HEGEMONY, DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALISM. THOUGHT AND INTELECTUAL DEBATE IN THE DEMOCRACTIC TRANSITION

Abstract

This study addresses the reflexive experience of a group of left-winged Argentinian intellectuals —called “Gramscianos Argentinos”— surrounding the concept of hegemony during the years of the democratic transition. The analysis will be focused on two literary bodies of knowledge: the articles published in the journal Controversia para el examen de la realidad argentina (México, 1979-1981) and the papers that were presented to the seminar on “Hegemony and political alternatives in Latin America” (UNAM, México, 1980).

Our hypothesis states that for these intellectuals the concept of hegemony became an important analytical tool to re-think the relationship between democracy and socialism by means of exercising a conceptual revision of the sense of democracy. This revision entailed challenging the liberal rationalist sense of the concept in order to preserve the political productivity of the tension between the formal and the substantive dimensions of democracy. Likewise, we will analyse how the notion of hegemony will surface within the socialism / Peronism controversy and, in particular, within the theoretico-political critique of populism.

Inspired by a strategy that combines the contributions of contemporary political theory with new intellectual history, we will try to prove our hypothesis by analyzing the uses of the concept of hegemony in the intellectual debate, understanding that such uses are index and factor of a conceptual review wider and more complex relationship between democracy and socialism.