Gramsci for Aotearoa – Lesson 5: War of Position, building counter-power from below

Gramsci drew a line between seizing state power in a single blow and the slower, harder work of building a new common sense. The second path is the only one available to us in Aotearoa right now.

Kia ora,

We have now built up a picture of Gramsci’s world: hegemony operates through civil society, maintained by both traditional and organic intellectuals, and it works because it makes ruling-class arrangements feel like common sense. Now the question becomes: what do we do about it?

This lesson is about Gramsci’s strategic answer: the war of position.

War of manoeuvre vs war of position

Gramsci borrowed these terms from military strategy. A war of manoeuvre is a frontal assault — the revolutionary seizure of state power in a single decisive blow, as in Russia in 1917. A war of position is a long strategic struggle to control terrain — the equivalent of trench warfare, where what matters is holding and extending ground over time.

Gramsci argued that the war of manoeuvre might have been possible in countries like Russia, where civil society was underdeveloped and the state rested almost entirely on force. But in the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe — and, we can add, Aotearoa — civil society is thick, complex, and deeply woven into everyday life. A frontal assault on the state would fail because the ruling class has far too many fallback positions in civil society.

In these conditions, he argued, the primary task is a war of position: a long, patient effort to build counter-hegemonic institutions, shift common sense, develop organic intellectuals, and create the conditions under which a different social order becomes thinkable and then achievable.

What this means in practice

The war of position is not passive. It is not waiting for conditions to ripen, or retreating into pure theory, or building a perfect socialist subculture that has no contact with the mainstream. It is active, strategic, and deeply political.

It means contesting every institution where working-class and Maori people are present: schools, workplaces, unions, local government, media, arts, sport. Not by pretending those institutions are neutral, but by working within and against them — building alternative capacities and relationships while refusing to be fully absorbed.

It means developing what Gramsci called a historic bloc: a broad alliance of social forces — workers, Maori, environmentalists, feminists, small farmers, the precarious and the excluded — united not just by shared interest but by a shared analysis and vision. This bloc is not built through proclamation. It is built through sustained work in civil society over years and decades.

War of position in Aotearoa

New Zealand is a small, geographically isolated country with a relatively thin civil society compared to larger capitalist states. This cuts both ways. The ruling-class apparatus is less consolidated, which means change can happen faster. But the counter-hegemonic infrastructure is also thin — few independent working-class media, a union movement that has not fully recovered from the 1991 Employment Contracts Act, limited socialist political organisation, and a left intellectual culture that is often disconnected from working-class communities.

The war of position here involves:

Building union education programmes that go beyond industrial relations. Developing independent socialist media that reaches people outside the existing left. Supporting kaupapa Maori education as an alternative to colonial schooling. Creating study circles and reading groups that develop organic intellectuals in workplaces and communities. Fighting for genuine worker representation in governance. Building solidarity economies: housing coops, worker coops, community land trusts.

None of this is spectacular. None of it will be resolved in one election cycle. But Gramsci was explicit: without this long work of building counter-hegemony, any political victory will be temporary and reversible. The ruling class will simply rebuild its common sense in a new form, as it has done repeatedly throughout New Zealand history.

The risk of the war of position

Gramsci was aware of the dangers in this strategy. The war of position requires working within existing institutions, which always risks transformism — being absorbed rather than transforming. It requires patience, which can become passivity. It requires building broad alliances, which can dilute the sharpness of analysis.

There is no formula for avoiding these risks. What Gramsci insists on is clarity of purpose: always knowing what you are building toward, and always asking whether today’s compromises are bringing you closer to or further from that goal.

Questions for you

Where in your own life or work are you engaged in something that could be described as war of position — building alternative capacities, shifting common sense, or developing working-class leadership?

What are the institutions or spaces in Aotearoa you think most need a counter-hegemonic challenge right now? And who is doing that work?

Reply or comment below. Final lesson next.

Next up: Lesson 6 – Gramsci in Aotearoa today: putting it all together.

In solidarity,

The Kiwi Dialect