Gramsci and Possibilities of Organic Intellectuals as Agents of Filipino Proletarian Hegemony in Post-Duterte’s Necrofascism

Abstract

This paper explores the potential theoretical grounding of possible Gramscian intervention of organic intellectuals toward the construction of Filipino proletarian hegemony. The authors reflect on the relevance of the working classes in sustaining the world being inspired by Gramsci’s dedicated life to the proletarian cause. Further, the trajectory is the recent historical event of the global COVID-19 pandemic as well as localized in the Philippines under the necrofascist (stimulated by the scholar Achilles Mmbe’s term necropolitics) Duterte regime which we see as an event-basis to situate a reconsideration of the Gramscian theory that highlights the political involvement of the organic intellectuals. As the Philippines remains a backward agricultural sector and service-sector reliant economy in the service of the global capitalist mode of production, this study shows the abundant grounds for the development of Filipino proletarian hegemony in the Gramscian sense. This study takes on the continuing struggles from various social movements that arose since the pandemic as a basis for how a possible unitary hegemony can mobilize Filipinos toward proletarian emancipatory politics. Therefore, through the theory of Gramsci on organic intellectuals, the authors propose the necessity of an organic intellectual’s role of unifying the people and leading the proletarian hegemony that will be the basis of political emancipation. Now moving past the Duterte necrofascist regime, such proletarian hegemony can happen through people’s active creation of their class hegemony toward societal transformation. This paper closes with notes on forming a unitary bloc among classes and identities or using Mao Zedong’s signifier—people. Further, there should be a necessity in this people’s bloc what the theorists Laclau and Mouffee call hegemonic articulation.