In order to start talking about counter-hegemony, we first need to define the term “hegemony”.
Hegemony is not just a state, not just a power. Gramsci understands “hegemony” as a phenomenon very close to what Lenin understood by “imperialism”, or what is today called “globalization”, the “great reset” or “new world order”. That is, hegemony is a complex historical, ideological, military, geopolitical, and strategic phenomenon.
The very concept of “hegemon” was not invented by Gramsci, it was invented long ago: it was used by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. The Greek term “hegemon” is a political force that is dominant in a regional or wider context. The Stoics took the concept of “hegemonicon” to mean the ruling principle.
Gramsci’s hegemony is a very special use of the term “hegemony” that does not follow directly from the historical analysis of the term’s use. According to Gramsci, hegemony is a force that combines history, idea, civilization, culture, military, socio-economic and industrial potential. The Greeks never included ideology in the concept of “hegemony”: the battle of Sparta and Athens was for them a struggle between two hegemonies. Even Rome and Carthage, the Romans and the Carthaginians themselves – despite the fact that Chesterton rightly tried to link Rome and Carthage with ideology in keeping with geopolitical dualism – perceived their enmity as a struggle for political control.
But Gramsci’s idea is different.
Unlike with the Greeks and Romans, the subject of Gramsci's hegemony is not the state. And this changes everything: from Gramsci’s viewpoint, hegemony is a certain force that can be embodied in a state, a bloc of states, or in a political orientation, but this force is more than a state. Historical, fundamental, ontological tendencies are embodied in hegemony. That is, hegemony is constituted by time and determined by its direction. And therefore, it is the network that is the subject of hegemony.
Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is an attempt to isolate a specific subject unifying historical forms of life. And these historical life forms suppress and subjugate everything: economic systems, cultural patterns, technology, military industry. Global hegemony is a specific living environment, it is a subject that extorts, grinds, assimilates, transforms everything it comes across.
In addition, hegemony is also a special economic order. For Gramsci, hegemony is capitalism, with its inherent cultural, informational, economic, media, military, political, and educational environment. Hegemony is a form of the being of capitalism as a specific subject of history.
Hegemony is based on a subtle symbiosis of its constituent elements. The takeoff of a NATO bomber, the arrival of a diplomatic mission to observe the “Iranian atom”, a Lady Gaga performance, the offer of a large loan from the IMF to a developing African country, censorship of an Italian or Russian philosopher’s speech – these are all elements of hegemony. Do you think that we are talking about completely different issues? In one case it is a military issue, in another case an economic one, in a third a political one, in a fourth a cultural one. And for Gramsci they are all directly related.
There is only one hegemony. The ancients believed that there is only one empire. The ruling class can change, be it Assyrian, Greek, or Roman, but one empire remains. Therefore, there is only one hegemony.
This fundamental understanding of Gramsci’s is in some aspects of international relations deeper than the methodology of Carl Schmitt. They go well together: when Gramsci strays into vulgar Marxism, Carl Schmitt can help with his realism; when Carl Schmitt speaks too cautiously or too narrowly, Gramsci unexpectedly unleashes his savage generalizations. Therefore, they must be read together – the “right” and the “left”, an ideal couple. This is real political science, and such an analysis in international relations is optimal and most complete.