Hegemony as power and opportunity

Among other things, Perry Anderson takes us back to ancient Greece, to the Russian Revolution, to Germany in the years 1848 – 1849, to fascist Italy, to Nazi Germany, to Maoist China, to conditions under Thatcher's England, to the EU government. under Angela Merkel and to Bush and Obama's USA.

Anderson is a Marxist theorist, who has written the books, among other things American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, The Indian Ideology og Considerations on Western Marxism. This book is about hegemonyconcept. What does it mean, and how can one find examples of hegemony throughout history?

The term peripeteia in the title of the book signifies a crucial turn in a developmental phase – the turning point often found in classical literature, for example in King Ødipus. i The H-Word represents peripeteia a hopeful belief in a possible future-
urge on the world domination and hegemony of the United States over other states.

Greek origin and Gramsci. Hegemony as a term is widely used in the study of international relations and in political science – without there being any consensus on the exact meaning of the term. It is originally Greek, and in its specific sense it means "to lead" or "to guide."

An important development of the concept of hegemony is often associated with the Italian thinker, politician and philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). He was a socialist, not a Marxist, and for him meant hegemony a very critical attitude to classical Marxist theory – which, in his opinion, placed too much emphasis on the underpinning, that is, the influence of the economy on culture. Gramsci himself put more emphasis on the superstructure – law, politics, religion, art and philosophy. According to Marx, however, these were determined by the substructure; culture thus had no intrinsic impetus, but was shaped by the economic structures of society.

Anderson believes a counter-hegemony must be created to today's "global hegemony" of the United States.

Gramsci, on the other hand, understood hegemony as a cultural phenomenon, and believed that socialists must wage a protracted war on the ruling class – by building a counter-hegemonic political-cultural bloc to replace the bourgeois power block. Consequently, Gramsci was more concerned with the development of labor councils and trade unions than with class struggle, and wanted to develop a healthy working democracy. Among other things, he thought this could happen through the use of hegemonic "appliances", for example the mass media. In other words, it was important to use the hegemonic means in a politically efficient way.

Triple vs. Gramsci. If hegemony simply means power, what does this do with relations between states? In 1938, following Hitler-Germany's takeover of Sudetenland, the leading German lawyer Heinrich Triepel wrote the book The Hegemonye. A book of leading states. Triepel was politically the complete opposite of Gramsci – a loyal monarchist during the Second Reich, and he welcomed the Third Reich as an expression of a "legal revolution".

For Triepel, hegemony was something that was stronger than influence, but weaker than domination; for Gramsci it was stronger than both domination and influence. Gramsci emphasized the relationship between classes within one state, while Triepel emphasized the domination and power of states over other states. And Triepel cultivated the myth of Germany's eternal hegemony, which meant eternal, violent and oppressive domination.

Gramsci's understanding of hegemony was that it was a central system of social practice, and a system of exchange of opinions at a deeper level than any political ideology could reach. Social structures must be constantly renewed, redefined, discussed and defended, according to Gramsci. Just keeping power is not enough, because then you often have to practice violence. Some believe that during the heyday of the Roman Empire, and the Nazi regime, people were seduced by rituals and ceremonies, and thus derived from the ongoing violence – the underlying assumption is that people will not tolerate violence if confronted too violently and directly with it.

Hegemony and domination. According to Anderson, the problems arise when hegemony becomes pure domination, as examples have been seen through US foreign policy after World War II. As the United States evolved into the world's only superpower, several thinkers – including Robert Cox – introduced the concept global hegemony. Cox defined this as a state-expanding national hegemony that is both capable of securing itself internally, and willing to expand and dominate outward – just as the United States acts today.

Anderson is very critical of the awarding of the Peace Prize to Barack Obama. He saw this as an expression of cultural hegemony, which is also expressed through the globalization of capital forces. Anderson writes: "The price itself, a million dollars in cash and an endless increase in publicity, belongs exclusively to transnational consumption in a commercial celebrity culture."

What needs to be done, according to Anderson? Yes, a counter-hegemony must be created. And then Gramsci is a useful thinker to use.