Antonio Gramsci: The Role of Intellectuals in Society

 ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS IN HEGEMONY

Gramsci regards the role of the intellectuals as an important one, fusing moral dimension with practical activities of the dominant group so as to enable it to exercise hegemony. According to him, the special function of the intellectuals, besides organising domination for the capitalists in the capitalist society, is to organise the consent of the masses in support of the dominant class. Such consent, Gramsci says, comes easily, given the "prestige" of the dominant class.

Though Gramsci regards everyone a philosopher, thinking in his own way or unconsciously, yet all are not capable of performing the social functions of the intellectuals. The intellectual is one, Gramsci believes, who is able to relate himself with the world in which he lives – "there is no place for the intellectual other than in relation to a fundamental class." The intellectual, for Gramsci, is not merely an orator or talker, he is a director and the organiser who helps build society and produce hegemony by means of ideological apparatuses such as education and the media. Gramsci classifies intellectuals into two types – organic and traditional. An organic intellectual is one who holds a close relation to the world or lived experience of the class which he represents. Such an intellectual elaborates a vision of emancipation, embedded in a class experience which entails first to discovering and then elaborating "the formulation of public spirit". The organic intellectuals are those who share class experience with those they represent, articulate that experience in political terms. They mobilise subordinate classes. The traditional intellectuals find themselves as a class apart from society and live in their own world of fancies. The job of the organic intellectuals is to organise and manage the "spontaneous" consent for the dominant class for whom they act as their agents, though some devise strategies. Some intellectuals are visionaries (organise intellectuals) while others are divulgators (traditional intellectuals). 

Gramsci is of the opinion that although all tasks require a degree of intellectual and creative Cability, some individuals are required to perform tasks which are overtly intellectual. Initially, such intellectuals are associated with particular technical requirements of the economic system. Subsequently, they get associated with the more general, administrative, or organisational institutions of the whole society. In the political sphere, such intellectuals represent the interests of the dominant economic group and develop its ideational understanding of the world. In the bourgeois society, the bourgeois intellectuals serve their dominant class while in the socialist society; the socialist intellectuals serve dominant proletarian class.

Through hegemony, the educative pressure, emanating from the intellectuals, is applied so as to obtain peoples' consent and their collaboration, turning necessity and coercion into freedom. The dominant group, once in power, implements its educative projects to obtain consent... "the school as a positive educative function and the courts as a repressive and negative educative function."