Coutinho, Carlos Nelson General Will in Rousseau, Hegel and Gramsci

Translated by Antonio Callari

Argues that Antonio Gramsci's (1958) concept of hegemony in democracy draws from Jean-Jacques Rousseau & G. W. F. Hegel, particularly in his explorations of the general will & the social contract in the modern political process. It is contended that Gramsci perceives political hegemony in the realm of intersubjective & consensual interaction, where the general will supersedes private interests, elaborating on Rousseau's position that society is based on public interest & popular sovereignty rather than on ownership & private property. Gramsci uses Hegel's concept of civil society & its communal ethic to overcome the limitations of Rousseau's idealistic dismissal of the economic sector's political will. Hegel's vision of general will is more modern in that it acknowledges the atomized structure of civil society, its collection of private interests presided over by a more general system (such as a labor organization). Gramscian civil society is both cause & effect of the increasing complexity of representational forms of particular interests & values converging to gain hegemony in democracy. 27 References. D. Bajo.

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