But Lenin was able to mount an opportunistic campaign to seize power by taking advantage of an organized party, a disorganized state, and a feeble civil society. These, Gramsci believed, were exceptional and peculiarly “eastern” conditions, quite different from the complex civil societies and structures of Western states, where the only course was first to fight the battle of ideas. “The war of position in politics,” he insisted, “is the concept of hegemony.” This was, according to one authority, “a capsule description of his entire strategic argument.”20
