第5章 Abstract
Gramsci's interpretation of hegemony is based on the dialectic dynamics be-tween cultural hegemony and cultural leadership, aiming at revealing the decep-tive capitalist cultural hegemony in disguise of common sense, leading to the theoretical construction of proletariats' cultural leadership. To gramsci, it was the Italian Communist Party's(ICP)underestimation of the erosive influences of fascist cultural hegemony which led to its consequent loss of military and political hegemony.
How can a communist party fight against capitalist cultural hegemony? The answer provided by Gramsci is to cultivate a "troop" of organic intellectuals, a-dopting the so-called "war of position" in the civil society for the purpose of in-fluencing the value systems of the mass, articulating the needs of different classes and obtaining active consent of the people, buliding the cultural leadership of communist parties.
Gramsci's theory is not perfect. He overemphasized the function of culture and ideology to such an extent that he found himself trapped in an ambivalent i-dealist tendency. The proposal of "war of positions" is simplified and idealized. Moreover, pinning the hope of revolution on so-called "organic intellectuals" signifies an elitist way of thinking. In the modern age, the realistic significance of "war of positions" is more about instructing a ruling party how to maintain its cultural leadership. Hoping for a non-ruling party to obtain leadership by war of position is no longer of much validity.
In general, Gramsci's thoughts on cultural hegemony are still a great inno-vation and development of Marxism. He soberly criticized the mainstream me-chanical materialist tendency in the 1930's and commenced the research on ide-ology by Western Marxists, hence enjoying a unique historical status on the de-velopment of Marxist Philosophy.
Firstly, his cultural perspective on leadership and power had made the theo-retical construction of political power more three-dimensional and complete, marking the staring-point of the criticism of capitalist culture by Western Marx-ists. Secondly, Gramsci rightfully acknowledged the constructive materialistic function of ideology, subverting the traditional Marxist conception of the false and deceptive nature of ideology. His theory had enlightened communist parties to purposefully build their own ideological discourse, serving to link different in-terest groups. Thirdly, Gramsci sensitively caught the fundamental extension of capitalist State power structure to the civil society. He in time revised the tradi-tional Marxist conception of the State, acknowledging the strategic significance of Civil Society and "war of positions" to hegemony. Fourthly, Gramsci's theo-ry on "organic intellectuals" link the cross-class identity chain of "the working class-the professional elites-the science and technology experts-organic intellec-tuals" , tracing the origin of intellectual hegemony to the real world of produc-tion. Lastly, Gramsci had widened the applicability of cultural hegemony theory to the power structures of the Capitalist State, showing the down-to-earth and courageous spirit of a real Marxist, making a decisive break from so-called "or-thodox Marxism" . His objective analysis of the cultural hegemony structure of the Capitalist State had brought profound insights to Marxists of later days, pre-venting proletariats to wait blindly for a predestined revolution, calling on people to look for a more realistic path of gaining hegemony from inside the capitalist societies.
The construction of cultural hegemony requires the systemic support of eco-nomic hegemony, political hegemony, military hegemony and discourse hegem-ony. If cultural hegemony is compared to a living organism, then economic he-gemony shall function metaphorically as its circulatory system, political hegemo-ny as the nervous system, military hegemony as the skeleton system and dis-course hegemony as the respiratory system. Out of these four types of hegemo-nies, the particular research interest of this thesis concentrates on the construc-tion routes of discourse hegemony.
After Gramsci, Juergen Habermas had attempted to reach the rule of fair law, social solidarity and social consensus by procedural deliberation and negotia-tive discourse. However, his discourse ethics follows a closed and self-circulat-ing chain of "reason-moral consensus-intersubjectivity-justice discourse-com-municative reason-social norms" , characterized by an over-optimistic expecta-tion of individual rationality and collective rationality. Moreover, a hidden elitist view could be detected in his theory which likewise failed to account for the dis-course qualification dilemma of the underprivileged social classes.
Similarly, Laclau and Mouffe also regarded discourse as a revolutionary strategy of cultivating proletariat hegemony. To them, the cultivation of cultural hegemony is a process of developing "discourse equivalent chains" in open space. As floating signifiers, discourse symbols create merging space for the ex-pansion of discourse sites and the articulation of discourse, serving as the univer-salizing prerequisite of articulating different political stands of the left-wing politi-cal parties. However, by their criticism of essentialism, Laclau and Mouffe com-pletely erased the existence of social classes and the function of economic factors, exaggerating the constructive functions of discourse, misunderstanding the thoughts of Gramsci.
This book hence proposes an innovative WWWH discourse hegemony the-ory, advocating the "Who, What, Where and How" as four dimensions of a discourse route for constructing cultural leadership. "Who" is about the recog-nition of various discourse subjects in a given society, with the leading bloc as an abstract subject, the organic intellectuals as boundary guardians and the mass who need discourse qualification and discourse motivation to be truly participative. The so-called "What" dimension is about the content of discourse, which va-ries according to different discourse subjects. The leading bloc's discourse con-tent is dichotomized into domestic policy discourse and foreign policy discourse. Organic intellectuals.discourse contents also vary according to different audi-ences. The contents of mass discourse should mainly consist of expression, pro-test, supervision and freedom of regime choice. "Where" refers to discourse sites, including traditional media and new media discourse sites. "How" is a-bout the adoption of effective discourse strategy. The leading bloc is advised to use "dialogic contraction" and "dialogic expansion" while organic intellectuals and the mass are advised to adopt rhetorical devices such as simile, metaphor, pun and euphemism.
To test the validity of WWWH discourse leadership theory, this book compares the cases of "non-interference" discourse of Chinese government and "neutrality" discourse of Swiss government. Results are the contents of Chinese government "non-interference" discourse lack sufficient description of national identity and deconstruction of international political "hidden rules" . As of dis-course subjects, the Chinese government has been able to maintain its abstract subjectivity and discourse coherence, but Chinese organic intellectuals haven't been able to implement their status of international discourse subjects because of language problems. The Chinese government has started to spend efforts on cul-tivating traditional and new media international discourse sites, but still has a long way to go. In the aspect of discourse strategy, Chinese government uses "dialogic contraction" extensively, but rarely touching on "dialogic expan-sion" . It uses "we, our, they, them" substantively but neglects the usage of first and second person singular pronouns to shorten communication gap. Be-cause of the above-mentioned deficiencies in the four dimensions of WWWH theory, the Chinese government's international cultural leadership is barely estab-lished. It needs to mend the above-mentioned deficiencies in order to construct the international cultural leadership.
Regarding discourse contents, the "neutrality" discourse of Swiss govern-ment reflects a rupture of national identity and the secretive violation of interna-tional rules. Regarding discourse subjects, the Swiss government has maintained its abstract subjectivity and discourse coherence, but failing to match its discourse with deeds. Consequently the WWWH theory about discourse subjects needs to be revised, changing "discourse coherence" paradigm into "discourse and deeds coherence" paradigm. Discourse pressures from "inorganic intellectuals" have prevented Swiss organic intellectuals from exercising their status of major dis-course subjects. Besides the role of "boundary guardians" , organic intellectuals should also take upon the role of "sub-hegemony" reminder. Swiss citizens.dis-course subject status is well-ensured by their discourse qualifications and dis-course motivations. Yet an extra dimension of mass "discourse differentiating a-bility" should be added to the WWWH discourse subject theory to be able to explain the Swiss case. As of discourse sites, the Swiss government has long neg-lected the English language media, both traditional and new media. About dis-course strategies, it is only in favor of "dialogic contraction" and ignores "dia-logic expansion" . It merely uses "we, us" in its "neutrality" discourse, seem-ingly avoiding the use of "they, them" to save antagonizing hegemonic coun-tries. Because of the above problems with four dimensions of WWWH theory, the Swiss government's international cultural leadership is also barely established, at best a implicit cultural sub-hegemony insecurely maintained by compromises to hegemonic countries.
After temporary possession of cultural hegemony, a ruling party should still bear in mind constantly the possibilities of its alienations. The achievement and maintenance of cultural leadership is a dynamic process. If a ruling party relies solely on coercive state apparatuses and neglects the development of civil society, then its core value system won't be able to penetrate the "Counter Hegemony Boundary" (CHB), consequently leading to the alienation of leadership into dictator hegemony. Conversely, when there is smooth transition within the ide-ological transmission chain of "ruling party-coercive state apparatuses-civil socie-ty-individuals" , then the ruling party can achieve cultural leadership temporari-ly. But a "Preventive Rationality Boundary(PRB)" is still needed to prevent second alienation of cultural leadership. In international political and cultural ex-changes, a further "Anti-phagocytosis Dual Boundaries(ADBs)" is needed to avert ideological invasion from hegemonic countries, causing the triple alienation of cultural leadership. This transition from CHB to PRB and then to ADBs con-stitutes the EB123 theory proposed by this research, a novel interpretation of Gramsci's hegemony theory.
In a nutshell, this book follows a theoretical path of "approaching Gramsci, analyzing Gramsci and transcending Gramsci" , aiming to further enrich and ex-tend Gramsci's thoughts by proposing the WWWH theory and EB123 theory, subsequently applying the theories to the case studies of China's "non-interfer-ence" discourse and Switzerland's "neutrality" discourse. In an effort to devel-ope Gramsci's theory in the context of contemporaty socialist society, I have at-tempted to bring forth a combination of both Western and Chinese Marxism re-search, expecting to be of reference value to the cultivation of cultural hegemo-ny for contemporary communist parties.