5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path
Dependencies: Antonio Gramsci’s Heritage
One scholar I have found particularly insightful for an understanding of the governing role of a dominant paradigm or common sense is Gramsci (1891–1937). An
Italian political economist of the twentieth century, he wrote most of his work while
imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in the 1930s. His quest was to find
an answer to the phenomenon of democratic orders whose citizenship rights were
presumed to be democratic, but in which a small number of people enjoyed far
more privilege than the majority (Gramsci 1971: 377).
For Gramsci, shaping or changing regime structurations or governing institutions
requires a “collective will” that can mobilize sufficient support, either in numbers of
people or in politico-economic power. This collective will is represented by a group
of people whose political program “presupposes the attainment of a ‘cultural-social’
unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills with heterogeneous aims are
welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception
of the world” (Gramsci 1971: 349).
The essential ingredient is the common conception of the world, and from it
springs the agreement that a particular program, its aim and its underpinning values
and norms are of general interest for the given community—or at least the best
possible solution for it. Of course here we find a resemblance to what I discussed as
paradigms or worldviews, and the role of narratives in generating collective action.
Gramsci uses the term ‘aim’ for what I formerly described as the declared
purpose of systems or strategies. Successful aims would have the quality of a
“social myth,” which is “a political ideology expressed neither in the form of a cold
utopia nor as learned theorizing, but rather by a creation of concrete fantasy which
acts on a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organize its collective will”
(Gramsci 1971: 126). This “concrete fantasy” is close to what I used the term
‘imaginary’ for in this book, and both are essential for the emergence of the will to
act and change.
In successful transformation processes, slowly but surely, the originally new aim
or purpose becomes the norm or basis of consent that I have called the ‘default.’ It
is produced and reproduced through a set of institutions, social relations, and ideas
that live in science or canonized knowledge as much as culture. Here we find the
analogy to the changing yet objectified role of old ideas in today’s path dependent
systems, taking the shape of infrastructures, technologies, political regulation,
market patterns, sociocultural norms, and mind-sets (Fig. 2.5).
Gramsci puts most emphasis on the sociocultural aspects when seeking to
understand why capitalism, despite its clearly unequal distribution of benefits and
power, was not leading to the revolution that Marxists had predicted. This is what
he coined the term ‘hegemony’ for: it is the soft or invisible factors like values,
ideas, knowledge, and norms about what is good and right that filter which solutions appear to be of general interest or acceptable. A successful collective will’s
narrative thus provides “not only a unison of economic and political aims, but also
5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path Dependencies …
151
Dependencies: Antonio Gramsci’s Heritage
One scholar I have found particularly insightful for an understanding of the governing role of a dominant paradigm or common sense is Gramsci (1891–1937). An
Italian political economist of the twentieth century, he wrote most of his work while
imprisoned by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in the 1930s. His quest was to find
an answer to the phenomenon of democratic orders whose citizenship rights were
presumed to be democratic, but in which a small number of people enjoyed far
more privilege than the majority (Gramsci 1971: 377).
For Gramsci, shaping or changing regime structurations or governing institutions
requires a “collective will” that can mobilize sufficient support, either in numbers of
people or in politico-economic power. This collective will is represented by a group
of people whose political program “presupposes the attainment of a ‘cultural-social’
unity through which a multiplicity of dispersed wills with heterogeneous aims are
welded together with a single aim, on the basis of an equal and common conception
of the world” (Gramsci 1971: 349).
The essential ingredient is the common conception of the world, and from it
springs the agreement that a particular program, its aim and its underpinning values
and norms are of general interest for the given community—or at least the best
possible solution for it. Of course here we find a resemblance to what I discussed as
paradigms or worldviews, and the role of narratives in generating collective action.
Gramsci uses the term ‘aim’ for what I formerly described as the declared
purpose of systems or strategies. Successful aims would have the quality of a
“social myth,” which is “a political ideology expressed neither in the form of a cold
utopia nor as learned theorizing, but rather by a creation of concrete fantasy which
acts on a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organize its collective will”
(Gramsci 1971: 126). This “concrete fantasy” is close to what I used the term
‘imaginary’ for in this book, and both are essential for the emergence of the will to
act and change.
In successful transformation processes, slowly but surely, the originally new aim
or purpose becomes the norm or basis of consent that I have called the ‘default.’ It
is produced and reproduced through a set of institutions, social relations, and ideas
that live in science or canonized knowledge as much as culture. Here we find the
analogy to the changing yet objectified role of old ideas in today’s path dependent
systems, taking the shape of infrastructures, technologies, political regulation,
market patterns, sociocultural norms, and mind-sets (Fig. 2.5).
Gramsci puts most emphasis on the sociocultural aspects when seeking to
understand why capitalism, despite its clearly unequal distribution of benefits and
power, was not leading to the revolution that Marxists had predicted. This is what
he coined the term ‘hegemony’ for: it is the soft or invisible factors like values,
ideas, knowledge, and norms about what is good and right that filter which solutions appear to be of general interest or acceptable. A successful collective will’s
narrative thus provides “not only a unison of economic and political aims, but also
5.1 The Role of Mind-Sets in Unlocking Path Dependencies …
151