 |
| John Dramani Mahama |
By
Azad Essa
When
John Mahama stepped down as president of Ghana in January
2017, he became the first in his country's history to fail to secure a second
term in office.
Critics
argued that Mahama, who was nicknamed Mr Power Cut because of a series
of debilitating power cuts during his term, was unable to
meet the expectations of ordinary
Ghanaians.
But
Mahama has also been praised for the role he played during the Ebola crisis, and most recently
for helping convince Yahya Jammeh, The Gambia's president, to step down after he lost
the presidential elections in December 2016.
Al
Jazeera spoke to Mahama about Ghana at 60, the possibility of justice in The Gambiapost-Jammeh, and how the calls for Jacob
Zuma to step down in South Africa may affect the continent.
Al Jazeera: Roughly a decade
after Ghana's independence in 1960, Ghanian author Ayi Kwei Armah wrote
the novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, in which a nameless man
struggles against corruption in post-colonial Ghana. Have things changed?
John Mahama: I believe the 'beautyful ones' are being born
every day. Each generation prepares itself to take over from the next. I feel
confident that the next generation is preparing itself to step into our shoes
just as we stepped What we need to do now is accelerate and improve the lives
of our people with a growing economy.
And making sure we provide better social services to our people, ensuring
that they have the opportunities for improving themselves through education, I
think that is happening in Ghana today.
Al Jazeera: This year marks 60
years of Ghanaian independence. How much progress has the country made in that
time?
Mahama: I believe that in 60 years one would expect us
to have made more progress than we have. But considering the continent we come
from, even maintaining Ghana as a united entity, not in conflict and posting
positive development is an achievement.
I think that today Ghana is positioning itself as one of the
potential emerging countries on the continent.
Al Jazeera: When you stepped
down, Ghana experienced a peaceful transition of power.
Mahama: I find it surprising because I think it should
be the norm. I don't think we should be celebrating each time a peaceful
transition takes places. This is what is supposed to happen.
And I think this is
increasingly happening in Africa. It happened in Nigeria when
President Jonathan stepped away and it happened here in Ghana
Al Jazeera: But it didn't
happen in The Gambia. When Jammeh eventually stepped down, he was allowed to
leave, going into exile in Equatorial Guinea. So, did democracy really win in
The Gambia?
Mahama: I do think that it is still a win for the
Gambian people even though it was the negotiations that created the opportunity
for Jammeh to leave. I think this gives the new government a free hand and
opportunity to do what they have to do.
I don't think it would have been very convenient for them to take
over power with Jammeh within Gambia and his party breathing down the necks of
the new government.
The new Gambian
government want to go the route of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC) where people come out and vent the abuses
they have suffered. Once that process is completed and a report is presented to
the president, he can decide what to do to bring closure to people who have
suffered abuses.
I don't know what direction he will take but I think a TRC is
appropriate. It's happened in South Africa and many countries including Ghana.
There are a lot of lessons that The Gambia can share with the rest of Africa.
| Al Jazeera: 20 years on, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa isn't necessarily seen as having provided justice. |
Mahama: Unfortunately, the reality of life is that there will never be complete closure for everybody. People who have gone through the process have felt satisfied that someone has listened to them, and have even reconciled with their perpetrators. In Rwanda, people live side-by-side with people who persecuted them during the genocide. They have gone through a process of acceptance and apology. If it is a means of bringing closure, I think it's good. Not everyone will get closure but it doesn't mean the process has failed.
Al Jazeera: Is justice
important for closure?
Mahama: I don't think anyone should dictate to the
Gambian people, it's for them to decide. There will be a report and the
president and his cabinet will have to decide what they want to do. People
outside the continent will say he needs to be sent to the International
Criminal Court.
Africans feel unfairly targeted because these atrocities happen
all over the world and no one is trying to arrest these leaders. If they can
find closure in The Gambia that's fine, if they can't, it's up to the Gambian
people to decide what to do.
 |
| Former President Yahaya Jammeh |
Al Jazeera: It took the
involvement of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),
which gave Jammeh a deadline to step down or risk being forcibly removed,
before he stepped aside. Isn't that a form of intervention?
Mahama: The community has to want it badly, but the
struggle is for the country in particular. The outside communities can only
help the process. I think what ECOWAS did is an example for the rest of Africa
but it isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.
The Gambia is a relatively small country. If Nigeria decided to
behave badly I don't know if ECOWAS could send forces in. Circumstances in The
Gambia were amenable to the kind of solution that was done. It was a
carrot and stick solution. We had two mediation missions into The Gambia and
spoke to all the parties to achieve a resolution.
ECOWAS applied the stick
and went in, not to use force or fire shots, but to show that ECOWAS was
prepared to go to that extent. When that happened we sent in the final mission
which was President Alpha Condé of Guinea and President Mohamed Ould
Abdel Aziz of Mauritania.
We chose them because they were closer to President Jammeh and it
would be easier to get them to negotiate for him to leave power. They did the
final negotiations where it was decided for him to leave the country.
Al Jazeera: There are many
shakeups taking place on the continent. For instance, President Jacob Zuma is
facing pressure to step down. What do you make of the events taking place
there?
Mahama: Countries like Ghana have a strong affinity for
the African National Congress (ANC) as it was the main instrument in fighting
against apartheid. We all celebrated South Africa's liberation from apartheid.
Nelson Mandela is an icon to us all.
We cannot afford to not be concerned with what is happening in
South Africa. They recently even lost Johannesburg in the local elections. This
is something that should not happen.
It is obvious that the
ANC is losing ground and I wish they would get a grip and turn
things around.
I don't anticipate them losing power in the next elections [in
2019], but there's a groundswell of dissatisfaction and I hope our comrades in
the ANC do a proper reflection and correct things before they get worse.
Al Jazeera: Does this have an
impact on the rest of Africa?
Mahama: It does. I have said that South Africa, Nigeria
and Egypt are the biggest economies in Africa and they have a certain
responsibility to drive investment and prosperity in the continent.
When South Africa is going through what it's going through, the
crisis and near-recession, it affects the rest of the continent, especially the
sub-region.
These larger economies have a responsibility to drive prosperity.
It happened in South-East Asia. Japan's prosperity is what's driven a lot of
progress in South-East Asia. China, Korea and Vietnam are all invested in this.
The bigger economies have the responsibility in their geographical
areas. I think in Africa these three countries need to get their act together
to drive integration and investments. We all continue to watch what's happening
in these countries and hope that they turn things around.
Editorial
WELCOME MADAM!
So
far no one has kicked against the appointment of Justice Sophia Akuffo, as the
second female Chief Justice of Ghana.
Even
the minority in Parliament and the women’s wing of the National Democratic
Congress (NDC) have accepted the appointment and congratulated the new Chief
Justice.
The
Insight has learnt that she has been on the Supreme Court for more than 20
years and that she is eminently qualified to occupy that very high office.
We
welcome her to the position and strongly urge her to make justice available to
all Ghanaians especially the poor.
The
situation in which poor people are denied justice purely on account of the size
of their pockets is not acceptable.
Justice
must mean just that and we hope our new Chief Justice will ensure that we get
justice for all irrespective of political affiliation or orientation.
Madam,
you are most welcome!
Local
News:
BATTLE FOR POST IN
BAPTIST CHURCH
That
battle for the Executive President of the Ghana Baptist Convention has
intensified with some church members alleging that there are moves to entrench
the current holder of the position.
The
current Executive President, Dr Ernest Adu-Gyamfi will be 62 years on 25th
July, 2017 and the constitution of the Church stipulates that only those who
are between the ages of 40 and 61 are eligible for the position.
However,
an advertisement placed by the search Committee of the Ghana Baptist Convention
states that “the President shall be between 40 and 61 years at the time of
assuming office on first term appointment and not more than 65 years on renewal
or resumption of office during the second term of appointment”
Many
church members see this as a gross violation of the constitution and an attempt
to impose Dr Adu-Gyamfi.
Church
members who spoke to The Insight vowed to resist the retention of Dr Adu-
Gyamfi as Executive President of the church.
Foreign
News:
Theresa May endures
radio phone-in from hell
 |
| British Prime Minister, Theresa May |
Prime
Minister Theresa May was grilled last Thursday night by LBC radio listeners,
including one furious doctor who is considering resigning from the medical
profession over National Health Service (NHS) understaffing and low morale.
May
was told by Romeena from Leeds that healthcare professionals are finding
it “near impossible” to provide care for their patients. She said she
is considering quitting after 12 years at the NHS “because things have got
so bad on the shop floor.”
“I’ve
witnessed organ transplants being canceled because there haven’t been enough
nurses to provide postoperative care,” she said.
The
pediatrician also questioned why Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has been
allowed to keep his job following doctors’ strikes.
“Whatever
the government is doing, it is clearly not enough – and you have reappointed as
health secretary somebody who has demoralized the whole workforce.
“It
seems like you stand up and support somebody who allowed junior doctors to go
on strike, who seems to be allowing nurses to go on strike and that doesn’t
fall in line with what the frontline of the NHS want to see.”
May
replied by saying Hunt had done a “very good job” and is focusing
on “quality of care.” She added that she had experienced NHS
treatment as a type 1 diabetic.
She
claimed the Tories had responded to a request from the NHS for £10 billion
(US$12.85 billion) by 2020 in real terms, although this figure is disputed.
May
was hit with tough questions from members of the public over the state of
public services, her record on failing to meet the Conservative target on
immigration, low morale in the armed forces and insufficient help with
childcare.
It
comes as more than 100 NHS nurses signed an open letter to May,
saying “the life of a nurse has become harder and harder in recent
years.” It says pay cuts have meant some nurses have had to leave the NHS
to stack shelves in supermarkets and rely on foodbanks to eat.
The
nurses say there are not always enough people on shifts to give patients proper
care, and at home their families are paying the price for cuts to wage packets.
“The
government failed to train enough new nurses and your cap on our pay means at
least £3,000 less in our pockets each year,” the letter says.
“How
is it the case that, in 21st century Britain, some of our colleagues are forced
to turn to foodbanks or ask for hardship grants just to make ends meet?
“It’s
a little wonder there are now 24,000 unfilled nursing jobs in the NHS in
England.
“Years
of real-terms pay cuts have left nurses heading for the door, with some going
to stack shelves in the supermarket instead.”
The
letter urges May to scrap the 1 percent pay cap on nurses and fill the tens of
thousands of vacant nursing jobs.
Britain:
British voters
overwhelmingly back Labour’s manifesto policies, poll finds
 |
| Jeremy Corbyn, next Prime Minister of Britain! |
Voters
overwhelmingly back policies set out in Labour’s leaked manifesto, including
nationalising the railways, building more houses and raising taxes on higher
earners, according to a poll.
The
ComRes survey shows around half of people support state ownership of the train
network (52 per cent), energy market (49 per cent) and Royal Mail (50 per
cent).
Roughly
a quarter of people (22, 24 and 25 per cent respectively) said they opposed the
policies, outlined in the party’s draft document, which was signed off by Labour executives at a meeting
last Thursday.
All
43 pages of Jeremy Corbyn’s plan for a Labour government were
leaked on Wednesday, days before the official manifesto launch.
The
20,000 word document revealed a radical plan for the country after 8 June;
proposals that saw right-wing critics claiming the Labour leader wanted
to drag Britain back to the 1970s.
Even
some moderate Labour MPs were said to be in revolt over Mr Corbyn's programme
of renationalisation and expanding public services, while Ms May branded them
"disastrous socialist policies".
But
the latest polling, conducted in the last 24 hours and published in the Daily Mirror, reveals wide-scale
support for the proposals, even if the party leader remains unpopular.
On
the plan to ban zero-hours contracts, 71 per cent said they backed the move,
while just 16 per cent said they were against it.
Income
tax hikes for the highest 5 per cent of earners on salaries of more than
£80,000 also got the thumbs up from 65 per cent of voters, with 24 per cent
opposed to higher levies.
And
more than half (54 per cent) of voters said they supported the policy of
building 100,000 more council houses each year.
Voters
are split on whether MPs should be given a final vote on the terms of the Brexit deal, a policy that also found its way
into the Labour manifesto.
Thirty-six
per cent supported Labour’s call for Parliament to have a say at the end of the
negotiating period, while 35 per cent are opposed, the survey found.
Meanwhile, Theresa May's support for fox hunting is at odds
with nearly eight out of ten (78 per cent) of those polled, who said they
wanted the ban to remain in place.
Labour’s
proposal for renationalisation of the railways is borne out by a Which? survey
which reveals the extent of overcrowding and delays on the network.
More
than half of travellers (53 per cent) could not get a seat at least once during
the past six months, while one-in-seven (15 per cent) said this occurs
"regularly".
Which?
said it has been contacted by thousands of people sharing details of their
nightmare train journeys.
However,
in a speech on Friday to mark the mid-point of the general election campaign,
an undeterred Ms May will say many people are "appalled" at the
direction he is taking the party.
"We
respect that parents and grandparents taught their children and grandchildren
that Labour was a party that shared their values and stood up for their
community.
"But
across the country today, traditional Labour supporters are increasingly
looking at what Jeremy Corbyn believes in and are appalled."
Leaked Labour
manifesto: All the key Corbyn policies in the draft document
 |
| Jeremy Corbyn poses for a picture with his campaign bus |
Right-wing
newspapers have dubbed the proposals as Jeremy Corbyn's bid to "take
Britain back to the 1970s", but what is actually inside the 43-page
document?
Nationalisation
One
of the core pitches which was widely expected to make the list is the proposed renationalisation of the railways, bus firms, the
Royal Mail and the energy industry.
Mr
Corbyn and people on the radical left of the party have long called for the
return of British Rail but the proposal has gained popularity among the general
public in recent years as rail fares continue to go up while cancellations and
delays continue.
Southern
Rail customers, who have suffered months of misery due to cancellations,
delays and strike action, were recently told the boss of its parent
company, Charles Horton, was awarded a £500,000 bonus in April despite the company
losing close to £15m.
Labour
would also nationalise the energy sector to combat price rises at a
time when the cost of commodities is falling. The move will go further than the
energy price freeze promised by Ed Miliband in 2015 which was then adopted by Theresa May.
NHS
Labour
has said the NHS will be "properly funded" with an extra £6bn-a-year
raised by a tax on the nation's highest earners, which will alleviate pressure on doctors and nurses
working in UK hospitals.
It
has vowed to take millions off waiting lists and boost support for the equally
under-pressure GP and ambulance services.
The
party has also vowed to scrap the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which allowed
more privatisation into the NHS.
It
will also invest a further £8bn a year over the course of the Parliament to
create a National Care Service which will embody the values of the NHS.
Education
The party will completely scrap the £9,000 tuition fees
for all undergraduate university students and will
reintroduce maintenance grants.
The
rise during the Coalition government was a reason for the collapse of
Liberal Democrat support at the 2015 election, as they had pledged to oppose
all tuition fee rises.
The
policy is expected to cost around £10bn and it is hoped will attract
younger voters to the party.
Mr
Corbyn has also vowed to reverse £5bn of Tory school cuts.
Housing
Mr
Corbyn has proposed the creation of a new Department of Housing and forcing
councils to build 100,000 new council houses a year.
He
will also see that thousands of homes will be offered to rough
sleepers and
private landlords will not be able to raise rent above inflation.
Work
The
party proposes reintroducing the Ministry of Labour – which was
renamed the Department of Employment in the late 1960s – and promises to
make the biggest changes to workers' rights in a generation.
It will also scrap Tory plans to increase the pension age
to 66, and
will retain the laws on workers' rights which have been passed down from EU
directives.
They
will also repeal the Trade Union Act 2016 which severely hampered
the unions' ability to call strikes.
Brexit
Labour
says it will continue with Brexit but it rules out "making false promises
on immigration numbers".
Mr
Corbyn will immediately secure the rights of the EU nationals who are already
living here and scrap minimum income rules for the partners of non-EU
migrants.
The manifesto said leaving the EU without a deal in place
was the "worst possible" option and would
damage the economy. It said Labour will formally reject the idea of no
deal as "viable".
It
has also promised a "meaningful vote" on the deal in Parliament.
Policing and
Infrastructure
As Diane Abbott struggled to announce last week, Labour will
introduce 10,000 new police officers on the UK's streets.
The
manifesto also promises to start a £250bn capital investment programme to
upgrade British infrastructure.
Taxation
On
the thorny issue of how the party plans to pay for the new spending,
Labour has the rich firmly in its sights.
There
will be new income taxes slapped on workers earning more than £80,000 a year – which the
party says will bring in an extra £6bn a year which they will put directly into
the NHS.
They
also promise to reverse the huge cuts to corporation tax introduced by the
Conservatives – bringing in an extra £20bn a year.
CHURCH OF
ENGLAND INSISTS ON ISLAMIC EDUCATION
Parents
who have concerns about their children being taught about Islam should be
banned from pulling them out of religious education (RE) lessons, according to
the Church of England.
Senior
Church of England official Derek Holloway said withdrawing children from RE
lessons could leave them without the skills required to live in a diverse
society and “live well together as adults.”
He
also cautioned against “fundamentalist” groups using human rights
legislation to keep children from learning about different world views.
“Sadly
and dangerously, the right of withdrawal from RE is now being exploited by a
range of ‘interest groups’ often using a dubious interpretation of human rights
legislation," Holloway wrote in a post on the CoE's Facebook page.
Parents
are currently entitled to withdraw their children from RE class without having
to provide a reason, although Holloway said this right should be repealed as it
leaves a gap in pupils’ education.
“This
is seemingly because they do not want their children exposed to other faiths
and worldviews, in particular Islam,” Holloway told the Press Association.
“Anecdotally,
there have also been some cases in different parts of the country of parents
with fundamentalist religious beliefs also taking a similar course. This is not
confined to any one particular religion or area of the country.”
Besides
repealing the right to withdrawal, Holloway said in a post on the Church of
England Facebook page that standardized RE lessons should be introduced to the
curriculum.
Holloway,
who was himself a teacher at comprehensive schools in Essex and Wiltshire, also
warned the right to withdraw children from RE lessons risks legitimizing those
trying to incite religious hatred.
“The
right of withdrawal from RE now gives comfort to those who are breaking the law
and seeking to incite religious hatred,” he wrote in the post.
Parents
also have a separate right to withdraw their children from school services and
prayers.
The
senior official, however, said the right to withdraw from RE lessons risks
conflating religious teachings with acts of “worship,” thus
reinforcing the “myth” that RE lessons are a means of perpetuating
the views of a specific religion.
He
instead argued that RE lessons contribute to a “broad and balanced
curriculum” by giving pupils an outlook on diverse religions and faiths.
However,
a spokesman from the National Secular Society argued the right should be upheld
until there is the guarantee that religious teachings are genuinely bias-free.
“If
the subject was reformed to be a genuinely educational and non-partisan study
of religious and nonreligious world views, the right to withdraw may no longer
be necessary.
"But
until such time, the right of withdrawal is required to protect parental rights
and freedoms," he said, according to the Times.
United
States:
Poor can
expect to die 20 years before rich in rural US ‒ study
 |
| A homeless family in the United States of America |
The
difference in life expectancy between rich and poor in the US has grown far
larger over the last three decades, a new study has found, creating a gap of
nearly 20 years in clusters of poor, rural counties, even as life expectancy
has risen overall.
In
2014, the life expectancy in the US at birth for both sexes combined was 79.1 ‒
up 5.3 years from 1980 ‒ but differed by 20.1 years between the counties with
the lowest and highest life expectancy, researchers at the University of
Washington found in a study published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
“Life
expectancy in many places in this country is declining. It’s going backward
instead of forward,” Dr. Ali Mokdad, a co-author of the report and a
professor of global health at the University of Washington’s Institute for
Health Metrics and Evaluation, told the Washington Post. “These
disparities are widening, so this gap is increasing.”
The
researchers used “deidentified” death records from the National
Center for Health Statistics and population counts from the US Census Bureau,
NCHS and the Human Mortality Database to create annual county-level life
tables. From there, they looked at the county-level association between life
expectancy and socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, behavioral and
metabolic risk factors, and health care factors.
“Absolute
geographic inequality in life expectancy increased between 1980 and
2014,” the researchers wrote. “Over the same period, absolute
geographic inequality in the risk of death decreased among children and
adolescents, but increased among older adults.”
People
who are poor, get little exercise and lack access to health care don’t live as
long, the researchers found, and the quality and availability of health care
has a significant effect on health outcomes.
 |
| US President Donald Trump |
The
US has fallen behind other countries ‒ like Australia, whose socialized health care system President Donald Trump
recently praised ‒ in focusing on preventative care and programs to
curb harmful behaviors like smoking, physical activity, obesity and high blood
pressure, all of which are preventable risk factors, Mokdad said.
“We
are falling behind our competitors in health. That is going to impact our
productivity; that’s going to take away our competitive edge when it comes to
the economy,” he told the Post. “What we’re doing right now is not
working. We have to regroup.”
Analyzing
county-by-county statistics allowed the researchers to identify the areas of
greatest inequality. Those pockets were particularly noticeable in parts of the
Dakotas, rural western Mississippi, eastern Kentucky and southwestern West
Virginia.
The
highest life expectancies were in most of central Colorado, western Wyoming and
Texas, most of the coastal counties in California, southwestern Florida, and
southern Minnesota.
“Looking
at life expectancy on a national level masks the massive differences that exist
at the local level, especially in a country as diverse as the United
States,” lead author Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, a researcher at IHME, said in
a statement. “Risk factors like obesity, lack of
exercise, high blood pressure, and smoking explain a large portion of the
variation in lifespans, but so do socioeconomic factors like race, education,
and income.”
Mokdad
and his team hope that their research can help start a conversation between
communities, healthcare experts and policymakers about how to narrow the
inequality gap, and thus the life expectancy gap.
“These
findings demonstrate an urgent imperative, that policy changes at all levels
are gravely needed to reduce inequality in the health of
Americans,” Mokdad said in the statement. “Federal, state, and local
health departments need to invest in programs that work and engage their
communities in disease prevention and health promotion.”
The
problem in the US, he told the Guardian, is that people don’t have the same
access to good preventative care, and then wait until their ailment requires a
trip to the hospital for treatment.
“That’s
a failure,” he said. “We need to make an investment in prevention…
I’m hoping the policymakers will look at this and say whatever we are doing is
not about politics any more, it’s about the future of the United States.”
While
there will always be disparities in any country, the disparities in the US that
Mokdad and his team found is unexpected “in a country with our wealth and
might,” he said.
“We
spend more money on healthcare than anybody else, and we debate the hell out of
healthcare more than anybody else, and still the disparities are
increasing,” Mokdad continued. “Everybody, in Europe and elsewhere,
is increasing life expectancy at a greater pace than we are, so that’s also
disappointing and not acceptable for a country like the US.”
Italy:
Was Antonio Gramsci
a Socialist?
 |
| Antonio Gramsci |
By
Howard Moss
This
month sees the 80th anniversary of the death of an icon of the left – Antonio
Gramsci. Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian political activist who was
imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime in 1926 and died while still a captive
10 years later from a combination of illnesses.
He
was an undoubtedly courageous figure who fought difficult family circumstances
when young to educate himself and became a prolific writer and editor for the
emerging left-wing press in Italy in the second and third decade of the 20th
century. He wrote intensively of the need for both workers’ rights and workers’
revolution and actively involved himself in the political action he advocated.
He
was a leading member of the foremost left-wing movement, the Italian Socialist
Party, until, after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, his disenchantment
with what he saw as their over-timid approach led him to become, in 1921, one
of the co-founders of the Italian Communist Party, which pledged allegiance to
Lenin and the Bolshevik regime. Then, in 1922-23, he spent a significant period
in Russia as delegate to the Communist International (‘Comintern’) and, on his
return to Italy, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and served until his
arrest and imprisonment. Sentenced to 20 years for subversion, he was however
able to continue writing in prison, where access to books and the extensive
knowledge of history and politics he had accumulated during his years of
political activity led him to produce a mass of notes, observations and essays
on an astonishingly broad spread of topics, later ordered into what were called
the Prison Notebooks. It is largely on these and on the collection of letters
he wrote from prison – mainly to family members – that his reputation as a
social and political theorist lies.
Hegemony
Gramsci
is said, in the Prison Notebooks, to have developed a new and original kind of
Marxist sociology, which, over the last half century or so, has engendered a
vast range of debate, interpretation and controversy by academics and others –
the so-called ‘Gramsci industry’. One of the key matters debated has been his
concept of ‘hegemony’ (‘egemonia’). This was the term Gramsci used to describe
what he saw as the prerequisite for a successful revolution: the building of an
ideological consensus throughout all the institutions of society spread by
intellectuals who saw the need for revolution and used their ability to
persuade and proselytise workers to carry through that revolution. Only when
that process was sufficiently widespread, would successful revolutionary action
be possible. So hegemony was what might be called the social penetration of
revolutionary ideas.
This
outlook is very different from the fervour with which in earlier years Gramsci
had greeted the Russian revolution and advocated similar uprisings in other
countries. By the second half of the 1920s, with Italy ruled by a Fascist
dictatorship and opposition leaders exiled or imprisoned, Gramsci came to see
revolution as a longer-term prospect which would depend on the conditions
existing in individual countries.
And
it is this ‘long-term’ idea of revolutionary change that has been interpreted
in very many different ways according to the standpoint or political position
of the individual commentator. One way it could be read would seem to tie in
closely with the Socialist Party’s view that only through widespread political
consciousness on the part of workers and majority consent for social revolution
can a society based on the satisfaction of human needs rather than on the
profit imperative be established. In this light Gramsci’s hegemony could be
seen to have the profoundly democratic implications of insisting on a
widespread and well-informed desire among the majority of workers for socialist
revolution before such a revolution can come about. Indeed it is clear that
Gramsci was not unaware of Marx’s ‘majoritarian’ view of socialism (or
communism – they were interchangeable for Marx) as a stateless, leaderless
world where the wages system is abolished and a system of ‘from each according
to ability to each according to need’ operates. In an article written in 1920,
for example, Gramsci refers to ‘communist society’ as ‘the International of
nations without states’, and later from prison he writes about ‘the
disappearance of the state, the absorption of political society into civil
society’. However, though he referred to himself as using ‘the Marxist method’,
such reflections on the nature of the society he wished to see established are
few and far between and cannot reasonably be said to characterise the
mainstream of his thought.
Leninist
When
looked at closely in fact, Gramsci’s thought is overwhelmingly marked by what
may be called the coercive element of his Leninist political background. So,
while undoubtedly in his later writings he came to see the Soviet model as
inapplicable to other Western societies, he nevertheless continued to conceive
of revolution as the taking of power via the leadership of a minority group,
even if in different circumstances from those experienced by Lenin in Russia.
The most important pointer to this lies in Gramsci’s view of the state. Hardly
ever does he view socialism other than as a form of state. The overwhelming
thrust of his analysis and his recommendations for political action point not
to doing away with states and the class divisions that go with them but to
establishing new kinds of states. In 1919, enthused by the Bolshevik takeover
in Russia, Gramsci wrote: ‘Society cannot live without a state: the state is
the concrete act of will which guards against the will of the individual,
faction, disorder and individual indiscipline ....communism is not against the
state, in fact it is implacably opposed to the enemies of the state.’ Later
too, in his prison writings, arguing now for a ‘long-term strategy’, he
continued to declare the need for states and state organisation, for leaders
and led, for governors and governed in the conduct of human affairs –
underlined by his frequent use of three terms in particular: ‘direzione’
(leadership), ‘disciplina’ (discipline) and ‘coercizione’ (coercion).
So,
despite what Gramsci himself recognised as changed times and circumstances
compared with Russia in 1917, he continued to be profoundly influenced by
Lenin’s view that ‘if socialism can only be realised when the intellectual
development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for
at least 500 years’ – in other words that genuine majority social consciousness
was unachievable. And in line with this, when looked at closely his ‘hegemony’,
far from eschewing the idea of a revolutionary vanguard, sees an intellectual
leadership taking the masses with them. In other words the ‘consent’ that his
hegemony, his long-term penetration of ideas, proposes is not the informed
consent of a convinced socialist majority but an awakening of what, at one
point he refers to as ‘popular passions’, a spontaneous spilling over of
revolutionary enthusiasm which enables the leadership to take the masses with
them and then govern in the way they think best.
Human nature
Underpinning
this lack of confidence by Gramsci in the ability of a majority to
self-organise is a factor little commented on but particularly significant –
and that is his view of what may be called ‘human nature’. In writing
explicitly about human nature, which Gramsci does on a number of occasions, he
expresses agreement with Marx’s view that human nature is not something innate,
fixed and unchanging, not something homogeneous for all people in all times but
something that changes historically and is inseparable from ideas in society at
a given time. This view of humanity is in fact described by Gramsci as ‘the
great innovation of Marxism’ and he contrasts it favourably with other
widely-held early 20th century views such as the Catholic dogma of original sin
and the ‘idealist’ position that human nature was identical at all times and
undeveloping. But despite Gramsci’s stated ‘theoretical’ view on this topic,
scrutiny of his writings in places where ‘human nature’ is not raised explicitly
but is rather present in an implicit way points his thought in a different,
more pessimistic direction.
When
he writes about education, for example, his pronouncements about the need for
‘coercion’ indicate little confidence in the ability of human beings to behave
fundamentally differently or to adaptably change their ‘nature’ in a different
social environment. In corresponding with his wife about the education of their
children, in response to her view that, if children are left to interact with
the environment and the environment is non-oppressive, they will develop
co-operative forms of behaviour, he states ‘I think that man is a historical
formation but one obtained through coercion’ and implies that without coercion
undesirable behaviour will result. Then, in the Prison Notebooks, on a similar
topic he writes: ‘Education is a struggle against the instincts which are tied
to our elementary biological functions, it is a struggle against nature
itself.’ What surfaces here as in other places, even if not stated explicitly,
is a view of human nature not as the exclusive product of history but as
characterised by some kind of inherent propensity towards anti-social forms of
behaviour which needs to be coerced and tamed.
Viewed
in this light, Gramsci’s vision of post-revolutionary society as a place where
human beings will continue to need leadership and coercion should not be seen
either as being in contradiction with his theory of ideological penetration
(‘hegemony’) or as inconsistent with the views that emerge about human nature
when his writings do not explicitly focus on that subject. So we should not be
surprised that Gramsci’s vision for the future is not a society of free access
and democratic control where people organise themselves freely and collectively
as a majority but rather a change from one form of minority authority to
another – a change from a system of the few manifestly governing in their own
interests to the few claiming to govern in the interests of the majority.
The
evidence of Gramsci’s writings therefore suggests that the revolution he
envisages is not one in which democracy in the sense of each participating with
equal understanding and equal authority prevails. Crucially, the leadership
function is not abolished. The hegemonisers will essentially be in charge,
since they will be the ones with the necessary understanding to run the society
they have conceived. What this society might be like he does not go on to say
in any detail. But it would clearly not be a socialist world of free access and
democratic control that rejects authority from above together with its
political expression, the state. For Gramsci any such considerations were at
best peripheral to the thrust of his thought and his social vision. And though
he did have a revolutionary project, it is not a socialist one in the terms
that socialism is correctly understood.
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