There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1. the Republican model, in which an "aestheticized" politics is promoted (in this case, it's the "aesthetics" of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2. the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is "bad pragmatism" and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Docudharma)

This is a review of Charles Derber’s (2005) book Hidden Power, a progressive problem-solution book offering advice to the Democratic Party about how to conduct "regime change" in America.  Derber is uninformed in certain ways, but his advice ought to be heeded, especially as regards expanding the realm of "people power" in American politics.  Derber brings a Gramscian reading of the American political situation to his political advice, and this makes said advice stronger and more practical.

This post-2006-election period may be an ideal time to rehabilitate Antonio Gramsci’s concept of a "war of position."  Until last year’s election, arguably, the "war of position" in American politics was the property of the Right, whose plans for extending what Gramsci called "hegemony" were well-organized.  The Left, on the other hand, felt obliged as a group to line up behind politicians who appealed to the "swing vote," thus conceding the war of position in order to gain political office.  After last-year’s election, I argue, a space within American politics has been opened for the Left to re-enter the "war of position."  Through Carl Davidson and Jerry Harris' piece on "Globalization, Theocracy, and the New Fascism" in Race & Class, I summarize Gramsci's position on how politics builds upward from philosophy and culture.  We ought to be following this strategy, I argue.

Cross-posted from Patterns That Connect

Although somewhat complicated, and somewhat debated, I like to put the concept of hegemony in a nutshell as "a dominant ideology in drag as a common sense."  It’s a very stripped-down way of putting it, but I think it suits our times. The concept is important precisely because it covers so much, and points to a common functionality across a wide range of topics and issues—the whole range of dominant ideology, and the opposing views it seeks to render as more or less "unthinkable," as readily dismissable at the very least.

In this installment of my "Hegemony is the Enemy" series, I’ll delve a bit deeper into the concept to justify that description, while providing enough information to draw other conclusions as well.