Aldous Huxleys Brave New World, a classic study of modern totalitarianism, contains a line that epitomizes the concept that Gramsci tried to convey to his party comrades: A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. While it is improbable that Huxley was familiar with Gramscis theories, the idea he conveys of free persons marching willingly into bondage is nevertheless precisely what Gramsci had in mind. Gramsci believed that if Communism achieved mastery of human consciousness, then labor camps and mass murder would be unnecessary. How does an ideology gain such mastery over patterns of thought inculcated by cultures for hundreds of years? Mastery over the consciousness of the great mass of people would be attained, Gramsci contended, if Communists or their sympathizers gained control of the organs of culture — churches, education, newspapers, magazines, the electronic media, serious literature, music, the visual arts, and so on. By winning cultural hegemony, to use Gramscis own term, Communism would control the deepest wellsprings of human thought and imagination. One need not even control all of the information itself if one can gain control over the minds that assimilate that information. Under such conditions, serious opposition disappears since men are no longer capable of grasping the arguments of Marxisms opponents. Men will indeed love their servitude, and will not even realize that it is servitude. Father James Thornton .. New American .. 1999.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:38:29 +0000
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