Orthodox Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had occurred in the most advanced nations. Capitalism, it seemed, was more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through
ideology. The
bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "
common sense" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented natural or normal values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. Lenin held that culture was ancillary to political objectives, but for Gramsci it was fundamental to the attainment of power that
cultural hegemony be achieved first. In Gramsci's view, a class cannot dominate in modern conditions by merely advancing its own narrow economic interests; neither can it dominate purely through force and coercion. Rather, it must exert intellectual and moral leadership, and make alliances and compromises with a variety of forces. Gramsci calls this union of social forces a "historic bloc", taking a term from
Georges Sorel. This bloc forms the basis of consent to a certain social order, which produces and re-produces the hegemony of the dominant class through a nexus of institutions,
social relations, and ideas. In this way, Gramsci's theory emphasized the importance of the political and ideological
superstructure in both maintaining and fracturing relations of the economic base.
Gramsci stated that bourgeois cultural values were tied to
folklore, popular culture and religion, and therefore much of his analysis of hegemonic culture is aimed at these.