Undoubtedly, the fact of hegemony presupposes that account be taken of [Page 337] the interests and the tendencies of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise equilibrium should be formed-in other words, that the leading group should make sacrifices of an economic-corporate kind. But there is also no doubt that such sacrifices and such a compromise cannot touch the essential; for though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic.70
Thus, a hegemonic ideology requires, by definition, that what are in fact particular interests be reformulated and presented as general interests. If it is to become an effective instrument of consent, it must meet two criteria. First, it must claim that the system of privilege, status, and property it defends operates in the interest not only of elites but also of subordinate groups whose compliance or support is being elicited. To do this it must, in effect, make implicit promises of benefits for subordinate groups that will serve as the stake which they too have in the prevailing social order.71 Second, as Gramsci realized, the dominant class must make good on at least a portion of these promises if it is to have the slightest hope of gaining compliance. That is, hegemony is not just a symbolic bone tossed to subordinate groups; it requires some actual sacrifices or restraint by the dominant groups.
The dominant ideology that developed before double-cropping in Kedah and that still, by and large, prevails as a normative framework may be understood in just these terms. The large farmers rationalized their social status, their property, and their privileges by emphasizing the benefits they provided for the rest of the village-tenancies, wage labor, charity, loans, feasts, zakat. This rationalization was embedded in concrete material practices and entailed a modest socialization of their profit in the interest of continued domination. For the issue at hand, it matters not that this rationalization and the practices associated with [Page 338] it were a product of struggle or that they did not infringe on the fundamental interests of the agrarian elite. The crucial point is rather that the very process of attempting to legitimate a social order by idealizing it always provides its subjects with the means, the symbolic tools, the very ideas for a critique that operates entirely within the hegemony. For most purposes, then, it is not at all necessary for subordinate classes to set foot outside the confines of the ruling ideals in order to formulate a critique of power. The most common form of class struggle arises from the failure of a dominant ideology to live up to the implicit promises it necessarily makes. The dominant ideology can be turned against its privileged beneficiaries not only because subordinate groups develop their own interpretations, understandings, and readings of its ambiguous terms, but also because of the promises that the dominant classes must make to propagate it in the first place.72
In this context, what we find in Sedaka is an eroding dominant ideology that never quite delivered the goods and that now no longer even serves the interests of the larger cultivators. It is therefore a vanishing and even retrograde tradition that has become the ideological weapon by which the rich may be further delegitimated. The irony, of course, is that the ideological weapon the poor now find so serviceable was earlier fashioned and handed to them by the same rich cultivators and landlords. A “shared” ideology is by no means a guarantee of consent or harmony.73
The structure of ideological conflict in Sedaka is far from unusual. In his searching analysis of slavery in the United States, for example, Genovese has shown how its legal codes and its ideology of paternalism-both violated with impunity in practice-came to be used by the slaves themselves to assert their claims for subsistence, humane treatment, and the preservation of the slave family. As in Sedaka, a large part of the critique of ruling group practice could be read directly from the text of ruling group ideology.74 Much the same analysis [Page 339] could almost certainly be made of the critique of “real existing socialism” in Poland that found expression in the Solidarity movement.75 How is it posible to understand what amounted to the revolt of most of civil society against the state in Poland except against the background of a self-proclaimed socialist system that ideologically insisted that it operated on behalf of proletarian interests?76 Polish workers daily confronted evidence that flew in the face of official ideology (hardly a hegemony in this case)-entrenched privilege and corruption, declining standards of living for workers, special shops for party officials, repression of worker protests, and so forth. This is not to say that neither slaves nor Polish workers were able to imagine a social order run along quite different lines. It is only to claim that, in each case, the ideology formulated by the ruling class to justify its own rule provided much of the symbolic raw material from which the most damning critique could be derived and sustained.
Similar logic might be applied to the routine forms of working-class disaffection in advanced capitalist nations. Although the work force in such countries has easier ideological access to radical alternatives, much of its critique of the social order appears to rest on premises that are also, broadly speaking, drawn from the ruling ideology itself.77 Without straying beyond the prevailing ideology, workers may contrast the meritocratic ethos with the reality of “connections,” favoritism, and unequal access to superior education; they may contrast the democratic ideology of “one man, one vote” with the reality of corporate influence on the media and elections; they may contrast the bountiful promise of capitalism with periodic recessions and unemployment. The solutions proposed by radical parties and intellectuals may, and frequently do, lie outside the dominant ideology. But for my purposes, it is clear that a radical critique of existing arrangements may arise in virtually any subordinate class that takes the dominant ideology to heart and, at the same time, penetrates in daily life the realities that betray or ignore the implicit promises of that ideology. On closer inspection, [Page 340] then, the ideologies of slavery, communism, liberal democracy, and even “agrarian paternalism” a la Sedaka may turn out to be a provocation and incitement rather than the general anesthesia which a hegemonic ideology is presumed to be.78
The implicit promises embodied in any would-be hegemonic ideology may seem, even to many of its subjects, to be nothing more than a cynical “protection” racket. From whom was the feudal lord protecting the serf, if not from other marauding lords like himself? How can the slaveholder be said to provide a “service” of subsistence when it is the slaves who feed both themselves and him? Such hypocrisies are, however, “the tribute vice pays to virtue” and they have real consequences.79 In Sedaka, it is tactically sound for the poor to make their case in terms of older agrarian norms. They are not only the moral categories in which villagers actually think; they also allow the poor to appropriate, as it were, the ideological resources of the well-off and turn them to good advantage. Finally, by remaining prudently within the accepted and familiar categories of moral discourse, the poor minimize the risks of a more dramatic confrontation.
Trade Union Consciousness and Revolution
Common sense is not a single unique conception, identical in time and space…. Its most fundamental characteristic is that it is a conception which, even in the brain of one individual, is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it is.
None the less the starting point must always be that common sense which is the spontaneous philosophy of the multitude and which has to be made ideologically coherent.80
For Gramsci and for many other Marxist scholars, the primary obstacle to radical [Page 341] change is to be found at the level of ideas. For reasons of “intellectual subordination,”81 Gramsci argued, the working class gets most of its ideas secondhand from dominant groups and, by itself, is therefore not able to rise above an “incoherent” and “fragmentary” conception of its situation. The result, at best, is a kind of “trade union consciousness” focusing on limited and concrete benefits rather than the “revolutionary consciousness” that might make radical change possible. It is this ideological short
coming of the proletariat, of course, that defines the intellectual role of the vanguard party.
A number of assumptions lie behind this position, each of which requires examination. The first is that dominant classes do, in fact, share a well-defined and coherent ideology. I will not examine this claim here, but it is worth suggesting that such ideological coherence may be quite rare-perhaps even among intellectuals whose stock in trade is the formulation of systems of thought. To what standard of coherence the consciousness of the working class is being compared, in other words, is not entirely clear. A second, and more nearly explicit, assumption is that revolutionary action can follow only from a thoroughly radical (Marxist?) consciousness that is not only diametrically opposed to the dominant ideology but that envisions an entirely new social order that will take its place. This assumption is certainly true, but tautological, if we define revolutionary action solely in terms of the consciousness of the actors. If, however, we do not adopt this sleight of hand, is it correct to assume that a less than revolutionary consciousness will inevitably lead to accommodations with the dominant class-to reformism and/or “trade union” politics?
What I wish to argue briefly here is that there is no necessary relationship between the small and limited demands typical of a “reformist” consciousness and the kinds of actions taken to achieve these demands. One may go still further and assert with some assurance that the rank-and-file actors in most, if not all, revolutionary situations are in fact fighting for rather mundane, if vital, objectives that could in principle-but often not in practice-be accommodated within the prevailing social order. The typical revolutionary crisis is, in other words, brought about by small but essential demands that are experienced by large numbers of people simultaneously and, because they are thwarted, can be achieved only by revolutionary action. The making of a revolutionary crisis, to be sure, depends on a host of factors outside my immediate concern, but the one factor it does not require is revolutionary ambitions among the rank and file. In this sense there is no fit between ends and means. At one level, this is no more than commonsense; the demands of subordinate classes spring from their daily experience and the material they face. The only reason why this commonplace merits restatement is that so many theoretical discussions appear to assume otherwise and to impose quite fanciful ideological requirements on working-class [Page 342] consciousness. Those requirements have, to my knowledge, never been met by any real working class.
Let us turn briefly to two revolutionary situations and examine the issue of working-class consciousness in each context. The groundwork has been laid by Barrington Moore’s analysis of German workers in the Ruhr after World War I who participated in what he terms “the closest approximation to a spontaneous proletarian revolution that has taken place in a modern industrial state”82 and of the Russian proletariat on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution.
For Germany, Moore has uncovered some remarkable evidence from openended surveys of proletarian values conducted around 1912 that allows him to address this issue. Although support for the Social Democratic Party was common, the hopes and aspirations of workers were largely personal rather than public or political. Among the most common wishes were those for better wages, enough to eat, decent humane treatment, and, more farfetched, a house of one’s own with some land. These were the modest aspirations of a working class that was already quite radical in its actions and would become more so. Those who had joined the socialists were a minority, and the vast majority of them were, it appears, absolutely innocent of socialist theory. Even in the case of coal miners, who, prior to 1914, were the most militant sector of the working class, “there is not the slightest hint that they were the carriers of revolutionary sentiments.”83
Over and over again the evidence reveals that the mass of workers was not revolutionary. They did not want to overturn the existing social order and replace it with something else, least of all one where ordinary workers would be in charge. They were however, very angry. They were backed into a corner and fought in self-defense…
Yet even if one grants all those points, from the standpoint of political consequences they do not really matter. Revolutionary objectives are generally imposed by leaders on an angry mass that serves to dynamite the old order when other conditions make it possible. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that in any of the great revolutions that have succeeded, the mass of the followers has not consciously willed an overturn of the social order.
To the extent that angry little people want something new, it generally amounts to their perception of the old order minus the disagreeable and oppressive features that affect them.84
To call the issues behind the near revolution in Germany “bread-and-butter” issues and petty questions of decent treatment is, as Moore notes, to miss their [Page 343] significance.85 They were not only materially vital to a working class with its back to the wall, but they were reinforced by the anger arising from their felt legitimacy. In fact, it is fair to say that the tenacious pursuit of such small goals was in part generated because they appeared to lie within the normative framework of the existing order. The claims of the German working class in this period were not much more ambitious or far-reaching than those of Sedaka’s poor. The reason why a revolutionary situation prevailed in the former case but not in the latter is due to many other factors; it does not, however, have anything to do with the presence or absence of revolutionary class consciousness per se.
The evidence for working-class demands in Russia immediately before the October revolution-and after the February revolution-comes from the autonomous demands of factory committees formed all over European Russia.86 Once again they reflect exactly what Lenin would have termed a reformist, trade union consciousness. The most popular demand was for an eight-hour day. Other demands included an end to piecework, a minimum wage, raises, and severance pay in case of dismissal. In the workplace the laborers insisted on politeness from management, on an end to arbitrary fines deducted from their pay, cooking and toilet facilities, and tools supplied by the factory, not the workers. Their most radical demand was apparently for the abolition of child labor and discrimination by sex, but they fully supported differential pay based on skills and experience. These were hardly the kinds of demands that, of themselves, suggested a revolution.87 As Moore summarizes them, “the whole thrust of these demands… was to improve working conditions, not to change them…. Once again we see that the workers’ idea of a good society… is the present order with its most disagreeable features softened or eliminated.”88
Further examples might be added to the weight of evidence here-for example, from the demands of the peasantry in Morelos during the Mexican Revolution [Page 344] and from the cahiers de doleances during the French Revolution.89 The point of introducing evidence from the working class is precisely that, for Marxist theory, it is among this class and no other that a revolutionary consciousness is considered possible. Even here, however, we find not only that it is largely absent, but that petty reformist demands are quite compatible with revolutionary action. A revolutionary vanguard party may be necessary for revolution to occur, but its necessity does not arise from the need for ideological instruction and consciousness raising among subordinate classes.90 Revolutionary conflict, so far as the rank and file is concerned, is normally generated within the confines of the existing hegemony. It is often only the means employed that are out of the ordinary. This observation is at least as applicable to peasant movements as to proletarian.
As Hobsbawm quite correctly observes, “Revolution may be made defacto by peasants who do not deny the legitimacy of the existing power structure, law, the state, or even the landlords.”91 The peasantry of Morelos, as a case in point, set out merely to recover communal lands the sugar haciendas had taken from them, not to destroy the hacienda system, let alone transform the Mexican state. Their dogged persistence in recovering their land, however, helped bring about both of these larger consequences. Just as small and uncoordinated acts of pet
ty resistance may aggregate to a point where they jeopardize state structures, so may petty, reformist, “ideological” goals aggregate to a point where their attainment implies a revolution.
It is, of course, still possible to assert that outside leadership in some form [Page 345] for example, a political party, an intelligentsia-may be necessary to transform a host of insurrections into a revolution that will seize power and transform the state. I do not address this particular issue here except to note that, if this argument is admitted, it is largely a matter of taste as to whether one sees subordinate classes as helpless without a radical intelligentsia or the radical intelligentsia as helpless without an insurgent mass. What is definitely being asserted, however, is that neither “revolutionary consciousness” nor an elaborate ideology, as those terms are ordinarily understood, is necessary to create the revolutionary crisis of which such leaders might conceivably then take advantage.
Who Shatters the Hegemony?
To sum up provisionally, spontaneous conceptions among pre-factory workers, factory workers, and modern revolutionary peasants have been mainly backward-looking. They have been attempts to revive a social contract that had been violated, most frequently they were efforts to remedy specific and concrete grievances in their particular occupation.92
Is it possible to speak of a social contract that is being violated in Sedaka? I believe it is possible, providing the social contract is understood as a set of practices and the norms associated with them, providing we recognize that the interpretation of this contract varies markedly by class, and providing we realize that the poor have in large part created and recognized their version of the contract only in the context of its violation. This violation has been mediated almost exclusively by the larger farmers, seeking to improve their returns, although the opportunity to create new relations of production was provided by the state-built irrigation scheme. These budding capitalists have dismissed tenants, raised the rent, switched to leasehold, and called in the machinery. It is they who have steadily abrogated the customs of zakat, charity, loans, and large feasts. It is they who have thus all but eliminated the modest “socialization” of paddy profits, which once served their interest. It is they who have increasingly monopolized the supply of state subsidies and inputs as well as the political institutions of village life.
Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Page 54
