In the West, Lenin did not win, not at least directly, nor, on a pragmatic-operational level, did Marx; but their European analogue, the Italian Antonio Gramsci, who developed an operational strategy applicable everywhere and which in fact was taken up in various countries, from Latin America to Europe up to the United States itself, seems to have won (i.e., Gramsci is one of the authors most studied in American universities). In short, the Gramscian theory holds that a political movement, to be hegemonic (which does not necessarily mean dictatorial) must have consent, and to gain consent it must win the trust of citizens; but to gain this trust it must conquer institutions which govern the state and which contribute to the formation of public opinion. First and foremost, it must conquer the spaces of education and culture: schools and universities, media and artistic-cultural sectors. According to this theory, the party that succeeds in imposing its cultural and social hegemony will therefore win the ideological war.
It can be said that Gramsci’s theory was effective and successful, because it is a sort of extension of the class struggle within the world of culture and education. Most of the subversive movements, both in the United States and in Europe, that are keeping our society in check, pushing it towards a socialist horizon, are heirs, even without knowing it, of Gramscism. Where the Gramscian theory of hegemony has been applied in a precise way, it has always been successful. In fact, throughout the Western world the cultural scene is dominated by the paradigm of the “politically correct,” of which Gramsci’s thought is one of the pillars. Today cultural Marxism has – unfortunately – become a global reality, above all, thanks to Gramscism.
