Lenin, for the most part, believed that class conflict was strong, and that the working class is subversive and social-democratic by nature (Fernia 33-34). However, Gramsci diverted from this:
…in this Quarderni, Gramsci stressed that class conflict is not just channelled by generally accepted norms: it is effectively neutralized. To his mind, the present, antagonistic social reality can be upheld only if the antagonisms contained in it are hidden from view. Prior to social life, beneath it, enveloping it, is an underlying consensus. As far back as 1919, long before he developed his concept of hegemony, he devoted considerable theoretical attention to hwo trade unions and socialist parties, by working within the categories of bourgeois democracy, come to accept the very presuppositions of its operation. Writing from prison some years later, he completely dismissed these traditional working-class institutions as mere ‘instruments of political order’, fully incorporated into the capitalist regime. Under their tutelage, class conflict becomes domesticated and degenerates into a desire for marginally higher wages. This illusory conflict is consensus in disguise, and only serves to strengthen bourgeois hegemony by obscuring its true character. For Lenin, trade unionism was a sign of poor strategy; for Gramsci, it was both a mechanism and symptom of cultural integration. (35)
Femia, Joseph V. Gramsci’s Political Though: Hegemony, Consciousness, and the Revolutionary Process. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.
