Book excerpt: In Lenin and the Logic of Hegemony, by means of a careful textual and contextual analysis of the writings of Lenin and his Marxist contemporaries, Alan Shandro traces the contours of the ‘(anti-) metaphysical event’ identified by Gramsci in Lenin’s political practice and theory, the emergence of the ‘philosophical fact’ of hegemony. In so doing, he effectively disputes conventional caricatures of Lenin’s role as a political actor and thinker and unearths the underlying parameters of the concept of hegemony in the class struggle. He thereby clarifies the conceptual status of this pervasive but now increasingly elusive notion and the logic of theory and practice at work in it.