So what is preventing the proletarian revolution from happening while all the material should lead to it ?

Gramsci’s response : Hegemony.

Hegemony = it is actually based on a classical distinction that can be found in Machiavelli’s work. Gramsci tries to understand how a society can force a population to do something. Machiavelli made the distinction between domination/coercion (external relation of power) ? Intellectual and moral leadership (people agree with the situation, internal consent).

Gramsci wants to force Marxism to pay more attention to the importance of ideology (superstructure). He looks at the hegemonic position of the ruling capitalistic class over other classes, including the proletariat.

How do bourgeois make hegemony ?

Gramsci uses the concept of civil society. Hegel first distinguished between the « state »(= political power) and « civil society » (commercial and industrial life). But Gramsci defines it differently : the civil society includes all the ideological instruments i.e. non-state institutions (mass media, Gramsci discusses for instance the role of the radio) as well as state institutions (schools, libraries etc). => propagate bourgeois ideas.

Indeed Gramsci’s definition of state is very large : « the entire complex of political and theoretical activity by which the ruling class not only justify and maintain their domination but also succeed in obtaining the active consent of the governed. »

The consequences of this hegemonic ideology is that the workers feel divided and torn between their class experience and the bourgeois ideology that they have received from the institutions : « implicit consciousness » -> contradictory character of the consciousness - it’s like having 2 consciousness :

• One which is implicit in his activity and which truly unites him with all his fellow-workers in the practical transformation of reality.
• One, superficially explicit or verbal, which he has inherited from the past and uncritically accepted.

= this contradictory consciousness produces a condition of moral and political passivity. The language itself is marked by the hegemonic ideology. The framework with which we understand the world does not let us understand the world we experience as workers. We become unable to make sense of our world experience.

Distinction between 2 political strategies, based on military metaphor :

• War of manoeuvre/movement (Russia 1917) : taking power by revolutionary means (the hegemonic power was not strong enough to spread everywhere)
• War of positions : the revolutionaries have to conquer all the agencies of civil society. ?