordre des phénomènes, l’homme, pour Fichte, n’a pas seulement la « faculté de se perfectionner », mais la loi de sa liberté lui en fait même un devoir. Au regard de cet impératif catégorique de perfectionnement, il n’y a pas de Common Law qui tienne. Aussi Fichte ne recule-t-il pas devant la révolution, si les institutions du passé font obstacle à la destination de l’homme. (shrink)

Animality is a central issue in phenomenology. If the core of the phenomenological approach is the investigation into the correlation between subject and object, what are we talking about when we talk about animal subjectivity? Is it possible to include the notion of animal being in the category of subject? What kind of intentionality does it possess? Our article will analyse the pathic dimension in order to track down some indications about animal subjectivity. Particular emphasis shall be placed on Weizsacker (...) and Merleau-Ponty’s perspectives. Both call into question the definition of subjectivity as an absolute and neutral gaze, exclusively attributed to human being. By contrast, by analysing sensitivity as the common background between animal and human beings, it will be possible to introduce the subject into biology, as explicitly stated by Weizsacker. Subjectivity lies at the intersection between passivity and activity, between perception and movement, between passion and revolution. (shrink)

This article offers a close reading of Hannah Arendt's book On Revolution. It exposes the ambivalence of Arendt with regard to tragedy and mimesis. This ambivalence is not just her own; it is inherent in the treatment of tragedy and mimesis throughout the history of political thought. In spite of Arendt's argument that privileges the limited American Revolution against the boundless French one, in her rhetoric and in her storytelling Arendt presents a unitary but dialectical picture of (...) class='Hi'>revolution, where suffering and foundation are inseparably intertwined. The founding public action of revolutionaries implies a crisis of mimetic passions (of fear and pity) which threatens to undo, but also set the stage for, revolution. This negative, passionate and passive side of revolution helps us to come to terms with the non-productive but emancipatory revolutions in the Eastern Europe of 1989-91. (shrink)

In the perspective of Hasan Hanafi, the renewal of Islamic thought in the Arab world must produce a new concept of theology and present a cultural revolution. A new theology must be developed through a progressive life perspective rooted in liberation and social justice. It is intended to free Arab–Islamic society from regression and fragmentation, producing a society that is just, prosperous, and civilized. The renewal of Islamic thought must be progressive to ensure it can produce a cultural (...) class='Hi'>revolution that can create a populistic social and ideological structure in Arab life, thereby ensuring that the faithful are intelligent, modern, and have a high level of social solidarity. This study is guided by the theory of cultural intensification, which emphasizes that the relations between individuals and society are rooted in sociological, psychological, and theological challenges, and holds that social and divine laws are intended to promote a personal/collective emotional involvement in social life. The analysis emphasizes the relationship between Hasan Hanafi, as an individual, with general Arab society, with a focus on his understanding of social challenges, the psychological condition of Arab society, and classical theology. This study indicates that the Arab–Islamic world requires a new theology, one that is anthropocentric, populistic, and transformative, which remains grounded and oriented towards the realization of prosperity and social justice. Cultural revolution, meanwhile, offers a liberational ideology for the subjugated as well as legitimization for every social struggle. It also holds that no entity that exists on its own, without any humanitarian context, has meaning; there is only a correlational truth connecting objective reality and universal human values. As such, new theology—in conjunction with cultural revolution—can radically transform the orientation of Arab–Islamic thought from static, passive, and traditional to progressive and oppositional. In doing so, it can offer liberation and social justice.Contribution: This article provides intelectual framework to dissect Hasan Hanafi’s new theological ideas by using cultural perspective, particularly cultural intensification theory, as well as work praxis in effort to build democratic, egalitarian, just, equality before the law, and uphold human rights of Muslim society. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze how the so-called ‘pedagogy of work’ attempts to answer the challenges of unemployment and job insecurity characterizing the labor market in contemporary society. The authors reflect on the concepts of nihilist pedagogies and the ‘end of work’ by distinguishing two approaches: an active and a passive nihilist pedagogy. The passive approach, based on resignation, is opposed to an active attitude in which labor pedagogy offers tools to address current challenges. The authors support the (...) idea that pedagogy as a human-improving science cannot adopt the position of passive nihilism in interpreting work in contemporary society. To better understand the dynamics related to job insecurity and corrective solutions by pedagogy, the authors analyzed the thoughts of three contemporary philosophers: Zygmunt Bauman, Jeremy Rifkin, and Dominique Méda. These authors redefined the concept of work in connection with the transformations because of globalization, the advent of new communication technologies, and digital work. These changes have redefined not only the concept of work but also the models of work pedagogy in the Western world: capitalism and Marxism. Considering the current challenges, the pedagogy of work needs to be rethought, starting from the problem of employability and focusing on the new occupations in demand in the Internet age. By integrating ideas on interpreting work from the theories of Bauman, Rifkin, and Méda, it is possible to propose a pedagogy of work in the age of change and to outline possible values of education inspired by it. (shrink)

This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality. From the early efforts of historians to work out a model for sexual history, to the extraordinary impact of French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the vigorous debates about essentialism and social constructionism, to the emergence of contemporary debates about historicism, queer theory, embodiment, gender and cultural history - we now have vast and diverse historical scholarship on sex and sexuality. 'Histories (...) of Sexuality' highlights the key historical moments and issues: pederasty and cultures of male passivity in ancient Greece and Rome; the impact of early Christianity and ideals of renunciation on the sexual cultures of late antiquity; the sustained existence of homosexual cultures in medieval and renaissance Europe; the "invention" of homosexuality and heterosexuality in eighteenth century Europe and America; the truth behind Victorian sexual repression; the work of reformers and scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Stella Browne, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson. (shrink)

This book presents the first assessment of one of the most rapidly expanding fields of research: the history of sexuality. From the early efforts of historians to work out a model for sexual history, to the extraordinary impact of French philosopher Michel Foucault, to the vigorous debates about essentialism and social constructionism, to the emergence of contemporary debates about historicism, queer theory, embodiment, gender and cultural history - we now have vast and diverse historical scholarship on sex and sexuality. 'Histories (...) of Sexuality' highlights the key historical moments and issues: pederasty and cultures of male passivity in ancient Greece and Rome; the impact of early Christianity and ideals of renunciation on the sexual cultures of late antiquity; the sustained existence of homosexual cultures in medieval and renaissance Europe; the "invention" of homosexuality and heterosexuality in eighteenth century Europe and America; the truth behind Victorian sexual repression; the work of reformers and scientists such as Havelock Ellis, Marie Stopes, Stella Browne, Margaret Sanger, Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia Johnson. (shrink)

Alienation is the name of the deformations of human personality produced by capitalism and, specifically, by wage labor. The alienated are powerless. That inhibits their self-esteem, and takes from them the direction of their own lives and the choice of their life values. They become passive bystanders to existence, distrustful of their fellows and motivated by the desire for gain. The alienated tend to be timid, morally indifferent, and ready to support great evil. Appearances are all that matters to (...) them. They are resentful, conservative. Alienation itself becomes invisible. It unfits those who work for a wage from being active in the movements for social change from capitalism to socialism. The transition to socialism appears to become well-nigh impossible. The force of this argument ismoderated by the fact that the conditions of wage labor are not uniform and alienation, and therefore are more severe for some workers than for others. (shrink)

Characterisations of Henryk Grossman as a theorist of capitalism’s automatic collapse and political passivity are false. Even before the publication of his principal work, Grossman had linked his recovery of Marx’s account of capitalism’s tendency to break down to his own, interventionist, Leninist politics. This is apparent in his substantial critique of Fritz Sternberg’s influential 1926 book, Imperialism. Grossman’s article also restates fundamental aspects of Marx’s value theory, class analysis and account of wages.

This essay explores the material, phenomenological and political meaning of the Syrian corpse and the question of its dignity as represented in a series of media and visual outputs from 2011 to the present. The essay begins by arguing that the violence in Syria now targets the dead as much as the living. As such, the essay highlights the forms of ‘necroviolence’ that the Syrian corpse has been subjected to: mistreatment, erasure of markers of identity, denial of burial, mutilation and (...) ultimately an attempt to erase it from memory. The essay concludes by arguing that the Syrian corpse is not merely the passive subject or victim of ‘necroviolence’ but can also become the paradoxical agent of what we might call ‘postmortem resistance’. (shrink)

Capitalism is often modernised and stabilised by its very critics. Gramsci called this paradox a 'passive revolution'. What are the pitfalls through which critique becomes absorbed? This question is taken up using a Cultural Political Economy approach for analysing the resistant potential of 'degrowth discourses' against the neoliberal hegemony. Degrowth advocates an economy without growth in order to achieve the transformation that is necessary in ecological and social terms. It thus does not follow the neoliberal idea of green (...) capitalism that already has absorbed much environmental critique. This paper argues that degrowth needs to be further differentiated in order to draw any conclusions about its counter-hegemonic potential. Three dimensions are identified for differentiating sub-hegemonic from counter-hegemonic degrowth positions: the mode of growth critique, the interpellation of the individual and the subsequent actions motivated. (shrink)

Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is currently understood as a theory of power in Western, democratic societies, and therefore as a theory of cultural power (“cultural hegemony”). The aim of this article is to show that this interpretation is erroneous, at least for three reasons. Firstly, because the notion of “democracy” itself has to be placed within its historical context: the meaning of “democracy” in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe was very different from what it became in the post-WWII era. (...) Secondly, because all the regimes Gramsci could have been taking into account when he wrote the Prison Notebooks were the result of the crisis of the Liberal State and parliamentarianism. Even if in different ways, political conflict in each of them unfolded in a manner that is very different from what is today presupposed by the notion of cultural hegemony. And thirdly, because the genetic reconstruction of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, as it is developed in the Prison Notebooks, will show that the core of what is usually considered the Gramscian theory of hegemony was already developed before 1926 (I shall refer to it as “standard theory”), while in the Notebooks he substantially updated this theory, in order to think the new conditions of political struggle in Italy and Europe. This revision can be summarised in three points. First: the notion of hegemony is organically combined with that of “war of position”. The latter will refer no longer the political struggle characterised by a strongly developed civil society, typical of the “West” (as opposed to backward “Eastern” context). The war of position is now the sort of political struggle that we have when huge masses of population enter into political life and actively participate in it. It thus means not a place where political struggles take place but a phase of these struggles, that Gramsci calls “culminating” and “decisive”. The image Gramsci adopts to visualise this phase of political struggles is that of two “reciprocal sieges”: of the masses to the State and of the State to the masses. Second: “hegemony” comes to mean now the means the rulers adopt with the purpose of winning the support of the masses. Politics is no longer the business of active minorities; it is now the organisation of the lifestyle of huge masses of population, in order to control their political agency (hence the notion of “passive revolution”). Third, from the above, the importance of religion follows since it is the most widespread language, as well as that of political myths which manage to mobilise politically social forces, translating religion into political action and the vice-versa, political ideology into religious faith. (shrink)

Although Gramsci developed his conceptual methodology out of concrete historical analysis, there is a significant tension between his account of the Risorgimento, which plays into a narrative of Italian exceptionalism, and concepts such as historical bloc, hegemony and passive revolution, which point towards European wide convergence in capitalist state dynamics after 1848. This article shows a de-alignment between Gramsci’s account of the Risorgimento and Marx’s analysis of the meaning of 1848 in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte. At (...) the same time, Gramsci’s conceptual methodology both re-aligns his argument with Marx and significantly develops Marxist analysis of politics. However, Gramsci’s conceptualisation of the role of intellectuals, especially the problematic distinction between traditional and organic intellectuals, does provide support for the kind of exceptionalist argument he offers of the Risorgimento. Therefore, this article reconstructs Gramsci’s account of the intellectuals in order to integrate it better into his analysis of a historical bloc composed of both conservatism and liberalism. (shrink)

The review article reconstructs the reception of Gramsci's writings in Italy from the postwar-period to the present. Compared to the Italian debate that has given little attention to Gramsci's writings, except for in some periods such as the 1970s, Gramsci's fortune has continued to grow internationally. Recent Italian contributions, such as the book of Alberto Bugio, Grasmci storico, criticised in this review, remain indebted to an historicist approach that does not allow a use of Gramscian categories as an optic for (...) interpreting and enacting the transformation of the present. The analysis concentrates on concepts such as 'passive revolution', 'fascism', 'Taylorism' and 'bureaucracy'. (shrink)

Within the agenda of historical-materialist theory and practice Sociological Marxism has delivered a compelling perspective on how to explore and link the analysis of civil society, the state, and the economy within an explicit focus on class exploitation, emancipation, and rich ethnography. This article situates a major analysis of state formation, the rise of the Justice and Development Party, and the growth of a broader Islamist movement in Turkey within the main current of Sociological Marxism. It does so in order (...) to critically examine the rather bold revision of the theory of hegemony at the heart of Cihan Tuğal’sPassive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism, which posits the separate interaction of political society, civil society and the state in theorising hegemonic politics in Turkey. My contention is that the revision of hegemony that this analysis offers and its state-theoretical commitments are deeply problematic due to the reliance on what I term ‘ontological exteriority’, meaning the treatment of state, civil society and the economy as always-alreadyseparatespheres. The focus of the critique then moves toward highlighting a frustrating lack of direct engagement with Antonio Gramsci’s writings in this disquisition on hegemony and passive revolution, which has important political consequences. While praise for certain aspects of ethnographic and spatial analysis is raised, it is argued that any account of the reordering of hegemony and the restructuring of spatial-temporal contexts of capital accumulation through conditions of passive revolution also needs to draw from a more sophisticated state theory, a direct reading of Gramsci, and broader scalar analysis of spatial relations and uneven development under capitalism. (shrink)

In the context of the worsening economic crisis analogies tend to be drawn between the economic and political crisis in Europe of the 1920s and 1930s and the current situation. Now as then, it is argued, there is the risk that a systemic economic crisis and the crisis of representative politics will in turn lead to authoritarian outcomes. Rarer, however, is the idea that the current political and economic crisis may lead to a “progressive” outcome. This article examines both options (...) under the light of the thinking of one of the most important interpreters of political crisis and change in the 1920s and 1930s: Antonio Gramsci. One of the central arguments in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is the crisis of parliamentarism and democratic politics. Gramsci did not limit his analysis to the crisis however. His theoretical undertaking also consisted in the attempt to imagine the conditions for moving beyond the democratic crisis in a progressive manner. What emerges is an existing continuity between the Gramscian categories of Cesarism-Bonapartism, economic-corporative State, hegemonic crisis and contemporary politics, particularly with reference to phenomena such as populism, technocracy and neo-liberalism; the utility of the conceptual category of Passive Revolution to comprehend the current forms of exerting power and building social consent; the potential fruitfulness of Gramsci’s schemata on counter-hegemonies, to understand the changes in the party-organization and the possibilities of building counter-hegemonies. (shrink)

Social psychology has based its development on triangle structures. Such are the cases of Symbolic Interactions and Social Representations. These triangle structures are not able even to draw an epistemology of common sense.

This book familiarizes the English-speaking reader with the debate on the originality of Gramsci’s thought and its importance for the development of Marxist theory. The contributors present the principal viewpoints regarding Gramsci’s theoretical contribution to Marxism, focussing in particular on his advances in the study of the superstructures, and discussing his relation to Marx and Lenin and his influence in Eurocommunism. Different interpretations are put forward concerning the elucidation of Gramsci’s key concepts, namely: hegemony, integral state, war of position and (...) passive revolution. (shrink)

Abstract Antonio Gramsci?s philosophy of praxis is characterised by the spatialisation as well as historicisation of its analytical categories. These theoretical practices are deeply intertwined in his ?absolute historicism?. Highlighting the spatiality of Gramsci?s analysis not only enables us to recover the many geographical themes in his work but also provides a useful counterweight to the emphasis on the historical dimensions of his historicism. In addition to obvious references to Gramsci?s use of spatial metaphors and his discussion of the Southern (...) Question, it is shown that many of his key concepts are best interpreted from a spatio?temporal as well as social and material perspective. After introducing the concepts of space, place and scale, the essay shows that all three are relevant to Gramsci?s analyses of issues such as language, the historical significance of the Catholic Church, the role of intellectuals, cosmopolitanism, class and class struggle, Americanism and Fordism, the nature of the Italian state, the social bases of state power, Jacobinism, passive revolution and hegemony. The essay concludes that Gramsci?s interest in place, space and scale was not merely academic but had to do with his analysis of revolutionary conjunctures. (shrink)

Social justice struggles are often framed around competing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. This article compares several organizations of global civil society that have helped shape or have emerged within the changing political-economic landscape of neoliberal globalization, either as purveyors of ruling perspectives or as anti-systemic popular forums and activist groups. It interprets the dialectical relation between the two sides as a complex war of position to win new political space by assembling transnational historic blocs around divergent social visions – the (...) one centered on a logic of replication and passive revolution, the other centred on a logic of prefiguration and transformation. It presents a sociological analysis of the organizational forms and practical challenges that their respective hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects entail. (shrink)

Peter Thomas’s criticism of arguments advanced recently of an era of “post-hegemony” in Western democracies may be extended by considering the experience of post-colonial Asia and Africa. Reviewing the use of the Gramscian concepts of consent and passive revolution in the study of modern South Asian history, this paper argues that both of Gramsci’s objectives –a general theory of power and the analysis of historically contingent and strategic politics– can be retained to yield valuable analytical insights. The paper (...) concludes that rather than focusing on whether the analysis of hegemony can remain true to Gramsci’s text, one can put the concept to analytical use in explaining political change in different parts of the world today. (shrink)

This book familiarizes the English-speaking reader with the debate on the originality of Gramsci’s thought and its importance for the development of Marxist theory. The contributors present the principal viewpoints regarding Gramsci’s theoretical contribution to Marxism, focussing in particular on his advances in the study of the superstructures, and discussing his relation to Marx and Lenin and his influence in Eurocommunism. Different interpretations are put forward concerning the elucidation of Gramsci’s key concepts, namely: hegemony, integral state, war of position and (...) passive revolution. (shrink)

In _Archaism and Actuality_ eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation of capitalism and fascism in Japan as a prime example of the uneven development of capitalism. He applies his theorization of subsumption to examine how capitalism integrates and redirects preexisting social, cultural, and economic practices to guide the present. This subsumption leads to a global condition in which states and societies all exist within different stages and manifestations of capitalism. Drawing on Japanese philosophers Miki Kiyoshi and Tosaka Jun, (...) Marxist theory, and Gramsci’s notion of passive revolution, Harootunian shows how the Meiji Restoration of 1868 and its program dedicated to transforming the country into a modern society exemplified a unique path to capitalism. Japan’s capitalist expansion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, rise as an imperial power, and subsequent transition to fascism signal a wholly distinct trajectory into modernity that forecloses any notion of a pure or universal development of capitalism. With _Archaism and Actuality_, Harootunian offers both a retheorization of capitalist development and a reinterpretation of epochal moments in modern Japanese history. (shrink)

This article examines the specific case of Brazil as an area in which Gramscian analysis has been put to practical use. It examines the application of Gramsci’s work to Brazilian reality in three different ways. First, the introduction of concepts derived from the Prison Notebooks in order to understand the development of capitalism in Brazil. This aspect deals in particular with the concept of ‘passive revolution’, and the relationship between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ social formations in Gramsci’s analysis. Second, (...) the role of Gramscian thought for political parties, particularly the Brazilian Communist Party and later the Workers Party, in particular the novel formulations of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony that appear during the PT presidencies. Third, the varied appropriation of Gramscian analysis by the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil, situated in an appreciation of Gramsci’s concept of the ‘Modern Prince’. The purpose of the article is to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of translating Gramsci’s thought to new contexts, and how new developments may or may not maintain the leitmotif of his thought. (shrink)

Antonio Gramsci is one of those philosophers, like Socrates, whose philosophizing consists in the critical examination of particular practical problems in terms of certain fundamental concepts. To Socrates' well known moral problems correspond Gramsci's concern with such things as improving the condition of subaltern classes, the interaction between intellectual elites and popular masses, the democratic operation of a political party, the viability of alternative models of revolution which differ from Bolshevism, and the religious component of political activity and political (...) aspects of religions. And to the Socratic concepts that are so familiar to philosophers correspond Gramsci's notions of hegemony, passive revolution, the modern "Prince," philosophy of praxis, integral journalism, Americanism and Fordism, the national-popular, Jacobinism, and folklore. Thus the proper philosophical appreciation of Gramsci has to overcome the widespread equation of philosophy with system, as well as two more external obstacles: the Franco-German hegemony over "continental philosophy" has the effect of relegating this Italian giant to the status of an unavoidably minor, however quaint, figure; and Gramsci's personal involvement with the political fortunes and misfortunes of the Italian Communist Party leads many philosophers to dismiss him as being merely a political leader. (shrink)