Social movements and hegemonic struggle

Antonio Gramsci’s Southern Question and Lyons Theses, written just before his imprisonment by Mussolini, are fundamental resources for social movements seeking to resist the rise of the far right and to construct a different social order. Here, hegemony appears primarily in terms of broad social alliances, defining a particular form of capitalism under the leadership of a given ‘historical bloc’. The task for activists in this context is to find ways of disrupting these alliances and to construct new ones on a different basis, ‘from below and to the left’. The chapter draws on examples from Gramsci’s own race-and-class organizing practice and is illustrated with tools from activist training workshops.