Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)

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As a theory of power, hegemony has to some extent, fallen out of favour. Among many scholars of neoliberalism in particular, hegemony has been seen as too simplistic a framework for analysis, relying on Marxist politico-economic factors and top-down domination. As Gilbert and Williams argue, however, Gramsci’s ideas can be understood as more nuanced than being about pure domination and lend themselves well to a detailed analysis of power relations, especially at times of instability and crisis. In particular, they can help deconstruct shifts in the status quo and think through periods where existing power structures are unstable or falling apart. If updated to accommodate the complexity of the contemporary world, as Gilbert and Wiliams do, they could be crucial for analysing power relations in the current conjuncture. Their approach is to develop Gramsci’s concepts to include more complexity, through additions from other critical thinkers such as Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari. This is much needed, particularly at a time when the appeal of simplified narratives is highly potent. However, there are also omissions in the book which have the potential to do their aim of complex analysis a disservice.

To build counter-hegemony in the vacuum bequeathed by neoliberalism, and ultimately to ensure that this follows a neosocialist trajectory, they argue for the creation of as large as possible an aggregation of interests through a broad social coalition behind a realisable ambition such as a “Green New Deal.” Random, H. (2001) ‘Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language’. Thunder Bay Press. Nonetheless, the macro political analysis contained in Hegemony Now is incredibly valuable and adds much to the debates around the potential demise of neoliberalism. We are facing an increasingly complex world, and the tools Gilbert and Williams’ develop from Gramsci enable us to think about this complexity without the reductions or simplifications that can be so appealing.

Introduction

Academics have argued that in the praxis of hegemony, imperial dominance is established by means of cultural imperialism, whereby the leader state (hegemon) dictates the internal politics and the societal character of the subordinate states that constitute the hegemonic sphere of influence, either by an internal, sponsored government or by an external, installed government. The imposition of the hegemon's way of life—an imperial lingua franca and bureaucracies (social, economic, educational, governing)—transforms the concrete imperialism of direct military domination into the abstract power of the status quo, indirect imperial domination. [87] J. Brutt-Griffler, a critic of this view, has described it as "deeply condescending" and "treats people... as blank slates on which global capitalism's moving finger writes its message, leaving behind another cultural automaton as it moves on." [88]

Grunberg, Isabelle (1990). "Exploring the ‘Myth' of Hegemonic Stability." International Organization 44 (4): 431–477. No regular or formal tribute was extracted from client states. The land of a client state could not officially be a basis for taxation. [33] The overall fact is that, despite extensive conquests, the Romans did not settle down nor extracted revenues in any subdued territories between 200 and 148 BC. [34] The first good evidence for regular taxation of another kingdom comes from Judea as late as 64 BC. [35] In Europe, Germany, rather than Britain, may have been the strongest power after 1871, but Samuel Newland writes: His most important observation was that the ruling classes retained control not only through the threat of force, but through the passive and active consent of subalterns to their intellectual and moral leadership. Hopper, P. (2007). Understanding Cultural Globalization. Malden, MA: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-3557-6.Watson, Adam, (1992). The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis, (London: Routledge), pp. 122–125, 131–132, 324. Porter, A., The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume III: The Nineteenth Century, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 258.

We cannot change anything until we have a better understanding of how power works, who holds it, and why that matters. Through upgrading the concept of hegemony-understanding the importance of passive consent; the complexity of political interests; and the structural force of technology-Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams offer us an updated theory of power for the twenty-first century.Spain 1516 to 1659 (From the accession of Charles I of Spain to the Treaty of the Pyrenees). Based on the Spanish dominance of the European battlefields and the global exploration and colonization of the New World. Hegemony Nowconsiders the political means by which finance capital re-established pre-eminence within the capitalist class and across wider society in the 1980s and 1990s. Digital technology corporations such as Apple, Facebook and Google have established virtual monopolies both on the distribution of information and on key infrastructures of everyday life, communication, and entertainment. Larsen, Henrik Boesen Lindbo (2019). NATO's Democratic Retrenchment: Hegemony After the Return of History. Routledge. ISBN 978-1138585287. Zolo, D. (2007) ‘Contemporary Uses of The Notion of “Empire”’, The Monist. JSTOR, 90(1), pp. 48–64. No-one did more to elevate the concept of hegemony to the centre of social analysis than the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, and at the heart of his writing is the notion of consent.