The Struggle for Hegemony: Notes on the Liberative Culture

Abstract

The masses of people that carried an insurrection at Edsa were there basically for Cory Aquino and everything therefore revolve around her. While this may sound pedestrian by now, it is an undeniable fact that must be the starting point of any strategy intent on successfully working for social change. And such success lie in precisely confronting and attempting to grapple with this fact. What barred the national democrats from seeing the revolutionary potentials of this cultural element? What caused them not to foresee their impending possible marginalization in the minds of the masses that participated in Edsa? The answers can be found in their paradigm of revolution which at this point, on hindsight, can be said to have lacked a thorough culturalist perspective. Hence, they were not able to diagnose that cultural shift in the minds of the masses given the snap elections which presented an opportunity for the masses "common sense: to be translated as a material force that shall establish a new political system.