5. Gramsci and the Philosophers of the Western Public Sphere

In this, episode 5. I discuss Gramsci's thinking in relation to three of his contemporaries from the United States - all New Yorkers. They are the philosopher John Dewey, the public relations genius Edward Bernays and the newspaper man and philosopher Walter Lippmann. None of these figures are interested in developing the kind of working class public sphere that we saw Trotsky wanted to develop. But coming from the most advanced and dense mass communications space on the planet, they have plenty to tell us about how elite hegemony works in class democracies.