Antonio Gramsci, Hegemony, and the Greek Crisis: Building New Hegemony to Supersede Neoliberal Discourse (original) (raw)

Antonio Gramsci’s interpretation and analysis of “hegemony,” its mechanisms, causes and consequences for the Left, is fundamentally an attempt to grapple with how culture and the “common sense of the epoch” (Miliband, 1990) grow out of class society and impose their ontological structure on even those whose interests it opposes. Given the continued existence and deepening of class divisions in the 21st century, an understanding of Gramsci’s work may be even more of a critical project for the Left now than when it was first written. The terrain on which political battles are conducted may have shifted in a multitude of ways, not the least of which being the influence of counter-hegemonic movements outside of traditional class struggle, but much of the operative systems of both domination and resistance remain similar. In first outlining an interpretation of Gramsci’s thinking on the question of hegemony in relation to political praxis, and then investigating the case of Greece in the post-2008 reality, this paper demonstrates that the failure of the Syriza party to resist EU-imposed austerity can be used as an example of hegemony reasserting itself over a Left project. Seen in this way, the experience of Greece contains important lessons about the necessity for the forces of the Left to build a new hegemony so as to supersede the currently dominant neoliberal discourse.

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