Introduction: Cultural Hegemony in Marxian and anti-Marxian Thought
We live in the most difficult times since the Great Depression, despite the end of the recession that started in 2008 and ended in 2011 in the US, while it lingers in much of the world until 2015. Just as in the Great Depression when there was political polarization and weakening of bourgeois parliamentary democracy but no revolution except for rise of Fascist movements, similarly in the early 21st century there is no sign of social uprisings in the Western World undergoing a crisis in the political economy and bourgeois institutions. Why is it that the masses remain so incredibly docile, a segment gravitating to the extreme right as we see in France, Greece, Austria, and across much of Europe where the leftist parties have yielded to neo-liberalism while retaining the Socialist rhetoric?
Another segment of the population going
as far as street protests and then back home to their social media networks
hoping others will join them or at least provide moral support for social
justice. By far, too people remain
apathetic, beaten down by the institutional structure that shows signs of
rising GDP but income redistribution from the workers and middle class to the
top ten percent of the richest people. In
2015 America’s real estate market shows a rise 13 times higher than
wages, forcing workers and the middle class either to go deep in debt or rent,
in either case working to pay the bank.
The euphoria about the BRICS, (Brazil,
Russia, India, China and South Africa) is fizzling, with the exception of China
that has much better prospects having consolidated its position in the
international economy than on the rest that either depends on revenues from energy
and minerals, or foreign capital that tends to shift with opportunities. Under
IMF advice, all countries are trying to reduce public debt, a move that has
sent many toward austerity measures that reduce consumption power for workers
and the middle class and transfer capital to banks.
The miracles in most of the BRICS,
especially in Brazil and Russia each with its unique set of political and
economic problems, will have to wait much longer than enthusiastic analysts had
been predicting in the last ten years. While GDP growth rates have been
phenomenal even in these countries, the vast majority has not seen any of the
benefits. Yet, people are not protesting, they are not as vociferous as one
would expect about the fruits of capitalism filtering down to them, about
democracy remaining a restricted luxury for the broader masses of the
population because the privileged capitalist class protected by the political
class refuse to fulfill the social contract as people understand it.
If the political economy does not
determine human behavior, is cultural hegemony responsible for shaping the
human mind? In 'sociological Marxism', a theory that assumes society runs
parallel to economy and state and rejects economic determinism, Marxian
intellectual Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi and others were among early 20th
century thinkers who developed a theory of cultural domination. Arguing that
ideological superstructures (institutions secular and religious, public and
private) dominate to influence the human mind that they did not see as
mechanistic, these thinkers placed the class structure in the context of
cultural hegemony that is the product of bourgeois constructs rather than an
inevitable or natural consequence as mainstream thinkers argue.
Another dimension to understanding cultural hegemony and the evolution of political systems is through the work of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). Moore examines how social structures under an agrarian and industrial political economy produces certain political outcomes in different parts of the world, focusing on the violence preceding the evolution of 'democratic' (bourgeois) institutions. A sociopolitical revolutionary break with the past comes only after there has been an economic transformation that alters social relations. Moore made famous the statement "no bourgeoisie, no democracy", which of course explains the 19th and 20th centuries, but it leaves questions about the decline of the bourgeoisie in the early 21st century and what that entails for democracy.
While Gramsci, Polanyi and Moore analyzed the dynamics of social class, political economy, social discontinuity, and the role of cultural hegemony from a rationalist or scientific perspective, Richard Rorty, an American philosopher who represented the new generation of right-wingers from the Reagan to the Bush presidencies returned to the assumptions of Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke regarding the irrationality of human nature and the conspiratorial nature of demagogue intellectuals preaching revolution in order to improve society and human beings; an otherwise unachievable goal. Besides perpetuating cultural hegemony instead of trying to understand it and suggesting ways for a more socially just society, such a philosophy is intended to reject a rationalist or scientific method of analyzing social class and political economy. The propagandist and populist nature of Rorty's philosophy captured the imagination of other populist conservatives throughout the media and political world.
Conservatism, especially in its extreme and especially when it comes from what the mainstream baptizes respectable academic, sells and it sells big with a segment of the population that is suspicious of intellectuals, identifying as 'elitist' that have no connection to the 'common man'. Because conservatism, especially in its populist form, has been an integral part of cultural hegemony that resonates with a receptive audience already indoctrinated in the cultural mainstream. When someone like Rorty or populist talk-show personalities argue that the new Left intelligentsia has been obsessed with castigating the US for having an institution of slavery, a history of racism toward minorities, a militaristic policy that proved unpopular with the War in Vietnam, etc., a large segment with strong nationalist tendencies identifies with such rhetoric and becomes anti-revolutionary. This is the ultimate triumph of cultural hegemony when the masses at whose expense policies are implemented adopt an ideological position contrary to their own interests.
Belaboring the negative institutional traits of society to radically change society is an anathema to Rorty and those promoting cultural hegemony, while true salvation is to be found in working within the system, accepting cultural hegemony that entails institutional conformity. Just like the early Cold War when there was systematic persecution of dissidents from Hollywood to academia and research laboratories, including that of Robert Oppenheimer (Manhattan Project), similarly in the early 21st century there is a major shift toward that political climate of quasi-police state, helped along by cultural hegemony.
Another dimension to understanding cultural hegemony and the evolution of political systems is through the work of Barrington Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (1966). Moore examines how social structures under an agrarian and industrial political economy produces certain political outcomes in different parts of the world, focusing on the violence preceding the evolution of 'democratic' (bourgeois) institutions. A sociopolitical revolutionary break with the past comes only after there has been an economic transformation that alters social relations. Moore made famous the statement "no bourgeoisie, no democracy", which of course explains the 19th and 20th centuries, but it leaves questions about the decline of the bourgeoisie in the early 21st century and what that entails for democracy.
While Gramsci, Polanyi and Moore analyzed the dynamics of social class, political economy, social discontinuity, and the role of cultural hegemony from a rationalist or scientific perspective, Richard Rorty, an American philosopher who represented the new generation of right-wingers from the Reagan to the Bush presidencies returned to the assumptions of Thomas Hobbes and Edmund Burke regarding the irrationality of human nature and the conspiratorial nature of demagogue intellectuals preaching revolution in order to improve society and human beings; an otherwise unachievable goal. Besides perpetuating cultural hegemony instead of trying to understand it and suggesting ways for a more socially just society, such a philosophy is intended to reject a rationalist or scientific method of analyzing social class and political economy. The propagandist and populist nature of Rorty's philosophy captured the imagination of other populist conservatives throughout the media and political world.
Conservatism, especially in its extreme and especially when it comes from what the mainstream baptizes respectable academic, sells and it sells big with a segment of the population that is suspicious of intellectuals, identifying as 'elitist' that have no connection to the 'common man'. Because conservatism, especially in its populist form, has been an integral part of cultural hegemony that resonates with a receptive audience already indoctrinated in the cultural mainstream. When someone like Rorty or populist talk-show personalities argue that the new Left intelligentsia has been obsessed with castigating the US for having an institution of slavery, a history of racism toward minorities, a militaristic policy that proved unpopular with the War in Vietnam, etc., a large segment with strong nationalist tendencies identifies with such rhetoric and becomes anti-revolutionary. This is the ultimate triumph of cultural hegemony when the masses at whose expense policies are implemented adopt an ideological position contrary to their own interests.
Belaboring the negative institutional traits of society to radically change society is an anathema to Rorty and those promoting cultural hegemony, while true salvation is to be found in working within the system, accepting cultural hegemony that entails institutional conformity. Just like the early Cold War when there was systematic persecution of dissidents from Hollywood to academia and research laboratories, including that of Robert Oppenheimer (Manhattan Project), similarly in the early 21st century there is a major shift toward that political climate of quasi-police state, helped along by cultural hegemony.
It remains amazing to me that so few not
only in the mainstream media but even in the broader web media have shown
little interest in immigrant detention centers in Texas and Arizona, in the
illegal detention center mostly for minorities held without due process in
Chicago’s Homan Square whose torturers have links with Guantanamo detention
center. The US Constitution flagrantly ignored, civil rights abused, as well as
human rights, but there is very little one reads about all of this as though it
does not exist. Is society so indoctrinated in the dominant culture that the
mainstream media has taught it to selectively choose what constitutes news –
anything related to crime, foreign enemies, especially “Islamic terrorists”,
business, celebrities, and human interest stories – while everything else from
the quasi-police state to rising gap between the very rich and the rest is
irrelevant?
Bourgeois Values and Indoctrination of the Masses
Does the dominant, or hegemonic social class and the political elites representing that class in pluralistic societies under the guise of 'democracy' have the ability to perpetuate the facade of 'democracy' behind which operates an economic dictatorship, an increasingly anti-labor and quasi-police state whose role is to prevent social change? If so, why has the institutional structure from politicians to the media, from churches to schools been so successful convincing people this is “normal” and we must continue to call it “democracy”? As long as cultural hegemony is effective in shaping the concept of self (Louis Althusser) for the masses, and as long as the masses identify their interests with the dominant social and political class, the facade of democracy and bourgeois culture works to prevent social revolution, even reform that has the potential of leading toward greater social justice.
Cultural hegemony explains modern-day reluctance on the part of workers and the declining lower middle class to resist through revolutionary means. However, one must never underestimate the power of co-optation, considering that the institutional structure has the vast means at its disposal to co-opt everything from “rebel” music to rebel movements. Is it possible that a social revolution is not taking place in the Western World and especially across southern and much of eastern Europe where austerity is devastating the middle class and workers because people have accepted bourgeois values, ideology and institutions to which they see no alternative better than the existing one no matter how horrible it may be? It is also the case that the comprador bourgeoisie – the capitalists dependent on foreign capital and foreign businesses – have convinced a large segment of the population that there is no choice but to maintain the “dependency status quo”.
Bourgeois Values and Indoctrination of the Masses
Does the dominant, or hegemonic social class and the political elites representing that class in pluralistic societies under the guise of 'democracy' have the ability to perpetuate the facade of 'democracy' behind which operates an economic dictatorship, an increasingly anti-labor and quasi-police state whose role is to prevent social change? If so, why has the institutional structure from politicians to the media, from churches to schools been so successful convincing people this is “normal” and we must continue to call it “democracy”? As long as cultural hegemony is effective in shaping the concept of self (Louis Althusser) for the masses, and as long as the masses identify their interests with the dominant social and political class, the facade of democracy and bourgeois culture works to prevent social revolution, even reform that has the potential of leading toward greater social justice.
Cultural hegemony explains modern-day reluctance on the part of workers and the declining lower middle class to resist through revolutionary means. However, one must never underestimate the power of co-optation, considering that the institutional structure has the vast means at its disposal to co-opt everything from “rebel” music to rebel movements. Is it possible that a social revolution is not taking place in the Western World and especially across southern and much of eastern Europe where austerity is devastating the middle class and workers because people have accepted bourgeois values, ideology and institutions to which they see no alternative better than the existing one no matter how horrible it may be? It is also the case that the comprador bourgeoisie – the capitalists dependent on foreign capital and foreign businesses – have convinced a large segment of the population that there is no choice but to maintain the “dependency status quo”.
What are some of the values imbedded
into the minds of the masses, including reformists and even leftists, at least those
claiming the title?
1. Working within the parliamentary system to find solutions to societal problems, because working outside such a framework entails absence of legitimacy as bourgeois society defines it, and the risk of lapsing into chaos if revolution follows means personal and societal disaster.
2. Ardent belief in individualism as the norm and the categorical rejection of communitarian values as deviation from the norm. In practice, this means that if you are rich, it is owing to the merits of your character, not because you have found the key legally or illegally to engage in the process of capitalist appropriation. By contrast, if you are poor, it is your fault, not institutional, because you must lack some trait that prevents you from making it in the open society that offers institutional opportunities to all who become rich. Therefore, the institutional structure is 'objective' and thus blameless for the fate of the individual and the multitudes of poor.
3. If the economy is contracting, it is because you and those like you have been living too well in the past, while under-producing, so now you must pay - this is especially true if you are a public employee, generally assumed lazy and overpaid, if not corrupt assuming you have a position that lends itself to making money under the table. In short, upward social mobility experienced in the past must be moderated through the process of downward social mobility for society to find balance, so the workers and middle class must sacrifice for the whole of society, when in reality the sacrifices are intended to strengthen finance capital.
4. If the economy and the state fiscal structure is on the wrong course, it is your fault for immersing in consumerist greed, debt-spending, or not spending enough to stimulate the consumer-based economy, and not paying your fair share of taxes that accounts for your predicament and that of the rest of society. How do all of these contradictory things make sense is in itself fascinating and that people believe it even more so.
The answer rests with cultural hegemony. Specifically, it has to do with massive advertising as well as the media whose role is to inculcate bourgeois values along with bourgeois guilt into people's heads. The rest of the institutions, from churches to schools, play a contributing role in the process of shaping the mind and identity, thus the entire society is bathing in the worldview of the bourgeois economic and political elites that transfer blame downward toward the masses, arguing that in an open society people have freely chosen their leaders and institutions, when in reality those have been superimposed.
5. When the economy is on the wrong tract, politicians are to blame and almost rarely business that the political class serves. For example, US public opinion poll conducted in 2011 found that 66% blame the lack of economic and job growth on 'bad policy’, while only 23% blame Wall Street, despite the well-publicized 'Occupy Wall Street' movement that eventually fizzled out as far as failing to take root at the grassroots and spread deeper into society to create the genesis of a popular movement. While there is a small segment that realizes the need for systemic change, grassroots organizing, solidarity with similar groups around the world, the majority either passively accepts or even trusts the corporate structure because they identify it with the 'national interest', while they mistrust politicians who in essence are the servants of the corporate structure. This process is also part of cultural hegemony.
6. Cultural hegemony is triumphant because the irrational is triumphant in human nature. It is a myth, perhaps dating back to Lockean philosophy and its influence on Enlightenment thinkers that influenced 19th century socialists including Marx, that human beings are rational and act as such, implying that in cases of social revolution the motivation and intent of those following revolutionary leaders is rooted on idealism.
As much as I regard reprehensible the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes who opposed the English Civil War of the 1640s and the counter-revolutionary Edmund Burke who opposed the French Revolution, there is something to be said about their keen observations regarding human nature manifesting itself in revolutionary times. Is it not the case that the rupture in cultural hegemony took place during the course of the Enlightenment that challenged the status quo, thus providing a sense of legitimacy to the revolution? After Locke was the first philosopher to make a rational case for revolution and he was a major influence on the French in 1789. In short, cultural hegemony has limitations because it is always challenged, and when that challenge reaches a substantial number of people and the nature of the challenge converges with the realities in peoples' lives, a segment of them will challenge the status quo.
Cultural Hegemony Lessons for the 21st Century
Revolutionary action has always been confined to a small group that leads and organizes grassroots support for mass uprisings against incredible obstacles by the state and the entire institutional structure. What motivates some to protest, others to adopt a more militant position, and the majority to do nothing except complain to their family and friends or write on social networks in the hope others are listening, a form of social psychotherapy? Has cultural hegemony suppressed any sense of idealism of aiming toward social justice because of the successful co-optation strategy that the mainstream institutions employ? After all, as Palmiro Togliatti (Italian Communist party general-secretary in the 1920s) insisted in his Lectures on Fascism, people must tend to their immediate needs of survival and set aside ideology. Is the majority of the population immersed in 'bourgeois pragmatism' - paying bills for now, taking care of family, satisfying immediate needs and trying to advance their careers in the age of careerism that cultural hegemony promotes?
1. Working within the parliamentary system to find solutions to societal problems, because working outside such a framework entails absence of legitimacy as bourgeois society defines it, and the risk of lapsing into chaos if revolution follows means personal and societal disaster.
2. Ardent belief in individualism as the norm and the categorical rejection of communitarian values as deviation from the norm. In practice, this means that if you are rich, it is owing to the merits of your character, not because you have found the key legally or illegally to engage in the process of capitalist appropriation. By contrast, if you are poor, it is your fault, not institutional, because you must lack some trait that prevents you from making it in the open society that offers institutional opportunities to all who become rich. Therefore, the institutional structure is 'objective' and thus blameless for the fate of the individual and the multitudes of poor.
3. If the economy is contracting, it is because you and those like you have been living too well in the past, while under-producing, so now you must pay - this is especially true if you are a public employee, generally assumed lazy and overpaid, if not corrupt assuming you have a position that lends itself to making money under the table. In short, upward social mobility experienced in the past must be moderated through the process of downward social mobility for society to find balance, so the workers and middle class must sacrifice for the whole of society, when in reality the sacrifices are intended to strengthen finance capital.
4. If the economy and the state fiscal structure is on the wrong course, it is your fault for immersing in consumerist greed, debt-spending, or not spending enough to stimulate the consumer-based economy, and not paying your fair share of taxes that accounts for your predicament and that of the rest of society. How do all of these contradictory things make sense is in itself fascinating and that people believe it even more so.
The answer rests with cultural hegemony. Specifically, it has to do with massive advertising as well as the media whose role is to inculcate bourgeois values along with bourgeois guilt into people's heads. The rest of the institutions, from churches to schools, play a contributing role in the process of shaping the mind and identity, thus the entire society is bathing in the worldview of the bourgeois economic and political elites that transfer blame downward toward the masses, arguing that in an open society people have freely chosen their leaders and institutions, when in reality those have been superimposed.
5. When the economy is on the wrong tract, politicians are to blame and almost rarely business that the political class serves. For example, US public opinion poll conducted in 2011 found that 66% blame the lack of economic and job growth on 'bad policy’, while only 23% blame Wall Street, despite the well-publicized 'Occupy Wall Street' movement that eventually fizzled out as far as failing to take root at the grassroots and spread deeper into society to create the genesis of a popular movement. While there is a small segment that realizes the need for systemic change, grassroots organizing, solidarity with similar groups around the world, the majority either passively accepts or even trusts the corporate structure because they identify it with the 'national interest', while they mistrust politicians who in essence are the servants of the corporate structure. This process is also part of cultural hegemony.
6. Cultural hegemony is triumphant because the irrational is triumphant in human nature. It is a myth, perhaps dating back to Lockean philosophy and its influence on Enlightenment thinkers that influenced 19th century socialists including Marx, that human beings are rational and act as such, implying that in cases of social revolution the motivation and intent of those following revolutionary leaders is rooted on idealism.
As much as I regard reprehensible the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes who opposed the English Civil War of the 1640s and the counter-revolutionary Edmund Burke who opposed the French Revolution, there is something to be said about their keen observations regarding human nature manifesting itself in revolutionary times. Is it not the case that the rupture in cultural hegemony took place during the course of the Enlightenment that challenged the status quo, thus providing a sense of legitimacy to the revolution? After Locke was the first philosopher to make a rational case for revolution and he was a major influence on the French in 1789. In short, cultural hegemony has limitations because it is always challenged, and when that challenge reaches a substantial number of people and the nature of the challenge converges with the realities in peoples' lives, a segment of them will challenge the status quo.
Cultural Hegemony Lessons for the 21st Century
Revolutionary action has always been confined to a small group that leads and organizes grassroots support for mass uprisings against incredible obstacles by the state and the entire institutional structure. What motivates some to protest, others to adopt a more militant position, and the majority to do nothing except complain to their family and friends or write on social networks in the hope others are listening, a form of social psychotherapy? Has cultural hegemony suppressed any sense of idealism of aiming toward social justice because of the successful co-optation strategy that the mainstream institutions employ? After all, as Palmiro Togliatti (Italian Communist party general-secretary in the 1920s) insisted in his Lectures on Fascism, people must tend to their immediate needs of survival and set aside ideology. Is the majority of the population immersed in 'bourgeois pragmatism' - paying bills for now, taking care of family, satisfying immediate needs and trying to advance their careers in the age of careerism that cultural hegemony promotes?
Is the majority so overwhelmingly
dispirited because politicians promise “reform” to deliver a variation of the
status quo and keep it as is? This is the case in the French election of Socialist
President Francois Hollande who vowed to take on German monetarist policy that
was hurting the middle class and workers, but instead moved as close to Merkel’s
austerity and0 neoliberal agenda as his conservative predecessor. Even worse
case was the election of Greek SYRIZA party chief Alexis Tsipras who dogmatically
insisted on ending austerity, privatizations, layoffs of public workers,
reinstituting the social safety net, higher wages, and above all establishing
national sovereignty in a nation that is in essence a colony of northwest European
and Chinese capital with US military bases. Scenarios of politicians blatantly
lying to voters about change and change never materializing are universal. What
is the beaten-down worker to do, especially when presumably leftist political
parties fall in line with austerity and neoliberalism?
To return to the Togliatti theory, if people are facing a bleak future for themselves and their children unless they embrace the institutional structure, how can they possibly unhinge from cultural hegemony, which is all they hear and see in the media, and in any institutional or social setting? How can people break away from bourgeois values and practices when the pragmatic realities of daily life do not permit it? This sense of 'bourgeois pragmatism' is also an integral part of the brainwashing process, to be absolutely crude about it, given that indeed this is a result of multifarious forces from society and the result of long-term historical and traditional (religious and secular) influences.
This concept of bourgeois pragmatism that has its roots in the 19th century, made a return in the 1980s onwards with Richard Rorty among others who adamantly opposed social revolution, any more than they believed in redemption of human beings or their progress through revolution. Unlimited freedom and allowing people to muddle through their problems is what these advocates of 'bourgeois pragmatism' favored; in short, early 19th century-style social and economic conditions.
To return to the Togliatti theory, if people are facing a bleak future for themselves and their children unless they embrace the institutional structure, how can they possibly unhinge from cultural hegemony, which is all they hear and see in the media, and in any institutional or social setting? How can people break away from bourgeois values and practices when the pragmatic realities of daily life do not permit it? This sense of 'bourgeois pragmatism' is also an integral part of the brainwashing process, to be absolutely crude about it, given that indeed this is a result of multifarious forces from society and the result of long-term historical and traditional (religious and secular) influences.
This concept of bourgeois pragmatism that has its roots in the 19th century, made a return in the 1980s onwards with Richard Rorty among others who adamantly opposed social revolution, any more than they believed in redemption of human beings or their progress through revolution. Unlimited freedom and allowing people to muddle through their problems is what these advocates of 'bourgeois pragmatism' favored; in short, early 19th century-style social and economic conditions.
Arab Spring and Cultural Hegemony
If cultural hegemony works to prevent social change, how do we account for Arab Spring revolts, regardless of meddling by foreign elements interested in subverting them and seeking regime change and a new and deeper form of integration into Western capitalism? If by the word 'revolution' we mean systemic change, then Arab Spring revolts did not result in systemic change at all, and in fact only regime change took place. If by the word 'revolution' we imply grassroots, then Arab Spring revolts do not fall in this category, because there was heavy outside interference, especially in the cases of Libya and Syria, but all across North Africa. Where political and economic conditions are either the same or much worse than before Arab Spring.
It is true that political change has resulted, but it is not institutional change by any means where Arab Spring has taken root. Still, how do we explain that an otherwise 'traditional' religious society, somewhat influenced by modern secular culture and using high tech communications, manage to have a segment of its population mobilize for change, albeit limited to political regime and with external political, financial and military interference? Does Arab Spring prove that the cultural hegemony theory is wrong, or does it validate it, and what are the lessons for the rest of the world's grassroots movements?
Arab Spring was a revolt against secular, one-party state regimes that lacked legitimacy from the ruling population and represented a notion of sovereignty identified with the early Cold War instead of the 21st century. Muslims rebelled against such regimes to bring change that would reflect traditional values and practices through domestic and foreign policy that their governments did not represent. Cultural hegemony actually worked to promote Arab Spring, given that the rebels by far wanted a return to Muslim roots and social justice within Muslim institutions.
One reason we fail to see progress on women's issues, democracy and human rights in the Middle East, as the West defines those concepts, is precisely because cultural hegemony, especially in the context of 'political Islam' operated all along behind Arab Spring. Political Islam, the mixing of religion and politics, has alienated a segment of the Middle East-North African population, but it remains the principal dynamic in Arab cultural hegemony. At the same time, the police and military played their traditional role in making sure there was no structural change. Does the failure of Arab Spring signal failure of uprisings in the Western World, or was this a special case of traditional societies undergoing “social venting” with the considerable external influence subverting the grassroots movements interested in systemic change?
Conclusions
There are conservative analysts who assume that more than anything people crave safety and security. Cultural hegemony rests on the fears of the people who have been conditioned to accept the status quo and avert risk when it comes to securing a new social contract that would represent all people. Some advocates of democracy argue that actualizing their potential is just as important for human beings, but this entails having an institutional structure that permits and promotes those possibilities. I have argued in the past that uprisings are very possible in the 21st century, especially after the next inevitable deep recession, but systemic change is highly unlikely.
Many factors have to converge for a
revolution to take place and bring about structural changes. It is true that
revolutions rarely take place amid economic contractions, although economic
hard times eventually prepare the stage for uprisings that may fester in the
minds of people for many years before they act. Moreover, it takes time for grassroots
movements to form and consolidate, assuming they do not become co-opted. Modern
technology has made it possible for cultural hegemony to be challenged, but it
has its limitations. Real (objective) conditions (socioeconomic status and lack
of prospects for a better future amid a miserable present) in peoples' lives
must be such that they will free themselves of cultural hegemony's grip to
embrace social change and then act upon it.
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