Inventing the Future by Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams

Author:Nick Srnicek & Alex Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

ENGINEERING CONSENT

The idea of ‘hegemony’ initially emerged as a way of explaining why ordinary people were not revolting against capitalism.7 According to the traditional Marxist narrative, workers would become increasingly aware of the exploitative nature of capitalism and eventually organise to transcend it. Capitalism, it was believed, ought to be producing an ever more polarised world of capitalists versus the working class, in a process that underpinned a political strategy in which the organised working class would win control over the state through revolutionary means. But by the 1920s it was clear that this was not about to happen in western European democratic societies. How was it, then, that capitalism and the interests of the ruling classes were secured in democratic societies largely devoid of overt force? The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci answered that capitalist power was dependent on what he termed hegemony – the engineering of consent according to the dictates of one particular group. A hegemonic project builds a ‘common sense’ that installs the particular worldview of one group as the universal horizon of an entire society. By this means, hegemony enables a group to lead and rule over a society primarily through consent (both active and passive) rather than coercion.8 This consent can be achieved in a variety of ways: the formation of explicit political alliances with other social groups, the dissemination of cultural values supporting a particular way of organising society (for example, the work ethic instilled by the media and through education), the alignment of interests between classes (for example, workers are better off when a capitalist economy is growing, even if this means mass inequality and environmental devastation) and through building technologies and infrastructures in such a way that they silently constrain social conflict (for example, by widening streets to prevent the erection of barricades during insurrections). In a broad and diffuse sense, hegemony enables relatively small groups of capitalists to ‘lead’ society as a whole, even when their material interests are at odds with those of the majority. Finally, as well as securing active and passive consent, hegemonic projects also deploy coercive means, such as imprisonment, police violence and intimidation, to neutralise those groups that cannot otherwise be led.9 Taken together, these measures enable small groups to influence the general direction of a society, sometimes through the achievement and deployment of state power, but also outside the confines of the state.

The latter point is particularly important, because hegemony is not just a strategy of governance for those in power, but also a strategy for the marginal to transform society. A counter-hegemonic project enables marginal and oppressed groups to transform the balance of power in a society and bring about a new common sense. To abjure hegemony therefore implies an abandonment of the basic idea of winning and exercising power, and is to effectively give up on the primary terrain of political struggle.10 While there are some on the left who explicitly endorse such a position,11 to the degree that horizontalist movements have been successful they have tended to operate as a counter-hegemonic force.

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