Gramsci Primer & Modern Reflections

A foundational summary of Gramsci's contributions to Marxism, and what they can tell us about modern political struggle.

Written by Sylus S.

Today, Antonio Gramsci represents one of the most essential contributors to Marxist theory. Mighty as the modern state is militarily, it is the realm of civil society and its mass influence on political consciousness where the greatest ascent is found. A proper understanding of these systems, which form the core of Gramsci's writings, is thus of the utmost importance. I believe if we are to have a modern strategy for the conquest of power, it shall have to be a Gramscian one. Unfortunately, these writings are overwhelmingly contained within his Prison Notebooks, a labyrinthine and fragmented collection, to say the least.

In order to render this information more accessible and to ensure that debate over these ideas is informed, a primer is in order. As such, this document will introduce a series of concepts. Beginning with hegemony, civil society, and the intelligentsia. Later on, it will cover common sense and subaltern classes. Finally, it will cover distinctions in forms of 'political warfare,' which has evolved greatly since the beginning of Marxist theory. I will not only define the aforementioned terms throughout this article, but also introduce a series of relevant examples from Gramsci's own writings as well as my own modern reflections on these concepts.¹

Part I: ABCs of Gramsci

Hegemony

Hegemony is the most natural place to begin, as almost all future topics exist to either explain how it works or the consequences of it. When Gramsci formulates the state, he divides its support into two elements.² There is 'political society' which finds its basis in domination and coercion, which we know very well to be the function of entities like the police. Hegemony is the other half of this equation, constructing consent and its basis in civil society. We shall address that second term later; for now, it is best to actually define hegemony. Quite simply, it is leadership, leadership of others in matters of political ideology.³ To say that one class or organization trusts another's political program, and their explanation of social systems is to say that they have hegemony over them.

Such a condition of leadership is invaluable to both those who aim for revolution and the preservation of the ruling class.⁴ Many of us already know the way this struggle for leadership plays out in our organizing and electoral work. A voter expresses their trust in the bourgeoisie as represented in a corporate Democrat like Josh Gottheimer. They believe him when he explains how 'extremism' is making it impossible to fix things, and that the way back to prosperity is through subsidy schemes with big business. It then becomes the mission of the DSA canvasser to explain otherwise; to elaborate on how these subsidies are mere robbery, that their misery can only be resolved with a united working class that demands democratic ownership of society. This struggle for hegemony is at the heart of the struggle for power.

Gramsci's earliest example comes in the form of the Jacobins, who took advantage of a hegemonic crisis for the aristocracy as initiated by issues of finance and famine. But as he emphasizes with all such feudal societies, civil society's relation to the state was a weaker and less developed organism.⁵ Crises like the current ones used to have the Gottheimer's cast out years ago, and the road to hegemony was much clearer. Today, the structures through which hegemony is built or reinforced are matured and better developed to uphold class rule. Thus, before we properly speak of the battle for hegemony, we need a clear understanding of how these institutions operate.

Civil Society

We now return to define 'civil society', the other half of Gramsci's formula for the state. Civil society is a rather broad domain, encompassing a great many private and public institutions. Such bodies are, however, united in being places where one might teach a political or cultural perspective, aiming to reinforce hegemony through such means.⁶ This may take the form of overt instruction, as is the case with school and various forms of 'informative' mass media, or it may be more indirect, such as the perspective one obtains from the labor and dialogue at their job. Political parties and organizations, such as our own, often combine these aspects. Regardless, civil society is a broad category with many possible inclusions, Gramsci even calling attention to urban design.⁷

It is through one's practical engagement with such bodies that they are able to impress the aforementioned viewpoints. In many cases, there is an important role played by instructors, but let us first think about urban design, where no such factor is at play. Think about a city like Reading, with minimal public transit and a number of highways, which produce not just racial segregation but also isolation. The obvious product of this is atomization, but one must ask why?

Because everyone, regardless of their particular position, is required to own a car to get around. The process of transit invites them to constant suspicion and irritation at their neighbors, and largely precludes them from putting a face or personality to them in the process. It is a sea of constant profanity directed at a driver you never really know in a tedious environment you hate. The act of commuting to work becomes one that alienates you from your fellow man, and the proposal of cooperative communal projects starts to sound more and more naive due to that experience. One struggles to imagine 'good transit', let alone that it could be created by collaboration with 'those idiots on the road.'

Then there is the neighborhood itself, those few neighbors who are within walking distance and thus are convenient to socialize with. They are, no matter how close you get to the city center, other white homeowners. Because there are a half-dozen rows of highway that separate them all from the poor renters and multiracial communities. Once more, the natural instinct under capitalism, to imagine a battle for public resources, is made all the worse. Why should you and your neighbors invest in the schools and well-being of those people whom you have never met?

So we can see how, without any individual direction, the organization of civil society's organisms may construct various worldviews from the experience of engagement. And in the case of this particular example, which turns everyone into a stranger, we also see how the different organs collaborate. Because you are now dependent on the news to give you any viewpoint about these unknown factors, in this manner, the safest period in American history becomes the most dangerous. Every Long Islander becomes a scared child, worried about monsters on the metro.

Before moving on, though, it is essential to remember that these lessons are not incidental. This may have been the case earlier, when there was no proper relationship between political and civil society. But now these bodies are developed to support one another.⁸ The government and bourgeoisie regulate, shape, create, and destroy such institutions for the purpose of delivering a desired worldview. A worldview that, on average, lends itself to accepting the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and their chosen agents.

Intelligentsia

The mention of the media, perhaps Gramsci's favorite example, should now draw attention to an important fact. Urban planning is a distinct example for its lack of instructors. The media do not operate autonomously; they depend upon journalists and pundits to deliver propaganda and agitational remarks. In this function, we find the basis for how Gramsci defines the intelligentsia.⁹ They are a subclass of social organizers, often and most relevantly working to curate the ideological lessons which civil society is meant to give. They can otherwise be proletarian, bourgeois, petty bourgeois, etc.

Generally, as with news workers, the intelligentsia do this all on behalf of other classes. Such as the owners of the media company, or the many bourgeois donors who puppet our two parties. This constitutes a 'second' degree of leadership, the 'first' belonging to the class they serve.¹⁰ Journalists do not articulate a worldview that justifies and necessitates the rule of journalists. They produce a logic that justifies the rule of the bourgeoisie, and they attempt to preach the virtues of such systems and rulers. As Gramsci put it, they serve as a link between the masses and the ruling class.¹¹

But there are also cases where the intelligentsia organize for their leadership and interests, Gramsci's chosen example being the Moderates of the Italian Risorgimento.¹² The Moderates were a party of financiers, rich landlords, and other strata of the bourgeoisie. Just as well, their program was one for the free pursuit of capital's interests and governance. Gramsci terms such a movement as "organic," and its intelligentsia are thus "organic intelligentsia." By which one means they are organizing and articulating a program on behalf of their class. Our own task is much the same today, proles fighting on behalf of a program which puts the working class in a position of power from which to address their needs.

In fact, it can often be said in our case that our interventions in civil society are for transforming leadership of the second degree into the first degree. Teachers, industrial union officers, and many others who all belong to the working class are compelled to serve as a mouthpiece for bourgeois dictatorship. When we intervene in the organs of civil society that they belong to, we do so with the intent of helping them break out of those restraints. Much revolves around such allegiances, though they are determined primarily by the structure of the institutions they operate within. Ultimately, drill sergeants cannot become a voice for revolution simply because they may wish to be so, which is not to say it doesn't always help to heighten tensions between structures and their agents.

Understanding the Basics

With all of this said, we now have the general picture: political leadership, which is produced and reinforced through the education of various social institutions and is often managed by a strata of people termed intelligentsia. The ruling class and movements against it find civil society as a body in which skirmishes are fought over hegemony. Such skirmishes contribute to a broader war and strategy, but for now, it is enough to just understand the individual battle. For which the simplest and most easily grasped example is in the trade unions.

The regular condition of the workplace is absolute dictatorship; everything is commanded by the bourgeoisie. The hours, the manner in which work is to be done, and even the language that can be used between co-workers. There are various ways in which these conflicts lend themselves toward class consciousness, which have been elaborated on so thoroughly elsewhere that they needn't be repeated here. What matters now is to note what else this reinforces, the natural expectation of bourgeois supremacy in society. If not necessarily making this feel acceptable, it makes it seem inevitable; life isn't fair as a logical theorem. A theorem that the managerial intelligentsia reinforce by giving the most constant illusion of powerlessness in handling the workers' complaints.

When fighting for a union's formation, we are thus aiming to accomplish two things. There is the well-known component of securing concrete power in solidarity, but we are also attempting to disrupt the system of education. We do this by giving them a structure wherein they have the power to make decisions. To elect leaders in service of those decisions. To even determine what the boss shall and shall not be permitted to reign over. A practical lesson that their domination is not inevitable, and they have the right to oppose it. Even if it can take time for this to lead to the hegemony of the politically advanced proletariat, the logic of such systems lends itself to that leadership rather than that of the bourgeoisie.

Such an organism will also spawn more favorable intelligentsia. Union representatives who may reinforce such lessons, though one would be remiss not to note that these, too, can fall into that second degree of leadership, ending which is often a tricky process. However, in either case, it may also lend credence to individuals like our own labor organizers. So long as they are engaged in the bodies which workers inhabit and place value in.¹³ Again, even if it takes time, it sets the stage properly for a transition from bourgeois to proletarian leadership.

It must, however, be kept in mind that this isolated example doesn't exist in practice. The organs of political society seek to shape the terrain of civil society toward the existing state's interests. In the most obvious sense, this is found in the battle over labor rights as found in the NLRB, or bills like Taft-Hartley and the PRO Act. The defense of the state thus happens in tandem.¹⁴ In our quest to replace this state with a proletarian one, we shall have to forge a similar attack in tandem.

Part II: Folklore of Philosophy

The great contributions of Antonio Gramsci are not limited to the explanation of political relations and their structures. Gramsci also devised important and more precise language to discuss those concepts that had already floated in and out of certain theorists' writings. Thus, we continue into the second part of this primer, this time addressing two of Gramsci's most important terms when discussing political consciousness. The notion of 'common sense' and of 'subaltern' classes. Afterward, these details and the previous section on ideological structures can be brought together to discuss passive revolution and the evolution of political warfare.

Common Sense

In the previous section, I made an effort to distinguish between hegemony and the broader education of civil society. Whilst supporting the leadership of a particular class is often the goal, this is largely accomplished by the construction of a worldview suitable to that class's rule.¹⁵ The same sort of mass education is also found in great historical events, mass strikes, and revolutions, being the familiar friends. Though one could just as well point toward the example of Germany's veterans and the ultranationalist worldview born from their experiences. In any case, when we discuss these matters of underlying logic, we are discussing 'common sense.'

Whilst we should not forget the power of great events, more often than not, common sense is developed through the passive absorption of various social environments' lessons.¹⁶ For this reason, Gramsci says its fundamental character is that of a "disjointed, incoherent, and inconsequential conception of the world that matches the character of the multitudes whose philosophy it is."¹⁷ That such a 'sense' permeates large swaths of society is what makes it common, though it must be kept in mind that every social stratum has its own conceptions of common sense.¹⁸ Each conception is in flux and subject to evolution as new ideas and experiences spread throughout society.¹⁹

To fully illustrate these points, we can take an aspect of capitalist logic in government programs, not the narrow question of trusting the bourgeois state, but really the concept of collective projects. Whilst there are several perspectives, for simplicity's sake, we shall take the two most obviously distinct perspectives. There are those who think communities can successfully invest time and resources into a project for the common good, and there are those who think it is only possible in the narrow tribal community of family and particular friends, if it can be done at all. Both are the product of particular lessons from history and civil society as found in their environment and social class.

So let us first consider the more reactionary worldview, one we often see in a place like rural Mississippi. Regardless of class, it becomes a struggle to imagine such collective victories due to its extreme atomization. The rural community has no public transit, its inhabitants live near-exclusively in far-apart single-family homes. Even if not for these regular obstacles affecting everyone, there is the matter of extreme segregation, both politically and geographically. I think we all would be a lot more skeptical if we personally recalled how desegregation first meant filling public pools with cement, and all white school boards selling everything for pennies to new private schools. One could go on, but the basic point remains that the general condition of living in Mississippi, both actively and through historical memory, instills the idea that something like New York's BPRA logically cannot work.

The great contrast to this can be found in an exceptional borough like Queens. The system of public transit is a real monument to the potential for collective work, pooling the resources of a whole city together so as to ensure that millions can move around a vast city in which none of your fellow travellers are of the exact same origin as yourself. Those whom the nationalists say have nothing in common thrive because they know something that only functions through their joint contributions. Thus, when Zohran says, 'We can work together and have fast and free buses,' people believe him because the experience of living in Queens has proven that such a project is logically possible.

Understanding these strains of common sense thus becomes an essential part of understanding the masses. Because the overwhelming majority of people, particularly in America, grasp politics almost purely on this low stage of consciousness. The current crisis of hegemony, alienation from the leadership of the big bourgeoisie and their typical agents in traditional Democrats and Republicans, reflects this. There is no organized and clear-eyed march to socialism, but a hazy grasping toward various different anti-status-quo politics as informed by different conceptions of societal cause and effect. People know that they no longer trust their old leaders, but their only real basis for identifying with new ones is zealous yet primitive philosophy. The politics are, as Gramsci would say, subaltern.²⁰

Subaltern Classes

What does Gramsci mean then by subaltern? He uses it in two ways, the first of which is simply as a synonym for subordinate.²¹ The second, which we are actually concerned with, is as a term for a social class. Such a class is largely dispossessed from political society; thus, their history and political activity are found in the realm of civil society.²² More importantly, their consciousness is the aforementioned low level of common sense.²³ For this reason, their political activity is spontaneous and spurred on by what Gramsci considers more restrictive rules.²⁴

The first of the three aforementioned criteria is often the most emphasized in later uses of subaltern, particularly in explorations of colonial politics. Subaltern classes, by their nature, do not wield political power at scale; they are found purely in civil society. This is not to say there cannot be individual exceptions; it is just that such people are systematically kept out of real governing authority. We are already used to recognizing this fact, as many labor aristocrats and even some poor proles find themselves in Congress, the White House offices, etc., but we know the proletariat as a class is still denied power in political society.

As such, the proletariat cannot truly be understood by looking to our three branches of government. Instead, we must look to where the subaltern classes take an active role. For the proletariat, this is most often in the workplace and various forums of civil society that we usually call third spaces, though it must be emphasized that the precise details vary over time. The subaltern peasantry had a much more important attachment to houses of worship, and thus, a deeper historical knowledge may be found there in their case. Today's social media discourses used to be found in a town's center, and so on.

The second of the three criteria is, however, more important in my opinion, as it is more directly explanatory. Subaltern classes are constrained in their historical perspective and do not operate beyond the boundaries of common sense.²⁵ This is true of not only the mass element but also of whatever leadership may form from their movements and communities. Unsurprisingly, they usually pursue their conflicts on the terms taught to them by absorbing an environment shaped by the ruling class. Liberal protests, big gatherings with speeches, and then a peaceful dispersion; this is the product of common sense. To large swathes of the proletariat, it is simply how you 'do' mass politics outside voting.

If in the course of struggle their consciousness should heighten, and they should come closer to grasping the actual nature of their political disputes, then they cannot be said to still be subaltern. In most cases, we may find that a class is only 'partially' subaltern. That is to say, it will contain some strata who are philosophically undeveloped. But it will also contain those who are engaged in a conscious hegemonic struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. So long as this does not happen, though, it must be said that the subaltern's conflict exists within a framework largely given to them by the ruling class.

So long as they remain subaltern, then they shall behave in line with the third criterion. There is a lack of initiative from the subaltern classes due to their underdeveloped social condition. They do not actively seek conflict with the ruling class as a conscious decision. Because the world as it exists is simply how it is, the Italian nation is eternal, etc.²⁶ Rather, such conflicts arise out of moments of desperation. For this reason, Gramsci spoke in terms of 'laws of necessity' and 'defensive' actions. Because their rebellions are ultimately spontaneous responses to the more harshly exploitative policies of the ruling class.²⁷

Gramsci was historically most enamored with explaining the behaviors of the Italian peasantry through these lenses of common sense and subaltern politics, the Sicilian Vespers being a model example for study in his mind.²⁸ This specific group would be quite anachronistic for us to consider today, yet there is a clear descendant for them in my mind. That is because today we have an overwhelmingly subaltern proletariat. The organic product of this proletariat, of its spontaneous resistance, is found in the various flavors of populism which have emerged over the last few electoral cycles.

So let us consider the development of this populism, with a particular eye toward what I call the Sanderistas. That is to say, the mass base of Bernie and AOC-style politics. Which we might understand by following a condensed version of Gramsci's checklist.²⁹ Such offers us a clear set of questions to follow: What is the social nature of this strata, how do they adhere to or resist the program of the dominant classes, and how do they attempt to assert autonomy? Is that quest for autonomy purely in the old framework, or does it also exist in a new one?

So let us first begin with adherence, and how that adherence has come to melt away. Obviously, we exist under bourgeois hegemony, exercised primarily through the organizing of their subservient intelligentsia in Congress and other lesser servants. The crisis emerges from the failure of the government to adhere to the terms of this hegemony as taught to the masses, to maintain a sufficient quality of life with the adornments of petty bourgeois aspirations. Increasingly incensed by this, there is a spontaneous resistance which is only inherently defined by a vague opposition to the status quo and its representatives.³⁰ In other words, the subaltern proletariat is everywhere grasping for new leaders as a response.

The question of more particular social strata, of their development in civil society, then informs what they will do with this spontaneous opposition. They will be guided by their common sense, albeit toward the end of adhering to the hegemony of new classes or prominent intellectuals. In understanding why a section of the proletariat lends itself toward Sanders rather than Trump, one can consider much of what I said earlier about Queens. The Sanderista is a proletarian renter, and not usually a particularly well-paid one. At least insofar as the cost of living is accounted for, though they do possess a college degree. I believe these are the essential details. Though it helps if they are attached to a multinational community, and are near to their neighbors.

Under ideal conditions in which the status quo appears to be working, this will simply constitute an ideal voter for bourgeois democrats of most stripes. Certainly, we can see this group's attachment to many of those liberal bourgeois policies: to the equal rights of racial and sexual minorities, to the welcoming of migrants, even if for the elite, those migrants exist only as a labor force, and they are fond of government support for schools and any positive health initiative. But what if, as with now, the status quo is concretely not working for them? And if they no longer trust the bourgeois democrats as guarantors of those general inclinations either? Then we arrive at our current condition in the spontaneous search for leaders, intelligentsia, who can correct this 'error.'

In the aftermath of Obama's failure to restore stable ideological leadership, this is where the Sanderista, as we know them, is born. Seeking a more aggressive implementation of the aforementioned program. In other words, the implementation of a radical form of social democracy. One which, as the crisis grows, even aspires toward the end of capitalism, though it does not necessarily put any particular measures forward to ensure that, most obviously, because their common sense struggles to imagine the end of capitalism as a real event.

But also because a real program for the end of capitalism would ascend beyond struggling in the old way, which they largely do not yet know how to do, but they are aware of stories from school and relatives, particularly on the topic of civil rights. And in those stories, a few reforms led to future more progressive reforms, and the cycle went on until a great transformation of society won out. In those stories, the battle was won by charismatic and principled politicians uniting disparate movement groups for grand marches and big elections. Often seizing the helm of one of the major parties, or failing because they tried a third way. The masses thus pursue both these policies and methods because their common sense naturally lends itself to such conclusions.

Understanding these nuanced intersections of common sense, hegemony, and the behaviors of subaltern classes are all necessary to grasping modern politics, because our quest for political independence is often one of conflict for leadership over those subaltern classes. Or against them when their common sense leads them to deeply reactionary places. In previous centuries, it was enough to simply declare our honest intent and make interventions in such spontaneous movements. Today, it remains necessary that we do so, but we cannot expect to reshape practically gained common sense by mere rhetoric. The battle for hegemony is now much more difficult, and we shall have to more carefully direct the results of battles won if we wish to awaken a great mass of subaltern workers to their potential.

Part III: Political Warfare

The purpose of Gramsci's writings was not simply to elaborate on relations in society, valuable as it is to do so. All of these theorems and postulates serve the goal of understanding the warfare of politics, which is always a war for hegemony. Most especially, the evolution of political strategy from a "war of maneuver" to a "war of position" in the postwar era. An evolution defined in particular by the adoption of passive revolution by the ruling class. Developing our knowledge of this problem, and how we might eventually overcome it, thus serves as the invaluable capstone of Gramsci's contributions to scientific socialism.

Before beginning on the more complex details of Gramsci's model of political warfare, a distinction must be clarified. That is the distinction between tactics and strategy. Tactics may refer to various individual plans for a given battle, whereas strategy considers a more expansive and interconnected series of those plans in service of the overall revolutionary goal. The pro-Palestine encampments may speak of tactics, ways to protect themselves from dispersion and reactionary violence. But the strategic question is how those encampments intersect with various elements of BDS work, electoral work, and how all of those may reinforce each other's positions toward the end of ending Israeli colonialism. In any given case, Gramsci seeks to describe a tactic or strategy as (usually) one of either maneuver or position.³¹

War of Maneuver

One might remember at the beginning when I noted the historic weakness of civil society and its cruder intersection with political society in earlier societies. In this historic condition, it was possible to engage in a strategy of maneuver. A crisis could very easily spiral out of control, and the ensuing refusal of the state to bend to public demands would result in the most expedient developments of political consciousness. Common sense, and its effects on hegemony, spun around in an instant. A big enough shock to the system could serve as 'heavy artillery capable of shattering the enemy and galvanizing allies,'³² so galvanizing in fact that the masses would continue to grasp the next logical conclusion in class conflict with every successive battle.

In the victorious war of maneuver, it may be said that the principles of permanent revolution were thus in effect.³³ To this end, we might take Gramsci's chosen parallel in the Jacobins of the great French Revolution.³⁴ The origins of the crisis are well known to us by now, lying in famine and the general impoverishment of the nation. From there, a series of demands and refusals produced an escalation of the conflict between the aristocracy and the rest of society. Each time the people of France would petition for relief, and each time they would find a new obstacle based in the political structure of society.

I have explained this in greater detail elsewhere, but for our purposes, it is enough to summarize.³⁵ Early on, one finds oneself under the impression that the aristocratic parlements serve the people of France, and so the people defend them against the monarch. Then, when the Estates-General is summoned, it becomes clear that the aristocracy wishes to keep the people out of decision-making. So it becomes the demand of the people that the Estates-General vote by head, not by order. Then, when the Estates-General refuses to do this, and refuses to make the changes necessary to alleviate mass suffering, the people conclude (as they did with the parlements) that the Estates-General was an obstacle and a new governing body had to be made. This general dynamic repeated itself all the way to the end of the monarchy.

What matters in this process is the process of education through struggle. The old order refuses to compromise, and so there is a concrete lesson on the need for political change in order to resolve one's core economic demands. Notably, the apparatuses of ideological education are less developed, so this lesson is easily and correctly digested, too, with a far greater willingness to accept the leadership of new classes and formations. In this context, it is a relatively trivial task for the revolutionary intelligentsia to organize and lead the people against the state. To simply harness their energy and reject concessions that do not actually touch the root of the conflict.³⁶ In this manner, one is able to go from the quiet and loyal toilers of France to the revolutionary national guard whose actions embody modern ideas of Jacobinism.

The defining character of a strategy built around maneuver is thus in expecting to have an exponentially growable claim to hegemony over the masses, reinforced by a strict emphasis on domination over consent by the state. Yet now we cannot simply depend on this; the assumptions attached to such a plan are no longer correct. Later episodes have more often avoided the rigidity demonstrated by the French monarchy, and the improved structure of the state has greatly complicated the battle for leadership and education during times of crisis. For now we shall set aside this latter detail and instead attend to the invention of passive revolution as a strategy of the ruling class.

Passive Revolution

The French Revolution had revealed not only to the aristocracy the dangers of staunch resistance during crisis, but also to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie henceforth aspired to carefully implement liberalism, avoiding the Jacobin-style struggle, which would give rise to the total education of the masses against all forms of exploitation.³⁷ This is not, however, to suggest that they take a wholly proactive role in reorganizing society, for them, it would be ideal not to address anything at all. Rather, they feel motivated to make selective progress in direct reaction to spontaneous rebellion by the masses.³⁸ They feel a need to take initiative away from would-be revolutionaries. If we accept this, and that the Thermidorian Reaction was a product of the bourgeoisie finding Jacobinism to be going too far, then we can take Gramsci's explanation that their future leaders became precautionary Thermidorians.³⁹

Gramsci was most interested in Italy's Risorgimento when discussing passive revolution; however, he was quite mindful that such an analysis could apply elsewhere.⁴⁰ Provided that a few criteria were met.⁴¹ First, the economy must be transformed from an "individualistic one" to one "according to a plan." From this process, an "intermediate economy" emerges, one enabling the progression to "more advanced political and cultural forms." In this formula, we find the historical basis of constitutional monarchy. An incubator for bourgeois democracy, one meant to avoid disrupting elite interests during a period of mass conflict and chaos.⁴²

The example of 19th-century European liberalism is quite removed from us, yet we may find a nearer example in the New Deal, which we might understand by tracing the same general concepts: material crisis, hegemonic crisis, and a reconciliation scheme between the elites and masses. The material crisis that inspired the New Deal is obviously found in the Great Depression. The grand scale of unemployment, the mass shortage of food and consumer goods, all of it makes up the most fundamental example of crisis under capitalism. In having this crisis, the leadership of the bourgeoisie and their intelligentsia come into question. Given the scale of suffering, it would of course be a particularly big question of leadership.

Hegemonic crises by nature needn't be economic, but it is the most foundational way in which the status quo rulers violate or affirm the 'consensual' arrangement taught to the people.⁴³ In any case, the people began to seek out new leaders who could fulfill those terms, or even offer new ones if they felt pushed far enough. Electorally, this was a great boon to the likes of the Farmer-Labor Party, but it also served the membership count of the Communist Party and other groups that claimed to oppose the current leaders of society. In both cases, it constituted a threat to individual elites, but the latter was, of course, the most troubling sign given the damage it could do to the overall system. Either way, one could clearly see the weakness of the ruling class's political influence over the people.

Without a resolution, it would be inevitable that more and more of society would find itself under the influence of revolutionary or at least frighteningly radical elements. Given that this problem was not just disappearing with time, it was necessary that the existing elites resolve it before it was resolved for them to their disadvantage. This is where the various concessions then come from: the systems of welfare and job programs. Because in restoring a good standard of living, Roosevelt reaffirmed the logic by which the people trusted in the overall system of bourgeois democracy and capitalism. In doing so, the basis for the growth of these various opposing movements vanished. Whatever gains that opposition made would largely vanish in time as well, and absent overhauls to civil society, history finds itself back at square one.

War of Position

The transition to a strategy of position as a means of social revolution exists for two necessary reasons then. One is the aforementioned passive revolution that the ruling class may attempt; one cannot depend on the stiffest resistance until things boil over. Secondly, there is the firmer basis for their hegemony, due to the extent to which the dominant class is now able to shape civil society.⁴⁴ Consequently, there is a deeply rooted common sense making it more difficult than ever to correctly grasp the nature of class conflict, and people are ever more pushed toward the leadership of specific classes. In practice, of those who already rule over us. The great problem thus lies in the fact that one can no longer depend on crisis as heavy artillery, an "unprecedented concentration of hegemony" is now required, but it cannot be gained in the simple old way.⁴⁵

Maneuver tactics retain importance, however, even if one cannot make a strategy out of it.⁴⁶ Today, Zohran's mayoral campaign is not likely to result in an electoral victory.⁴⁷ Yet it seems an excellent victory already in expanding our reserves through recruitment. In expanding the basis for us to intervene with socialist politics in civil society. In short, agitation-served electoral campaigns can still accomplish something when appropriate. What changes is that these things are now in service of claiming particular positions, "commanding heights."⁴⁸ One seeks to reshape civil society so that the proletariat can be sufficiently educated at scale for a proper political revolution. This is the essence of the war of position. Otherwise, we will only ever have temporary victories, concessions which merely buy time for the bourgeoisie to undermine a revolutionary movement.

We cannot expect to craft a socialist man under capitalism, one whose common sense immediately gives itself to the revolutionary proletariat. Still, we need to sabotage the reproduction of a firmly capitalist man, one who would sooner trust the fascist petty bourgeoisie when a great crisis comes, or perhaps just stick with some liberal reformists to the end. This, however, cannot be done just with maneuver after maneuver—a series of individual campaigns for unionization and other conquests of shards of civil society. Political society now plays a greater direct role in shaping civil society than ever before. So we cannot neglect a more direct legislative role in this process if it is to be done at the necessary scale.

I believe the recognition of this need to undo in tandem that which is done in tandem underlies the notions of "transformative" or "non-reformist" reforms in socialist discourse. There is evidently a powerful relationship between political consciousness and the way that government shapes our life, and so it would seem natural that we leverage so-called 'inside' power to alter these dynamics toward even terrain. That we do so not simply to improve the quality of life under capitalism, but also to "materially shift the balance of power toward the working class" and build an "expanding ability to organize."⁴⁹ These notions get at the right spirit of things, but are fairly crude sketches. One which falls back on the most historically tread path, "reforms making it easier for workers to organize unions."⁵⁰

Though unions are often the most easy to grasp explanation because of their history in socialist thought, a shortcoming is revealed in being limited to such an example. If we are to pursue such a strategy then we must understand what actually makes reforms transformative, rather than a potential asset for passive revolution. The answer of course is found in the scientific nature of Gramsci's war of position, which expands this viewpoint from unions to civil society as a whole. Which takes its standpoint not simply from the question of the "ability to organize," but from the question of the struggle over political consciousness. Thus I can clearly say: Reforms are transformative when they favorably alter the terrain in which we fight for hegemony, when they give us a better basis for intervention in arenas of civil society toward the end of gaining trust and establishing socialist leadership.

Gramsci's war of position and its aforementioned postulates thus offer a scientific solution to the observations of more modern comrades, firmly elaborating on the dynamics by which hegemony and political consciousness function, and thus a general notion of where to focus our immediate demands. The formula by which one can construct a correct program involving transformative reforms. More specifically, of course, we need a proper survey of civil society in the present United States.⁵¹ Some of my own contributions to the survey already exist in this text, but I aim to give more thoroughly to such a discussion in the future. In the meantime, coming up with a detailed battle plan for the war of position remains the most essential task of postwar politics.⁵²

Part IV: Modern Prince

What then is the role of a socialist party, of Gramsci's Modern Prince?⁵³ One may recall my emphasis on 'taking helm of a major party' in subaltern lore. This is, in part, natural, as parties are the ultimate vehicle through which hegemonic politics are done.⁵⁴ The peculiarity, of course, is the way in which civil society and its intelligentsia emphasize the leadership of one party or another, which is very strictly just two in our case. In any case, only a party and its connection to both political & civil society can organize a strategy in political warfare.⁵⁵

Such organization fundamentally consists in being a mediator, mediating between immediate (usually economic) demands and the long-term conquest of power.⁵⁶ In isolation, the tendency of any section of the intelligentsia is often toward the former. Politicians want to be re-elected. Union leaders want to bring back the best wages and direct benefits. Organizers want the biggest crowd, or one popular with their desired audience. In essence, they all wish to reaffirm the terms by which they gain the trust of the subaltern masses, who are, of course, indispensable as strikers and voters. There is also likely a desire for personal prestige, or a belief that one's method of work is the more important sort of present tasks.

Regardless, these immediate demands cannot be abandoned, and in a genuine mass party of workers, it should be practically impossible to do so. Yet the modern war of position calls for the reshaping of civil society in order to seize power. Thus, the party must work to harness the spontaneous anger of the masses toward the end of such long-term goals, at times an easily agreeable task, as with labor rights and education. At other times, this can be quite difficult, given that the dream of homeownership clashes with our need for a renters' education. Given electoral reform, despite its abstract popularity, often runs into unpopular details or just a general disinterest when compared to other wants. Either way, both must be fought for, and to that end, one also needs a party as a factory for intelligentsia loyal to these hegemonic politics.

The war for hegemony is thus the core justification of our need for an independent party. Otherwise, it shall remain especially difficult to maintain primary leadership over the intelligentsia of either the congressional or communal variety. Because each side of that equation seeks to be united by the support of the other, the domain of political parties. If organized, civil society holds the strength to make demands of political society, and to select its members. With the levers of coercion, political society can alter the terrain in which civil society organizes itself. Without any of these things, we are all ultimately doomed to become detached from the subaltern masses until we wither away as all previous socialist formations have. And, again, only a political party truly functions as a bridge between all these things. Only a party can serve as the collective strategist for the working class by uniting its politically conscious segments.

This reveals the basic formula by which things now operate in the war of position, most especially how we engage with crises. The opportunity to intervene in civil society insofar as it currently enables us, during which one can seize a slice of political society. Such a slice, particularly when amplified by mass unrest, can then be guided by the party toward altering the structure of civil society. An especially pressing task given the relatively ephemeral impacts of crises and their educational capacity in the modern day. This lifts the proverbial ceiling on how far-reaching our bid for hegemony can be, and in turn brings us closer to having the capacity to seize power. Both our vanguard of politically educated workers and trusting subaltern ones shall grow evermore in the process. We shall march forward one trench at a time, and each height captured will bring with it greater reserves than the fight expended: First a stronger position, then a party of our own, and then a state of our own!

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1. The first citation for each volume of the Prison Notebooks will follow a traditional footnote style, but successive iterations will follow a V(olume)/N(ote)/P(age) format. Ie. V3/N88/P75. This is to make looking up citations easier, as pages may at times contain multiple notes. All references to the Prison Notebooks come from Joseph Buttigieg’s translation.

2. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Vol. 3, trans. Joseph Buttigieg. (Columbia University Press, 2007,) p. 75 “in the sense, one might say, that state = political society + civil society, that is, hegemony protected by the armor of coercion.”

3. Sylus S., A History of Marxist Hegemony, Stance 18, no. 1 (2025): 100-113

4. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Vol. 1, trans. Joseph Buttigieg. (Columbia University Press, 1992,) p. 137 “There can and there must be a ‘political hegemony’ even before assuming government power, and in order to exercise political leadership or hegemony one must not count solely on the power and material force that is given by government.”; Georgy Plekhanov, “Speech at the International Workers’ Socialist Congress in Paris,” marxists.org, 1889, https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1889/07/speech.html “the revolutionary movement in Russia will triumph only as a working-class movement or else it will never triumph!”

5. V3/N16/P169 “In the East, the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous, in the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state tottered, a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed.”

6. V3/N24/P20 “One must distinguish civil society as Hegel understands it and in the sense it is often used in these notes (that is, in the sense of the political and cultural hegemony of a social group over the whole of society; as the ethical content of the state)”

7. Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks Vol. 2, trans. Joseph Buttigieg. (Columbia University Press, 1996,) p. 53 “Everything that directly or indirectly influences or could influence public opinion belongs to it: libraries, schools, associations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture, the layout of streets and their names.”

8. V3/N18/P170 “In politics—the relation between the state and civil society, that is, the intervention of the state (centralized will) to educate the educator, the social milieu in general.”

9. V1/N43/P133 “By intellectuals, one must understand not [only] those ranks commonly referred to by this term, but generally the whole social mass that exercises an organizational function in the broad sense, whether it be in the field of production, or culture, or political administration:”

10. V2/N39/P39 “It is also connected to the question of which social group exercises political and intellectual leadership over the great masses: leadership of the first degree and of the second degree. (The intellectuals often exercise a leadership of the second degree because they themselves are under the influence of the great landowners and these, in turn, are led directly or indirectly, partly or wholly, by the upper bourgeoisie, especially the financiers.)”

11. V1/N43/P131 “in the South, the ‘solemn’ [or cavilling lawyer] type who establishes contact between the peasant masses and the landowners and the state apparatus is still dominant; in the North, the dominant type is the factory ‘technician’ who functions as a link between the working mass and the capitalist class”

12. V1/N44/P137 “that is, the Moderate intellectuals were a real, organic vanguard of the upper classes because they themselves belonged economically to the upper classes: they were intellectuals and political organizers and, at the same time, heads of business, great landowners-administrators, commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, etc.)”

13. V2/N42/P41 “a historical organism rooted in the masses, such as the chamber of labor”

14. V3/N10/P162 “the superstructures of civil society resemble the trench system of modern warfare.”

15. V3/N173/P334 “In reality, however, the result in each case has been to surmount one particular ‘common sense’ in order to create another that is more compliant with the conception of the world of the leading group.”

16. V3/N173/P333 “-in other words, the conception of the world acritically absorbed from the various social environments in which the moral individuality of the average person is developed.” Emphasis Gramsci’s

17. V3/N173/P333

18. V1/N65/P173 “Every social stratum has its own ‘common sense’ which is ultimately the most widespread conception of life and morals.”

19. V1/N65/P173 “Every philosophical current leaves a sedimentation of ‘common sense’: this is the document of its historical reality. Common sense is not something rigid and static; rather, it changes continuously, enriched by scientific notions and philosophical opinions which have entered into common usage.”

20. V2/N48/P51 Gramsci gives some general descriptions of spontaneity here, which he notably intertwines with the concept of subaltern classes.

21. V3/N86/P73 “Namely, the habits of a subaltern (subordinate, executive-bureaucratic)”

22. V2/N90/P91 “For the subaltern classes, the unification does not occur; their history is intertwined with the history of ‘civil society’; it is a disjointed segment of that history.”

23. V2/N48/P49 “One may say that the element of spontaneity is therefore characteristic of the”history of subaltern classes” and, especially, of the most marginal and peripheral elements of these classes, who have not attained a consciousness of the class per se and who consequently do not even suspect that their history might possibly have any importance or that it might be of any value to leave documentary evidence of it.”

24. V2/N18/P24 “since the subaltern class lacks political autonomy, its”defensive” initiatives are constrained by their own laws of necessity, which are more complex and politically restrictive than the laws of historical necessity that govern the initiatives of the ruling class.”

25. V2/N48/P49 “In these movements, then, there exists a”multiplicity” of elements of “conscious leadership,” but none of them predominates or goes beyond the level of “popular science”—“common sense,” that is, the [traditional] conception of the world—of a given social stratum.”

26. V3/N78/P58 “Common sense is led to believe that what exists today has always existed and that Italy has always existed as a unified nation but was suffocated by foreign powers, etc.”

27. V2/N14/P21 “Subaltern classes are subject to the initiatives of the dominant class, even when they rebel, they are in a state of anxious defense.”

28. V2/N48/P51-52

29. V2/N90/P91

30. V2/N46/P45 “Not only do the”people” have no precise consciousness of their own historical identity, but neither are they conscious of the historical identity and exact limits of their enemy. (The lower classes, being historically on the defensive, cannot acquire self-consciousness except through negations, through a consciousness of the identity and class boundaries of their enemy, but it is precisely this process that has yet to dawn, at least on a national scale.)”

31. V1/N134/P219 Gramsci gives some general examples here along with their categorization

32. V3/N10/P161 “The immediate economic factor (crises, etc.) is seen as the field artillery employed in a war to open a breach in the enemy’s defenses big enough to permit one’s troops to break through and gain a definitive strategic victory–or, at least, to achieve what is needed for a definitive victory.”

33. V3/N52/P267 “in politics, the 1848 concept of the war of movement is precisely the concept of permanent revolution;”

34. V1/N44/P139-148 One could frankly cite this entire, lengthy, note.

35. Sylus S., “Duck, Duck, Goose: The Search for a Modern Electoral Theory,” Cosmonaut Magazine, August 2024, https://cosmonautmag.com/2024/08/duck-duck-goose-the-search-for-a-modern-electoral-theory/

36. V1/N44/P147 “The old classes do not want to give up anything, and if they do give up something they do it with the intention of gaining time and preparing the counteroffensive; the bourgeoisie would have fallen into these successive”traps” without the energetic action of the Jacobins, who oppose every intermediate halt and send to the guillotine not only the representatives of the old classes, but also yesterday’s revolutionaries who have become today’s reactionaries.”

37. V3/N113/P93 (Of Jacobin politics) “Which is precisely what was missing and which in fact was purposely and systematically avoided by the democratic parties of the Risorgimento.”

38. V3/N25/P252 This is summarizing pretty much the entire 1-2 paragraph note.

39. V3/N89/P76 “Cavour was essentially a ‘fireman’ or, as one might say, a ‘precautionary Thermidorian’”

40. V2/N57/P232 “The concept of passive revolution, it seems to me, applies not only to Italy but also to those other countries that modernize the state through a series of reforms or national wars without underground a political revolution of a radical-Jacobin type.”

41. V3/N236/P378

42. V3/N236/P378

43. V1/N44/P148 Gramsci elaborates on the Jacobin’s land reform as a means of securing hegemony, which one may understand as the capstone on the Jacobin’s victory over the aristocracy in the hegemonic crisis which produced the French Revolution.

44. V3/N10/P162-3; V3/N16/P169 “In the East, the state was everything, civil society was primordial and gelatinous, in the West, there was a proper relation between state and civil society, and when the state tottered, a sturdy structure of civil society was immediately revealed.”

45. V3/N138/P109

46. V3/N10/P162 (of maneuver) “But in wars among the most industrially and socially advanced states, these methods of war must be seen to have a reduced tactical function rather than a strategic function;”

47. This was written over the course of the spring, and finished before May 17th. The author is extremely delighted to be proven wrong in this matter.

48. V3/N88/P285

49. Groundwork Caucus, “Our Tasks & Perspectives,” Groundwork DSA, 2025, https://www.groundworkdsa.com/tasks-perspectives

50. Groundwork Caucus, “Our Tasks & Perspectives,” Groundwork DSA, 2025, https://www.groundworkdsa.com/tasks-perspectives

51. V3/N16/P169 “Needless to say, the configuration varied from state to state, which is precisely why an accurate reconnaissance on a national scale was needed.”

52. V3/N138/P109 “Transition from the war of maneuver (and frontal assault) to the war of position–in the political field as well. In my view, this is the most important postwar problem of political theory; it is also the most difficult problem to solve correctly.”

53. V2/N127/P382 “in this sense, ‘Prince’ could be translated in modern terms as ‘political party.’”

54. V2/N38/P179-180

55. V2/N127/P382 “the political party juridically neither rules nor governs. It has ‘de facto power,’ it exercises the hegemonic function, and hence function of balancing various interests in ‘civil society;’ however civil society is in fact so thoroughly intertwined with political society that all the citizens feel instead that the party rules and governs.”

56. V1/N44/P147 “The Jacobins, then, represent the only party of the revolution, in that they not only perceive the immediate interests of the actual physical individuals who constitute the French bourgeoisie, but they also perceive the interests of tomorrow and not just those of particular physical individuals, but of the other social strata of the third estate which tomorrow will become bourgeois, because they are convinced of egalite and fraternite.”