Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Economy

Abstract

Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in Global Economy. By Adam David Morton. London: Pluto Press, 2007; pp. 272. US $28.95 paper. Adam David Morton's new book attempts to by focusing on Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and revolution. Unravelling Gramsci is a close look at some of Gramsci's key ideas that converge in an effort to understand issues such as nation-state, role of history when interrogating texts, problems of globalization, and on-going possibilities of resistance to national, as well as global power. Morton's goal is to unravel and contemporary relevance of thought and practice of Antonio Gramsci to factors of hegemony and revolution to global political economy (1). While a bit ambiguous, Morton's purpose in writing text is to uncover elements and concepts of Gramsci that have often been to shed insight into dynamics of global power. In an era of increasing globalization, such a treatise is undoubtedly beneficial as our identities and markets tread between here and there, us and them, national and international. Morton acknowledges that, given cryptic notes in Prison Notebooks as well as other writings, knowing precisely what Gramsci intended is not only impossible, but also not very helpful. Instead, in agreement with Stuart Hall, Morton suggests we look at the Gramscian of Gramsci's writings (Hall, 1991, 7). In other words, we should not focus on literal meanings of Gramsci's writings, necessarily, but instead should view holistic project of Gramsci to see his overall concepts as they relate to many different situations. The Gramscian way is a pseudo-philosophy of not ignoring forest when we stare at trees. As Morton suggests, however, we must temper Gramscian way from important pursuits of focused attention towards issues that Gramsci did concern himself with, such as nature of State, power and resistance, role of intellectuals, etc. In this way, he structures rest of book on underlying philosophy of Gramsci, as opposed to literal interpretations of Gramsci's writings. Morton claims he does a thorough job of analyzing all of Gramsci's writings, including overlooked ones, to ascertain Gramscian meanings of these important concepts (5). However, Morton fails to include some works by Gramsci, and he uses some of Gramsci's writings to support his own personal conclusions. Yet, Morton does do a fair job of accentuating Gramsci's writings with theories contemporary in field of international relations and textual criticism. For example, Morton goes to great length describing debate about historicism versus new historicism. While some major authors are ignored in this discussion, Morton explains how some scholars can interpret Gramsci within Gramsci's own historical moment as compared to those who view Gramsci's writings as more ephemeral, or more flexible depending on location. Eventually, Morton concludes that applying Gramsci to contemporary problems is more important and closer to Gramscian way than only viewing Gramsci's politics in times of Gramsci's life. Morton's detailed discussion of Gramsci and textual criticism has obvious relevance for both argumentation and rhetoric scholars. For this reason, it is important to examine how Morton chronicles several important Gramscian concepts. First, Morton describes Gramsci's notion of passive revolution, as a precursor to hegemonic state formation. In fact, revolution is when social struggles find sufficiently elastic frameworks to allow bourgeoisie to gain power without dramatic upheaval (8). This, of course, means that constituencies of power form in dramatic, institutional ways without violent or chaotic means, hence name passive. This is important, according to Morton, because it portrays state-based hegemonic development in a nodal manner that suggests a spatial division of geopolitics (149). …