Hegemony

Writing from prison during the 1920s, Gramsci compared two Marxist notions of social control: domination, direct physical coercion of the people by state institutions like the police, army, and law in political society; and hegemony, ideological control through the production of consent by unions, schools, churches, families, and so on in civil society. Civil institutions, Gramsci thought, incalculated in people an entire system of values, beliefs, and morality that he found supportive of the established order and its dominating classes. Workers identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie and  helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting. Hegemony is a worldview diffused through socialization into every area of daily life that, when internalized, becomes "common sense." Hegemony mystifies power relations, camouflages the causes of public issues and events, encourages fatalism and political passivity, and justifies the deprivation of the many so that few can live well. Hegemony works to induce oppressed people to consent to their own exploitation and misery.

In his concept of "American Fordism" Gramsci explored the development of a new kind of hegemonic regime in which trade unions would be subdued, workers would be offered a higher real standard of living, and the ideological legitimation of this new kind of capitalism would be embodied in cultural practices and social relations extending far beyond the workplace. More simply, Fordist capitalism might achieve institutional stability through the achievement of willing consent (keeping people happy) through mass consumption.

Revolutionary political transformation, Gramsci said, was not possible without a crisis of ideological hegemony--changes in civil as well as political society. Socialist movements, Gramsci concluded, had to create "counter-hegemony" to break ideological and cultural bonds and penetrate the false world of appearances as a prelude to the making of new ideas and values conducive to human liberation (Gramsci 1971 ed.; Boggs 1976).
(Peet & Hartwick, 2009)