Recently there have been several attempts to arrive at a more precise understanding of the relationship between Marxism and psychology. These have been notable in that they have been informed by Althusserian treatments of Marxism rather than orthodox Freudian or Lacanian themes. Such treatments, it is argued, entail the complete eradication of any notion of subjectivity. The following analyses the Gramscian concept of hegemony and whether it can furnish an alternative to this rejection and provide at least an initial point of departure in formulating a ‘Marxist psychology’. It suggests that hegemony is a dialectical concept in the classical Hegelian tradition, a concept expressible only in and through the Hegelian notion of a ‘speculative proposition’. It is argued that this would necessitate a wholesale rejection of the classical Marxist tradition that assigns primacy to the material base. It is suggested that the ‘logic’ of hegemony is fundamentally at odds with hegemony as an item of real socio-cultural analysis. Gramsci’s own retention of the primacy thesis, the dominance of the economic moment in the constitution of hegemony, requires that hegemony be the result of that moment as a causal factor. A refusal of the Althusserian alternative requires a concept of agentic psychical subjectivity, albeit one open to massive influence by the logic of commodity production.
