specific political strategies of passive revolution. This school of thought also recognises that global hegemony is dependent upon not just the direct domination of one state over other states. Metaphorically, the Gramscian view of consent and coercion is applied to the international within neo- Gramscian literature.
potentially incriminating ideas under the conditions of imprisonment.
Marx had written that:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;
they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living.
(Marx 1852) Gramsci’s understanding of historicism to a large extent was an adaptation of Marx’s impressions and encouraged a ‘revolutionary perspective … [whose] practical function is the modification of social existence and existing social arrangements’ (PN: 219). So people and their behaviour are not simply determined by their circumstances as is suggested in structural Marxism and idealism, but people are the creators of history.
Robert Cox introduced Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to IR theory with his seminal article ‘Social forces, states and world orders: beyond international relations theory’ (1981), which cleared a space for invaluable critical theoretical research on ideas of hegemony, passive revolution, and the impact of social forces on history and theory. Scholars of the neo- Gramscian and what Burnham (1991) calls the ‘Amsterdam School’ (Van der Pijl 1984; Overbeek 1990) use Gramsci’s particular understanding of the relations that perpetuate hegemony to analyse international expansion of world order rather than Gramsci’s predominantly nationally focused writings. The incorporation of these ideas demonstrates a clear shift from positivist theorising inherent to the orthodox IR and into the critical arena of IR theory.
Gramscian-inspired work explores questions of power and social relations of production which provides a framework to analyse hegemonic processes, with the allusion that a national expression of world hegemonic transformations is the ultimate evidence of a hypothetical progression of world history and theory itself. Rupert has called the historical global phenomenon capitalism and the historic periods identified over a contemporary trajectory of political economic activity a case of ‘liberal globalization’ (Rupert 2000: 45–9), while Cox (1987: 111–50) has discussed the ‘emergence’ and ‘consolidation’ of the ‘liberal world order’.
What distinguishes Gramsci from other Marxist writers is the analysis of a diverse range of social forces that participate in the formations of
historical blocs. This analysis has inspired research by Gramscian neophytes, but these writers do not restrict their analyses to the economic sphere alone. Neo-Gramscians recognise that sustainability of economic practices in a nation requires more than forced change. Ideological consent is the gateway for complete consolidation and thus requires extensive analysis for the understanding of how the elite class actually works to achieve control in this area. ‘Elites lead historic [hegemonic]
blocs understood in the Gramscian sense as coalitions of social forces bound by consent and coercion’ (Sinclair 1996: 9).
‘New Gramscians’, by exploiting Gramsci’s interventions and applying them to a contemporary scenario:
… adopt a broad historicist or historical materialist framework to examine the structural organisation of world order, and focus upon the emerging terrain of global civil society as the principal battle- ground over which the struggle for world hegemony is now occurring.
(Germain and Kenny 1998: 71) My analysis of Korea’s subjection to the global surveillance and structuring organisations of the IMF and the UN through UNESCO agencies in the following chapters demonstrate that these entities have directly played a role in Korean economic, political and social develop- ment. The struggle against externally generated, but internally affective phenomena is seen at the level of workers and unions, groups that compose a fraction of civil society. The arenas of Korean civil society who question IMF restructuring that occurred in response to economic crisis tend to reassess the depth of a material environment of capitalism in South Korea. Therefore, contemporary Gramscian-inspired work aids in my contextualisation of Gramscian theories about the state, civil society, social forces, and historicism to bring to light a contemporary global hegemonic struggle surrounding neoliberal capitalism.
What differentiates the neo-Gramscian/Coxian methodology from other methodologies is its analysis of social relations of production.
Contrasting perspectives and resulting relations between institutions within the superstructure of Korean society represent the tensions within the social relations of production. The struggle for hegemony over production in Korea has resulted in class formations and divisions that are evident among the corporate, intellectual, and political arenas. Within the
first category, corporate forces are represented by business formations over time and the expansion of transnational capital. The second category of intellectualism encompasses workers, research institute personnel and think-tanks within the research sector. Within the third category (political), trade unions and states and the relations between these institutions over time, play a role.
A neo-Gramscian perspective therefore views not just production processes, but emphasises a more inclusive view: the ‘social relations of production’. Cox writes that the consolidation and sustenance of hegemony are dependent on the social relations of production.
Production … is to be understood in the broadest sense. It is not confined to the production of physical goods used or consumed. It covers the production and reproduction of physical goods used or consumed. It covers the production and reproduction of knowledge and of the social relations, morals and institutions that are pre- requisites to the production of physical goods.
(Cox 1989: 39) Tooze (1990) writes that:
… a Gramscian analysis … denies the very possibility of ‘objective’
theory which is the epistemological bedrock of orthodoxy and explains, in a non-determinist frame, its own emergence as well as explaining the emergence of other perspectives as part of the global political economy itself … a Gramscian political economy is inherently reflexive.
Thus the epistemology of Gramscian-inspired writers strays from the orthodoxy, or the positivist notion that objective understanding of events is possible. The above quote indicates further the shift from the logical, empiricist positivism that dominated IR thought since the 1960s, to a strain of critical IPE. The shift is shown by the gradual recognition of distinctions between subject and object, the decrease of distinction made by both realists and idealists between morality and politics, the notion of agency, the reopening of history as a resource for understanding, the inclusion of politics and political economics in analysis of IR topics – generally, the reassessment altogether of what is important within international relations.
This shift in the discipline has emerged as international politics and economics have become more and more intertwined due to business, government, and class networks that increasingly develop across the globe. Ultimately, the burgeoning global struggle for ideological hegemony and ownership of ideas in the contemporary world order is seen by conducting a case study of South Korea’s passive revolution, a project intended to advance Korea’s international competitiveness as well as to incorporate workers into internationalisation measures.
Hegemony
Hegemony is the prolongation of certain systems within which economics and politics interact, and social forces move, but there are quite distinct differences among theories of hegemony. Whilst the theory of hegemony can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, the modern concept of hegemony originates from ideas within the Third International regarding strategies of the creation of the Soviet state and the Bolshevik Revolution, and Machiavelli’s ideas of consent and coercion. The idea of the Third International was that the working class would formulate partnerships and ally with other subordinated groups, aiding in revolutionary goals. This is similar to Lenin’s work inspired by the Russian Labour movement that emerged to contest Tsarism. Lenin’s, and the Russian Marxists’ under- standing of hegemony is thus revolutionary in essence, and requires solidarity across groups of the working class with other groups.
Gramsci responded to Lenin’s ideas on alliances between classes with the claim that hegemony cannot be fully achieved if the class in some role of coercion does not address national-popular interests rather than its own interests alone. Gramsci wrote in the 1920s, but his ideas were not revived until 60 years later. In the meantime, realist and neorealist conceptions of hegemony allow this form of state power to be evident in a unipolar sense alone, and can only account for political power supported by military capability. Orthodox ideas of hegemony maintain that one nation has superior economic strength over other nations that retain control over the globally important technological sector. The attractiveness of Gramsci’s ideas is that they apply to a wider range of cases and a more complex range of analyses than orthodox theories of hegemony.
Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony requires more than dominance or leadership, and necessitates more than Lewis’s determinist framework of hegemonic leadership as related to economic growth (see Figure 2).
Gramscian hegemony is not simply a material condition of power and
economic strength, as neorealism imagines, but its ‘decisive’ elements are cultural and ideological. The General Secretary’s work was preceded by Lenin’s revolutionary conceptions of hegemony from the Russian Labour Movement in the late 19th century and the Third International regarding strategies of the creation of the Soviet state and the Bolshevik Revolution, and by Machiavelli’s ideas of consent and coercion. Gramsci’s innovation was not just an unprecedented concept of hegemony, but also the analysis of elite behaviour that occurs during crises of hegemony, such as passive revolution, as elites aim to recapture hegemonic power. Whereas subordinated groups are most often considered to contain ‘revolutionary’
motives, Gramsci considered that dominant classes enact revolutions with power-seeking motives. Passive revolution creates an ambiguity between resistance and rule by merging ideologies of both in a manner less obviously coercive but coercive all the same, through the use of trasformismo. In the case of fascist Italy, hegemonic leadership applied to situations such as the capitalism of northern Europe in which the petty bourgeoisie and workers were absorbed into state strategies through concessions and allowed them leadership roles that were intended to provide an overall harmony. While Italian leaders may have achieved hegemonic status, I aim to identify power relations and strategies in the semi-peripheral nation of Korea that have occurred in the absence or struggles for hegemony.
In Gramsci’s notes on the Prince, or the political party, he envisages a metaphor of the Greek centaur, half animal and half human, which is a symbol of a ‘dual perspective’ (PN: 169–70) of how representatives of a class enforce coercion as well as enhance consent over and with subordinate classes. The hegemony referred to by this metaphor is not a direct domination in the realist sense of authority over the ruled, but involves ideological leadership. Gramsci’s use of the words direzione intellettuale e morale (leadership, direction) can be equated with his use of egemonia (hegemony) as they are applied interchangeably, while dom inaione (domination) clearly diverges in his work in the Prison Notebooks. Gramsci acknowledges that leadership within an effective hegemony requires not just military rule but involves more complex direction and even incorporation and integration of classes into the state, to the extent that they are no longer distinguishable.
Gramsci thus weighed Lenin’s idea of hegemony with the idea that the capitalist class or its representative’s actions may ultimately gain state power, and maintain that power. Gramsci questioned why Lenin’s and
Marx’s prophecies for overthrow of oppressive governments had not occurred, and reasoned that civil society must have some say in the workings of hegemony. So hegemony within a particular bloc of history involves consent as well as some amount of coercion: ideological leadership and consolidation is the cohesion that maintains hegemonies.
The analysis of historical blocs is an instrument for the ‘creation of conscious history’ (Salamini 1981: 28–9) that is seen in the ideological consolidation of interests. Hegemony can become consolidated from the revolution of the oppressed classes, but also emerge from the formation of new classes via one class’s strategic activity. A class becomes hegemonic when it effectively transcends its corporate phase of solely representing its own interests but succeeds in representing universally, at least in rhetoric, the main social forces that form a nation. Gramsci (PN:
180–95) noted that there are three levels of consciousness in the trajectory toward hegemony. The first level is economico-corporative, wherein only one group’s interests are represented. The second level is that of solidarity and class-consciousness of a social class in its entirety which remains at the economic level. The third level is hegemonic because the interests of subordinate classes are incorporated into a universally accepted ideology.
Gramsci came to his conception of hegemony and historical blocs from the knowledge of hierarchical structures within a state and was interested in national struggles for leadership. So is Gramsci’s hegemony valuable for contemporary research, during which time international forces struggle for hegemonic leadership, a battle that divides national groups in unprecedented ways? The neo-Gramscian school has incorporated Gramsci’s ideas to accommodate for contemporary phenomena in ways that will be delineated.
Neo-Gramscian writers utilise the concept of historical blocs but expand its application to look at contemporary struggles for international hegemony, building on earlier conceptual developments envisioned by WST for a broad division of labour. Cox has been the most prolific in his writings on the formation of historical blocs over time. He writes that historical blocs are formed around ideas, institutions and material capabilities (see Introduction, Figure 1), and the relations between these forces are both a reflection of, and the creators of international historical blocs. The manifestation of struggles for international hegemony emerges with a discussion of world orders, forms of state, and social forces (see Introduction, Figure 2). Cox discusses a trajectory of power relations that have constructed what he reasons holds the potential for being a
contemporary historical bloc of global neoliberal capitalism, a description that applies to both the national and the international progression of events. Cox (1987: 106) writes that powers of principal states and forms of state have changed the global distribution of production, and that this transformation has further altered the structures of power relations and productive powers within states that are affected by the new global configuration. Cox (1987: 111–271) places these relatively abstract concepts into empirical context with an analysis of hegemonic struggles that occurred via the expansion of particular forms of state and production relations that have resulted in a contemporary hegemonic struggle around neoliberal capitalism.
Because I aim to identify conditions for a series of non-hegemonic passive revolutions in Korea that have forced capitalist development forward, for the sake of comparison, the question of what hegemony ‘looks like’ is crucial. Femia outlines three phases of hegemony from a Gramscian perspective (1981: 47). First, ‘integral’ hegemony means that at social and ethical levels of society, the relationship between rulers and ruled is devoid of contradictions or antagonisms. An integral hegemony does not know opposition because the leading group has integrated all potential opposing ideas into its own leadership rhetoric. A less austere phase is ‘decadent’
hegemony. In this form, a bourgeois economy and the ideas that once lent legitimacy to the leading group appear outdated and outmoded. A decadent historical bloc shows signs of decay, meaning that ‘the potential for social disintegration is ever present: conflict lurks just beneath the surface’ (1981: 47). It is at this stage that the disjuncture between once- integrated social units begins to surface. Thus ideological fray begins when the ‘dominant group has lost its function’ (Gramsci 1949: 72).
The lowest form of hegemony is ‘minimal’ (Femia 1981: 47). This form shows domination but not leadership: any intervention of popular masses is stalled or deemed illegitimate by the dominant classes. But hegemony will not endure without consensus of ideology that incorporates ‘concern’
for the welfare of all members. Therefore the group who wishes to maintain hegemony should ensure that it is ‘developing a critical self- understanding, making alliances, and capturing the ideological realm and, if it intends to extend its hegemony to a larger public, assuring economic development’ (Augelli and Murphy 1993: 132). Overall, hegemony is an ongoing struggle and therefore, cannot be definitively ‘complete’, however it knows a series of increments that make it more or less likely to become integrated or consolidated.
It is a ‘constant struggle against a multitude of resistances to ideological domination; any balance of forces that it achieves is always precarious, always in need of re-achievement’ (Fiske 1987: 41). In fact, Gramsci’s ultimate vision was a scenario wherein the hegemony of knowledge could be wielded by the democratic socialist classes, and he struggled to identify how this ideal could become reality. So under what conditions is hegemony not integrated, despite groups’ or classes’ efforts to achieve this end? Very little work has been done to answer these questions, much less in the context of East Asian social, political and economic development.
Dominic Kelly adopts an ‘eclectic’ Gramscian approach (2002: 7), showing that for a period of time, Japan behaved as a hegemon for the region during a particular historic bloc throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Kelly considers the role of Japan in the East Asian region, looking at forces for social change in the Japanese state-society complex and concludes that political and economic circumstances within the territorial boundaries of Japan directly affected the region as a whole. This occurred particularly when it began to lose hegemonic status after the Nixon and oil shocks and various domestic political events began to affect foreign policy.
Kelly notes social change in conjunction with the negotiation between forces as depicted by Cox (material capabilities, ideas and institutions). Interrelations between forces and hegemonic struggles within Japan imposed pressures on groups and individuals both nationally and regionally. In marked contrast to the story of following chapters, Kelly does not explore in full the space between hegemony and its absence.
Transnational Capitalist Network
With a commitment to recognising the impact of the international on the national, I should discuss exactly who or what drives capitalism. Within developing societies, particular units of socialisation and new class formations emerge, or more specifically in the process of groups’
socialisation to capitalist norms and leadership is necessary for the prolongation and maintenance of class struggle. The leaders of the development of capital are people of a sub-category of cadres who play a guiding role for the subdivisions of class (Van der Pijl 1998: 139–40). The international expansion of the ideologically informed work norms of neoliberal capitalism creates friction and the foundation for class fractions.
Bieler and Morton (2003) reiterate that:
… an analysis of global restructuring has to … account for class struggle that takes place at the transnational level not only in sub- stance, but also in form involving national and transnational class fractions, which operate from within and through national forms of state.
So, as the name suggests, the transnational capitalist class is a class specific to capitalism, whose members are generally people who would have been, or were, members of the petty bourgeoisie in original communities, and who are agents of the expansion of capitalism. While these cadres do not necessarily experience class identity, they retain some aspects of the identity of preceding social units i.e. class solidarity and sensitivity to social status.
Coherence of the cadre arrangement develops historically and involves several responsibilities that are ultimately meant to integrate ‘the various moments of alienation into an integral world of rules and norms’ (Van der Pijl 1998: 138). These class members are typically individuals who have become managers or major stakeholders in business. Cadres within states are involved in the facilitation of the development of capital and the world-wide network, or what I call the transnational capitalist class network (TCCN) because this class has become rearticulated in the present stage of capitalism a la ‘Network Society’ (Castells 2004) and provides the rules of standardisation and regulation of subordinate classes.
In a nation like Korea, ‘class’ is not a particularly rigid concept due to its lack of historical ideological embeddedness. Korea does not have a history of class-based social organisations in the same way that nineteenth century Europe has, and so it is anachronistic to discuss class expansion without noting that Korea’s class formations and divisions themselves are relatively new manifestations. Korea has seen the rise of working class consciousness occurring during rapid industrialisation (Koo 2001: 8); but in comparison to Europe, the environment within which class- consciousness transpired was, in Korea, ‘extremely unfavourable’
culturally and politically (11). The emergence of a working class consciousness has been paired with a growth of a separate class formation at the corporate managerial level (see Cox 1987: 360–1). A neo-Gramscian discussion of class permits the focus on struggles between various social forces for the establishment of a hegemonic production structure at the national level. What is seen in the Korean case is an ascendance of groups who have taken the initiative to operate within the criteria of transnational norms, and the co-operation of the state, to attempt to incorporate