To few Americans is Antonio Gramsci a familiar name. That is to be regretted because the work of the late Italian Marxist sheds much light on our time. It was he who first alerted fellow revolutionaries to the possibility that they would be able to complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved “cultural hegemony,” or control of society’s intellectual life by cultural means alone. His was an incremental, rather than an apocalyptic, revolution — the kind, that is, that we have been witnessing in the United States, and the Western world generally, since the 1960s. With this in mind, we ought not to treat the contemporary “culture war” lightly; the fate of what remains of civilized life may well be decided by its outcome. — Lee Congdon