Hegemony explains class rule as cultural and political sway, not just economic interest

Evidence

Here we have in mind Gramsci’s development of the political instance, and the critical (if often provisional and cryptic) concepts he elaborates there of “relations of force,” hegemony, historical bloc, corporate and subaltern classes, class fractions, Caesarism, Bonapartism, etc. Once again, in Gramsci’s concept of “hegemony,” for example, we discover the beginnings of a way of conceptualizing how classes, constituted at the fundamental level of production relations, come to provide the basis of the social authority, the political sway and cultural domination of a “class alliance on behalf of capital,” without reducing the idea to what Marx once called the “dirty-Jewish” question of class interest, narrowly conceived. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 527

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s concept of hegemony as authority and cultural domination wielded by a class alliance on behalf of capital, not merely narrow economic interest.
• XREF: Connects to general discussions of cultural hegemony in critical theory and foundations Hall builds his essays on.

Related

• Hegemony is achieved by more than mere class dominance (similarity 0.91)
• Cultural domination has real effects without being all-powerful or all-inclusive (similarity 0.90)
• A class becomes hegemonic when its elite transcends narrow corporate interests (similarity 0.90)
• Hegemony explains class domination without reducing it to narrow class-interest exposure. (similarity 0.89)
• Hegemony is not equivalent to ideological domination. (similarity 0.88)
• Dominant culture operates as an active process of incorporation, not static ideology (similarity 0.86)
• Hegemony is coercion combined with consent, won and perpetually reconstructed through class struggle. (similarity 0.85)
• Gramsci’s hegemony concept treats power as non-coercive and culture-based, not class-direct (similarity 0.85)
• Hegemony requires economic leadership, not just compromise concessions (similarity 0.85)
• Hegemony as a term blocks reductive class-domination readings of political formations (similarity 0.85)
• Dominance is maintained through unstable equilibria that concede some subordinate interests (similarity 0.84)
• Ruling class hegemony is secured through cultural and ideological leadership across civil society (similarity 0.84)
• Hegemony is an unstable equilibrium never certain of success (similarity 0.84)
• Hegemony in Gramsci’s later work becomes a general analytic concept applicable to all classes. (similarity 0.84)
• Cultural hegemony operates as a shifting balance of power, never pure victory or domination (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Capitalism reproduces itself by drawing civil and cultural life into conformity with its needs #expands (0.80)
• Racial ideology functions as a labor discipline for capital #exemplifies (0.75)
• Cultural domination shapes working-class perception without fully occupying the mind #expands (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1006
• Culture acquires class meaning only through present political struggle #qualifies (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1021