Why Gramsci still matters for Malaysia’s AI governance

A recurring critique in contemporary discourse in Malaysia is that a Gramscian mode of analysis has outlived its usefulness.

According to this view, Malaysia’s contradictions are now seen as primarily racial and institutional, anchored in the New Economic Policy (NEP) and its reproduction of Malay supremacy.

While this critique correctly identifies ethnicity as a powerful organising principle, it risks confusing a mediating mechanism for the structural driver of domination.

However, a Gramscian analysis examines how power endures through consent as much as through law or coercion. It shows how ideas, institutions and everyday assumptions can make unequal arrangements appear normal, legitimate and difficult to challenge.

Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony remains relevant because it explains why racialised policies persist, how they are rendered normal, and whose material interests they ultimately serve.

At this historical juncture, Malaysia’s principal contradictions remain structurally capitalist and geopolitically neo-imperial, with ethnicity functioning as a stabilising ideological layer rather than the primary engine of exploitation.

Hegemony and consent

Gramsci’s central insight is that ruling classes don’t just govern through force.  They secure consent through culture, institutions and everyday common sense.

In Malaysia, the NEP did not merely redistribute opportunities. It also produced a hegemonic narrative of protection, insecurity and entitlement that anchored political legitimacy.

Empirical political-economy work by Jomo KS and Terence Gomez demonstrates that the principal beneficiaries of this settlement were not the ethnic Malay working class but politically connected capital groups operating through state-linked enterprises, privatised monopolies and patronage networks.

Ethnicity thus became the language of consent, while accumulation proceeded along class lines. A race-only critique risks obscuring this deeper structure of power.

The NEP as mediation

From a Gramscian perspective, the NEP functions as part of the ideological superstructure that stabilises capitalism under conditions of uneven development.

It mediates class contradictions by redirecting discontent towards inter-ethnic competition rather than vertical struggles over ownership, wages and surplus extraction.

This explains why repeated political turnovers and rhetorical reforms have failed to dismantle oligarchic concentration. As long as the underlying mode of accumulation – rent-seeking, financialisation and reliance on external capital – remains intact, reforms that focus only on ethnic redistribution tend to reproduce hegemony rather than challenge it.

AI and technocracy

The government’s embrace of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) governance reflects a genuine attempt to modernise state capacity.

However, Gramsci warns that technocratic reforms can be absorbed into existing hegemonic projects if they do not alter material relations.

If AI governance is narrowly focused around efficiency, compliance and investor confidence risks producing a new layer of ‘digital consent’.

Corporate consultancies, platform monopolies and policy think tanks increasingly act as supporters of capital, shaping narratives around innovation while marginalising labour rights, data sovereignty and democratic oversight.

Without a counter-hegemonic strategy, AI becomes an instrument of administrative rationalisation rather than meaningful social transformation.

Dependency and digital power

Gramsci’s relevance extends beyond the nation-state.

Malaysia occupies a semi-peripheral position in the global political economy, where domestic elites align with monopoly finance capital, Big Tech platforms and geopolitical power centres.

This produces a layered hegemony: external domination mediated through local compradore and ethno-capitalist elites.

Lim Mah Hui’s work on ownership and corporate control illustrates how concentrated capital structures persist despite policy shifts.

In the AI era, this manifests as dependence on foreign cloud infrastructure, proprietary algorithms and extractive data regimes.

Race-focused critiques alone cannot address these dynamics of digital dependency.

Building counter-hegemony

To confront the NEP–Malay supremacy nexus is necessary but insufficient. A Gramscian strategy requires building counter-hegemonic blocs that cut across ethnicity while addressing material conditions.

This includes democratising AI and data governance, with meaningful representation from labour, small and medium-sized enterprises and communities.

It also means breaking state–corporate capture in procurement, platforms and digital infrastructure.

Industrial policy must be reoriented towards productive capacity rather than rent extraction.

Equally important is the cultivation of independent organic intellectuals across civil society, academia and the public sector.

This is where the government AI agenda must evolve – from managerial reform to a political project.

Gramsci and Malaysia’s digital future

Gramsci remains indispensable because he explains not only domination but also endurance.

Malaysia’s crisis is not merely one of ethnic imbalance, but of a hegemonic order that fuses capitalism, identity and neo-imperial integration into a resilient whole.

If AI governance is to serve ordinary people rather than reproduce elite consensus, it must be embedded in a counter-hegemonic vision that confronts ownership, dependency and consent itself. Only by moving beyond symbolic reform can Malaysia reclaim democratic and digital sovereignty.

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