Knowledge and the Impasse in Left Politics: Potentials and Problems in Social Movement Practice

Abstract

In the 1920s, in a context of historic transformations and of crisis and defeat on the left, Antonio Gramsci argued for the historically-specific character of hegemonic power and the need for the left to engage in historically-specific analysis. In the context of the rise of fascism in Italy, such analysis led Gramsci to distinguish between and strategically privilege a of over a of manoeuvre. The war of position is a long-term strategy aimed at the transformation of world views among the working class and poor majorities which would both erode tacit popular consent for the status quo and nurture essential cultural dispositions hospitable to socialism. This strategy both acknowledged the complex character of hegemonic power and its penetration of and reliance upon popular consciousness, and the intellectual capacities of ordinary people and the strategic primacy of engaging those capacities in the building of socialism.