Antonio Gramsci and the Reinfiltration of Culture

Antonio Gramsci was a Marxist with a twist. His twist--a brilliant insight, actually--is something conservatives should be studying since it was the ideological basis for the wildly successful cultural revolution that American society underwent in the 1960s.

You can get the details of Gramsci's life here if you like. Being a Marxist meant several things: Economically, it meant he was a communist, hoping for a utopia where all material needs were met by holding all means of production in common (no private property). Being a Marxist also meant Gramsci was implicitly a materialist, meaning that empirical matter was the only reality (i.e., no afterlife). This makes the quest for an earthly utopia the highest good, one that justifies all means undertaken to attain it. (Compare the frightening devotion of al-Qaeda, an aspect that liberals fear without distinction in all persons of religion.)

Gramsci's insight was characteristic of Western Marxism's focus on political and cultural issues: namely, that the worldwide economic Revolution had not taken hold in the West because of the strength there of non-economic ideologies. Some of the non-economic ideologies that resisted communism were:

1. Theism, including a belief in an afterlife where we are judged;

2. A morality that holds immaterial goods higher than material ones -- that the good of giving, for example, is more beneficial to man than the acquisition of material goods.

3. A view of human dignity that respected individuals enough to leave them in charge of the material goods they produced, even while calling them to better themselves by the act of giving to their fellow man.

Ask yourself how prevalent these are in our society today, or how comfortable you would feel talking about them out loud, and you will see the success of the cultural revolution. Antonio Gramsci's insightful twist on Marxism was that these ideologies were in fact hindering communism by being so entrenched. He called this "cultural hegemony."

So Gramsci came up with a plan.

Quite simply, the plan was that in order to prepare Western society for the economic revolution of communism, communists needed first to focus on reversing these important, indeed characteristic Western concepts. In other words, communists needed to undermine the ideological basis for Western morality, and really for Western Civilization. In this way Gramsci is the true father of the cultural revolution in the West, because it was Gramsci that called for a conscious, deliberate, "infiltration" of the institutions of civil society (as opposed to political society) that strengthen, promote, and pass on (the meaning of the word tradition) these important Western ideals. We know it worked: the educational system has been so masterfully taken over, and those vital Western ideals are therefore not being passed on. Even more, the literature and agenda of the National Education Adminstration make it the strongest, most obvious modern-day standard-bearer of Gramscian ideology. The cultural and moral achievements of Western civilization have been not refuted, but replaced nonetheless.

What should conservatives take from the study of Gramsci? Two things, at least:

1) It means we must beware of focusing too much on process, to the neglect of the personal. Gramsci drew a clear distinction between political society and civil society, and his liberal ideological heirs have understood and assimilated its significance far better than conservatives. To wit: the anti-abortion movement's number one goal is one of (political) process -- overturning Roe v. Wade -- while things like presidential election losses are counted the biggest setbacks. Meanwhile liberals are famous for being "community organizers" and address their propaganda more successfully to the average working guy--Joe the Plumber notwithstanding. (I use the term propaganda impartially, since our side needs to use propaganda better: more on this in another post.)

If there is one thing I took with me from my years in the Legion of Mary, and keep to this day, it is an appreciation for personal contact. We cannot simply reason our way to a society that sees the evils of things like abortion, since it is not mainly reason that has led people astray; the rationalization comes after the decision has already been made in most cases. Nor can we have any hope of ultimate victory at the level of president, congress, supreme court, or anything else, as long as the society that keeps electing them (or those who appoint them) continues on the path it is on.

McCain in his concession speech was right: the American people did speak clearly in the 2008 election. Which means the next step isn't just to try and win another election, but to educate and convince the people. This is a difficult challenge, to be sure, but it is exactly the one that Gramsci's followers faced, which leads me to the second thing conservatives should learn from Gramsci.

2) We must plan to infiltrate the institutions of civil society that now maintain "cultural hegemony" in favor of the Left. As Gramsci's people did before them, we should try to encourage conservatives in large numbers that if they are serious about fighting the culture war, they should keep their heads down and their mouths shut until they are actually in charge of schools, newspapers, film companies. And not just versions of these things that barely, technically count, but ones in the mainstream.

This is an ambitious plan, and I don't know if it will ever happen, mainly because the various groups of conservatives are so frustratingly difficult to unite (look at how many anti-abortion and pro-life groups there are, all following their own strategies with no coordination with the others--what a waste of resources!) In fact it has been tried in part in the past, but failed usually because it was executed in a crude, obvious, or harsh manner. But the more we are willing to adopt strategies that work, in ways that are tailored to a truly understood target audience, the more we will truly do justice to the causes we say we wish to fight for.