The Heavenly Council, Part II

Gramsci

That was terrific, Wally. Thank you so much for bringing great clarity to this discussion. Permit me to address your last question, as it is something I have devoted my life to, mostly while incarcerated in a fascist prison. Of course, the great thinker in this regard was Karl Marx, whose solution to the elites oppressing the majority was that the latter, specifically the proletariat, needed to revolt against their oppressors, and assume control of the state; which, he claimed, would eventually wither away. My own version of this was to opt for what is called “soft power,” as opposed to Marx’s military solution. Let me explain.

Marx posited the existence of a substructure in society, namely the economy, the mode of production. On top of that, so to speak, was the superstructure, consisting of culture—ideas, beliefs, religions, art, literature, consciousness, and so on. In his view, it was the former that determined the content of the latter; causality always went from bottom to top, never the other way around. The superstructure, in a word, was just so much fluff; when the substructure changed, the former superstructure just melted away. My study of history led me to a different conclusion: that while the economy was certainly important, the superstructure was also influential—maybe even more so than the economy, because human beings live in consciousness, in culture, and are not just economic robots.

Clearly, Marx remains our greatest analyst with respect to capitalism; he has never really been surpassed. But in terms of prediction, his formula proved to be seriously off-base, in a number of ways. For example, the Soviet Union was a resounding failure; not a dictatorship of the proletariat, but merely the replacement of one set of oppressive elites by another—a situation brilliantly satirized by my colleague sitting over to the left of me, George Orwell. The key concept I developed to explain the hold of the elites over the masses was not military repression, but what we now call “soft power,” or what I called egemonia—hegemony. Of course, Wally is right to note that in much of the world, it is hard power that serves to keep the masses in line. But if you look around, you’ll discover something of great importance: in the majority of cases, the government and the people are of one mind. In the case of America, for example, the comedian George Carlin was wont to say that its leaders did not descend from Mars. After Franklin Roosevelt, it was one snow job after another. Reagan deepened the oppression of the poor; he widened the gap between the lower classes and the rich. And to this day, the American people, poor ones especially, say he is their favorite president. Not Roosevelt, who helped them. No, Reagan, who hurt them. Consider also that a lunatic like Donald Trump is also beloved by millions of adoring followers, even as he takes the bread out of their mouths. It’s only the concept of hegemony that can make sense of this huge contradiction. Which is why the phrase “snow job” is quite apropos.

The analysis of this conundrum actually originates with Marx, who noted that the ideas of the masses are the same as the ideas of the ruling class. In which case, the carrot, so to speak, is much more effective than the stick. Hegemony is the way of life and thought that exists in any society in any particular era; it suffuses all of that society’s institutions. It is so total a world view, so all-encompassing, that very few people are able to think “outside the box,” as we like to say. The hegemonic power in Europe during the Middle Ages and a bit beyond was the Catholic church; in the modern age that succeeded it, it’s capitalism. How many Giordano Brunos existed in the sixteenth century? How many Allen Ginsbergs exist today? You see what I’m getting at. Culture is the true site of political struggles. It is for this reason that the political activist Rudi Dutschke described the work to be done as “the long march through the institutions.”

So this is a different answer to Lenin’s question, What is to be done? It involves changing people’s minds, getting them to see through the hegemonic bullshit, if you’ll pardon my French, and into a liberatory hegemony, or way of life. For this, university intellectuals are of no use, because being well-paid, they buy into the capitalist system. What we need, instead, are grass-roots intellectuals, ones who don’t have a stake in that system. This would include writers like Allen Ginsberg and J.D. Salinger, whose books have sold in the millions of copies. But this is where I hit a brick wall. None of this has made any difference—up to now. And now, we see that things are changing; millions of people are disenchanted with the hegemonic American Dream. Many see that it’s a scam. Unfortunately, it has left them at a loss, disoriented, with no coherent plan for an alternative. As a result, we are at a position similar to the end of the Middle Ages, hanging in midair—a situation brilliantly captured by Shakespeare in The Tempest. We not only need a new formula; we need a new leader to embody that formula, a person who can capture the attention of millions—Hegel’s “world historical individual,” if you will. Trump is such a person, but only for the purposes of destroying the current hegemony. We need a leader who can point to a positive outcome, a shift to something that is life-enhancing. Perhaps, dare I say it, a new mythology. Such a person has yet to appear on the scene.

Fellini

I want to thank my fellow countryman, my paisan, for his brilliant analysis. He has given us much to think about, quite obviously. But I have to take issue with that analysis in one respect: it is too rational. It seems to me that real change comes about almost by accident. It is not rational, and it is not planned. That it could be arranged in such a clear, may I say clairvoyant way—well, I doubt that’s in the cards. Some of you may know that great British satire, 1066 and All That, a kind of hilarious pseudo-documentary. At one point in the book, it is the end of the Middle Ages, and everyone knows it. They are all sitting on the edge of their seats, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Renaissance—a delightfully absurd scenario. Today, many realize that we are in the end times, but no one can predict what the new Renaissance is going to look like. And this, I believe, is where my most well-known film, 8½, might be relevant. It has been called the greatest movie ever made. How did I do it? Hint: not by rational planning. For those of you who haven’t heard the story, let me give you a brief synopsis.

It came about through failure—mine. In the character of a film director named Guido Anselmi, played by Marcello Mastroianni, I was struggling to make a science-fiction film, and was suffering from “director’s block.” Guido retreats into a fantasy world, where the women in his life—i.e., my life—confront him with his romantic failures. His ideal woman, played by Claudia Cardinale, arrives, only to tell him that he is incapable of love. I wrote all this, but it hurt like hell, because it was autobiographical. So I too developed director’s block, and drafted a letter to my producer, Angelo Rizzoli, to tell him that I had lost the film, so to speak, and was unable to go on. At just that point the chief machinist on the film came into my office, and asked me to celebrate the launch of the film, as is. And at just that moment, everything fell into place. The plot line was clear: it was the story of a director who had lost his way. I put all of the people in my life into a circus ring, and they all run around the circle, holding hands. The failure turned into a great success; I had unwittingly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

My friends, we are in a similar situation today. Capitalism, modernity, neoliberalism, the American Dream—all of that is falling apart. My suggestion is that as in my film, the failure might be transformed into a success. Call me pazzo, but somehow, I put it to you that we are going to go through major collapse and disorientation, and the other side of that process could be a new hegemony, a better world. That needs to be our new mythology, and what we as a group can do is spread the gospel, be Antonio’s “organic intellectuals.” The more people believe that this is happening, the more likely it is to come about.