For some time now, I've been writing about the Gramscian concept of "hegemony" and a "war of position"/"culture war" to control the cultural institutions that in turn shape our "common sense" understanding of things. It's my contention that for the 30-40 years, extreme cultural conservatives have been waging a one-sided culture war of precisely this sort-a culture war to control cultural institutions. And in response, moderates, liberals, even progrerssives have basically been asleep at the switch. I've also argued that while all the extreme conservatives' plans have produced impressive institutional successes, the realworld results have been utterly disasterous, which puts us on the cusp of a potentially historic realigning election.
A large part of my disappointment with Barack Obama stems from his unwillingness to confront the conservative establishment. But it's more than that: Obama is genuinely hostile to the notion of others engaging in such confrontation. He insists that the problem is partisanship per se-on both sides. This simply is not so. Logically, of course, it could be so, if the left had been fighting the same sort of well-coordinated culture war that the right is figthing. But historically, this simply did not happen.
Comes now the British newspaper, The Telegraph to provide dramatic truth that the culture war has been one-sided-and to remind us of why Obama dares not tell the truth about this. The Telegraph has produced a list of "the 50 most influential political pundits" who "help drive the national conversation and shape public opinion."
It is not a perfect list, by any means. Any number of influential people have been left off the list, while some who are on it seem rather over-rated, even from the perspective of simply having influence for whatever reason. Still, it seems generally accurate in terms of the distribution of influence across the political spectrum, and in that regard, it is quite telling. Here is the list, without the accompanying explanations:
1. Karl Rove
2. Chris Matthews
3. Sean Hannity
4. Rush Limbaugh
5. John Harris And Jim Vandehei
6. Matt Drudge
7. Tim Russert
8. Jon Stewart
9. David Brooks
10. Mark Halperin
11. Stephen Colbert
12. Bill O'Reilly
13. Keith Olbermann
14. Chuck Todd
15. Bill Maher
16. Glenn Beck
17. Andrew Sullivan
18. Frank Luntz
19. Donna Brazile
20. Joe Klein
21. David Gergen
22. Dick Morris
23. Mike Allen
24. Laura Ingraham
25. Michael Savage
26. Arianna Huffington
27. Pat Buchanan
28. James Carville
29. Ron Fournier
30. Peggy Noonan
31. Juan Williams
32. William Kristol
33. Roland Martin
34. Howard Kurtz
35. Joe Trippi
36. Newt Gingrich
37. Eugene Robinson
38. Michael Barone
39. Dee Dee Myers
40. Tony Snow
41. Mark Shields
42. Bill Bennett
43. Paul Begala
44. Jeffrey Toobin
45. Fred Barnes
46. Mark Levin
47. JC Watts
48. Paul Krugman
49. Mary Matalin
50. Rachel Maddow
It's worth noting that three of the top four voices from the left side of the spectrum are comedians. The fourth is a career sports commentator, whose show includes a fair amount of what can only be called "cultural fluff." Then again, perhaps that's all to the good, since the only other entries from the Democratic side of things in the top 20 are Donna Brazile and Joe Klein, taking up the last two slots. This is indicative of how thoroughly liberal and progressive voices are excluded from positions of media influence.
One reason the 2008 election is vitally important can be summed up in two words: Global warming. Another reason can also be summed up in two words: Supreme Court. I hope to write about global warming as well this weekend, but this diary is about Supreme Court.
Both, however, have the same underlying theme: while winning the 2008 is vitally important, it is necessary, but not sufficient. Indeed, neither global warming nor the Supreme Court should be the real focus of our attention, as they are but the most prominent outer manifestations of larger systemic struggles.
What is really needed is a much more sweeping and fundamental reshaping of our collective thinking--and that can only come about through a reshaping of our public institutions.
I now want to turn my attention to global warming, by way of revisitng a recent, diary from Joe Brewer, of the Rockridge Institute, Why We Are Losing the Global Warming Battle. In it, Joe argues:
Right now, things don't look very promising. It isn't just that we've reached the tipping point, as James Hansen suggests. (warning - large PDF file) It isn't just that the first-ever climate bill is about to arrive DOA on the Senate floor--maybe not such a bad thing since Lieberman-Warner is built on the wrong ideas. The real problem is in the way we think about the problem and, therefore, the solutions.
There are two problems with "the way we think"-the actual lack of a well-developed framework of ideas, and the lack of an institutional framework for propagating the ideas we do have. These are, ever and always, the two sides of what Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci described as a "culture war" or "war of position"-a struggle to control the institutions that shape our culture, including not just the ideas we think, but the ideas we can think. In this case, I would argue that the later-the institutional framework- is much more of a problem than the framework ideas itself is.
For example, Joe goes on to say:
Consider this sampling of Big Ideas conservatives have pushed into public discourse:
* Nature is a resource to be exploited.
* Wealth is measured simply by money.
* The economy and environment are distinct and inevitably in conflict with one another.
* Polluting is a right, so companies should be compensated for the cost of clean-up.
* Markets are natural and naturally good.
* Government is distinct from markets and intrudes upon them.
These ideas are at the heart of the climate debate.
It is not hard to think of ideas counter to those. What is hard is to envision powerful organizations engaged in systematically refuting them with a vigour equal to that of conservatives pushing them.
One reason the 2008 election is vitally important can be summed up in two words: Global warming. Another reason can also be summed up in two words: Supreme Court. I hope to write about global warming as well this weekend, but this diary is about Supreme Court.
Both, however, have the same underlying theme: while winning the 2008 is vitally important, it is necessary, but not sufficient. Indeed, neither global warming nor the Supreme Court should be the real focus of our attention, as they are but the most prominent outer manifestations of larger systemic struggles.
What is really needed is a much more sweeping and fundamental reshaping of our collective thinking--and that can only come about through a reshaping of our public institutions.
A couple of weeks ago, law professor Jack Balkin wrote a very significant post on his Balkinization blog, The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement-- An Exercise in Living Constitutionalism, which revolves around a couple of very significant points: (1) despite the rhetoric of "original intent" as revolt against the liberal approach of the "living constitution," what the conservatives were doing was creating their own version of the living constitution. (2) What's involved in doing this is very much an example of a Gramcian "culture war" or "war of position," (though Balkin doesn't call it that) which I have discussed on various previous occassions. This involves graning control of cultural institutions-either by takeover of existing instutions or creation of new ones-which in turn results in systematic and interlocking redefinitions of funamental assumptions. It means, quite simply, a struggle to redefine what is thinkable.
Teles's book is important in many respects; indeed, it is likely to become the standard history of the rise of legal conservatism. For me what is interesting is the light it sheds on how living constitutionalism actually works, in this case, living constitutionalism from the right.
That may sound strange given the familiar associations between conservatism and originalism, but in fact conservative legal thought is a major contributor to the living constitutionalism of the present generation. Originalism and a call for a return to origins was one of the tropes that conservatives, like many other social and political movements before them, used to persuade people to reform constitutional law.
I've written before about the Gramscian "war of position" that the right has been fighting for the last 40-50 years or so, and which liberals and Democrats have still largely refused to engage. The war of position is all about controlling instutions that in turn serve to define social, cultural and political reality.
Gramsci developed the concept in response to the question of why the European working class had failed to make a proletarian revolution. His answer: bougroise institutions still controlled their thought. A proletarian revolution could only occur after proletarian counter-institutions had been created to counter their indoctrination-subtle and not-so-subtle-by bourgoise institutions. Although Gramsci is a figure of the left, conservatives long ago surpased the left in picking up on Gramsci, even without knowing in most cases. However, Rush Limbaugh wrote about Gramsci explicitly as far back as 1992 in his second book, See, I Told You So.
A key aspect of Gramsci's theory is that different institutions work together, like units in an army, simply by fulfilling their individual functions. However, it is obvious that if one defines those functions in slightly different ways, one can significantly increase how effectively different institutions work together. And nothing illustrates this better than the way that conservatives define media bias and the detection of it by media watch groups. While the left is reality-based, and defines bias in terms of things like (a) spreading falsehoods, (b) ignoring truths, and (c) presenting biased pictures by excluding some topics, stories, sources and points of view while dramatically over-representing others, the right is war-of-position-based, and defines bias in terms of "are you for us, or against us"? And because of this, it is intensely personal. It's all about demonization and attacking individuals, just like their politics.
As an illustration of this, on the flip, I'm posting a extended version of an article I wrote for Random Lengths News back in 2002. It's about the rightwing media watch group, the Media Resource Center, whose "Notable Quotable" newsletter is sent out to thousands of news organizations-including us. The way in which they conceive both media bias and their role in fighting it fits perfectly into a Gramscian framework-and has nothing to do with "media bias" as an objective social scientist might define it.
I am not saying that we should mimic them. Indeed, I think that Media Matters has developed a very potent reality-based counter-strategy. But we do have to understand them, and we do have to do a much better job of integrating the work that Media Matters does into a larger structure of institutions that does not yet exist, even though it is most certainly growing-although far too much of that growth is still confined to the online world.
For a deeper look at what we're up against, join me on the flip...
The proper perspective for viewing the NYT McCain story, the unfolding food fight, and the continuing fallout, is Gramsci's twin concepts of the war of position and the war of movement. I've written about this several times before, but here's a quick refresher.
(A) Gramsci's motivation was that the predicted worker's revolution did not occur in the mot advanced capitalist countries, as Marxist theory predicted. He therefore sought to explain why this was so, and what to do about it. The answers he came up with, described briefly below, have been adapted by people whose viewpoints are far removed from his--Rush Limbaugh, for one--so there is no need to accept his initial premises, if--like I do--one finds his descriptions of processes compelling.
(B) Grmsci attributed the failure to make an anti-capitalist revolution to the capture of worker's ideology, and organizations by the hegemonic (ruling or dominant) culture, transmitted by institutions such as the church, compulsory education, popular culture, etc. as well as appeals to bourgoise ideologies, such as nationalism, consumerism, careerism, etc. which also enjoy their own forms of instutional support.
Such institutions and ideologies have both their own independent rationale and function in their own spheres, as well as their function in the largr social system. Gramsci's conception allows us to view both institutions and narratives at varying different levels of abstraction operating according the same over-all logic, without denying or distorting the fact that they also follow their own particular logic as well.
(C) To overcome the power of hegemony, and create a workers revolution, Gramsci argued for a two-fold strategy, First, a "war of position" to build working-class counter-institutions, and take over bourgoise ones while promulgating working-class ideology. Second, once this stage was successful, then a "war of movement" to the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support that Marxist theory originally predicted.
Consciously or not, the American right has adopted Gramsci's fundamental insight, but adapted it to their somewhat different position in society. On the one hand, as Gramsci advised, they have dilligently built up their own institutional infrastructure, and attacked existing instriutional structures that they do not control, seeking either to take over or cripple or destroy them. On the other hand, they have combined the war of position and war of movement into a more integrated whole, frequently taking advantage of a constellation of positions to launch a "war of movement" attack on an insitution they wish to cripple, destroy or take over, or an idea, principle, value, or narrative they wish to discredit, or subvert.
With this in mind, the NYT McCain story can be viewed as particularly involving:
(1) The expression of conservative identity politics, a binary worldview that involves the valorization of all things "conservative" and the demonization of "liberals" specifically, and anything generally that stands opposed to, or outside of self-defined "conservatism." I've written about this previously, back in 2006 in diaries at MyDD here, here, here, here and here.
(2) The narrative of "personal virtue" as the foundational concern of politics, which is a core conservative belief dating back at least to Hesiod's Works and Days, and heavily inscribed into the DNA of the Western Worlds in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. This narrative is strongly connected to cognitive developmental levels two and three in Robert Kegan's schema, which I've previously described here and here, for example.
(3) The rightwing war on fact-based (i.e. "liberal) journalism as a specific facet of their overall attack on modernity, empiricism, reason and critical thought. The NY Times, as the nation's leading daily newspaper has long been a prime target in this war, and has long been significantly compromised by their successes.
For a more detailed description of how this perspective affects our understanding of the NYT-McCain story and its repurcussions, join me on the flip....
I've been writing a lot lately about Antonio Gramsci's ideas about cultural hegemony--the ways that a dominant ideology embedded in diverse institutions serves to control what is politically conceivable--and how it can be overthrown via a two-stage process, the "war of position" (or "culture war") to gain control of institutions, and the "war of maneuver" (or "war of movement") to seize state political power once the institutional positions have been readied.
Gramsci's thinking was formulated in a Marxist context, but contains significant insights that can be more generally adapted to other purposes. The two sides need not be the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, nor does there need to be a once-and-for-all seizure of absolute state power. The war of position and war of manuever can proceed in tandem. A post by Dday at Digby's place in advance of the State of the Union sparked some thoughts that can help illuminate the usefulness of a Gramscian perspective. It's called "Rally 'Round The Flag"....
Higher education has been highly contested terrain in culture wars as far back as ancient Greece, if not farther. But a recently-published article in The Nation magazine gives a fascinating snapshot of the efforts undertaken since 9/11 to bring academia into line with George Bush's highly-partisan "homeland security" agenda.
As such, it illustrates a particularly broad front in the struggle for hegemony-subsuming the entirety of an inherently troublesome institutional sector to the most rigorous forms of hierarchical control-those associated not simply with the military, but with military intelligence. The article, "Repress U", by Michael Gould-Wartofsky, is organized perfectly for illustrating how a well-coordinated war of position can be carried out. Discussion begins on the flip.
Note: This is not a candidate diary. It is a critical article--one that engages in critical analysis. It uses a key narrative of the Obama campaign as a jumping-off point, but that is merely a point of departure for illuminating what none of the campaigns are really facing up to. I have not endorsed anyone. None seem to grasp what is really going on here. Obama simply provides the most promising opening to begin the discussion. He misunderstands it--or at least appears to--in the most deep and fundamental way.
It's the grand premise of the Obama campaign that he can bring us together, slay the dragon of partisan divisiveness and end the culture wars which he lays at the feet of the Baby Boom generation. It's a nice, appealing narrative, in a way, it all turns on the question of what you mean by "culture war." The commonsense meaning of "culture war" over the past few decades is a war over social mores between hierarchical "traditional values" and the post-1950s emergence of egalitarian values, especially with respect to race and gender, more closely aligned with the traditional values at the core of our Constitution.
But there's a deeper meaning, which is clearly understood by rightwing culture warriors, and virtually unknown to everyone else. This meaning comes, ironically, from a leading Marxist theorist, the highly independent Italian leader, Antonio Gramsci, who described culture war as a struggle for ideological control of the broad range of institutions in society. And in this deeper sense, Obama's analysis is completely upside-down--the problem is not that both sides are equally to blame, but that only the right is actually fighting a coordinated culture war as Gramsci defined it. It's not a case of bringing a knife to a gunfight, it's a case of brining a plastic yogurt spoon to a nuclear war.
Gramsci was grappling with the question of why Marxist predictions had not come to pass, why the rise of working class power had not lead to a communist revolution, or even the dominance of socialist political parties. The reason, he believed, was that workers aspired to become their class enemy--they wanted to join the bourgeoisie, not destroy it, and the reason for that was the hegemony of bourgeois ideology, expressed through a whole range of political institutions.
Gramsci's argument is based on an analysis that can clearly be transposed onto other forms of ideological struggle, such as the one that grips America today. Whether or not Gramsci was entirely right in his specific analysis (not being a communist, I obviously think he wasn't), he clearly was onto something, and America's post-1960s New Right has followed his prescription quite faithfully, even if they did not cite him specifically until Rush Limbaugh did so in the 1990s. By engaging in a Gramscian culture war, the right has positioned itself to define the terms of the "culture war" as commonly understood. While there may be hopes of diminishing, if not ending the "culture war" in the latter sense it is not clear how this is possible, except temporarily, without countering the rightwing's Gramscian culture war. And countering that culture war is not possible without first grasping the full nature and extent of it.
This diary represents a small beginning, a thumbnail sketch overview of what that would entail. I intend to follow it up with some diaries that look at how the right has moved in on various different cultural institutions-possible examples include think tanks, the media, K-12 and higher education, churches, state governments, the courts and civil society institutions such as the Boy Scouts. I have one about the intrusion of "homeland security" on academia that's ready to go. I plan to do one or two others this weekend or next. Two other forms of follow-up are planned-first, more scrutiny of Barack Obama in light of this analysis and his failure to grasp what's going on, and second, a step back to discuss what the two sides are all about. Broadly conceived, I will characterize them as hierarchy, authority and coercion on the right, versus equality, autonomy, and voluntary cooperation on the left. These encompass a wide range of specific forms and culture expressions on both sides that have their differences with one another, but that all express similar fundamentals.
