Macro N Cheese

Historian and journalist Vijay Prashad talks with Steve about why Antonio Gramsci still matters. Listeners to this podcast know that we have a pretty good grasp of the monetary system. But we’re constantly working to expand our understanding of the systemic underpinnings of real power. How else will we be able to seize it? For help, we turn to Gramsci. According to Vijay, Gramsci was doing class forensics. His core puzzle was brutal and practical: why did big chunks of Italy’s working-class bail on their own unions and parties and drift into fascism? That’s the real origin story of “cultural hegemony,” “common sense,” and the whole Gramscian toolbox: figuring out how consent gets manufactured and how counterrevolution recruits. Vijay takes us through Gramsci’s political development and his imprisonment under Mussolini, where he wrote his seminal Prison Notebooks. Then they get into Gramsci’s key concepts: hegemony&n