Hegemonic rule substitutes protracted positional struggle for frontal assault on the state.

Evidence

Hegemony is a state of play in the class struggle which has, therefore, to be continually worked on and reconstructed in order to be maintained, and which remains a contradictory conjuncture. The important point, for Gramsci, is that, under hegemonic conditions, the organization of consent (by the dominated classes to the “leadership” of the dominant class alliance) takes precedence (though it does not obliterate) the exercise of domination through coercion. … In such conditions, the class struggle tends to assume the form, not of a “frontal assault” on the bastions of the state (“war of maneuver”) but of a more protracted, strategic, and tactical struggle, exploiting and working on a number of different contradictions (Gramsci’s “war of position”). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 626

Categorization

• XREF: The war of maneuver vs. war of position distinction maps onto Milgrom’s analysis of how institutions structure long-horizon cooperative strategies rather than one-shot confrontation. — connects to: Demand meanings get fixed only through hegemonic struggles over frontiers. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 266