Hegemony

The concept of hegemony comes predominantly from the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1889–1937), who was also a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy. As a university student, he became involved in the Italian labor movement and was arrested and incarcerated in 1926 for challenging Mussolini’s fascist control of Italy. Gramsci spent the next decade in prison, where his health steadily deteriorated. He died shortly after his release in 1937.

Gramsci struggled over the conflict between fascism and communism in Italy in the 1920s. Although he saw that his country was in a position to create a left-wing revolution, instead, the fascists conquered popular opinion by engaging with the everyday life of the working classes. In a period of great social, political, ...