Lenin built the doctrine of hegemony to supplement a force-based theory of the state.

Evidence

For Gramsci’s more usual use of this important concept, see especially MS. pp. 201-2: “Croces* thought must therefore, at the very least, be appreciated as an instrumental value. Thus it can be said that he has drawn attention energetically to the importance of cultural and intellectual facts in historical development; to the function of great intellectuals in the organic life of civil society and the State; to the moment of hegemony and consent as a necessary form of the concrete historical bloc. That this is not something ‘futile’ is proved by the fact that, contemporaneously with Croce, the greatest modern theoretician of the philosophy of praxis [Lenin], on the terrain of political struggle and organisation and with a political terminology, gave new weight in opposition to the various ‘economist’ tendencies to the front of cultural struggle, and constructed the doctrine of hegemony as a complement to the theory of the State-as-force, and as the present form of the Forty-Eightist doctrine of ‘permanent revolution’. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1869

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Gramsci’s hegemony from mere ‘direction’, positioning it as consent-based leadership complementing state coercion.
• XREF: Feeds forward into the Islamophobia toolkit’s need for a hegemony/common-sense concept distinct from simple dominance.