ABSTRACT
The theory of hegemony is entirely founded on the presumption that the economic structure of society is a natural phenomenon. In contemporary analysis, the traditional certainty about unfolding processes of socialist transformation has given way to arguments about capitalism as manifesting either a capitalist hegemony, which is referred to as neoliberal capitalism, or a working-class hegemony, which is referred to as either planned economy, welfare capitalism, or simply anti-austerity. The politics of hegemony is as much about mobilisation as it is about demobilisation, representation and leadership. Louis Althusser famously declared that K. Marx’s critique of political economy is a work of theoretical anti-humanism and proclaimed for a politics of practical humanism to set things right. Historical materialism conceived dogmatically as a science of some general economy laws reflects existing society under the spell of identification, which includes the idea that the specific manifestation of the economic laws depends on the power of the social forces that act upon them.
