Cultural hegemony

Historical In 1848, Karl Marx proposed that the economic recessions and practical contradictions of a capitalist economy would provoke the working class to proletarian revolution, depose capitalism, restructure social institutions (economic, political, social) per the rational models of socialism, and thus begin the transition to a communist society. Therefore, the dialectical changes to the functioning of the economy of a society determine its social superstructures (culture and politics). Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, argued in his book Problems of Everyday Life, that capitalism was long established in Western Europe, the proletariat of those societies were much more culturally acculturated with bourgeois habits and reformist traditions and hence more attached to the existing system. Consequently, this in turn made the revolutionary process in those respective countries more difficult. Nevertheless, Trotsky argued that due to the cultural and economic advantages that Western Europe had accumulated over centuries that this in turn would make the potentiality of socialist construction more achievable. To that end, Antonio Gramsci proposed a strategic distinction between the politics for a war of position and for a war of manœuvre. The war of position is an intellectual and cultural struggle wherein the anti-capitalist revolutionary creates a proletarian culture whose native value system counters the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie. The proletarian culture will increase class consciousness, teach revolutionary theory and historical analysis, and thus further develop revolutionary organisation among the social classes. After winning the war of position, socialist leaders would then have the necessary political power and popular support to realise the war of manœuvre, the political praxis of revolutionary socialism. Political economy Marxist philosophy holds that a society's dominant ideology reflects the interests, values, and beliefs of the ruling class. According to Gramsci, the ruling class achieves its ideological dominance through socializing the people with its beliefs, values, and mores through institutions including churches, media, courts, and schools. ==Intelligentsia==

To perceive and combat ruling-class cultural hegemony, the working class and the peasant class depend upon the moral and political leadership of their native intelligentsia, scholars, academics, and teachers, scientists, philosophers, administrators et al. from their specific social classes; thus Gramsci's political distinction between the intellectuals of the bourgeoisie and the intellectuals of the working class, respectively, the men and women who are the proponents and the opponents of the cultural status quo: ==After Gramsci==

, a leader of the German student movement, the "68er-Bewegung", said that changing the bourgeois society of West Germany required a long march through the society's institutions, in order to identify and combat cultural hegemony. German student movement In 1967, regarding the politics and society of West Germany, the leader of the German Student Movement, Rudi Dutschke, applied Gramsci's analyses of cultural hegemony using the phrase the "Long March through the Institutions" to describe the ideological work necessary to realise the war of position. The allusion to the Long March (1934–35) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army indicates the great work required of the working-class intelligentsia to produce the working-class popular culture with which to replace the dominant ideology imposed by the cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie. The ideological state apparatuses (ISA) are the sites of ideological conflict among the social classes of a society; and, unlike the military and police forces, the repressive state apparatuses (RSA), the ISA exist as a plurality throughout society. Despite the ruling-class control of the RSA, the ideological apparatuses of the state are both the sites and the stakes (the objects) of class struggle, because the ISA are not monolithic social entities, and exist amongst society. As the public and the private sites of continual class struggle, the ideological apparatuses of the state (ISA) are overdetermined zones of society that are composed of elements of the dominant ideologies of previous modes of production, hence the continual political activity in: • the religious ISA (the clergy) • the educational ISA (the public and private school systems) • the family ISA (patriarchal family) • the legal ISA (police and legal, court and penal systems) • the political ISA (political parties) • the company union ISA • the mass communications ISA (print, radio, television, internet, cinema) • the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sport, etc.) The parliamentary structures of the State, by which elected politicians exercise the will of the people also are an ideological apparatus of the State, given the State's control of which populations are allowed to participate as political parties. In itself, the political system is an ideological apparatus, because citizens' participation involves intellectually accepting the ideological "fiction, corresponding to a 'certain' reality, that the component parts of the [political] system, as well as the principle of its functioning, are based on the ideology of the 'freedom' and 'equality' of the individual voters and the 'free choice' of the people's representatives, by the individuals that 'make up' the people". ==See also==