The Death of Hegemony

Capitalist rule relies on the idea of inevitability to function.
With the development of information technology, this idea is becoming increasingly difficult to fabricate.
An excursus on Gramsci, domination, and social media.

Reminder: The words marked in red are links leading to relevant Kritikpunkt articles.
This article, like all our more theoretical ones, is suitable as an introduction to certain topics, in this case cultural hegemony — it is deliberately simplified to provide a more accessible entry into a complex subject.

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The remaining dominance of capitalism is maintained not only through coercion but also through the idea of inevitability.
For stability and mere preservation of capitalism, broad consent or at least tolerance from the masses is required. For Gramsci, this meant; “that the ruling group will coordinate in a concrete way with the general interests of subordinate groups, and that state life can be understood as a continual formation and overcoming of unstable equilibria (…)” – i.e., that the ruling class, the class of property owners, can rule not only through coercion (being compelled to participate in capitalist production) but also by establishing the idea that the interests of the ruling class are also those of society as a whole.

This works internally through discourse shifts, such as the idea that recipients of citizen income and refugees are responsible for rising living costs, and externally through the creation of “national enemies” who threaten “shared values” (democracy, “freedom,” etc.).

The state then allows bourgeois freedoms that are not directly aligned with the ruling interests but serve hegemonic interests by suggesting a reciprocal relationship between domination and the governed.
A central mechanism of hegemonic rule according to Gramsci is that the interests of subordinate classes are not fully suppressed but integrated into the existing power structure in a modified form.
For example, the state can permit trade unions, legally codify labor standards, or introduce social policies like minimum wages — which at first glance appear as progress for working classes — but do not alter the fundamental property relations upon which capitalist production and societal power are based.

Such arrangements function more as hegemonic strategies by which the ruling class maintains its dominance without having to resort to immediate coercion.
By partially accommodating demands of the working class and institutionalizing them, their oppositional power is weakened, and the current system is portrayed as reformable and consensus-based.

This form of rule in terms of foreign policy, i.e., societal approval of the declaration of friends and enemies, worked well for decades.
Initially, there was resistance within parts of the student movement against Germany’s role in the Vietnam War, but this was ultimately suppressed through institutionalization of anti-war voices.
The claim that capitalism is inevitable was exemplified in West Germany over 40 years by the existence of East Germany: “Socialism is not the solution; capitalism is the solution. This has been demonstrated by the revolutions of the peoples of the East.” (Helmut Kohl, 1989)
Subsequently, it was enough to point out that one of the two systems still existed while the other collapsed.

Of course, there have always been isolated opponents of this status quo, but never enough to threaten the dominant culture.
Without opponents of the status quo, it would eventually lose its mask and seem truly inevitable.
Where in absolutist societies there was still coercion to follow the ruling culture, in capitalism this is no longer necessary:
“Freedom,” “Progress,” “Development” — Western capitalism and its states have succeeded in removing the “for whom?” from every aspect of culture.
If someone talks about economic growth, no one asks for whom? Or why it is considered inherently good?

This so thoroughly erodes any consciousness of value creation that it no longer exists.
In the societal debate about “alternatives,” reference is made to states of the Global South, with the punchline that “we” are doing better, without questioning why; Why are some states rich and others poor?

A mere reference to the fundamental democratic order of this state suffices to make its mechanisms seem reasonable — no one questions whose democracy and freedom are meant.
The idea of fundamentally questioning capitalism itself is so distant that all opponents of the status quo, at least those who see themselves as such, rely on pseudo-alternatives.
This applies to right-wingers who believe they have found a structural alternative in the AfD, and to left-liberals who think they can bring about systemic change through social democracy.

Establishing this inevitability worked very well for a long time:
Until a few decades ago, controlling the flow of information was relatively straightforward.
Until the 2000s, Tagesschau was the main source of information for a large part of the population. Only from the mid-2010s did online news portals begin to reach 50%.
These online portals, mostly still tied to fixed editorial standards with established practices for information gathering, do not differ fundamentally in maintaining cultural hegemony — there was simply no reason to seek out alternative media.
The information market “did not fundamentally open”; of course, every print medium also had an online branch — but that’s about it.

This only really changed during the Covid pandemic, and the sharply worsening material conditions here in Germany.
The material deterioration of living standards, especially among the poorer classes, led to widespread distrust, often reflected in conspiracy myths. This distrust is a consequence of the tight grip capitalism’s self-understanding has on the ruling culture.
Blaming inflation on profit logic during the crisis is impossible due to cultural hegemony — the profit logic, meaning that corporations make profits, that’s just how it is.
Between 2020 and 2022, thousands of Telegram channels emerged, which are both a symptom and a cause of the erosion of trust in the state.
The erosion is a result because material decline generally leads to reduced identification with the ruling culture, and the proliferation of these new alternative media, regardless of their often absurd output, has strengthened awareness of alternative, sometimes oppositional, viewpoints among many (including outside the Hildmann bubble).
We do not claim that Covid deniers on Telegram channels had any progressive value, but the close link between material existence and identification with cultural hegemony is clearly visible.

IShowSpeed in China

American streamer Darran Watkins, known by his pseudonym “IShowSpeed,” or simply “Speed,” visited several Chinese cities last week, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Chengdu, sharing his experiences via Twitch.
His visit reached, when including all platforms, clips, and repeats, approximately 50 million people — a number unachievable with any traditional medium.
The unfiltered insight into the daily lives of many Chinese people, as well as the modern facades and infrastructures of Tier One and Two cities, prompted hundreds of thousands to express their surprise regarding Chinese reality:
“Is China now so advanced? It blows my 30-year-old understanding of China out of the water. I have been so deceived by the mainstream media for so many years, and I want to visit China to see for myself,” reads a TikTok comment with 3,800 likes. Another user writes: “The US has spent billions on anti-China propaganda, only for it to be reversed by Red Note (the Chinese TikTok version, KP) and IShowSpeed streams,” with 4,200 likes.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented on the visit, “The unique live streams of foreign influencers show China as it is, in an unfiltered panoramic view,” and offered Watkins a ten-year visa for China.

Regardless of one’s stance on China, the development of media production methods over the past 20 years has shifted the information monopoly from a largely centralized, monopolized media apparatus to a largely decentralized, easily accessible network, making it increasingly impossible for the ruling class to maintain control over ideological hegemony.

Attempts to reassert control over the flow of information, such as the short-term banning of TikTok, paradoxically deepen the contradiction between ruling ideology and subjective perception, because direct interventions in information flow lift the veil of the voluntary nature of ruling ideology — for example, the TikTok ban led millions to try the Chinese version “Red Note,” resulting in comments like those above.

This rupture is most actively observable in the context of the genocide in Gaza; the existence of an incredible amount of private footage, immediate recordings of Israeli war crimes, and constant news of new atrocities by Palestinians (beyond the dominant news portals) contrasted with the actively hegemonic reporting by Tagesschau, The Guardian, Bild, and others, has led to an unprecedented break with cultural hegemony in this country.
Looking into comment sections of Tagesschau, The New York Times, or other bourgeois outlets on Palestine, one encounters a level of critique that exists solely because of developments in information technology.

The productive aspect of such ruptures is only possible because the entire system of cultural hegemony is built on sand.
The development of productive forces, including information media, continuously contradicts the preservation of the status quo.
The consent of the subordinate classes to rule, through adopting the ideology of the ruling class, cannot be maintained in a media-saturated, rapidly developing, and informed society.

Coupled with the decline of material conditions in almost all states of the Global North, this aspect of contradiction — between the level of productivity (i.e., technological development) and the limits of bourgeois-democratic hegemony (such as the need to portray rule as both inevitable and voluntary) — opens the door to the end, if not the crisis, of bourgeois rule as an perceived inevitable construct.
When a state finds ways to actively subordinate the flow of information to hegemonic control (such as the TikTok ban), it directly contradicts its most important element of hegemony: pre-packaged “freedom.”