Post-hegemony and Gramsci: a bridge too far (original) (raw)
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Historical Materialism, 2019
This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.
Hugo Chávez’s Unwritten Testament: National-Democratic Struggle and Contradictions of Socialism
Gramsci’s vision of the national-popular and counter-hegemonic struggle offers an insightful framework for a more systematical and synthetic reading of the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela. In contradistinction to the simplistic accounts that draw on pure anti-capitalist and/or anti-imperialist struggles, a Gramscian lens can sharpen the perspective into internal colonial relationships with regard to squattering, race and gender as well as the contradictory nature of socialism. A Gramscian lens can also help us formulate a coherent critique of prevailing hegemonic leadership types from a participatory-democratic perspective. With this in mind, I contend that Chávez bequeathed two major legacies that need to be carefully taken into account by the revolutionaries and other socialist intellectuals and scholars of the twenty-first century. The first is that the task of the national-democratic revolution has become more pressing than ever for Third World revolutions and needs to be successfully incorporated into the struggle for socialism. Interestingly enough, this legacy brings to the table what Gramsci understands by the “national-popular.” Following Schiller’s (Dialect Anthropol 35(3):255–260, 2011) assertion that a comparative outlook on Venezuela is necessary in order to offer a more nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the complexity of the Bolivarian process, this paper also presents a comparative/historical analysis of Gramsci’s Italy and Venezuela. Chávez’s second legacy arises from the recognition that socialism is to be understood as a long protracted process replete with inner contradictions and risks embedded in the political-cultural transformation of daily life. This legacy underlines institutional innovation and cultural struggle, which exhibit astonishing similarities with Gramsci’s vision of counter-hegemonic struggle. As such, this paper touches on the challenges and contradictions of the post-Chávez era as they pertain to the transformation of daily life via counter-hegemonic tools and leadership mechanisms. Indeed, any genuine social transformation toward socialism excludes race- and gender-blind approaches, hence the necessity of rigorously analyzing the limitations of the Bolivarian process in race and gender relations.
Gramsci and contemporary Spanish politics
2011 was a remarkable year in the annals of popular unrest. Commencing with the self-immolation of a street hawker in Tunisia, what would become known as the Arab Spring exceeded geographical frontiers as it spread tumultuously from Tunis to Tahir Square, Cairo, and from there to Europe, to the central squares of almost all of Spain's major cities (the 15th May or 15M movement), to London and across the Atlantic, to New York, to the occupation of high schools in Santiago de Chile. None of these uprisings was the result of cultural or ethnic questions, they were not inspired by religion or identity, they were responses to economic injustice, to the austerity measures imposed by national and supranational governing entities and the international lending bodies responsible for the crisis in the first place. Never was this more the case than in Spain, where the banking sector, construction companies and local municipal authorities had conspired for decades to build up a network of corruption, often with the connivance of the trade union bureaucracy and aided by a reserve army of mass unemployment to inhibit workers resistance. The financial crash of 2008 (followed by the events of 2011) exposed the contradictions of "democratic" discourse and shook the foundations of its institutions. It laid bare the fragility of the 1978 consensus that inaugurated Spain's current political system. To put it in terms favored by Antonio Gramsci, the conjunctural crisis revealed a deeper, longer-standing organic crisis that has yet to be resolved. My aim in this chapter is to suggest that, in spite of voices to the contrary, a Gramscian analysis of the contemporary political situation of Spain remains productive in mapping the upheavals of the last decade or so. While Britain is where Gramsci has exercised the greatest influence outside of Italy (British Cultural Studies is, historically at least, Gramscian), in Spain his work was introduced by and remained the preserve of a handful of eccentric Marxists operating on the provincial fringes of the State itself during the latter stages of the dictatorship. They were often marginalized by the very Spanish Communist Party with which they were associated (even after their theses had come to be officially-and only very partially-adopted by the same party). 1 Notable among these are the texts,
The ideas originating in Antonio Gramsci's politico-theoretical work, in a multifaceted itinerary departing from a purely ethical matrix, have developed in Latin America into a sophisticated theoretical formulation focused on the theory of hegemony. The emergence of this formulation marks the beginning of a complex process of reformulation of the classic paradigms of the left, producing a drastic change in thinking about the logic of social transformation in Latin America. With this shift the issues of strategic design and the transformational process began to undergo thorough debate. The theoretical tasks presented by the current development of Gramscian thought toward the construction of a comprehensive theory of hegemony include the classical political and cultural dimension and the productive dimension of hegemonic actions.