So, there is only one hegemony. Hegemony is capitalism, modern Western capitalist society. But capitalism does not immediately develop into hegemony. What changes it into hegemony? The internal logic of hegemony itself.
Capitalism enters the stage of hegemony at a certain milestone, once the universal, which is in its very structure, begins to prevail over individual national matters. There is only one hegemony, it is universal and springs up through all spheres of life. Becoming explicit, it begins to abolish nation-states and subjugate them completely.
What we saw in the globalization of the 1990s, which Gramsci did not live to see, was a unipolar world that began to take shape, and there is hegemony. Hegemony did not become itself immediately, it was always enclosed in capitalism, in its striving for universalization. But capitalism reached the globalist stage in a certain historical period, when the domination of the capitalist West over all other alternatives became explicit and historically affirmed. That was the moment when hegemony became itself.
Therefore, Gramsci’s ideas became truly acute precisely after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with which everyone became convinced that the concept of hegemony was the most effective concept. Describing hegemony, he was describing the world of the 1990s: an era of hegemony, a unipolar world where political liberal democracy, capitalist economy, political systems of electoral parliamentarism, technocentric culture, freedom to open networks – all these began to penetrate into every society.
And what does hegemony do? It breaks open and breaks down national structures. Kamala Harris arrives and destroys the wild supporter of sovereignty. Why? Because hegemony cannot be resisted from within hegemony itself. Because the preceding stage – hegemony represented by nationalism, sovereignty and nation-state – is part of the same hegemony. It is a part of the past, and global hegemony is the future, whither we are drawn by all forces.
Hegemony is a hacker structure that attacks the enemy, looking for weak points in his defense system and, upon penetration, already decomposes him from the inside. Accordingly, a nation-state that partially accepts hegemony becomes completely vulnerable, permeable to it, which eventually leads to its absorption.
Hegemony works in a sophisticated way. It invades states that do not have nuclear weapons by military force. It comes to states that have some kind of national administration through culture. It penetrates into states that have nuclear weapons through networks and finances. It penetrates Chinese civilization through liberalism, starting with the coastal zones.
Hegemony is a moldy additive that spreads through the media, the Internet, bank loans, education, school, the family, through all forms of connection; through catering, watching movies, participating in modern political process. All of these are forms of some kind of hegemonic action, which, strictly speaking, are not intrinsic to man in principle. Hegemony adjusts the structure of human behavior, encouraging him to do what does not make sense from his point of view, but makes sense from the point of view of this mold.
Hegemony is not arbitrariness; it is the logic of the historical process of the Modern era. And the nation-state is not an alternative to hegemony – it is only a temporary hindrance, and this nation-state declares the constitution, human rights, the capitalist form of production, liberal democracy, elections, and culturally sends its representatives to Eurovision. From Gramsci’s point of view, the question of eliminating this formation is only a matter of time.