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Commie Symp Rambling

The forced acceptance of a massive Muslim invasion; the gag order on the British press surrounding Tommy Robinson; European press compliance with whatever Brussels dictates; a 180-degree turn in the mass culture with respect to homosexual activity. Something sinister has been afoot . . . and probably has been for many years:

[C]ultural hegemony . . . describes how the state and ruling capitalist class ”“ the bourgeoisie ”“ use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. The bourgeoisie in Gramsci's view develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the "common sense" values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is therefore used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order. This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure.

That's from the Antonio Gramsci Wikipedia entry. I first ran across Gramsci in Kill All Normies and have found myself Googling him occasionally over the past few months. I've now begun to read a book about his life, thought, and legacy. His concept of cultural hegemony fascinates me.


I have a concept, half-baked at best, that Marx (and subsequent Marxists) offer cogent criticism. Their answers are terrible, to say the least, and they're normally awful people, but their diagnoses are worth listening to. I'm not "there" yet with respect to the concept, but at this point, I'm buying into it enough to continue to read Capital and now a biography about an Italian Communist thinker from the early 1900s. I have also subscribed to the Zero Books podcast (Zero Books is a Marxist publishing house . . . see this TDE post from last December).

Random Blurb from the Notebooks: I've written many times about the bruising dynamic that the State's power has on social power: as the State takes care of something, individuals don't take care of it, with the result that the voluntary association of individuals that marks a healthy society deteriorates. With 75 years of Socialism, Russia's society deteriorated completely. It's in tatters today. It's a great laboratory of State power for anyone who cares to as much as glance into the microscope. This fundamental truth can't be divorced from the market economy. It's no coincidence that the Marxist fixates on the economic: he knows that economic drives all else. If he can control the economy, he can control society . . . or at least destroy it, with the result that the State can make a stronger claim to its need for more power.

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