I have tried to begin this debate in other threads, but there has been no real response to it, so I am trying to get discussion going by beginning a thread. The purpose of this is to get some reasoned contributions to thought which address a controversial idea. I find this idea confronting and provocative, and I have not worked to the end of it yet. Treat my assertions as the bones of my hypothesis. (By hypothesis here, I mean a reasonable or apparently logical idea needing investigation.)
Gramsci, before Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, developed the concept of cultural hegemony. Following Lenin, who argued that the working class needed to develop its own emergent alternative hegemonic practices to combat the hegemony of the ruling class, Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony to formulate a strategy by which a revolutionary working class movement could be built (but it was never as coherent as Trotsky’s theory). Gramsci’s formulations, aided by Lukacs, preceded those of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, and found fertile soil in the radical student movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s as well as profoundly influencing a large portion of the academic establishment, in the UK at least (‘history from below,’ etc). This influence, I would argue, is now apparent across libertarian communist, anarchist and ultra-left circles. It has been assisted by the work of such people as Adorno and Marcuse, and other modern pioneers of the social sciences.
In Gramscian terms, the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie forms the accepted precepts by which society under capitalism lives – but these precepts and ways of doing things are not necessarily correct or infallible. Therefore, it is valid, in Leninist terms, to propose a counter-hegemony. It is valid to try to create a movement amongst people which challenges the dominant social ideas and structures.
This, then, is more than simply a call for eruptions of class warfare - it is the conscious building of a real movement. It is a theoretical formation which came out of the split in the Comintern (the Communist International) in 1921 when the ‘Theory of the Offensive’ (an insurrectionist stance supported by Bukharin and Zinoviev in Russia) was put into disrepute by Communist leaders, such as Trotsky, who then properly began working out the concept of ‘the United Front’ (which is basically a more coherent version of Gramsci’s war of manoeuvre and war of position). The formulation of concepts such as The United Front, and the War of Position and Manoeuvre, by both Gramsci and Trotsky, were part of the Comintern’s, and Lenin’s, attack on the Left Communists and Vulgar Marxists (the Economic Determinists).
Was it Lenin who really kicked off the whole arena of cultural theory? If so, then he did this in his rejection of economic determinism and in his attacks on those elements in the left who tried to preserve some faith in the creative potential of untutored workers. (Unfortunately, those leftists who had faith in workers never got far enough from Lenin theoretically to be able to develop their ideas into a truly negative critique of existing conditions. Their faith in workers was always as misplaced as the lie that they would never act on the behalf of others.)
Gramsci argues that in order for any social class to achieve dominance in society it must go beyond its economic interests. Therefore, the bourgeoisie have attained dominance not only through their control of economic factors, but also through control of cultural and intellectual factors. Gramsci suggests that through wars of manoeuvre and position (Trotsky’s United Front), and through the building of working class influence in all sectors, the revolution, aided by military conquest, can be won. How do Libertarian Communists escape this Gramscian logic in theory and in practice? Do they escape it, or is their distance from Leninism a delusion?
Is it the case that Libertarian Communists, Anarchists, Anarcho-Syndicalists and Ultra-Leftists adhere to the same principles: building a nascent working class hegemonic, or historical, bloc? Or do they adhere more to the incoherent praxis of the Left Communists and Vulgar Marxists, who were unable, in the final analysis, to oppose Leninism? Why were the oppositions to Leninism so weak? Why have these oppositions continued to be weak – even in the era in which Leninism in the West has been marginalised? Why do all the solutions of the Libertarian Communists, Anarchists and Ultra-Leftists seem to turn out to be Leninist? Is the problem something to do with continuing to offer solutions?
Libertarian Communists et al persist in promising the imminent end of capitalism, revealing its fatal flaws and cracks - ‘Its coming comrades, hold fast’ - and they persist in talking about winning, about building a movement, that will ‘win’. This is always just about to happen, or just around the corner. And yet, when one asks: so what is the plan? There is nothing really substantial, and those asked are quick to point out that they don’t actually have any blueprints. But didn’t they just say that capitalism was about to crash down and we were going to win? Is this still the essence of the weak theory which led so many good people to help set up the Leninist State?
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Did I just enter the libcom time machine?