The same consenting-adults principle is read abroad as false consciousness warranting coercion

Evidence

Hegemony is that state of “total social au thority” which, at certain specific conjunctures, a specific class alliance wins, by a combination of “coercion” and “consent,” over the whole social formation, and its dominated classes: not only at the economic level, but also at the level of political and ideological leadership, in civil, intellectual, and moral life as well as at the material level: and over the terrain of civil society as well as in and through the condensed relations of the state. This “authority and leadership” is, for Gramsci, not a given a priori but a specific historical “moment”—one of unusual social authority. It represents the product of a certain mastery of the class struggle, certainly, but it is still subject to the class struggle and the “relations of social forces” in society, of which its “unstable equilibrium” is only one, provisional, outcome or result. 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 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The same consent that legitimizes autonomy at home marks false consciousness abroad; Hegemony is rule achieved through consent rather than coercion — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 626; Mass culture deception is self-consenting misconception, not top-down manipulation — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 845 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Hegemony is rule achieved through consent rather than coercion #complicates (0.74) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 626