Hegemony and Marxism

            Hegemony is unavoidable for Marxism; it is either a strong reinforcement of Marx’s theories or a contradiction of them. In an important document, the Preface to A Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx wrote:
            The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
            This is the classic statement of historical materialism. Does not Gramsci’s notion of hegemony run flatly counter to Marx’s words? Gramsci himself, however, thought that his own ideas improved upon Marx rather than discredited him. He said that the materialism expressed in the words just quoted were not truly Marxist but ‘must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx.’ This dispute has never been definitively settled; Marxists in the USSR tended to follow the harsher view - that life is determined by material factors; Western Marxists have, on the whole, favored Gramsci’s view that ideas are at least equally important.
            Gramsci, has some very interesting theories about the role of intellectuals, both in revolutionary movements and in society in general. It is, also, fascinating to look at the many examples in History of groups or classes in societies who owe their power in whole or in part to their intellectual and moral superiority. One may think of the Catholic Church down the ages, and of priesthoods in general. There is the hegemony, up to recent times, in the USA of WASPs - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. There was the British culture in India under the Raj, and the ‘nomenklatura’ of the USSR.  Nomenklatura means a small elite group within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.
            Here are the basic differences between Gramsci’s hegemony and Marx’s marxism: Gramsci supports capitalism, while Marxism is basic theory of modern communism.  Also, Gramsci creates cultural hegemony theory as way to keep the sustainability of capitalism; while Marx thinks that capitalism makes the workers live miserably.

References
Englestad, F. (Ed.). (2003). Introductory chapter. In Power,culture,hegemony. Introduction to comparative social research (Vol. 21) . Oxford: Elsevier science. Retrieved January 15, 2008, from Institute for social research Web site