Hegemony before Gramsci: The Case of Benedetto Croce

Hegemony before Gramsci: The Case of Benedetto Croce

Edmund E. Jacobitti Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Persons familiar with the thought of Antonio Gramsci will recall his celebrated idea of "culture" set out in Letteratura e vita nazionale: "But what does 'culture' mean in this case? Undoubtedly it means a coherent, unitary, nationally diffused 'conception of life and man,' a lay religion,' a philosophy that has become precisely a 'culture,' that is, it has generated an ethic, a way of life, a civil and individual conduct."

A "culture," in other words, provided the parameters within which the otherwise open-ended worlds of theory and practice were confined.

It was similar to what Vico in his Scienza nuova called "common sense." "Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entire nation, or the entire human race."


Common sense and culture were for Gramsci, as for Vico, the not so solid foundations on which nations rested. Without these foundations theory and practice came unhinged, flying off in separate directions, making behaviour unpredictable, and bringing the "un-heard of" on an equal footing with what was customary and traditional.

Without common sense the king would indeed have no clothes, and civil institutions hitherto armored in that common sense would crash down.

To Gramsci, however, "culture" and "common sense" consti-tuted not simply a defense against chaos but a major element in what he saw as the "hegemony" of the dominant class of society over the whole, an element of the "superstructure" used to shield society from the critical analysis of its opponents.

Far from sneering at this hegemony Gramsci had for it a singular appreciation, seeing there not only the defensive weapon of the middle class but an example, a model to be emulated in forging an offensive weapon for the proletariat.

In the notion of cultural hegemony Gramsci saw the power of an ethical-political atmosphere which, though supposedly serving the interests of only a single class, had come to be the common sense of the whole society.