Władza i kultura – Antonio Gramsci jako prekursor socjologii polityki

THE MOST IMPORTANT neo-Marxists thinker was Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was the first Marxist to theorize the ideological and political superstructure as relatively autonomous of the economic base. The key term for Gramsci is „hegemony”, which means the way in which the dominant class gains consent for its rule through compromises and alliances with some class fractions and the disorganization of others, and also the way in which it maintains that rule in a stable social formation. According to Gramsci, hegemony is gained in the first place in civil society where ideology is embodied in communal forms of life in such a way that it becomes the taken-for-granted common sense of the people. All relations of civil society involve issues of power and struggle, not just class relations. Gramsci is actually the first theorist of cultural politics, since he sees politics, not as confined to the level of the state, but as taking place in all social relations, representations, and institutions. Politics is more a cultural sensibility than an institutional activity. Antonio Gramsci was the one of the precursors of political sociology. His focus on the cultural aspects of political life inspired thinkers like Louis Allthuser, Michael Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau. The cultural turn in political sociology show haw important thinker was Antonio Gramsci.