Die Europäische Wiedergeburt
[The European Rebirth]
by
Pierre Krebs
An Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, was the first to understand that the state is not confined to a political apparatus. In fact he established that the political apparatus runs parallel to the so-called civil apparatus. In other words, each political apparatus is reinforced by a civil consensus, the psychological support of the masses. This psychological support expresses itself through a consensus on the level of culture, world-view and ethos. In order to exists at all, political power is thus dependent on a cultural power diffused within the masses. On the basis of this analysis Gramsci understood why Marxists could not take over power in bourgeois democracies: they did not have cultural power. To be precise, it is impossible to overthrow a political apparatus without previously having gained control of cultural power. The assent of the people must be won first: their ideas, ethos, ways of thinking, the value-system, art, education have to be worked on and modified. Only when people feel the need for change as a self-evident necessity will the existing political power, now detached from the general consensus, start crumbling and be overthrown. Metapolitics can be seen as the revolutionary war fought out on the level of world-views, ways of thinking and culture.
