ABSTRACT
Although Gramsci makes some illuminating comments on the international trends of his time, there is little sustained analysis of the operations of hegemony outside Italy. The exception is his extensive discussion of Americanization in Europe. While a common observation about the American economy at various historical moments has been precisely its chaotic lack of regulation, Gramsci argues that Americanism and Fordism are the processes through which economic individualism and laissez-faire are transformed into a planned economy. It is thus possible to detach Americanism from America, since Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and later Nazi Germany and the western democracies also experimented with economic planning. Equally, large parts of the United States were less subject to industrialization than Gramsci implies. However, for the most part Gramsci is indeed dealing with America as the home and symbol of a new phase of capitalist accumulation. He therefore writes within the tradition of European theorizations of American political economy established by Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835-40).
