The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony
Perry Anderson, The H-Word: The Peripeteia of Hegemony (London and New York: Verso, 2017), 208 pp. $26.95.
In recent years scholars and activists have used the concept of hegemony to describe the cultural dominance of the ruling class, or a dominant idea in general. In this short but difficult book, Perry Anderson offers a global intellectual history of the many meanings, applications, and turning points in the use of hegemony as a theoretical tool. In the current climate of rising fascism and the growth of the socialist left, the interest in the concept of hegemony has also been on the rise. More generally hegemony has become equated with the cultural domination of a ruling group. However, more often than not, the concept of hegemony is divorced from any material or economic underpinnings. In academia, where it occupies a position that almost makes users of the concept targets of mockery, hegemony is used across a range of disciplines from international relations to gender studies. It emerges in discussions of social movement practice, cultural studies, and the power of states in international relations. Anderson explores all of these. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of his work is the breadth he must operate with in terms of history, disciplines, and geographic contexts beyond Marxist theory and beyond the continent of Europe. After all. As Anderson illuminates, hegemony has been associated with thinkers both before and after Antonio Gramsci.
Along with some other works that have attempted to clarify Gramscian concepts which include hegemony (Morton 2007; Thomas 2009). By focusing attention on the H-word: hegemony, Anderson makes a valuable contribution to this work and clarifies many misconceptions about the concept without defaulting to becoming another review of Gramsci.
Anderson begins by looking back to classical Greek usages of the term. Later in the work he uses classical Chinese political thought. One of the key points that the concept explores is the relationship between power and consent. The concept owes its most popular usage to debates surrounding economism within Russian revolutionary circles preceding the revolution of 1917. Here, gegemonia referred to the strategic necessity of uniting oppressed sectors of society under the leadership of the party. Anderson quotes Lenin, who states that, "from a proletarian point of view, hegemony in a war goes to he who fights most energetically, who never misses an opportunity to strike a blow at the enemy.” Referring to the need to maintain alliances and attack the ruling class on any front. But hegemony goes even further than that for Lenin and even includes the construction of a collective identity, that we might term social class, that can coalesce around the party in the struggle for liberation. From here Gramsci is exposed to the concept via its institutionalization in the Comintern. Anderson then points out that “Gramsci’s key move…"was to generalize it beyond a working class strategy to characterize stable forms of rule by any social class: in the first instance, and most notably, the very possessing class, landowners and industrialists, against whom the concept had been originally aimed" (19). This is a key aspect of Gramsci’s contribution, which aligns with the cultural dominance framework which is highly emphasized in discussions of Gramscian hegemony.
But this is a history of the concept that readers of this journal may be familiar with. Luckily, Anderson extends his analysis into political and social thought that may not be as comfortable of a space for some readers including this reviewer. In other words, he touched on how the concept is also used beyond the confines of Marxian theory in political thought and international relations. For example, the German legal scholar, Heinrich Triepel, was one of the first to use the concept to describe interstate relations characterized by consent rather than force. As Anderson explains, “For Triepel, hegemony was a type of power that lay between ‘domination’ and ‘influence’—hegemony was stronger than influence but weaker than domination” (31). In the next chapter, Anderson offers a slight critique of the historian, Ludwig, Dehio’s usage, referring to it as “A synonym that does no work.” This criticism is poignant in the particular, but this characterization may be used to describe a great deal of work that uses the concept. This could be explored more. For it could be argued that it applies to mainstream usage of hegemony in the social sciences and in critical work done by public intellectuals.
Overall. the crux of understanding hegemony and the differences in its usage lies in the nuanced way the exercise of power is discussed. Rule by coercion and consent are the two heads of hegemony. For example, in an especially interesting discussion of hegemony as it appears in Chinese political thought, the concept is used to describe different types of rulers. To show just how much historical and intellectual ground the work covers, Anderson, with the help of translation from collaborators, quotes Xunxi, writing in the 3rd century BCE, who states, “ A king seeks to acquire the right men. A hegemon seeks to acquire allies. A strongman seeks to acquire territory” (119).
The post-Marxist variant of hegemony also receives attention. Emerging during the cultural turn of the 1980s, scholars struggled to come to grasp with the seeming insignificance of class and the rise of identity politics. Perhaps legitimate leadership or “soft power” are other terms that might capture the base of the concept.
The H-Word is not a treatise on Gramsci and may not necessarily be the best place to look in terms of his use. Anderson’s (1976) classic New Left Review piece may be more suitable. Scholars and activists interested in how power is exercised in modern society will find Anderson’s work useful in that it also addresses the distinctions and nuances of hegemony as it applies to territorially bound societies and how it operates at the global level between and among nation-states. The work is especially geared toward people with expertise and some exposure to the concept. However, the work also challenges one to think beyond the utility they may get from the concept and acknowledge its long history and variation. In short, The H-Word is about power, specifically how hegemony has been used to describe that power.
Anderson, Perry. 1976. “The Antimonies of Antonio Gramsci.” New Left Review. 100(1).
Morton, Adam David. 2007. Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy. London: Pluto Press.
Thomas, Peter. 2009. The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism. Chicago: Haymarket.
Chris Hardnack
Cal State University San Marcos and National University
San Marcos, CA
chardnack@csusm.edu