Gramsci's concept of hegemony: The Italian Church-Communist struggle

Abstract

Italy is simultaneously the world center of Roman Catholicism and the home of the largest Communist party in the non-Communist world, a paradox which has been widely noted but little understood. The struggle between the Church and the Communist (and before it the Socialist) Party has left its mark on Italian society, both in the national institutional context where, for example, the Church embraced Mussolini as its best defense against the 'red threat' and at the local level, where parish priests have expended millions of words railing against the secular forces of satan. Yet while this battle continues, the exact mechanisms which determine where people give their allegiance are only partially understood. In these pages the focus will be on just one theoretical aspect of this question, one which has implications far beyond the Italian peninsula: To what extent should people's loyalty to the Church and the Communist Party be conceived of in ideological terms as opposed to seeing these loyalties as outgrowths of more purely social processes? This question will be put in a broader perspective which is designed to depict the relative importance of ideology and social relations in determining people's political allegiances.