Gramsci, Common Sense, and the National-Popular

Since I first read (and at least partly understood) Gramsci, I've been particularly interested in his ideas of the national-popular and common sense, which at least in my mind seem interconnected though I have difficulty to some extent differentiating them. I will try here. The hegemonic strategies of contending fundamental classes in a war of positions attempt to articulate (or appropriate?) the common sense--what Hall defines as that which "shapes out ordinary, practical, everyday calculation and appears as natural as the air we breathe" (8)--of the nation's general population and turn it into the national-popular: what naturalizes the rule of the fundamental class that ends up most effectively articulating the common sense. Furthermore, the latter is done through a fundamental class's organic intellectuals. This, again in my mind, is what gives importance to a PMC, especially the part of it involved in cultural analysis and construction, with sympathies to the working class. Gramsci's particular description of class, which from this weeks reading seems like a fluid conception of alliances between different strata of a fundamental class--e.g. both the proletariat and bourgeoisie having different levels of sub-classes--allows for this interpretation of the PMC's--as a strata or sub-class as opposed to a class in itself, some of the members of which will identify with the bourgeoisie while some with the proletariat--potential. But the PMC's importance as organic intellectuals--not to preclude that there are no more decidedly working class intellectuals as well--will attempt to analyze and critique the appearance of common sense in works of popular culture in a way that reveals both the contradictions of those beliefs towards the interests of the working class and the relevancy of those beliefs towards other forms of political, social, and economic organization, perhaps best represented by socialism. The latter could be performed in both popular culture and more intellectual forms of culture to show that some forms of common sense between members of the PMC and members of working class are not so far off.

But what about those elements of common sense that will be far off or incommensurate? How will those be reconciled? Will they be shuffled under a rug for the immediacy of a social movement and dealt with later if and when they should reappear? What further harm will this cause for future alliances and relations both if the proletariat as a fundamental class succeeds or fails in its hegemonic strategy? Can a fundamental class ever really fully articulate the interests and common sense of the strata that forms it?