Lecture 21 Sociology 621 HEGEMONY & LEGITIMATION November 16, 2009 I. HEGEMONY Hegemony is one of the most elusive concepts in Marxist discussions of ideology. Sometimes it is used as almost the equivalent of “ideological domination:” to describe a class an ideologically hegemonic (or to talk about the hegemonic ideology) is just to talk about the dominant/dominating ideology. Gramsci, who made the most sustained discussions of this concept, used it in a rather different way. Hegemony designates the capacity of a class for what Gramsci termed “moral and intellectual leadership.” To understand this notion we need to first see what is meant by “leadership” and then link it to the moral and intellectual aspects of leadership, and then to the specific issue of ideology: 1. Leadership A leader must be distinguished from a boss. A boss tells you what to do. A leader induces you to do things by virtue of the assurances you have that the leader is concerned with your interests, is advancing your interests. In class terms, a ruling class has leadership capacity if it is able to somehow link the interests of subordinate classes to its own interests in the pursuit of a social project which reproduces its own dominant position. Leadership implies the capacity to give direction to social development, to establish the project of the ruling class as the universal project by tying the interests of subordinate classes to that project. A hegemonic class, then, is not just a ruling or dominant class, but a ruling class that manages to organize its rule in a particular way: namely, by linking the interests of subordinate classes and groups to its own. When the GM CEO proclaims, “What’s good for GM is good for America” he is affirming the hegemonic character of the American bourgeoisie in the 1950s for this was not a complete illusion. The American capitalist class had a project of economic and social development which did in fact tie the interests of large segments of the working class to the interests of capital/ Michael Burawoy’s analysis of the machine shop is a good example of hegemony: Burawoy distinguishes between two forms of organization of the machine shop, what he calls the despotic organization of work and the hegemonic organization of work. In the former, productivity is mainly assured through surveillance, controls, and discipline; in the latter it is assured through a “game” in which competition among workers striving to increase their individual incomes and “make out” on the shop floor has the effect of directing their activity in ways that enhance productivity. This latter game is a hegemonic form of the labor process: some of the interests ofLecture 21. Legitimation & Hegemony 2the workers are met -- the possibility of higher wages -- but in a way that links them to the interests of the capitalist class more closely. More generally, in the period of stable accumulation and expansion, the bourgeoisie has the possibility of generating a material basis for hegemony through redistributive policies and the Keynesian state. This is Przeworski’s general argument about the material basis for hegemonic politics in electoral democracies: parties are forced to play by certain rules if they are to avoid being isolated from the working class, but if they play by those roles then they act to tie the interests of the working class to those of the Bourgeoisie in various direct ways. 2. Moral and Intellectual Leadership All of this is hegemony in general. Ideological hegemony represents the specific effects of hegemony at the ideological level, and this is where the “moral” and “intellectual” elements come in, corresponding to our earlier discussions of normative ideology and mystification/cognition respectively. 2.1 Two visions of what it means to have an antagonism to oppositional normative systems: a) The two contending ideologies can be seen as antagonistic in terms of each element within them, so that proletarian normative ideology is simply the negation point-by-point of bourgeois ideology. This is what Mouffe refers to as the view of ideological struggle as the confrontation of two paradigmatic ideologies. b) The two contending ideologies can be seen as containing many of the same elements, but they are organized into a different “matrix.” Thus, the belief in individual freedom is an element in both bourgeois and proletarian ideology, but because of its link to the belief in private property in the former and its link to collective self-determination in the latter, the meaning of the element itself changes. In this view, ideological struggle is over the appropriation and reappropriation of elements into different class matrices, rather than the confrontation of two polarized paradigms. Ideological struggle = struggle on the terrain of ideology rather than between ideologies. 2.2 Hegemony = second view: The view of ideological hegemony as involving moral leadership necessarily presupposes the second of these views. Aspects of normative principles which are rooted in popular struggles, popular consciousness and culture are appropriated by the bourgeoisie and tied to other ideological/moral elements so that they serve the bourgeois project. Such a hegemonic situation sets a trap for revolutionaries, because it suggests that to oppose to the bourgeoisie is to oppose individual freedom, civil rights, etc., and many revolutionaries in fact accept these terms of the struggle. To the extent that the bourgeoisie is able to define the form of ideological struggle in this way, it effectively isolates revolutionary ideology from the working class, since many of these elements are in fact organically related to the working class itself.Lecture 21. Legitimation & Hegemony 32.3 Moral leadership means: incorporating popular/oppositional moral elements into the hegemonic ideology 2.4 Central elements in bourgeois ideology defending capitalism = ! freedom ! democracy ! private property ! equality ! material well-being How are these “articulated”? freedom means freedom from coercion by the state; this implies sanctity of private property. Freedom Î private property. Democracy depends upon private property and is the form of the state that protects freedom. Democratic constraints on private property are an affront to freedom equality means equality of citizenship rights, not material conditions material