Gramsci is famous for his contributions to social, political, and cultural analysis and his effort to develop an autonomous Marxist science of politics. He also made some acute comments on the economy and developed some original methodological insights on Marxist economic analysis. This is very clear in his remarks on 'Americanism and Fordism' and their role in the interwar USA; and in his related analysis of the prospects of importing them into Europe -- despite its history and civilization that differed markedly from the States. These ideas are not only relevant to the rise of Fordism but also to its crisis and the problems of developing a post-Fordist accumulation regime. Gramsci also made some remarks on economic analysis which anticipate recent work in institutional economics. I begin with these methodological remarks.
Although Gramsci saw the discipline of economics as being largely concerned with 'value', he also located economic problems in their broader political, intellectual, and moral context. His economic analyses went far beyond any narrow concern with 'the relationship between the worker and the productive forces'. This emerges from his critique of Ricardo's concept of 'determined market' (mercato determinato). Gramsci redefined this as '"equivalent to [a] determined relation of social forces in a determined structure of the productive apparatus", this relationship being guaranteed (that is, rendered permanent) by a determined political, moral and juridical superstructure' (Gramsci 1971: 410). In this sense the economy must be related to the overall form of the 'historical bloc' and the 'ethico-political' as well as economic and politico-military roles of the state (see below).
Classical economists reified the various elements of the market and treated its laws as 'eternal' and 'natural'. Marxist political economy should begin from the historical nature of 'determined market' and its social 'automatism' (as expressed in the so-called invisible hand of the market). Economic laws are always tendential. They laws are always grounded in specific historical and material conditions. And their regularities should be studied in terms of 'the ensemble of the concrete economic activities of a determined social form' (1971: 400n, 411). Most historical materialists share these arguments. But Gramsci goes well beyond such views to provide a much richer account of the historical specificity and material foundations of these economic laws.
Thus Gramsci linked them to wider social relations and class struggles. Many institutional economists and economic sociologists emphasize this nowadays in their studies of the socially embedded, socially regularized nature of the economy. Gramsci clearly anticipated these ideas. But he was also able to reveal the conflictual as well as the consensual aspects of this social embeddedness, its historical variability, and its close connection to changes in the 'state in its inclusive sense' (lo stato integrale). Indeed it seems that he began to develop an analysis of the 'economy in its inclusive sense' (l'economia integrale) that parallels his brilliant work on the state.
Gramsci argues that economic laws are linked to the formation of a specific type of 'homo oeconomicus'. This is reflected in 'popular beliefs' and a certain level of culture (1971: 279-318, 412, 400n, 413; 1975: 167). Thus his notes on Americanism and Fordism focus on the struggles to shape the social norms of production and consumption to reinforce the emerging accumulation regime. Whilst this is partly related to his claim that 'hegemony is anchored in the factory' (at least for American Fordism), the struggle to establish a new accumulation regime extends far beyond the labour process. Entrepreneurs must also organize 'the general system of relationships external to the business itself' (1971: 6). This insight is even more compelling today as attempts are made to bring an ever wider range of extra-economic institutions into conformity with the so-called demands of international competitiveness. Indeed, Gramsci argues that the 'conquest of power and achievement of a new productive world are inseparable, and that propaganda for one of them is also propaganda for the other, and that in reality it is solely in this coincidence that the unity of the dominant class -- at once economic and political -- resides' (1971: 116).
Intellectuals have a key role here. For economic laws are secured, according to Gramsci, only in so far as one or more strata of intellectuals give the dominant class a certain homogeneity and an awareness of its own function in the social and political as well as in the economic fields (1971: 410-414). Today this role is mediated through a much expanded range of institutions and organizations, including think tanks, research institutes, business schools, management consultancy, and the business media as well as political parties. Where these forces are successful, an 'historical bloc' will be developed.
Gramsci employs the latter concept to address the problematic relationship between the economic 'base' and its politico-ideological 'superstructure'. He asks how 'the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production'. He answers in terms of how the historical bloc reflects 'the necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructure' (1971: 366). This reciprocity is realized through specific intellectual, moral, and political practices. These translate narrow sectoral, professional, or local (in his terms, 'economic-corporate') interests into broader 'ethico-political' ones. Thus the ethico-political not only helps to co-constitute economic structures but also provides them with their rationale and legitimacy. Analyzing the historical bloc in this way can also show how 'material forces are the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction between form and content has purely didactic value' (1971: 377).
Pursuing such an analysis would enhance the French regulation school's work on the re-regularization of capital as a social relation. For, to paraphrase Gramsci's own comments on the state and state power, one could say that the integral economy comprises an 'accumulation regime + mode of regulation' and that accumulation is the 'self-valorization of capital in and through regulation'. In these terms, an historical bloc can be understood as the complex, contradictory and discordant unity of an accumulation regime (or mode of growth) and its mode of economic regulation. There is always a strong ethico-political content to this regulation (values, norms, vision, discourses, linguistic forms, popular beliefs, etc.) and its role in shaping specific productive forces and relations of production. This can be seen in the struggles to secure the hegemony of particular accumulation strategies.
Gramsci once noted that, 'though hegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity' (1971: 161). This claim can be interpreted in at least three ways. The first, and least satisfactory, interpretation is that only one of the two fundamental classes (bourgeoisie or proletariat) will ever be capable of exercising hegemony. A second, and related, interpretation (at least for the bourgeoisie) is that changes in hegemony are linked to the functions performed by fractions of capital and, regarding international hegemony, to the changing importance of different national capitals in the world system. This could then be applied to the successive Dutch, English, and American hegemonies and to the current resurgence of US hegemony after a period of crisis associated with Fordism.
Third, it could mean that the essential function of hegemony is to ensure the reciprocal relationship between the economic (and extra-economic) needs of the mode of growth by creating appropriate forms of 'economic man' (and, of course, women) and by conforming the economic base and its superstructure. This would clearly help to create an historic bloc. In this regard Gramsci argues that 'every State is ethical in as much as one of its most important functions is to raise the great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level, a level (or type) which corresponds to the needs of the productive forces for development, and hence to the interests of the ruling classes' (1971: 258). This need not mean that the highest priority is explicitly given to economic development. In some historical circumstances, for example, this could be realized by prioritizing the demands of 'national security' (whether in the form of 'strong army, rich nation' or in the form of national development to combat the threat of communism). Moreover, where an historical bloc has already been constituted around a given accumulation regime and the latter is operating smoothly, it may be possible for hegemony to prioritize issues such as social welfare. The boom years of Fordism would illustrate this possibility. In periods of economic crisis, however, the economy would once again become the decisive issue in struggles for hegemony.
Gramsci was concerned with the diffusion of Fordism from America to Europe. The problems he identified in this regard are also relevant to post-Fordism. The rise and consolidation of a new accumulation regime and its mode of regulation always involves a 'cultural revolution' and radical institutional innovation. In turn, economic crises of an accumulation regime (as opposed to crises in that regime) always involve a crisis in the mode of regulation that extends far into the superstructures. This is well illustrated in the crisis of Atlantic Fordism with its wide-ranging repercussions in 'the state in its inclusive sense'. If capital is to resolve this crisis, it must pursue an equally wide-ranging reorganization of the economy, state, and civil society.
Thus struggles are continuing on many levels to restructure the ensemble of social relations and realign them around new accumulation strategies. Techno- economic paradigms have changed. Whereas Atlantic Fordism emphasized productivity and planning, post-Fordist discourses emphasize flexibility and enterprise. Changes are also occurring in organizational paradigms -- most noticeably in the new emphasis on networking, public-private partnership, and governance. The role of the national economy and national state as units of economic and political organization is also being challenged. There is also an active debate around identity politics, social movements, and the proper forms of democracy. Nonetheless, despite all this ideological ferment, no clearly hegemonic post-Fordist historical bloc has yet emerged. This is not so much because the 'battle of ideas' is unresolved since it is already clear that there is no return to the Atlantic Fordist status quo ante. It is more due to the inability to find the structural forms that could regularize the the core contradictions in the decisive economic nucleus of post-Fordism. Even as the neo-liberal economic strategy and hegemonic project is being extended into post-communist economies, it already appears as 'arbitrary, rationalistic, and willed' in its original heartlands. Yet the most obvious alternative solutions for capital also seem to be failing in the face of an intensified international competition through which 'bad policy' seems to destroy 'good policy'. This makes it all the more important to develop alternative economic strategies and hegemonic projects that can revive the socialist project in late capitalist circumstances.