go right back to Marx himself.
JOHN ROSS looks at how the concept of hegemony originated in the first writings of Marx.
MARX noted from his earliest writings that every revolution involyed an alliance. In the case of the French revolution commencing 1789, for example, the capitalist class united with the peasantry and working nobility and monarchy.
But the basis of this alliance was that the bourgeoisie, proletariat had real interests in common. Indeed one class can lead other social forces in a revolution precisely because it represents not only its own but also wider social interests. Marx's words:
"The class making a revolution comes forward from the very start. notas a class but as a representative of the whole of society, mass of society confronting the one ruling class.
Struggle *It can do this because initially its interest really is as yet most connected with the common interests of all other non-ruling classes."' This alliance is in fact necessary for victory. Because 'each class could actually overthrow its predecessors only by liberating the individuals of all classes from certain chains which had hitherto fettered them'.2 In order to engage victoriously in political struggle - and above all to make a revolution — a class necessartly must represent in struggle not merely itself but also interesis of society as a whole. Without representing such interests cannot power.
As Marx put it: 'No class of civil society can play awakening a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses: a moment in which this class fraternises and fuses with society in general, becomes identified with it and is experienced and acknowedged as 1t5 representative; a moment in which its claims and rights are truly the rights and claims of society which it is in reality the heart and head o1 socicly.
'Only in the name of the universal rights of society can a particular class lay claim to universal domination.3 A revolution, therefore, develops not in the crude, transparent and simple form of another' but through a process in which one class represents in a concentrated form all the development of develops alliances on that basis — and where another (ruling) represents the concentrated sion in a society. As Marx put it:
'Revolutionary spiritual self-confidence enough to storm peasants and In one's own sphere.
as the whole must universal self-liberation.
liberation par another overt oppression. '4 Strength applies dynamic of the situation Africa conquer somoza -the French monarchy leader of the nation:
of the French nobility universal clergy determined itself and in bourgeoisie."
A revolutionary Independence.
French bourgeois against progressive this. In Marx's words 'Liberalism, oppres- owners, not position of liberator and to ensure thereby the political exploitation of all the other spheres of society in the interests of 'If the revolution of a people and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society are to coincide, if one class is to stand for the whole of society, then all the deficiencies of society be concentrated in another class, one particular class must be the class which gives universal offence, the embodiement of a general limitation; one particular sphere of society mes tapola of socioto so that the so inal ine liberation of this sphere appears as 'If one class is to be the class of excellence, then must be the class of The above description - which beautifully the in South the struggie against - was exemplified for Marx, for example, in the French revolution - where the notorious oporession by feudal nobility allowed the French bourgeoisie to come forward as the 'The negative general significance and French the general significance of the class which stood class, merciore must necessarily put forward its goals as universal interests of society - d classic example of which is the ringing tones of the American Declaration of In the case of the revolution, the capitalist class proclaimed the right to private property not as a right of particular class but as a universal right — and furthermore the revolutionary bourgeoisie was prepared to act on Die liberal property the beginning of the French revolution gave private property a liberal appearance by declaring it one of the rights of man. They were forced to do so if only because of their position as a revolutionist party; they were compelled not only to give the mass of the French (rural) populaion the right to property, (but also to let them seize actual property."
More generally: 'each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to present its interests as common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality.
rising clas political power in order to express its interests as the general interests ol society: 'every class which is aiming at even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, leads to the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination in general, must first conquer political power in order to represent its interests in turn as the general interest."
members of the class engaged in the revolutionary struggle. A rising class can conquer only knowing that it is "The practical task of each newly emerging class was bound to appear to each of its members as a universal task, and when each class could actually overthrow its predecessor only by liberating the individuals of all classes from certain chains which had hitherto fettered them. most revolutionary class in history because its goals are necessarily not the liberation of one class, and the continuation of the oppression and liberation of the whole of humanity. Unlike all other ruling classes, the working class does not live on the exwith the working class is 'the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, SISLCLICO de Gal sentence that proletariat. '"
superiority of individual workers but from the nature of the proletariat as a class. 'It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole of the proletariat, regards as its aim. It is a question of conquer what the proletariat is, and what, nancha se r the vanguard fighter for humanity. It is on this basis that the working class nothing to do with empty sentimenvanguard of humanity, is precisely the guardian of all progressive conquests seeds of what is to come in the future.
won its historic significance as the the most valuable achievements of the bourgeois epoch, it has, on the coneverything of value in the more than two thousand years of the developAgain in Lenin's words, in his famous What is to be Done, workers are trained to respond to all work, 'the Marxist ideal should not be degrees today. and which makes it pro. The proletariat executes the Guevara or a private property proitself by producing the humanistic. achievements This role flows not from the moral at the momen with this being, the black 14 The working class i that degree, capital. society.
(4) MEEW, ) MECW MECH MECW (10)
(12) MEEW (I2) Lenin In terms of agitation and political (16) Lenin, (17) Lenin, tion; Engel's constant work in sup port of the struggle of Ireland for independence from Luxem burg's condemnation of the deatt penalty; Lenin's support for nationa self-determination; Lenin's demand for land to the peasnats; the Communist International's call 'workers and oppressed nations of the world unite' all embody that approach.
Inspiration It is also easy to see the forces with mass appeal that embody, to different such a hegemonic approach When a Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop, a Malcolm X, a Che Tomas Borge explain the goals of their struggle they do so in a terminology which sometimes seers Sher spheir retoluien, their revolution their class or their race in terms of "human dignity', or 'national liberty' - not in terms of meeting outputs on steel quotas or purely wage demands But this is not populism - as the accusations sometimes runs. In a na oppressed by imperialism the working class must literally 'place itself at the head of the nation'. A decisive part of the liberation of humanity is to free rom 2,500 ypas of domination b of the white Europe and its offshoots. The tremendous international impact of the women's movement is equally a revolt of the majority of humanity which will continue develop long after the working class has taken power.
Unless the working class champions every single one of these strug gles it is not a hegemonic class but, to La pitiful plaything In Lenin's phrase Working class consciousness cannot be genuine consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to al of tyranny, oppression violence, and abuse, no matter wha class is affected.' That, and only that, is the basis o! the potential of the working class to become a ruling class - that is io become the real hegemonic class o (1) Marx and Engels, Collected Works (MECW), Vol 5, p60. (2) MECW, Vol 5, p29( (3) Marx and Engels, Early Works (MEEW), Penguin edition, p.254.
Vo MECI Vol 4, p36 Vol 4, p37. (13) MEEW, D257. (14) Lenin, Collected Works (CW), Vol 31. p317 Vol 5, p412.
CW Vol 5, 042: cW Vol 5, p323
Socialist Action 6 September 1985
----- pull-quotes -----
historically be compelled to do.!, Will Victory