lar situation which it helps to explain-a contact which also develops the mean- ing of the concept.This is the strength of Gramsci's historicism and therein lies its explanatory power.The term 'historicism'is however,frequently misunder- stood and criticised by those who seek a more abstract,systematic,universalistic and non-historical form of knowledge.3 Gramsci geared his thought consistently to the practical purpose of political action.In his prison writings,he always referred to marxism as 'the philosophy of praxis'.4 Partly at least,one may surmise,it must have been to underline the practical revolutionary purpose of philosophy.Partly too,it would have been to indicate his intention to contribute to a lively developing current of thought, given impetus by Marx but not forever circumscribed by Marx's work.Nothing could be further from his mind than a marxism which consists in an exegesis of the sacred texts for the purpose of refining a timeless set of categories and concepts. Origins of the Concept of Hegemony There are two main strands leading to the Gramscian idea of hegemony.The first ran from the debates within the Third International concerning the strategy of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of a Soviet socialist state;the second from the writings of Machiavelli.In tracing the first strand,some commentators have sought to contrast Gramsci's thought with Lenin's by aligning Gramsci with the idea of a hegemony of the proletariat and Lenin with a dictatorship of the proletariat.Other commentators have underlined their basic agreement.5 What is important is that Lenin referred to the Russian proletariat as both a dominant and a directing class;dominance implying dictatorship and direction implying leadership with the consent of allied classes(notably the peasantry).Gramsci,in effect,took over an idea that was current in the circles of the Third International: the workers exercised hegemony over the allied classes and dictatorship over enemy classes.Yet this idea was applied by the Third International only to the working class and expressed the role of the working class in leading an alliance of workers,peasants and perhaps some other groups potentially supportive of revol- utionary change. Gramsci's originality lies in his giving a twist to this first strand:he began to apply it to the bourgeoisie,to the apparatus or mechanisms of hegemony of the dominant class.?This made it possible for him to distinguish cases in which the bourgeoisie had attained a hegemonic position of leadership over other classes from those in which it had not.In northern Europe,in the countries where capitalism had first become established,bourgeois hegemony was most complete. It necessarily involved concessions to subordinate classes in return for acqui- escence in bourgeois leadership,concessions which could lead ultimately to forms of social democracy which preserve capitalism while making it more acceptable to workers and the petty bourgeois.Because their hegemony was firmlyentrenched in civil society,the bourgeoisie often did not need to run the state themselves. Landed aristocrats in England,Junkers in Prussia,or a renegade pretender to the mantle of Napoleon I in France,could do it for them so long as these rulers recognised the hegemonic structures of civil society as the basic limits of their political action. 163 Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHAI JIAOTONG UNIV on October 10.2010Downloaded from mil.sagepub.com at LIB SHANGHAI JIAOTONG UNIV on October 10, 2010